The Irish poet W. B. Yeats once wrote, with great sapience and perception: Nor dread, nor hope attend A dying animal; A man awaits his end Dreading and hoping all. That death has ever been a problem to man is attested as far back as we can trace our species in the archaeological record—indeed, it seems to have been a problem even for that immediate precursor of homo sapiens, the so-called Neanderthal Man; for he buried his dead.

Sober (1992) has recently evaluated Brandon's (1982, 1990; see also 1985, 1988) use of Salmon's (1971) concept of screening-off in the philosophy of biology. He critiques three particular issues, each of which will be considered in this discussion.

In this paper, I articulate a novel conception of knowledge, one that integrates the most important insights of epistemic contextualism and the idea, for which I am indebted to the later Wittgenstein, that to know this or that is to be able to do something. On my conception, S knows that p if and only if p is true and S is able to Φ. I contrast my conception of knowledge with epistemic contextualism and an account similar to my own (...) put forward by John Hyman. Unlike the conceptions of knowledge I critique, my account allows us to better understand how the word “know” functions in conversation and what our intuitions track in the Gettier cases. (shrink)

Revision of author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2014 under title: "Being salvation": a reinterpretation of Rahner's Christ as savior.

A great amount of scholarly attention has been devoted to Karl Rahner’s early philosophical writings, but his theological work from the same time period remains only marginally known. While his dissertation in philosophy, Spirit in the World, has been published in multiple editions and in many languages, his dissertation in theology, E latere Christi, was only available in archives until it was published in the third volume of his collected works, Sämtliche Werke. Exploring the content of this third volume which (...) contains Rahner’s early writing on the spirituality and theology of the Church Fathers, this article illuminates a neglected part of Rahner’s career: his fascination with patristic thought during his early, formative years. It also identifies themes in these early writings which reappear in his more well known mature writings on the theology of das Symbol, soteriology, mystery, and the importance of historical theology for the activity of today’s theologian. (shrink)

A search for consensus about the methodology of discovery among physicians and physiologists led the author to identify a crucial anomaly of medical historiography: in general, physicians stress the significance of clinicopathologic method, while physiologists emphasize the experimental. Hence, physicians and bench scientists might be perceived as members of epistemically distinct research traditions. However, analysis of the historical development of discoveries in medicine, exemplified by case studies in physiology, bacteriology, immunology, and therapeutics, reveals that the epistemic dichotomy is illusory. Both (...) physicians and bench scientists discover in the same way: by identifying and explaining clinical anomalies. It is argued that the sociological role of experimentation is to dramatize clinical hypotheses and not test them in a Popperian sense. Keywords: accident, anomaly, continuity, experiment, logic of discovery, psycholinguistic realm CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

El presente artículo ofrece una revisión crítica de la noción de injusticia hermenéutica de Miranda Fricker a partir de dos elementos de la obra de Frantz Fanon: 1) la «historicidad» como una carga cultural en las categorías sociales que es productiva, lo que exige cuestionar la definición de injusticia hermenéutica como ausencia o tergiversación de categorías; 2) la redefinición que Fanon hizo del «esquema corporal» de Merleau Ponty: la experiencia vivida del cuerpo, lo que muestra que los recursos hermenéuticos no (...) son solo categorías mentales, sino que están imbricados con la dimensión material. Nuestro objetivo es mostrar cómo estos dos elementos de la teoría fanoniana hacen una contribución a la noción de injusticia hermenéutica y por qué esta es relevante para entender la injusticia estructural del racismo. (shrink)

Felicia Ackerman argues that it is often wrong to use real people in fiction because it harms them. I argue that even when drawing from life is wrong, the unethical use of real people as literary material may nonetheless be rationally justified, and not in purely self-interested, instrumentalist terms. Either ethical considerations are always overriding, and much of our creative and appreciative practices are morally corrupt, or ethical and aesthetic values are incommensurable. I defend the plausibility of the incommensurabilist alternative, (...) and indicate how creative and appreciative choices might be rational even when the values in play are incommensurable. (shrink)

Rahner’s theology of the cross, as articulated in the last two decades of his life, has several weaknesses: it neglects Jesus’ Jewishness, makes supersessionist presumptions, is typically more abstruse than dramatic, and is insufficiently connected to his theology of sin. At the same time, many of his core soteriological insights remain valuable. This article seeks to expand on those insights, especially by integrating post-conciliar covenantal theologies. A soteriology which features Christ as the covenant-in-person, I argue, can serve as a corrective (...) to these shortcomings and capitalize on Rahner’s contributions. (shrink)

Zimmerman, Brandon I teach philosophy at Good Shepherd Seminary in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. My specialty is ancient philosophy and the reception of pagan philosophy by Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. This paper is my attempt to use ideas from ancient philosophy to respond to a serious problem that the Catholic Church faces today in Papua New Guinea. All my students are young PNG nationals discerning a call to the priesthood within (...) the Catholic Church. Unlike the other Christian denominations, the Catholic Church requires its priests to be celibate, that is, to remain unmarried and to abstain from sexual relationships. I myself am a married layman with three young children, and I steadfastly support my students in their development of a celibate lifestyle. (shrink)

Zimmerman, Brandon Review of: Thinking being: Introduction to metaphysics in the classical tradition, by Eric D. Perl, Leiden: Brill, 2014, pp. 215, $141.

Authored by leading sound studies scholar Brandon LaBelle, this book focuses on questions of acoustics as the basis for challenging normative structures.

Huw Price has developed versions of naturalism and anti-representationalism to create a distinctive brand of pragmatism. ‘Subject naturalism’ focuses on what science says about human beings and the function of our linguistic practices, as opposed to orthodox contemporary naturalism’s privileging of the ontology of the natural sciences. Price’s anti-representationalism rejects the view that what makes utterances contentful is their representing reality. Together, they are to help us avoid metaphysical ‘placement problems’: how e.g. mind, meaning, and morality fit into the natural (...) world. By combining subject naturalism and his own ‘global’ version of expressivism with Robert Brandom’s inferentialism about content, Price proposes a pragmatist ‘anthropology’ as a replacement for substantively metaphysical approaches to placement problems. In this paper I argue that Price’s project cannot succeed, and that this shows something important about what form pragmatism ought to take. Price’s view doesn’t work because no subject naturalist vocabulary is sufficient to describe any assertional practice; there is no way to connect his expressive-functionalist explanations to the practices and concepts which are their subject – nor, even, to the human subjects who are the focus of a philosophical anthropology. I close by suggesting how we might improve on these shortcomings of Price’s pragmatism. (shrink)

Brandon Absher demonstrates that the neoliberalization of higher education has led to a paradigm shift in contemporary philosophy in the United States. Neoliberal philosophy aims to produce human capital and profitable knowledge.

Using data from interviews, student work, and classroom observations in a “History of Race” course at a private predominantly White high school, this article examines the racialized tensions that led the teacher (first author) to create an unofficial affinity group for students of color that met outside of class. The authors argue that the teacher's attempt to implement a curriculum that was culturally affirming for students of color by de-centering Whiteness led to White students’ resistance that necessitated the creation of (...) an unofficial “safe space” outside of the classroom for the students of color. The need for such a group demonstrates the difficulties inherent in presenting a more honest account of the role of race and racism in the United States that challenges narratives of historical progress. The article concludes that while students of color ideally should have access to culturally affirming knowledge inside social studies classrooms, this experience demonstrates why that kind of knowledge can only be engaged effectively within learning spaces that challenge the norms of conventional social studies education. (shrink)

Zimmerman, Brandon Review of: The philosophy of early christianity, by George Karamanolis,, pp. xvi + 317, $24.95; Christianisme et philosophie: Les premieres confrontations, by Sebastien Morlet, pp. 260, 7.10 euros.

El artículo intenta establecer las configuraciones que asume el humanismo crítico en la escritura de Aimé Césaire en la encrucijada de la diferencia colonial, entendida desde una perspectiva decolonial, y a partir de una noción de espectralidad que deriva y se diferencia de las perspectivas derrideanas. Así entonces, se destaca el hecho de que la escritura de Césaire produce una fuerte impugnación de los procesos de la representación colonial y abre el campo de la experiencia política y cultural signada por (...) la heterogeneidad. The article tries to establish the settings that the critical humanism assumes in Aimé Césaire´s writing at the crossroads of the colonial difference, which is understood from a decolonial perspective, and from a notion of spectrality which derives and differs from the Derridean perspective. So then, the article remarks the fact that Césaire´s writing produces a strong challenge to the processes of colonial representation and it opens the field of political and cultural experience marked by heterogeneity. (shrink)

The article addresses the relationship between modernity and coloniality in the field of colonial theories, both postcolonial and decolonial, emphasizing the problems of representation and putting in the foreground the problem of not having a language suitable to express the tensions that the same relationship produces. For this, it discuss the crossroads of the coloniality and modernity, present in representative authors of these theories, and it assumes such a crossroads as a cultural and theoretical arena. From there, a reading exercise (...) is proposed, as an example, in texts by Joseph Conrad and Frantz Fanon. Finally, the article discusses some nuances of the problem of representation that could affect our understanding of the processes of subjectivity, their histories and the morphologies of our knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper I evaluate the nature of the claim that agent-centered restrictions render deontology inconsistent and address three seemingly promising responses available to the deontologist. The first response is inspired by Kant’s essay “On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns.” The latter two responses appeal to the importance of personal moral integrity and the moral worth of actions, respectively. I conclude that neither response will allow the deontologist to refute the charge of inconsistency.

Na podlagi kritičnega pregleda teoretskih razprav Branislava Djurdjeva, v katerih nam avtor predstavi svojo koncepcijo razvoja historične metode, skuša pisec - ob pomoči Mirjane Gross -prikazati, kako nas vztrajno in nereflektirano zagovarjanje edine prave metode zgodovinopisja postavi v položaj, ko zgodovino kot epistčme razumemo samo še kot sredstvo za »razsvetljevanje« sodobnikov, se pravi kot zgodovino, iz katere se je treba učiti in na podlagi njenih naukov spreminjati ali potrjevati lastna stališča.

Reflective essay focusing on a discussion of personal identity issues with ninth grade students.

Reflective essay focusing on a discussion of personal identity issues with ninth grade students.

Epistemic Modality Epistemic modality is the kind of necessity and possibility that is determined by epistemic constraints. A modal claim is a claim about how things could be or must be given some constraints, such as the rules of logic, moral obligations, or the laws of nature. A modal … Continue reading Epistemic Modality →.

Drift is to evolution as inertia is to Newtonian mechanics. Both are the "natural" or default states of the systems to which they apply. Both are governed by zero-force laws. The zero-force law in biology is stated here for the first time.

I argue in this paper that Mountaintop Removal (MTR) is part of what I call “ecological violence.” Whereas the common conception of violence perceives it as harm directly inflicted against an individual by a person or group, I seek to illuminate a form of violence that operates in the complex interrelation between people and the environing world they disclose through their practices. Ecological violence, as I understand it, is ecological in that it concerns the practices through which humans understand and (...) uncover beings in their surrounding environments. It is violent in that it is concerned with practices that sever people and other beings from the relations necessary for their authentic being. MTR, I argue, is violent in just this sense. To make sense of the concept of “ecological violence” I draw on the philosophies of Martin Heidegger and György Lukács. (shrink)

Aesthetic discourse is highly metaphorical, and many art-critical metaphors seem to be genuinely informative. Aesthetic property realism holds that the characteristic terms of aesthetic discourse pick out mind-independent properties. The prevalence of metaphor is a problem for realism, then, because most art-critical metaphors are true only when artworks are imagined in a certain way. Realist attempts to consign metaphor to the roles of filling lexical gaps or picking out mind-independent but ineffable properties fail. I argue that a cognitivist aesthetic anti-realism (...) is a better fit with a reflective understanding of our art-related practices. Metaphorical assertions about artworks can be truth-apt, but their truth depends essentially on our mental activity. (shrink)

Focusing on the contributions of Frantz Fanon's writing to the construction of a theory of the postcolonial subject, this book engages post-structuralist discussions on subjectivity and explores the most important readings and discussions of Fanon's work. Problems such as historicity, contingency, and the positions of the subject in postcolonial contexts receive special attention together with phenomenological approaches to Fanonian writing. The central idea is to give Fanon a privileged place in social, political, and cultural analysis. The objectives of the book (...) are to insert Fanon’s texts in contemporary critical theory on modernity and coloniality and to incorporate Fanon in the epistemological and conceptual context of the academy. This innovative work allows us to understand Fanon’s writing as key to linking the experiences and critical developments between the global south and the global north. (shrink)

El artículo se concentra en el cruce conceptual y político de dos escrituras, las de Frantz Fanon y Gilles Deleuze y Félix Guattari, en el momento en que trabajan una crítica a la representación como categoría filosófica y política. Aprovechamos las inducciones que están en él para trazar nuestra propia intervención en dicha crítica. Hemos puesto en contacto estas dos escrituras porque apostamos a comprenderlas dentro de un movimiento crítico de la modernidad, pero también de la colonialidad. Esta última categoría, (...) con frecuencia escamoteada, permite conectar textos, conceptos y escrituras para entender la dimensión organizacional de los cuerpos en la diferencia colonial y en la racialización. Los textos de Fanon son anteriores, cronológicamente hablando, a los de Deleuze y Guattari. No obstante, los tres autores participan del proceso crítico que se inició a mediados de siglo XX, en particular a partir del movimiento histórico de la descolonización. Si bien cada una de estas escrituras apunta inicialmente a audiencias distintas, ambas ofrecen intervenciones asimilables entre sí para una heurística en nuestro presente de la relación modernidad/colonialidad. Abstract This article focuses on the conceptual and political crossroads of two contemporary writings, Frantz Fanon´s and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari´s, and it read them in the precise moment they develop a critique of representation as a philosophical and political category. We take inductions that are in it to draw our own involvement in such criticism. Both writings are committed not only to produce a critical movement of modernity but also of coloniality, especially Fanon. The latter category, often retracted, is crucial to connect texts and concepts to understand the organizational dimension of bodies in the colonial difference and racialization. Fanon´s texts predate, chronologically speaking, to Deleuze and Guattari work. However, both are part of the critical process that began in the mid-twentieth century, particularly from the historical movement of decolonization. While each of these writings is initially aimed at different audiences, both offer comparable interventions which make sense for a heuristic, in our present, of modern/colonial relationships. (shrink)

La circulación de la escritura de Frantz Fanon en medios intelectuales y políticos de los años sesenta y setenta en la Argentina, ofrece la oportunidad de analizar dos dimensiones centrales de sus tesis sobre el colonialismo: por un lado, el carácter revisionista que ellas tienen con respecto a visiones eurocéntricas de la modernidad y, por otro, las formas específicas en que se articularon con algunas posiciones intelectuales del período. Recorremos algunos aspectos de tres lecturas de Fanon: las de Francisco Delich, (...) José Sazbón y Carlos Fernández Pardo y las ponemos en relación con los debates poscoloniales y descoloniales acerca de la colonialidad del saber y la diferencia colonial. The circulation of Frantz Fanon's writings in the political and intellectual milieu of the sixties and seventies in Argentina offers the opportunity to analyze two central dimensions of his theses about colonialism: first, their revisionist nature in relation to Eurocentric visions of modernity, and second, the specific ways in which they articulated with some intellectual points of view from that period. We visit here three readings of Fanon, by Francisco Delich, José Sazbón and Carlos Fernández Pardo, and place them in relation to postcolonial and decolonial debates about the coloniality of knowledge and colonial difference. (shrink)

This article attempts to describe the extent to which the Legalist political vision possesses moral concern. Drawing from the Book of Lord Shang and the Hanfeizi 韓非子, I investigate the discipline reinforced by rewards and punishments, the relationship between the state and its subjects, and the interiorization of the law’s production of subject self-determination. With a positive sociological lens, this study guides its discussion utilizing a Durkheimian definition of moral education. I argue that its three elements of morality share a (...) very similar pedagogical quality with the interplay of Legalist law and its reinforcements. Moreover, the effects of rewards prove to play a particularly enhanced role in the cultivation of discipline and commitment to impersonal objectives amongst the populace. (shrink)