Este ensayo parte de una experiencia disruptiva en un aula de bachillerato de un instituto español. En el transcurso de una clase ordinaria de filosofía, un incidente inesperado rompe la definición de la situación, haciendo añicos el consenso de trabajo entre los alumnos y el profesor. Para reconstruir su trasfondo de expectativas, los alumnos se ven forzados a emplear estrategias de acomodación y normalización. En el análisis de esta experiencia disruptiva convergen la fenomenología del mundo social de Alfred Schütz, (...) la etnometodología de Harold Garfinkel y el interaccionismo simbólico de Erving Goffman.This essay starts from a disruptive experience in a Spanish high school classroom. In the course of an ordinary philosophy lesson, an unexpected incident breaks the definition of the situation, smashing the working consensus among students and teacher to smithereens. In order to rebuild their background expectancies, the pupils are forced to resort to accommodation and normalization strategies. The analysis of this disruptive experience is based upon the convergence of Alfred Schütz’s phenomenology of the social world, Harold Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology, and Erving Goffman’s symbolic interactionism. (shrink)

This paper is a comparative study of Alfred Schutz and Jose Ortega y Gasset, with special attention to their respective characterization of social reality. For this purpose, the author draws on the explicit references Schutz and Ortega directed towards one another and develops a critical comparison of their theoretical systems. In addition to the reciprocal references which appear in their published works, valuable documentary evidence is provided by Schutz's letters and, first and foremost, by his marginal notes preserved in (...) his own copy of Ortega y Gasset's Man and People. As far as the critical comparison of Schutz's and Ortega's theories is concerned, the weight of the discussion falls on Ortega's Man and People. A careful reading of this essay allows us to successively invoke the key components of Schutz's phenomenological characterization of the structures of the life-world. According to this strategy, and after some preliminary sections devoted to contextual, biographical, and sociocultural matters, the following topics are comparatively discussed: (1) the philosophical foundations of sociology, with particular attention to Ortega's doctrine of the Other as potential danger; (2) the taken-for-granted dimensions of the social world; (3) the multiple spheres of reality, and their structuration around the fundamental core of the radical reality of the I (for Ortega) or the paramount reality of everyday life, as the intersubjective world of culture (for Schutz); (4) the influence of pragmatism on their theoretical systems; (5) their strikingly similar characterization of the perspectivist stratification of the social world; (6) the inexhaustible complexity of the problem of intersubjectivity. Obviously, the common influence of Husserl, Weber, Scheler, and Bergson casts light upon the comparative consideration of any of these issues. (shrink)

This chapter constructs a libertarian view that grants the main moral of Frankfurt-style cases, and offers a resolution of the problem of present luck. Attention to how human beings may develop from neonates who do not even act intentionally into free, morally responsible human agents proves instructive in developing the resolution.

This chapter develops compatibilist replies to the most popular styles of argument for incompatibilism, and concludes that these arguments leave compatibilism in the running. Differences among various kinds of compatibilism, including semicompatibilism, are examined.

Libertarians hold that free action and moral responsibility are incompatible with determinism and that some human beings occasionally act freely and are morally responsible for some of what they do. Can libertarians who know both that they are right and that they are free make sincere promises? Peter van Inwagen, a libertarian, contends that they cannot—at least when they assume that should they do what they promise to do, they would do it freely. Probably, this strikes many readers as a (...) surprising thesis for a libertarian to hold. In light of van Inwagen's holding it, the title of his essay—‘Free Will Remains a Mystery’—may seem unsurprising. (shrink)

Rebuts an objection David Velleman has raised against what he calls “the standard story of human action.” It is argued that the objection is misguided. The chapter reinforces the significance of various aspects of the causal theory of human agency developed in this book and shows more fully and explicitly how that theory applies to the upper range of human action, or what may be regarded as human action par excellence.

This chapter focuses on a pair of topics in moral psychology that are linked to motivation and evaluation: weakness of will and first-person moral ought beliefs.

David Pears's recent essay, "How Easy is Akrasia?, '' is, in significant part, a refutation of an argument against the possibility of a certain sort of incontinent action. The kind of incontinent action in question is, in Pears's words, "underivative brazen akrasia, which is commonly taken to be akrasia with the fault located between the last line of an agent's reasoning and his action" (p. 40). The argument which he attacks is attributed to Donald Davidson. The purpose of this note (...) is, not to quarrel with Pears, but rather to supplement his interesting essay. In Section I, drawing upon some of Davidson's views on intending and unconditional practical judgments, I construct a stronger argument for the impossibility of the type of akratic action at issue than the one which Pears refutes. In Section II, I explain why even the stronger argument fails and sketch out some implications of its failure for a causal theory of action. (shrink)

Self-control has gained enormous attention in recent years both in philosophy and the mind sciences, for it has profound implications on so many aspects of human life. Overcoming temptation, improving cognitive functioning, making life-altering decisions, and numerous other challenges all depend upon self-control. But recent developments in the philosophy of mind and in action theory, as well as in psychology, are now testing some of the assumptions about the nature of self-control previously held on purely a priori grounds. New essays (...) in this volume offer fresh insights from a variety of angles: neuroscience; social, cognitive, and developmental psychology; decision theory; and philosophy. While much of the literature on self-control is spread across distinct disciplines and journals, this volume presents for the first time a thorough and truly interdisciplinary exploration of the topic. The essays address four central topics: what self-control is and how it works; temptation and goal pursuit; self-control, morality, and law; and extending self-control. They take up an array of complex and important questions. What is self-control? How is self-control related to willpower? How does inhibitory control work? What are the cultural and developmental origins of beliefs about self-control? How are attempts at self-control hindered or helped by emotions? How do our beliefs about our own ability to deal with temptation influence our behavior? What does the ability to avoid temptation depend on? How should juvenile responsibility be understood, and how should the juvenile justice system be reformed? Can an account of self-control help us understand free will? Combining the most recent scientific research with new frontiers in the philosophy of mind, this volume offers the most definitive guide to self-control to date. (shrink)

Leicht verständliche Einführung in Fragestellungen und Probleme der Ethik und Metaethik von dem Antipoden Wittgensteins in dessen Cambridger Zeit. – Ewings Buch erfuhr im englischen Original zehn Auflagen und erscheint hier zum ersten Mal auf Deutsch. - Wenn ein Philosoph (wie in Cambridge in den 1940er-Jahren geschehen) öffentlich bezweifelt, dass sein Universitätskollege überhaupt »einen Geist besitze« und dessen ethische Theoreme mit einer »aus drei Stücken Matsch« geformten Kugel vergleicht, sein Gegner hingegen vor Studenten bekennt, dass er kein Wort von dem (...) verstehe, was der andere vertrete, und dessen Anhänger in eine Reihe mit marxistischen und römisch-katholischen Glaubenseiferern stellt, muss mehr dahinterstecken als eine sorgsam gepflegte Feindschaft. In der Tat grenzte sich Letzterer, der englische Philosoph A.?C. Ewing, scharf von der Position des Ersteren, des zehn Jahre älteren Ludwig Wittgenstein, ab. Ewing, der seine Position selbst als eine Art analytischen Idealismus bezeichnete, führte seine Kritik des Logischen Positivismus und des sprachanalytischen Konventionalismus damals in die akademische Isolation, während Wittgensteins Denken enormen Einfluss gewann. Heute hingegen werden viele Überzeugungen Ewings wieder wie selbstverständlich diskutiert. Ewings Ethik steht in einer über G.?E. Moore und W.?D. Ross bis zu Henry Sidgwick zurückreichenden Tradition britischer Moralphilosophie. Für diese sind moralische Urteile von ganz eigener Art und können objektiv wahr sein. Ihre Rechtfertigung beruht zuletzt auf intuitiver Erkenntnis; unsere normativen Begriffe lassen sich auf wenige Grundbegriffe zurückführen. »Ethik. Eine Einführung« behandelt zahlreiche Grundprobleme der normativen Ethik und Metaethik wie den Konflikt zwischen Konsequentialismus und Deontologie, den Stellenwert moralischer Intuitionen, das Wesen und die Objektivität moralischer Urteile, die Definierbarkeit von »gut« und »sollen«. Als Einführung in die Ethik konzipiert und glänzend geschrieben, erfuhr der Band zahlreiche Auflagen und liegt hier zum ersten Mal in deutscher Übersetzung vor. (shrink)

Prolonged investigations of past and present use of wetland margins in various lowlands within Latin America have yielded a wealth of detail. It has become necessary to search out regularities in the natural environmental context and the human adaptations, all of which can be done advantageously in the context of the concept of landscape. Such a move in the direction of theory is attempted here by means of a heuristic model and an exploration of variations in its expression. The discussion (...) of seasonal as well as longer termed change in the natural environment and human adaptation is easily accomodated. The essay includes a brief consideration of some of the recent directions in the investigation of the tropical wetland landscape. (shrink)

What role should a motivation to do the right thing, read de dicto, play in the life of a virtuous agent? According to a prominent argument from Michael Smith, those who are only motivated by such a desire are moral fetishists. Since Smith’s argument, a number of philosophers have examined what role this desire would play in the life of the morally virtuous agent. My primary aim in this paper is an historical one. I will show that much of this (...) discussion can be found in Adam Smith’s The Theory of the Moral Sentiments (1764), published over two hundred years before Michael Smith’s The Moral Problem. I will then argue that there is an important insight to be found in Adam Smith’s book that is missing from the contemporary discussion. According to Adam Smith, while a de dicto desire to do the right thing can play an important role in the life of a virtuous agent, the person who is only ever motivated by this desire will often be epistemically disadvantaged compared to the person who possesses the appropriate sentiments. I will argue that Adam Smith’s claim is plausible given his own view of the moral sentiments as providing the foundation of morality. In addition, there is good reason to accept Smith’s claim even for those who do not accept his view of the foundational role of the moral sentiments. (shrink)

Fiction and myth have been used for centuries in writing history as well as in making it. And this is not surprising; for Clio was not only the muse of history but also that of epic poetry. This personal union of the two functions shows that the Greeks may have felt what we know today, thanks to the additional experience of twenty-five hundred years: that in historiography as well as in its subject matter, history as reality, it is not always (...) possible to draw a neat line of demarcation between historical truth and poetical fiction. History as res scriptae is, and has to be, a product of documentation and imagination. If this imagination is subjected to logical methodology, it will result in “scientific” history, in which the word “science” has to be interpreted in that liberal sense proposed by Collingwood, as “any organized body of knowledge.” If, on the contrary, the imaginative component of historiography is abandoned to poetical fancy, it will result in mythological history. Finally, if the imagination of the historian is guided by the conscious, half-conscious or sub-conscious wish to influence and manipulate the readers’ minds, the result will be ideological history. (shrink)