The evil God challenge is an argumentative strategy that has been pursued by a number of philosophers in recent years. It is apt to be understood as a parody argument: a wholly evil, omnipotent and omniscient God is absurd, as both theists and atheists will agree. But according to the challenge, belief in evil God is about as reasonable as belief in a wholly good, omnipotent and omniscient God; the two hypotheses are roughly epistemically symmetrical. Given this symmetry, thesis belief (...) in an evil God and belief in a good God are taken to be similarly preposterous. In this paper, we argue that the challenge can be met, suggesting why the three symmetries that need to hold between evil God and good God – intrinsic, natural theology and theodicy symmetries – can all be broken. As such, we take it that the evil God challenge can be met. (shrink)

In 1836, at 19 years of age, Colombian philosopher José Eusebio Caro wrote a sociological and anthropological treatise titled Mecánica social that illustrates in context the reception of French philosophy in 19th-century Colombian philosophical thought. The purpose of this paper is to present critically Caro’s theory of the will and to bring to light the philosophical sources from which he draw, especially physiology and its role as theoretical basis for both ideology and a new “scientific” anthropology that could, in turn, (...) provide support for a science of morals and legislation, a major goal of French radical liberal thought. (shrink)

This paper explores aspects of GPT-3 that have been discussed as harbingers of artificial general intelligence and, in particular, linguistic intelligence. After introducing key features of GPT-3 and assessing its performance in the light of the conversational standards set by Alan Turing in his seminal paper from 1950, the paper elucidates the difference between clever automation and genuine linguistic intelligence. A central theme of this discussion on genuine conversational intelligence is that members of a linguistic community never merely respond “algorithmically” (...) to queries through a selective kind of pattern recognition, because they must also jointly attend and act with other speakers in order to count as genuinely intelligent and trustworthy. This presents a challenge for systems like GPT-3, because representing the world in a way that makes conversational common ground salient is an essentially collective task that we can only achieve jointly with other speakers. Thus, the main difficulty for any artificially intelligent model of conversation is to account for the communicational intentions and motivations of a speaker through joint attention. These joint motivations and intentions seem to be completely absent from the standard way in which systems like GPT-3 and other artificial intelligent systems work. This is not merely a theoretical issue. Since GPT-3 and future iterations of similar systems will likely be available for commercial use through application programming interfaces, caution is needed regarding the risks created by these systems, which pass for “intelligent” but have no genuine communicational intentions, and can thereby produce fake and unreliable linguistic exchanges. (shrink)

The article elaborates an exegetical study of the figure of “Hell” present in the work of the martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. This trope is thought of as a core element of the narrative of Black Skin, White Masks that is linked to reflections on racist alienation, the epidermis, the gaze, and the zone of non-being. Exploring the different modulations of “Hell”, the article makes a displacement that seeks to argue how the infernal of Fanon’s story, more than a metaphor, accounts (...) for the “real-lived” of the colonial world. Consequently, the racialized body and its lived experience offer a reading about “Hell” in an anaphoric and existential key that strains the modern-hegemonic grammars about the identities. From this starting point, the work discusses the problem of temporality linked to the critical tenor that at various moments in Black Skin... assumes the infernal architecture of colonialism narrated by Fanon. (shrink)

The objective of the present review on the evolution of Green Chemistry, since its emergence until 2016, aimed an integrated vision of its progress along the three phases of its development: emergence, divulgation and consolidation. The methodology involved the analysis of a selection of bibliography on the evolution of GC collected from issues of the ACS symposia series; editorials in specialized GC journals; and commemorative birthday papers/editorials of these journals and of the GC itself. The analysis allowed to identify and (...) discuss the characteristics and conceptions of GC agents about fundamental concepts and procedures, in order to visualize and better understand the state of knowledge and the subject areas that make up the field. The main alterations identified in the evolution of GC were: it acquired a better defined identity, with more participation of academy and increased scope; was progressively framed in sustainability; has been aspiring to a holistic frame and to a change on the nature of the innovation for its implementation, from incremental to transformative. The analysis suggests that for supporting expansion and consolidation of GC the following aspects deserve attention: full validation of chemical greenness by metrics; better characterization of the frontiers of GC research areas/themes; increased integration between academy and industry; and penetration in chemistry curricula. Its basic philosophy being the practice of a chemistry more focused on the environment preservation, GC means a new stage in nature and in the history of Chemistry. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta e discute a influência do cristianismo na obra do filósofo brasileiro Roberto Mangabeira Unger, que se apresenta como um herdeiro e continuador do que entende ser a ortodoxia ocidental. Inicia examinando a dupla consciência cristã representada nas interpretações de Nietzsche (tendo a questão do ressentimento como foco) e a de Unamuno (debruçada sobre o problema da agonia), ambas tomadas em seu sentido formador dos valores mais característicos da civilização ocidental. Em seguida, analisamos a maneira pela qual Unger (...) enxerga o desenvolvimento e a tradução do cristianismo na cultura romântica que desabrochou na modernidade europeia. E, na sua última parte, o texto reflete acerca da relação entre moral e política, tal como desdobrada, no pensamento de Unger, numa institucionalidade democrática específica. Concluímos que uma ordem sob o domínio do experimentalismo democrático melhor condiz com o potencial de realização da identidade do homem ocidental. (shrink)

De quelqu'un qui supporte la douleur avec courage, on dit qu'il fait preuve de stoïcisme. Un bon vivant est souvent qualifié d'épicurien, et notre époque se voit parfois reprocher son scepticisme. Le langage courant conserve ainsi comme un écho lointain et déformé des doctrines philosophiques hellénistiques, celles apparues après qu'Alexandre eut imposé son pouvoir à une grande partie du monde. Longtemps ces systèmes, dont l'influence sur la pensée philosophique et religieuse de l'Occident fut en réalité immense, ont été considérés comme (...) le parent pauvre de la philosophie ancienne, parce que l'injustice de la transmission des œuvres du passé a fait que nous ne possédons que des témoignages lacunaires ou tardifs. Mais dans ces dernières décennies le scepticisme, l'épicurisme et le stoïcisme ont suscité un vif intérêt, qui s'est traduit par la publication d'un grand nombre d'éditions et de recherches. Il n'est pas excessif de dire que l'image de la philosophie hellénistique en a été ainsi considérablement renouvelée. Cet ouvrage a pour finalité de présenter le plus clairement possible des doctrines que l'on aurait pu croire réservées à quelques spécialistes et qui, au fur et à mesure que nous les connaissons mieux, apparaissent de plus en plus proches des inquiétudes et des espoirs des hommes de notre temps. (shrink)

This essay aims to examine how Thomas Mann reinterprets, in the novel “The Magic Mountain”, Nietzsche’s view of the world expressed in “The Birth of Tragedy”. The Olympic world becomes in the novel of Mann, a sanatorium where the death drive controls everything. Several interpretations for this ironic reading of the magic mountain symbol are offered, in particular the idea that death must not hypnotise us, a major theme of “Snow scene” of the novel.

Namera ovog teksta jeste da pokaze da je problem licnog identiteta temeljno pitanje klasicne indijske misli. Uobicajeno, skloni smo misljenju da je licni identitet tema zapadne filozofije, te tako skloni smo da zaboravimo znacaj sopstva u hinduizmu, pa cak i u budizmu. Autor pokazuje kako je indijska filozofija pristupala pitanju licnog identiteta i koje je konkretno resenje izlozeno u delima koja se obicno pripisuju Gotami Budi.

Resenha do livro “Raízes do Conservadorismo brasileiro: a abolição na imprensa e no imaginário social”, escrito por Juremir Machado da Silva e publicado pela Editora Civilização Brasileira em 2017.

Reseña del libro: Cortés, F.. Del arte de la paz: reflexiones filosóficas sobre justicia transicional. Siglo del Hombre.

Discusses the nature of choice in terms of discovering God's will, tells how to face the fear of choosing, and looks at the role of compromise.

La CEPAL se fundó en 1947 por un periodo de "prueba" de tres años al final del cual se decidiría sobre su futuro. Apenas un año después, Celso Furtado logró ocupar un puesto en sus oficinas en Chile; su carrera como funcionario internacional habría de durar casi ocho años (1948-57), en uno de su..