Many prominent theories of moral responsibility rely on the notion of “tracing,” the idea that responsibility for an outcome can be located in (i.e., “traced back to”) some prior moment of control, perhaps significantly antecedent to the proximate sources of a considered action. In this article, I show how there is a problem for theories that rely on tracing. The problem is connected to the knowledge condition on moral responsibility. Many prima facie good candidate cases for tracing analyses appear to (...) violate the knowledge condition on moral responsibility. So, either we need to dispense with tracing approaches or we must refine our understanding of the knowledge condition or we are responsible less frequently than we suppose. (shrink)

This paper discusses the logical space of alternative conceptual engineering projects, with a specific focus on (1) the processes, (2) the targets and goals, and (3) the methods of such projects. We present an overview of how these three aspects interact in the contemporary literature and discuss those alternative projects that have yet to be explored based on our suggested typology. We show how choices about each element in a conceptual engineering project constrain the possibilities for the others, thereby giving (...) rise to distinct groupings of possible projects under the banner of conceptual engineering. We conclude with a critical reflection on the potential ethical issues that arise as a result of effectively putting conceptual engineering into practice. (shrink)

Justice Across Ages offers an attractive account of justice between the young and the old that brings together three notable principles of age-group justice: complete-lives equality, relational equality, and prudence. Yet, the book says little about the fact that many of us live longer than others, and the little it does say casts doubt on whether lifespan inequality threatens justice as construed by the three principles. This essay argues, instead, that theories of justice between the young and the old should (...) not dispense with a conception of justice between different longevity groups. It concludes that we must be sensitive to lifespan variations when designing policies to promote justice across age groups. (shrink)

This is a topically organized introduction to the traditional problems of philosophy. It aims to introduce readers to traditional philosophical problems and to expose readers to philosophical argumentation in such a way that they will feel confident in handling abstract concepts.

The present text surveys and reevaluates the meaning and scope of Ortega y Gasset’s philosophy. The chapters reveal the most important aspects of his history such as the Neokantian training he went thru in Germany as well as his discovery of Husserl’s phenomenology around 1912. The work also covers his original contributions to philosophy namely vital and historical reason - and the cultural and educational mission he proposed to achieve. The Spanish – and to a certain extent the European – (...) circumstance was the milieu from which his work emerged but this does not limit Ortega’s scope. Rather, he believed that universal truths can only emerge from the particulars in which they are embedded. The publication in 2010 of a critical edition of his Complete Works opened worldwide access for many unpublished manuscripts, and some of his lectures. There is renewed interest among students and researchers in Ortega and this book uniquely delivers scholarship on his content in English. (shrink)

La primera parte de este artículo expone la interpretación praxeológica del concepto noológico de “acto”. En la segunda, se muestra la crítica que Antonio González Fernández hace de esta. Su objeción consiste en que los actos no pueden ser considerados cosas reales, sino solo el surgir de estas. A partir de dicha observación a la noología, González Fernández no solo da surgimiento a su praxeología (también conocida como hiparqueología), sino que su sistema filosófico comienza a ser cuestionado por no explicar (...) qué son, en el mundo de los hechos, los actos, más allá de la suposición de que ellos están ahí a pesar de ser invisibles. En la tercera y última sección se presentan algunas hipótesis para procurar solucionar ciertas objeciones al concepto praxeológico de “acto”, tales como el anteriormente mencionado y las aparentes circularidades y posibles contradicciones que hay al interior del sistema praxeológico. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Ortega's Thought and the Spanish Philosophical Emigration to Latin America Ortega's Influence in Latin America References Further Reading.

The paper argues against a commitment to metaphysical necessity, semantic modalities are enough. The best approaches to elucidate the semantic modalities are (still) versions of lingustic ersatzism and fictionalism, even if only developed in parts. Within these necessary properties and the difference between natural and semantic laws can be accounted for. The proper background theory for this is an updated version of Logical Empiricism, which is congenial to recent trends in Structural Realism. The anti-metaphysical attitude of Logical Empiricism deserves revitalization. (...) Another target besides metaphysical necessity are substantial forms of iterated modalities, as used, for instance, in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Manuel Azaña nació en un Reino, presidió una República y murió cuando España ya estaba bajo el yugo de una dictadura. Vivió una vida llena de vicisitudes en los campos de la política, pero también de la literatura y el pensamiento, que él mismo se encargó de dejar para la posteridad.

What exactly is the role of empirical beliefs in moral reflective equilibrium (RE)? And if they have a part to play, can changes in our empirical beliefs effectuate changes in the moral principles we adopt? Conversely, can empirical beliefs be adjusted in light of certain moral convictions? While it is generally accepted that empirical background theory is of importance to the method of wide reflective equilibrium (WRE), this article focuses on a different aspect, namely the role of empirical beliefs that (...) is intrinsic to the coherence relation of moral beliefs in any (narrow or wide) conception of RE. First, it is shown that in the application of RE, empirical beliefs are crucial to the procedure of matching principles to considered judgments. Changes in our empirical beliefs may therefore upset the relevant coherence relation and motivate changes in the moral principles we adopt. This more detailed account of the interplay between empirical and moral beliefs can help evaluate the overall philosophical appeal of RE. Finally, it is argued that, at least in WRE, the relation between empirical and moral beliefs need not be a one-way street, that is, moral convictions can provide us with some epistemic means of adjudicating between competing empirical descriptions of the world. (shrink)

Testemunhos na primeira pessoa dados por quem aceitou recordar os factos, os dramas e os sucessos do tempo de mudança e transformação vertiginosa que constituiu o período de vida do Padre Manuel Antunes, professor que marcou indelevelmente várias gerações.

In this paper, we study the effects of using an algorithm-based risk assessment instrument (RAI) to support the prediction of risk of violent recidivism upon release. The instrument we used is a machine learning version of RiskCanvi used by the Justice Department of Catalonia, Spain. It was hypothesized that people can improve their performance on defining the risk of recidivism when assisted with a RAI. Also, that professionals can perform better than non-experts on the domain. Participants had to predict whether (...) a person who has been released from prison will commit a new crime leading to re-incarceration, within the next two years. This user study is done with (1) general participants from diverse backgrounds recruited through a crowdsourcing platform, (2) targeted participants who are students and practitioners of data science, criminology, or social work and professionals who work with RisCanvi. We also run focus groups with participants of the targeted study, including people who use RisCanvi in a professional capacity, to interpret the quantitative results. Among other findings, we observe that algorithmic support systematically leads to more accurate predictions from all participants, but that statistically significant gains are only seen in the performance of targeted participants with respect to that of crowdsourced participants. Among other comments, professional participants indicate that they would not foresee using a fully-automated system in criminal risk assessment, but do consider it valuable for training, standardization, and to fine-tune or double-check their predictions on particularly difficult cases. We found that the revised prediction by using a RAI increases the performance of all groups, while professionals show a better performance in general. And, a RAI can be considered for extending professional capacities and skills along their careers. (shrink)

The aim of our paper is to question the problem of artistic creation as a transfiguration of suffering. We will point out that health is always a state to be looked at with the eyes of a convalescent, and how in particular there can be no artistic creation that is not accompanied by a condition of suffering. Our interpretive key will be the faculty of perceiving nuances, a topic that often appears in Nietzsche’s later writings, and the relationship between the (...) nuance and the affirmative power of art. Finally, we will consider whether the taste for nuance is not itself a sign of a profoundly suffering nature, aristocratically devoted to detachment from all that is grossly general. (shrink)

The book aims to set out in which respects concepts are properly studied in philosophy, what methodological role the study of concepts has in philoso-phy's study of the world. Many of the considerations in this book nowadays are placed under the headline ‘metaphilosophy’. In contrast to paradigmatic ordinary language philosophy the book endorses a representationalist theory of meaning and concepts, thus agreeing with many of its critics in philosophy and the cognitive sciences. In contrast to many of these critics and (...) supposedly the majority of cognitive scientists it endorses the viability of conceptual analysis as one method of philosophy. The book reflects on Frege's theory of concepts, because Frege's theory of sentential unity has barely been super-seded, and the problems arising from Frege's understanding of concepts are still alive. The central part of the book starts by reconsidering the approach and the idea of ordinary language philosophy. Although ordinary language philosophy cannot be the whole of analytic philosophy a proper understanding of conceptual analysis turns out to be one part of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

O livro oferece o primeiro estudo sobre o espólio de Edmundo Curvelo (1913-1954), professor da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa e um dos introdutores dos laboratórios psicotécnicos e psicológicos em Portugal. São publicados pela primeira vez manuscritos filosóficos de Curvelo, bem como a sua correspondência com grandes nomes da Cultura e da Filosofia do século XX (W. V. Quine, Alonzo Church, Stephen Kiss, Joaquim de Carvalho e Delfim Santos). O livro apresenta igualmente um estudo do enquadramento da obra (...) de Curvelo e da sua importância para a história do pensamento e da ciência portuguesa do século XX. This book presents the first study into the collection of Edmundo Curvelo (1913-1954), professor in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon and co-responsible for the introduction of psychotechnic and psychological laboratories into Portugal. Some of his philosophical manuscripts are published here for the first time, along with his correspondence with great names of 20th century Philosophy (W. V. Quine, Alonzo Church, Stephen Kiss, Joaquim de Carvalho and Delfim Santos). The book also contains a study which contextualizes Curvelo’s oeuvre within the history of 20th-century Portuguese science and thought. (shrink)

The debate surrounding ‘big tech’ and antitrust has dominated public policy discourses over the past few years in many parts of the world. Noteworthy is that several countries and regions, including China, the European Union, and the United States, have launched investigations into the allegedly anticompetitive and exclusionary business practices of companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google and their Chinese counterparts, Alibaba and Tencent. This paper builds on the renewed interest in the topic and discusses in detail – (...) and from an ordoliberal perspective – the key characteristics of the digital economy, the business conduct of tech platforms, and the corresponding antitrust concerns, as well as possible reform steps which could help to strengthen modern-day competition law and policy (and antitrust enforcement). (shrink)

In his explanation of human action Alfred Schutz resorts mainly to Max Weber’s notion of subjective meaning and Husserl’s notion of type. For him subjective meaning seems more important to understand human action than the fact that social actors internalize normative values. Accordingly, validity has mainly to do with projects of action, with fulfilled (or unfulfilled) expectations and to the stock of knowledge available, along with the actor’s system of relevances. This raises two characteristic Schutzian problems: 1) the relation between (...) the subjective meaning of an action and the objective criteria (namely, the juridical and the ethical ones) according to which any action can be evaluated; 2) the relation between an actor and his fellow human beings that arguably share the same system of relevances and act in the same normative framework. In this paper, I intend to offer an analysis of these issues, resorting mainly to Schutz’s 1934 book Der Sinnhafte Aufbau der Sozialen Welt, and in some unpublished manuscripts. (shrink)

The paper presents a renewed Habermasian view on transnational multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) and assesses the institutional characteristics of the Equator Principles Association (EPA) from a deliberative democracy perspective. Habermas’ work has been widely adopted in the academic literature on the political responsibilities of (multinational) corporations (i.e., political corporate social responsibility), and also in assessing the democratic qualities of MSIs. Commentators, however, have noted that Habermas’ approach relies very much on ‘nation-state democracy’ and may not be applicable to democracy in MSIs—in (...) which nation-states are virtually absent. We argue that Habermas’ detailed conceptualization of the institutionalization of deliberative democracy can be applied to transnational MSIs if these initiatives can be said to have their own ‘dèmoi’ that can be represented in associational decision-making. Therefore, we develop a definition of the dèmos of an MSI based on the notion of collective agency. Subsequently, we explain how Habermas’ approach to democracy can be applied to MSIs and show that it has more to offer than hitherto has been uncovered. Our illustrative analysis of the EPA confirms the criticisms regarding this MSI which have recently been articulated by researchers and practitioners, but also yields new findings and possible avenues for the further development of the EPA: That is, although our assessment suggests that the EPA in its current state is still far from being a democratic MSI, the possibility of a sensible analysis of its democratic character indicates that transnational MSIs can, in principle, help to fill governance gaps in a democratic way. (shrink)

Plural definite descriptions across many languages display two well-known properties. First, they can give rise to so-called non-maximal readings, in the sense that they ‘allow for exceptions’. Second, while they tend to have a quasi-universal quantificational force in affirmative sentences, they tend to be interpreted existentially in the scope of negation. Building on previous works, we offer a theory in which sentences containing plural definite expressions trigger a family of possible interpretations, and where general principles of language use account for (...) their interpretation in various contexts and syntactic environments. Our theory solves a number of problems that these previous works encounter, and has broader empirical coverage in that it offers a precise analysis for sentences that display complex interactions between plural definites, quantifiers and bound variables, as well as for cases involving non-distributive predicates. The resulting proposal is briefly compared with an alternative proposal by Križ, which has similar coverage but is based on a very different architecture and sometimes makes subtly different predictions. (shrink)

In the light of several ongoing antitrust investigations in the E.U. and the U.S., the following research paper analyzes whether ‘big tech’ – same as the big banks – need special regulatory (and economic -political) attention and if so, how an updated form of regulatory policy for the digital era could look like. It does so by utilizing – and reviving – the normative and business -ethical ideals of German ‘neoliberalism’, also known as (classical) ordoliberalism. Especially, Walter Eucken’s work has (...) the potential to inform and enrich the current debate concerning the regulation of big tech. The main goal of the paper is to outline a potentially new regulatory framework – one that combines (and revises) Eucken’s ordoliberalism with the competition policy of the European Union. (shrink)

Understanding what motivates employees is essential to the success of organizational objectives. Therefore, properly capturing and explaining the full range of such motivations are important. However, the classical and most popular theories describing employee motives have neglected, if not omitted entirely, the importance of the ethical and spiritual dimensions of motivation. This has led to a model of a person as self-interested, amoral, and non-spiritual. In this paper, we attempt to expose this omission and offer a more complete taxonomy of (...) motivations which include these dimensions. Although more work will need to be done to fully develop the ethical and spiritual dimensions of motivation, the expanded taxonomy will provide the foundations and serve as a guide for such further research. Furthermore, this new categorization of motivations brings out the full dimensions of being human, which promises to lead to improved management practices with regard to employees and foster greater human flourishing in the workplace. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering means to provide a method to assess and improve our concepts working as cognitive devices. But conceptual engineering still lacks an account of what concepts are (as cognitive devices) and of what engineering is (in the case of cognition). And without such prior understanding of its subject matter, or so it is claimed here, conceptual engineering is bound to remain useless, merely operating as a piecemeal approach, with no overall grip on its target domain. The purpose of this (...) programmatic paper is to overcome this knowledge gap by providing some guidelines for developing the theories of concepts and of cognition that will ground the systematic unified framework needed to effectively implement conceptual engineering as a widely applicable method for the cognitive optimization of our conceptual devices. (shrink)

O presente ensaio aborda o pensamento de Karl Leonhard Reinhold entre 1789 e 1792. Após um curto período em que apareceu como discípulo e divulgador da filosofia de Kant, Reinhold procurou conduzir o kantismo na direcção que lhe parecia a mais adequada para a resolução de dois problemas que Kant deixara em aberto: a clarificação da natureza da coisaemsi e o acabamento dos intentos sistemáticos da sua filosofia. Este último desiderato, Reinhold procurou resolvêlo por meio de uma teoria da faculdade (...) representativa. Este ensaio procura também mostrar de que forma a filosofia de Reinhold estimulou o surgimento das interpretações especulativas do pensamento kantiano, nos grandes sistemas do idealismo alemão. (shrink)

This paper addresses the meaning of Husserl’s idealism between the Ideas of 1913 and the Cartesian Meditations of 1931. In the work of 1913, the idealism stems from a distinction between consciousness and world based in a difference in the corresponding modes of giveness: consciousness gives itself absolutely and without profiles, and the world is given as an identity pole of a multiplicity of profiles. The fact that Husserl offered a second definition of his idealism in the same work proves (...) that he thought the first one was not sufficient to ground the kind of idealism he was committed to. According to this second definition, consciousness is an absolute being that nulla res indigent ad existendum, while the world has a relative and contingent being. In 1931 the Cartesian Meditations give the final clue to the understanding of these earlier definitions. Husserls sharply distinguishes his phenomenological idealism from the Berkeleyan and Kantian ones and defines it as a thorough explicitation of the Ego as a constitutive agency, so that the «world that really is» is «the world constituted by consciousness». (shrink)

Este ensaio tem como objectivo apresentar, num primeiro momento, os resultados da análise intencional do processo de constituição dos objectos físicos, do corpo somático e da psique, tal como ela foi levada a cabo por Edmund Husserl. Na base desses resultados, será possível elaborar uma teoria da afecção que permitirá, num segundo momento, algumas aproximações com a Psicanálise de Freud e a teoria freudiana das pulsões. A especificidade do corpo somático relativamente a qualquer objecto físico – apesar de algumas semelhanças (...) no seu modo de doação – revela-se, acima de tudo, na experiência do corpo próprio e nas modalidades de vivência das afecções. Em particular, o enfraquecimento ou obscurecimento destas últimas colocam a questão da existência de um «inconsciente fenomenológico», cujas relações com o inconsciente de Freud, num terceiro e último momento do ensaio, se tentarão pôr em evidência. (shrink)

I’ve been told that in the good old days of the 1970s, when Quine’s desert landscapes were regarded as ideal real estate and David Lewis and John Rawls had not yet left a legion of influential students rewriting the terrain of metaphysics and ethics respectively, compatibilism was still compatibilism about free will. And, of course, incompatibilism was still incompatibilism about free will. That is, compatibilism was the view that free will was compatible with determinism. Incompatibilism was the view that free (...) will was incompatible with determinism.1 What philosophers argued about was whether free will was compatible with determinism. Mostly, this was an argument about how to understand claims that one could do otherwise. You needn’t have bothered to talk about moral responsibility, because it was just obvious that you couldn’t have moral responsibility without free will. The literature was a temple of clarity. Then, somehow, things began to go horribly wrong. To be sure, there had been some activity in the 1960s that would have struck some observers as ominous. Still, it was not until the 1980s that those initial warning signs gave way to real trouble. The meanings of terms twisted. (shrink)

The past few years have seen the opening of several antitrust investigations against some of the most dominant and powerful companies in the world—e.g., the U.S. Department of Justice, numerous states, and the Federal Trade Commission have sued Google, Facebook, and Amazon, and the E.U. has launched additional proceedings against Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. This paper looks at the latest trends and developments in the E.U. and the USA and analyzes the different regulatory approaches taken from a distinct business (...) ethics, that is, ordoliberal perspective. The paper aims to derive ordoliberal-inspired antitrust principles and apply them to the current antitrust proceedings and investigations, thereby assessing their strengths and weaknesses. It also aims at developing ordoliberal-inspired reform proposals which might help to strengthen and “harden” modern-day antitrust regimes. (shrink)

Elementos criticos de la filosofía de la existencia.--Marx; o, La crítica como fundamento.

Platons Nomoi standen lange zu Unrecht im Schatten seiner Politeia. Dennoch prasentiert der umfangreiche und schwer zu interpretierende Dialog die Einsichten und Innovationen seines reifen Staatsdenkens. Sie werden in dem Band von internationalen Platon-Experten erschlossen. Zu diesen Einsichten und Innovationen zahlt der Gedanke, dass Machtmissbrauch durch politische Institutionen verhindert werden kann, und dass den Gesetzen Vorreden bzw. Praambeln vorangestellt werden sollen, die zu ihrer Befolgung uberreden. Die versammelten Original-Beitrage behandeln die zentralen Themen des Dialogs wie die neue Mischverfassung, die politische (...) Theologie, den Gesetzesbegriff, das Verhaltnis von Tugend- und Gesetzeslehre, die Erziehung und Bildung sowie den Einfluss und die Wirkung des Dialogs in der Antike, der Neuzeit und der Gegenwart. Eine ausfuhrliche Einleitung fuhrt in das Werk und seine Wirkungsgeschichte ein und informiert den Leser uber die Themen und Thesen der versammelten Beitrage. (shrink)

In this paper I will examine the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy as the alleged tensions between them appear in diagnoses about the crisis of liberal democracy. The issue is approached through the arguments of the German jurist Martin Kriele, who holds the thesis that there can be no sovereign in the constitutional State. I will begin by explaining this thesis as well as the justification offered by Kriele. According to him, the guarantee of rights and freedoms is only possible (...) within the framework of the constitutional State. Hence, he advances a second related thesis, that democracy can only be developed in the constitutional State, that is, as constitutional democracy. However, this second thesis seems in contradiction with the first if the democratic principle implies popular sovereignty. To resolve this apparent antinomy, I will distinguish with Kriele two rival conceptions of democracy in order to point out the danger of misinterpreting the meaning of constitutional democracy. -/- En este trabajo examino la relación entre constitucionalismo y democracia, puesto que las supuestas tensiones entre ambos aparecen en los diagnósticos sobre la crisis de la democracia liberal. La cuestión se aborda a través de los argumentos del jurista alemán Martin Kriele, quien defiende la tesis de que no puede haber soberano en el Estado constitucional. Empezaré por explicar dicha tesis así como la justificación de ella que ofrece Kriele, para quien la garantía de los derechos y libertades sólo es posible en el marco del Estado constitucional. De ahí que avance una segunda tesis relacionada, cuando sostiene que la democracia sólo puede desarrollarse en dicho Estado constitucional, esto es, como democracia constitucional. Sin embargo, esta segunda tesis parece contradictoria con la primera si identificamos el principio democrático con la soberanía popular. Para resolver esa aparente antinomia, se distinguiré con Kriele dos concepciones rivales de la democracia, a fin de señalar el peligro de malinterpretar el sentido de la democracia constitucional. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Are They Blameworthy for What They Do? The Puzzle On the Virtues of Philosophy Interruptus What You Don't Know About Psychopathic Serial Killers Back to Philosophy Psychopathic Serial Killing and Evil.

Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving our concepts. However, little has been written about how best to conceive of concepts for the purposes of conceptual engineering. In this paper, I aim to fill this foundational gap, proceeding in three main steps: First, I propose a methodological framework for evaluating the conduciveness of a given concept of concept for conceptual engineering. Then, I develop a typology that contrasts two competing concepts of concept that can be used in conceptual (...) engineering — namely, the philosophical and psychological ones. Finally, I evaluate these two concepts of concept using the proposed methodological framework and I show that, when it comes to making conceptual engineering an actionable method, the psychological concept of concept outclasses its philosophical counterpart on all counts. This provides a baseline from which the concept of concept can be further improved for the purposes of conceptual engineering. (shrink)

My goal in this paper is to reconstruct Anthony Collins’ challenge to the authority of orthodox Anglican figures, which arises due to arguments Collins develops in his Vindication of the Divine Attributes (1710) and Discourse on Free-Thinking (1713). In addition to shedding light on a hitherto underappreciated argument by Collins, my reconstruction allows me to propose a solution to the interpretive problem posed by §§16–22 of the fourth dialogue of Berkeley’s Alciphron (1732). While it has been acknowledged that Collins looms (...) large in the background of these sections, Berkeley’s argumentative strategy has remained perplexing to commentators, particularly his references to several Scholastic thinkers. I argue that we can make sense of Berkeley’s strategy and references if we appreciate that these sections are intended to evade Collins’ challenge. (shrink)