El escepticismo de Pirrón une a su condición fundadora un problema de recepción recurrente en los clásicos de la antigüedad, y presente aquí en extremo: la ausencia de textos escritos del autor. La interpretación del escepticismo como modo de vida, y no como discurso, en Michel de Montaigne y Friedrich Nietzsche, es el resultado de asumir radicalmente, aunque de formas divergentes, la tensión originaria entre escepticismo y (ausencia intencionada o no de) discurso verbal: como restitución de la paridad de palabras (...) y cosas o como privilegio de la lectura sobre la designación del texto. (shrink)

The well-known distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness has moved away from the conceptual domain into the empirical one, and the debate now is focused on whether the neural mechanisms of cognitive access are constitutive of the neural correlate of phenomenal consciousness. In this paper, I want to analyze the consequences that a negative reply to this question has for the cognitive phenomenology thesis – roughly the claim that there is a “proprietary” phenomenology of thoughts. If the mechanisms responsible (...) for cognitive access can be disentangled from the mechanisms that give rise to phenomenology in the case of perception and emotion, then the same disentanglement is to be expected in the case of thoughts. This, in turn, presents, as I argue, a challenge to the cognitive phenomenology thesis: either there are thoughts with cognitive phenomenology we lack cognitive access to or there are good reasons to doubt that there is such a thing as cognitive phenomenology. I discuss a... (shrink)

The non-transitivity of the relation looks the same as has been used to argue that the relation has the same phenomenal character as is non-transitive—a result that jeopardizes certain theories of consciousness. In this paper, I argue against this conclusion while granting the premise by dissociating lookings and phenomenology; an idea that some might find counter-intuitive. However, such an intuition is left unsupported once phenomenology and cognitive access are distinguished from each other; a distinction that is conceptually and empirically grounded.

In having an experience one is aware of having it. Having an experience requires some form of access to one's own state, which distinguishes phenomenally conscious mental states from other kinds of mental states. Until very recently, Higher-Order (HO) theories were the only game in town aiming at offering a full-fledged account of this form of awareness within the analytical tradition. Independently of any objections that HO theories face, First/Same-Order (F/SO) theorists need to offer an account of such access to (...) become a plausible alternative. My aim in this paper is twofold. In the first place, I wish to widen the logical space of the discussion among theories of consciousness by offering a distinction, orthogonal to that between F/SO and HO theories, between what I will call 'Self-Involving' (SI) and 'Mental-State-Involving' (MSI) theories and argue in favor of the former one. In the second place, I will present the basics of a characterization of such a Self-Involving theory in Same-Order terms. (shrink)

Cognitive theories claim, whereas non-cognitive theories deny, that cognitive access is constitutive of phenomenology. Evidence in favor of non-cognitive theories has recently been collected by Block and is based on the high capacity of participants in partial-report experiments compared to the capacity of the working memory. In reply, defenders of cognitive theories have searched for alternative interpretations of such results that make visual awareness compatible with the capacity of the working memory; and so the conclusions of such experiments remain controversial. (...) Instead of entering the debate between alternative interpretations of partial-report experiments, this paper offers an alternative line of research that could settle the discussion between cognitive and non-cognitive theories of consciousness. Here I relate the neural correlates of cognitive access to empirical research into the neurophysiology of dreams; cognitive access seems to depend on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, that area is strongly deactivated during sleep; a period when we entertain conscious experiences: dreams. This approach also avoids the classic objection that consciousness should be inextricably tied to reportability or it would fall outside the realm of science. (shrink)

Ever since the early days of quantum mechanics it has been suggested that consciousness could be linked to the collapse of the wave function. However, no detailed account of such an interplay is usually provided. In this paper we present an objective collapse model where the collapse operator depends on integrated information, which has been argued to measure consciousness. By doing so, we construct an empirically adequate scheme in which superpositions of conscious states are dynamically suppressed. Unlike other proposals in (...) which “consciousness causes the collapse of the wave function,” our model is fully consistent with a materialistic view of the world and does not require the postulation of entities suspicious of laying outside of the quantum realm. (shrink)

In this essay we discuss recent attempts to analyse the notion of representation, as it is employed in cognitive science, in purely informational terms. In particular, we argue that recent informational theories cannot accommodate the existence of metarepresentations. Since metarepresentations play a central role in the explanation of many cognitive abilities, this is a serious shortcoming of these proposals.

It is often claimed that a minimal form of self-awareness is constitutive of our conscious experience. Some have considered that such a claim is plausible for our ordinary experiences but false when considered unrestrictedly on the basis of the empirical evidence from altered states. In this paper I want to reject such a reasoning. This requires, first, a proper understanding of a minimal form of self-awareness – one that makes it plausible that minimal self-awareness is part of our ordinary experiences. (...) I will argue that it should be understood as Perspectival First-Person Awareness : a non-conceptual identification-free self-attribution that defines the first-person perspective for our conscious experience. I will offer a detailed characterization of PFP-Awareness in semantic and epistemological terms. With this tool in hand, I will review the empirical literature on altered states. I will focus on psychedelics, meditation and dreams, as they have been claimed to present the clearest cases in favor of a radical disruption of self-awareness. I will show that the rejection of the idea that minimal self-awareness is constitutive of our experience on the basis of this evidence is unfounded, for two main reasons. First, although there are good grounds to think that some forms of self-awareness that typically accompany our ordinary experiences are compromised, they do not support the claim that PFP-Awareness is absent. Secondly, the reports that could make us think of a radical disruption of self-awareness are most probably due to a confirmation bias – and hence we should mistrust them – derived from the expectations and metaphysical views of their subjects. (shrink)

Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theories of consciousness maintain that the kind of awareness necessary for phenomenal consciousness depends on the cognitive accessibility that underlies reporting. -/- There is empirical evidence strongly suggesting that the cognitive accessibility that underlies the ability to report visual experiences depends on the activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). This area, however, is highly deactivated during the conscious experiences we have during sleep: dreams. HOT theories are jeopardized, as I will argue. I will briefly present HOT (...) theories in the first section. Section 2 offers empirical evidence to the effect that the cognitive accessibility that underlies the ability to report depends on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: dlPFC is the neural correlate of HOTs. Section 3 shows the evidence we have of the deactivation of this brain area during dreams and, in section 4, I present my argument. Finally, I consider and rejoin two possible replies that my opponent can offer: the possibility of an alternative neural correlate of HOTs during dreams and the denial that we have phenomenally conscious experiences during sleep. (shrink)

This article interprets the accounts and testimonies of native Chilean Pentecostalism, from a philosophical approach. In these accounts Pentecostal dilemmas are expressed and that oppressed beings prove by the economical and social conditions that the Chilean society lived in the 20th century. These dilemmas manifest anguish produced by absurd, emptiness and loneliness; that rise due to illness, alcoholism and poverty, which leads the individual to critical situations that push him to choose being Pentecostal, stigmatized beings and socially excluded, or to (...) suffer and death. Once they have chosen being Pentecostal the symbolic exodus starts, interpreting the past, the society and individuality in a tragic way. (shrink)

Some philosophers, like David Chalmers, have either shown their sympathy for, or explicitly endorsed, the following two principles: Panpsychism—roughly the thesis that the mind is ubiquitous throughout the universe—and Organizational Invariantism—the principle that holds that two systems with the same fine-grained functional organization will have qualitatively identical experiences. The purpose of this paper is to show the tension between the arguments that back up both principles. This tension should lead, or so I will argue, defenders of one of the principles (...) to give up on the other. (shrink)

In A Virtue Epistemology, Ernest Sosa defines the notions of safety and aptness of beliefs and uses them to characterize two kinds of knowledge, animal and reflective. This paper tries to bring out what I take as an incoherence in Sosa's views concerning how safety and aptness relate to knowledge and to each other. I discuss an apparent counterexample Sosa gives to his final view that aptness suffices for animal knowledge and argue that in fact the principle on which Sosa (...) responds to the counterexample does not permit the response he offers. The principle in question is problematic for Sosa's epistemology in a deeper way: it doesn't seem to cohere with Sosa's view that only aptness, not safety, is required for animal knowledge. En A Virtue Epistemology, Ernesto Sosa define las nociones de seguridad y aptitud de las creencias y las usa para caracterizar dos clases de conocimiento, el animal y el reflexivo. En este artículo discuto lo que parece una incoherencia en las tesis de Sosa acerca de cómo se relacionan la seguridad y la aptitud con el conocimiento y entre sí. Examino un aparente contraejemplo que Sosa plantea a su tesis final de que la aptitud es suficiente para el conocimiento animal, y argumento que el principio que él usa para responder al contraejemplo de hecho no permite dar esa respuesta. El principio en cuestión es problemático para la epistemología de Sosa de una manera más profunda: no parece ser coherente con su tesis central de que sólo la aptitud, no la seguridad, es necesaria para el conocimiento animal. (shrink)

Modernity developed two conceptions of “nation”: “political nation” (grounded on the free will of subjects) and “cultural nation” (grounded on an objective entity, like culture, race, etc). But both axes of justification, the Subject and the Object, have recently suffered hard attacks from philosophies like Hermeneutics, which reveal heavy contradictions in them if they are to function as “grounds” of the “nation”. Nevertheless, no radical alternative to the concept of “nation” nor to these ways of grounding it seems nowadays plausible. (...) The hermeneutical approach that we propose is, then, to keep them, but in a verwordenem (weakened) sense, as termini towards which (not from which) making dialogical explanations about “nation”. In such a way, once we have excluded Modern fundamentals, a non fundament(al)ist way of thinking about it would favour the “reduction of violence” that hermeneutical practical philosophy adopts as its keynote. (shrink)

We develop a general framework for forcing with coherent adequate sets on [Formula: see text] as side conditions, where [Formula: see text] is a cardinal of uncountable cofinality. We describe a class of forcing posets which we call coherent adequate type forcings. The main theorem of the paper is that any coherent adequate type forcing preserves CH. We show that there exists a forcing poset for adding a club subset of [Formula: see text] with finite conditions while preserving CH, solving (...) a problem of Friedman [Forcing with finite conditions, in Set Theory: Centre de Recerca Matemática, Barcelona, 2003–2004, Trends in Mathematics, pp. 285–295.]. (shrink)

Resumo: Abordamos a interpretação nietzschiana sobre “liberdade” e “necessidade” e como o filósofo contesta noções da tradição, vinculadas a essa problemática: “causa e efeito”, “sujeito”, “vontade”, etc. Ele assinala como esses conceitos seriam construtos antropomórficos que não conseguem desvendar as ações geridas apenas pela dinâmica da vontade de potência. Mostramos que Nietzsche, mesmo com sua crítica aos conceitos da tradição, continua empregando noções como “fatalidade”, “necessidade”, que parecem reeditar uma conceituação antropomórfica. Indicamos como ele ultrapassa objeções passíveis de serem feitas (...) a um pensamento oscilante, que parece negar e afirmar a liberdade. Concordamos com intérpretes que destacam como seu estilo suscita deliberadamente paradoxos e aporias, já que seu objetivo, antes que estabelecer uma doutrina ou uma teoria consolidada, visa instigar novas reflexões e experiências de pensamento sobre o agir do homem.: We address nietzschiana interpretation on the issue of freedom and necessity. We show how the German philosopher disputes notions of philosophical tradition, linked to this problem, as “cause and effect”, “subject”, “i”, “will” etc. He points how these concepts would be just anthropomorphic constructs that cannot unravel the nature of the actions; managed only by the power control game of the will of power. We show that Nietzsche, even with this radical criticism of the concepts of tradition, continues to employ notions such as “fatality”, “necessity” that seem to resend to the anthropomorphic conceptualization questioned. We indicate how the author of Zaratustra manages to overcome the objections that may be made to an oscillating thought, which sometimes seems to deny and affirm freedom at different times of his work. We agree with interpreters who point out that Nietzsche’s style deliberately chooses to raise paradoxes and apparent apores, since his goal, before establishing a doctrine or a consolidated theory about freedom and necessity, is an attempt to instigate new reflections, new thought experiences, new paths of meditation on the action of man. (shrink)

This article states that research in skill acquisitionand executionhas underestimated the relevance of some features of attention. We present and theoretically discuss two essential features of attention that have been systematically overlooked in the research of skill acquisitionandexecution. First, attention alters the appearance of the perceived stimuli in an essential way; and second, attention plays a fundamental role in action, being crucial for solving the so called ’many-many problem’, that is to say, the problem of generating a coherent behavior byselecting (...) between many inputs and many potential outputs. We discuss the importance of these features for skill acquisition in sport. We also suggest empirical ways to assess the precise impact of taking them into consideration and at the same time we propose important implications for training derived from the ideas discussed in the paper. (shrink)

Representationalism maintains that the phenomenal character of an experience is fully determined by its intentional content. Representationalism is a very attractive theory in the project of naturalizing consciousness, on the assumption that the relation of representation can itself be naturalized. For this purpose, representationalists with naturalistic inclinations typically appeal to teleological theories of mental content. Not much attention has been paid, however, to the interaction between representationalism and teleological theories of content. This paper will provide reasons to think that such (...) an interaction is not felicitous. In particular, I will argue that those who endorse the conjunction of these two theories are committed to the existence of impossible experiences. (shrink)

Many philosophers and scientists have argued that the difference between phenomenally conscious states and other kind of states lies in the implicit self-awareness that conscious states have. Higher-Order Representationalist theories, attempt to explain such a self-awareness by means of a higher-order representation. Consciousness relies on our capacity to represent our own mental states, consciousness depends on our Theory of Mind. Such an ability can, at least conceptually, be decomposed into another two: mindreading and metacognition. In this paper I will argue (...) that consciousness cannot depend on mindreading. The tenability of HOR theories depends, therefore, on the relation between mindreading and metacognition. I analyze several views on such a relation and argue that none of them seem to be a plausible option for HOR theories. (shrink)

The traditional approach in cognitive sciences holds that cognition is a matter of manipulating abstract symbols followingcertain rules. According to this view, the body is merely an input/output device, which allows the computationalsystem—the brain—to acquire new input data by means of the senses and to act in the environment following its com-mands. In opposition to this classical view, defenders of embodied cognition (EC) stress the relevance of the body inwhich the cognitive agent is embedded in their explanation of cognitive processes. (...) From a representationalist frameworkregarding our conscious experience, in this article, I will offer a novel argument in favor of EC and show that cognitionconstitutively—and no merely causally—depends upon body activity beyond that in the brain. In particular, I will arguethat in order to solve the problem derived from the empirical evidence in favor of the possibility of shifted spectrum,representationalist should endorse the view that experiences concern its subject: the content of experience isde se.Ishow that this claim perfectly matches the phenomenological observation and helps explaining the subjective characterof the experience. Furthermore, I argue that entertaining this kind of representation constitutively depends on bodilyactivity. Consequently, insofar as cognition depends on consciousness, it is embodied. (shrink)

Resumen: Spinoza afirma que las decisiones, elecciones y acciones de un agente son necesarias porque están determinadas causalmente. ¿Acaso los seres humanos no son agentes morales? ¿son sólo eslabones de una cadena de causas cuyo curso no pueden controlar y que los exime de las consecuencias de sus actos, así como de premios y castigos? ¿ser un individuo libre significa aceptar pasivamente lo que ocurre y abandonar la pretensión de modificarlo? Este artículo responde a estas preguntas mediante la distinción en (...) la obra spinoziana de dos conceptos de libertad, la verdadera libertad y el libre albedrío, así como con la distinción entre la responsabilidad civil fundada en el concepto de potestas humana -y no en la verdadera libertad, aunque la posibilita-.: Spinoza sustains that the agents' decisions are necessary because they are causally determined. But then, are humans really moral agents? Is it possible that they are only passengers in a train of causes, whose course they cannot control and exempts them from the consequences of their acts, of reward or punishment? Is accepting whatever happens and quitting the aspiration of changing things the hallmark of the free man? This paper answers these questions by distinguishing two concepts of freedom, real freedom and free will, as well as two concepts of responsibility. Civil responsibility is grounded in free will, whereas moral responsibility is not grounded in true freedom, but in human power. (shrink)

La intervención de la ciudad con fines artístico-creativos en manos de colectivos o anónimos transeúntes, es una práctica cada vez más habitual en el espacio urbano. Esta pluralidad de manifestaciones, tanto icónicas como verbales, suscita ciertas controversias a la hora de nominarlas, sobre todo por tratarse de “obras” proscritas en su mayoría, por lo que su estatus artístico o literario es, a veces, discutible. A partir de la delimitación de la estructura de necesidades de algunas expresiones artísticas, en este trabajo (...) proponemos una taxonomía, basada en la lógica analógica de Jean-Marie Schaeffer, de las manifestaciones murales de tipo lúdico-textual inscritas en la ciudad. Para ello, tomamos como referentes a tres representantes vigentes de lo que llamaremos aquí, pintadas poéticas. Con este trabajo trabajo buscamos contribuir a esclarecer la ambigüedad conceptual que existe en torno a la noción de pintadas poéticas, y a revitalizar la discusión sobre el espacio urbano, el espacio virtual, la subversión y la institución artística. (shrink)