Le sceptique nous demande " Comment sais-tu que tu as deux mains? Peut-être rêves-tu, ou es-tu trompé par quelque Malin Génie? Peut-on même définir ce que c'est que la connaissance? Va savoir! " Lui rétorquer, comme le faisaient G.E. Moore et la tradition de la philosophie du sens commun : " Mais je sais bien que j'ai deux mains! " semble à la fois une pétition de principe et une bien mauvaise réponse. Le mieux, depuis que nous avons perdu le (...) souci de fonder nos croyance sur des raisons ultimes, serait, tout simplement, de ne pas se soucier des questions du sceptique. Ce que l'on sait dépend, nous dit-on, des circonstances, et toutes nos connaissances sont faillibles. N'y a-t-il pas plutôt des savoirs, dont l'histoire nous montre combien leurs modes de validations sont variés? Ce livre entend refuser ce type de réponse contextualiste et relativiste. Il propose de revenir à la réponse de sens commun de Moore, à partir des reformulations contemporaines des raisonnements sceptiques issues de la philosophie analytique de la connaissance. Personne ne peut nous envoyer savoir quelque chose que nous ne pourrions pas savoir. De fait, nous savons, mais notre savoir n'est pas transparent : nous n'avons pas besoin de savoir que nous savons. Pour parvenir à cette réponse, il faut replacer la notion de connaissance, plutôt que celle de croyance justifiée ou rationnelle, au centre de l'épistémologie, et reformuler des questions traditionnelles comme celles de la nature de la perception, du témoignage, et de la connaissance a priori. On peut aussi reprendre le vieux projet d'une enquête sur la nature de la connaissance en général. (shrink)

The Unfinished Revolution compares the post-Second World War histories of the American and British gay and lesbian movements with an eye toward understanding how distinct political institutional environments affect the development, strategies, goals, and outcomes of a social movement. Stephen M. Engel utilizes an electic mix of source materials ranging from the theories of Mancur Olson and Michel Foucault to Supreme Court rulings and film and television dialogue. The two case study chapters function as brief historical sketches to elucidate further (...) the conclusions on theory and whilst being politically-oriented, they also examine gay influence and expansion into mainstream popular culture. The book also includes an appendix that surveys and assesses the analytical potential of five critical understandings of social movements: the classical approach, rational choice, resource mobilization, new social movement theories, and political opportunity structures. It will be of value to academics and students of sociology, political science, and history. (shrink)

What is truth? What value should we see in or attribute to it? The war over the meaning and utility of truth is at the center of contemporary philosophical debate, and its arguments have rocked the foundations of philosophical practice. In this book, the American pragmatist Richard Rorty and the French analytic philosopher Pascal Engel present their radically different perspectives on truth and its correspondence to reality. Rorty doubts that the notion of truth can be of any practical use and (...) points to the preconceptions that lie behind truth in both the intellectual and social spheres. Engel prefers a realist conception, defending the relevance and value of truth as a norm of belief and inquiry in both science and the public domain. Rorty finds more danger in using the notion of truth than in getting rid of it. Engel thinks it is important to hold on to the idea that truth is an accurate representation of reality. In Rorty's view, epistemology is an artificial construct meant to restore a function to philosophy usurped by the success of empirical science. Epistemology and ontology are false problems, and with their demise goes the Cartesian dualism of subject and object and the ancient problematic of appearance and reality. Conventional "philosophical problems," Rorty asserts, are just symptoms of the professionalism that has disfigured the discipline since the time of Kant. Engel, however, is by no means as complacent as Rorty in heralding the "end of truth," and he wages a fierce campaign against the "veriphobes" who deny its value. _What's the Use of Truth?_ is a rare opportunity to experience each side of this impassioned debate clearly and concisely. It is a subject that has profound implications not only for philosophical inquiry but also for the future study of all aspects of our culture. (shrink)

When it comes to second-order knowledge (i.e. knowing that one knows), internalists typically contend that when we know that p, we can, by reflecting, directly know that we are knowing it. Gettier considerations are employed to challenge this internalistic contention and to make out a prima facie case for internalistic metaepistemological skepticism, the thesis that no one ever intemalistically knows that one internalistically knows that p. In particular, I argue that at the metaepistemological second-order level, the Gettier problem generates three (...) distinct problems which, taken together, seriously undermine the possibility of anyone possessing second-order internalistic knowledge. (shrink)

Nossa Igreja, em São Paulo e no Brasil, tem urgente necessidade de uma nova geração de leigos, bem preparados para atuarem em todos os campos da vida social e cultural da sociedade; leigos e leigas com a consciência clara de serem discípulos de Cristo, conhecedores da fé, da moral e da doutrina social da Igreja, capazes de tomarem posição, como cidadãos católicos, sem medo de assumirem sua identidade e sua adesão à Igreja no mundo pluralista, no qual vivemos; este, não (...) deve ser o espaço onde nós calamos nossa voz ou nos eximimos de dar nossa contribuição, talvez temerosos diante de vozes e testemunhos diferentes dos nossos; no espaço plural e democrático, todos podem afirmar e defender suas convicções e colocá-las a serviço da convivência social O Cardeal Odilo Pedro Scherer é Arcebispo de São Paulo e Grão Chanceler da Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. (shrink)

Detroit Become Human (DBH) offers a stunningly visual gameplay experience that both tells a philosophical story and stimulates the moral reasoning process in players. The game features a futuristic world where highly intelligent androids are bought and sold as workers who take on menial labor tasks for humans. In this chapter, we explore three dimensions of moral reasoning: accounts of moral agency, ethical theories or frameworks, and accounts of moral patiency. We then explore how DBH addresses all of these philosophical (...) issues in its narrative and gameplay scenarios. Issues of moral agency are explored through some of the androids gaining consciousness and autonomy. Ethical theory is explored through various ethical dilemmas that emerge in the gameplay. Moral patiency is explored by questioning if the androids, conscious and unconscious, are worthy of moral concern and why. We then show how the gameplay structure offers a unique interactive opportunity for players to engage in the moral reasoning process. Additionally, through the questions it raises and scenarios it poses, DBH makes an implicit anti-speciesist argument regarding moral patiency. Additionally, it makes a secondary argument that suffering and struggle are necessary to develop the possibility of second-order desires and true freedom and agency. The interactive structure of the game, in which players’ choices have more weight than in many gameplay experiences, makes DBH a unique work of contemporary philosophical pop culture. (shrink)

Grey’s Anatomy focuses on the personal and professional life of protagonist Meredith Grey. Throughout the long series, a consistent theme is that the audience is confronted with moral dilemmas in Meredith’s professional work with patients as well as in her personal life. Grey’s decision-making often breaks professional protocol in order to do what she believes is best for her patients and those close to her. We argue that Grey’s approach to morality is representative of Simone de Beauvoir’s approach in The (...) Ethics of Ambiguity. In this text, Beauvoir argues that an existentialist ethic must reject a childlike approach to morality in which moral rules are absolute and moral dilemmas have obvious answers. Instead, she argues for a rejection of universalist ethics in favor of acknowledging the ambiguity of the moral realm. By tracing Meredith’s decision-making throughout the course of different seasons of the show, we argue that Meredith exemplifies an existential authenticity compatible with Beauvoir’s existentialist approach to ethics. (shrink)

This chapter explores the comedy of George Carlin (1937–2008) as a powerful statement about the value of truth over ignorance. Carlin challenged his audience to confront the truth, regularly using clever rhetorical strategies to force viewers to grapple with inconvenient realities about the world in which they lived. This chapter examines historical and contemporary philosophical arguments for the importance of the pursuing truth over comforting fictions. I begin with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which argues it is preferable to know (...) reality as it truly is over appearances of the truth, even when it’s painful or difficult. I then discuss Nozick’s argument that humans would not want to plug into a pleasurable experience machine. Last, I examine contemporary arguments that there are distinctly moral reasons for pursuing the truth. I show how there are examples of all three arguments in Carlin’s comedic work, and suggest we can consider Carlin’s work a critical commentary that reveals multiple reasons for valuing truth over enticing fictions. (shrink)

A course-grained theory of event individuation is defended by arguing that events are spatiotemporal particulars with an ontological affinity to coarse-grained physical objects and by demonstrating that the metalinguistic correlate to one set of adequate identity conditions for events is most plausibly iterpreted as coarsely individuating events. Such coarse-grained events, it is argued, do admit of divisibility proliferation, much like the proliferation of physical objects entailed by Goodman's calculus of individuals. This coase-grained, divisibility proliferation account of events is then used (...) to resolve Davidson's paradox concerning the poisoned space traveller who is killed long befor he dies. (shrink)

In “Revive and Refuse,” Marshall et al. (2024) argue that many individuals who are revived from opioid overdoses have diminished decision-making capacity (DMC), given that so many of them have opio...

The failures of a philosophic system are often a good deal more revealing than its successes, for such failures test its strength and mark the limits of its endurance. Yet if these failures disclose any uniform pattern they are not only revealing but instructive and can be turned to good account.

The Good Place was a historical landmark in the field of pop culture as philosophy, as it was the first mainstream sitcom to explicitly tackle the works of philosophers in its content. In addition to exposing its viewers to the works of famous philosophers, The Good Place makes its own philosophical arguments. The show is ultimately about the concept of the afterlife – what it might look like, how it would operate, and if it is even desirable. The show also (...) explores the relationship between morality and the afterlife. Essentially, The Good Place explores three focal questions: (1) Are there reasons to be morally good, irrespective of how that plays out in an afterlife? (2) What would a fair system for gaining admission to a merit-based afterlife look like? And (3) is an eternal afterlife even desirable? Ultimately the show argues that yes, virtue is worthwhile for virtue’s own sake, irrespective of the consequences in an afterlife. Second, it argues that a fair merit-based system would allow people the chance to improve and get better, given the right circumstances. Third, it argues that an eternal afterlife, in which you maintain your identity and live forever, is not desirable. (shrink)

Many pragmatists, from J. Dewey to Richard Rorty, hold that their views provide a defense of democracy or are consonant with it. In this chapter, the author presents the distinction between various views of truth and explains which ones are supposed to matter, and in what sense, for a defense of democracy if one is a pragmatist. The first distinction is between a theory of truth and a conception of truth's importance for various purposes, epistemic, practical, or political. The second (...) distinction is between different theories of truth, in particular between substantive theories of truth, on the one hand, and so‐called deflationist or minimalist theories of truth, on the other hand. The author then shows that pragmatism fails to provide an adequate defense of democracy whether or not it eschews truth. He also deals only with the kind of role and justification that pragmatists give to truth within democracy. (shrink)

This paper was presented at the XIX World Congress of Philosophy, "Mankind at a Turning Point: Philosophical Perspectives" held in Moscow, August 22-28, 1993. The author, representing the International Association of Women Philosophers, criticizes the use of "Mankind" in the Congress title and incorporates a resolution, subsequently passed unanimously by the steering committee of the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie, that calls for the use of non-sexist language at future World Congresses.

An analysis is presented of the possible existence of the second anomalous dipole moment of Dirac’s particle next to the one associated with the angular momentum. It includes a discussion why, in spite of his own derivation, Dirac has doubted about its relevancy. It is shown why since then it has been overlooked and why it has vanished from leading textbooks. A critical survey is given on the reasons of its reject, including the failure of attempts to measure and the (...) perceived violations of time reversal symmetry and charge–parity symmetry. It is emphasized that the anomalous electric dipole moment of the pointlike electron is fundamentally different from the quantum field type electric dipole moment of an electron as defined in the standard model of particle physics. The analysis has resulted into the identification of a third type Dirac particle, next to the electron type and the Majorana particle. It is shown that, unlike as in the case of the electron type, its second anomalous dipole moment is real valued and is therefore subject to polarization in a scalar potential field. Examples are given that it may have a possible impact in the nuclear domain and in the gravitational domain. (shrink)