This work focuses on the role that music has in the constitution of the World as a philosophical category. I explore the work of Eugenio Trías and Augustine of Hippo, and the way both philosophers have conceptualized music in relation to the constitution of the time of the World. For Trías music is not about the World but about its limits and, in that way, gives it a form. For Augustine music relates man to universe’s ordo , liberating him from (...) mundane distentio animi and helping him to give sense to a World that gives itself as finite. (shrink)

En este trabajo intentaré mostrar que, de acuerdo con Agustín de Hipona –y a diferencia de una cierta lectura relativamente clásica de Pascal–, el deseo puede ser el comienzo de la relación del hombre con el Absoluto. Para ello divido el texto en cuatro partes: primero, describo la situación existencial primordial de la que nace el deseo, la inquietud. Después, describo el doble despliegue del deseo: amor o concupiscencia, según objeto e inclinación. En tercer lugar, intento describir los tipos de (...) concupiscencias y sus paralelismos en ambos autores. Concluyo mostrando la importancia de la costumbre en la constitución del deseo. (shrink)

This paper argues that the gesture of being silent —or “subjective silence”— can be described as a specific modulation of attention, in which consciousness gains awareness of a specific realm of experience where the body appears as a transcendental dimension of the self. Taking Dauenhauer’s typology as a point of departure, I will describe what I understand with the expressions “subjective silence” –and “the gesture of being silent”– and try to show its specific relation to “attention,” according to Husserl’s description (...) of it. Second, that the noematic field of this “subjective silence” is the realm of the pre-predicative, since it allows consciousness to maintain a certain intentional tension that does not focus on any categorial object. Finally, I will try to show that in this realm of the pre-predicative, the body appears as an immanent dimension of consciousness and, therefore, not as a mere object but as a transcendental instance of the self. (shrink)

The principal purpose of this text is to show that Michel Henry’s radicalization ofphenomenology conduces to a problematic interpretation of the world and human desire, and to proposea solution to the problem from the philosophy of Augustine of Hippo. If for Henry, Life is absoluteimmanence, for Augustine it is also extasis. If for the first desire has to be reduced to mere immanence,for the later this desire (appetitus) is one of the ways in which man can encounter the Absolute.

En el capítulo I titulado "Del origen de los indios de Chile y de las noticias que acerca de él se han conservado", el jesuita Diego de Rosales propone una lectura de los mitos indígenas a partir de su vinculación con la tradición judeocristiana. Este hecho, además de rescatar una parte de la cultura oral mapuche, demuestra la vigencia del proyecto evangelizador iniciado por el padre Luis de Valdivia. El artículo analiza la relación entre la escritura de los (...) mitos indígenas y el programa misional jesuita. Planteo que el rescate de las creencias nativas fue un medio para desestabilizar la legitimidad del discurso esclavista y para justificar una forma distinta de imponer las prácticas de sujeción colonial a partir de la idea de continuidad entre ambas culturas. (shrink)

Sustainability reporting has become a well-entrenched practice in the mining sector. Failure to adequately live up to societal expectations is now considered a significant threat to the viability of the industry. There is general agreement that broad endorsement of standards for nonfinancial disclosure supports mining companies to improve their image, while conflicts persist. Because sustainability reports “speak” on behalf of sustainably operating organizations and may create socio-political effects, we explore the symbolic nature of SR. We conceive of SR as a (...) performative practice to research how it interferes with the world that it seeks to represent. Our case study research suggests that conformity with global templates is not an end in itself but might create below-compliance effects if a common interest in mining is developed in local arenas that avoids clarification of impacts and maintains ambiguity over responsibility. (shrink)

This work promotes the thesis that humans are naturally transhuman. In order to achieve this, we present in the first two sections some examples of technological devices assembled to human beings, and we critically review the assumptions and dichotomies on which the idea of human enhancement is based according to the ordinary transhumanist vision. Thirdly, we present the thesis of the Extended Mind to support our intuition. Fourthly, we dismantle the most relevant philosophical dichotomies that structure the transhumanist position. Finally, (...) we recapitulate the reasons why we should wake up from the transhumanist dream. (shrink)

El presente trabajo propone un análisis sobre las políticas educativas y de inserción social destinadas a los y las jóvenes pertenecientes a una configuración neo-colonial, agraria y periférica. Para este fin se estudia el caso del distrito de Costa de Araujo, ubicado en la provincia de Mendoza (Argentina), el cual se caracteriza por ser un territorio marginal que ha sufrido las transformaciones propias de las actuales estructuras capitalistas agrarias. Para alcanzar el objetivo, se estudia el papel creciente que ha asumido (...) el sistema educativo en la implementación de políticas de formación para jóvenes rurales. En este sentido, presentamos un análisis sobre el único centro de Capacitación para el Trabajo de la zona y de su propuesta que contiene como metas institucionales: ofrecer la terminalidad educativa secundaria y capacitar la fuerza de trabajo de los y las jóvenes del lugar. De esta manera se pretende reflexionar sobre estas propuestas educativas a la luz de la realidad social y particular que asume la juventud rural en Costa de Araujo. (shrink)

In Older Adults (OAs), Electroencephalogram (EEG) slowing in frontal lobes and a diminished muscle atonia during Rapid Eye Movement sleep (REM) have each been effective tracers of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), but this relationship remains to be explored by non-linear analysis. Likewise, data provided by EEG, EMG (Electromyogram) and EOG (Electrooculogram)—the three required sleep indicators—during the transition from REM to Non-REM (NREM) sleep have not been related jointly to MCI. Therefore, the main aim of the study was to explore, with (...) results for Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) and multichannel DFA (mDFA), the Color of Noise (CN) at the NREM to REM transition in OAs with MCI vs. subjects with good performances. The comparisons for the transition from NREM to REM were made for each group at each cerebral area, taking bilateral derivations to evaluate interhemispheric coupling and anteroposterior and posterior networks. In addition, stationarity analysis was carried out to explore if the three markers distinguished between the groups. Neuropsi and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) were administered, as well as other geriatric tests. One night polysomnography was applied to 6 OAs with MCI (68.1 ± 3) and to 7 subjects without it (CTRL) (64.5 ± 9), and pre-REM and REM epochs were analyzed for each subject. Lower scores for attention, memory and executive funcions and a greater index of arousals during sleep were found for the MCI group. Results confirmed that EOGs constituted significant markers of MCI, increasing the CN for the MCI group in REM sleep. The CN of the EEG from the pre-REM to REM was higher for the MCI group vs. the opposite for the CTRL group at frontotemporal areas. Frontopolar interhemispheric scaling values also followed this trend as well as right anteroposterior networks. EMG Hurst values for both groups were lower than those for EEG and EOG. Stationarity analyses showed differences between stages in frontal areas and right and left EOGs for both groups. These results may demonstrate the breakdown of fractality of areas especially involved in executive functioning and the way weak stationarity analyses may help to distinguish between sleep stages in OAs. (shrink)

El siguiente documento es el resultado de un seminario de investigación sobre novela policíaca latinoamericana reciente, desarrollado en el curso de Novela Latinoamericana, de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras en la Universidad de La Salle. La fundamentación teórica del seminario tuvo como marco general la Estética de la Recepción fundada en la Escuela de Constanza, Alemania, por Hans Robert Jauss y Wolfgang Iser. Para el caso concreto de la teoría literaria sobre novela policíaca vista en perspectiva sociológica, preferimos apelar (...) a las reflexiones fundacionales de Roger Caillios (1942), las que tiene un sugestivo subtítulo, a saber, La novela policíaca. –De cómo la inteligencia se retira del mundo para consagrarse a sus juegos y de cómo la sociedad introduce sus problemas en éstos. Por otra parte, elegimos la novela corta de Roberto Bolaño, La pista de hielo; y sobre esta elaboramos distintas hipótesis de trabajo, hasta lograr, al juicio de nuestros lectores, una propuesta de teoría literaria, que dé cuenta de la nueva narrativa policíaca. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that every form of knowledge, even scientific knowledge, is linked with the personal existence that effectuates it. We offer a map of the different schools of Interdisciplinarity attending to an anthropological criterion. To this end, a map of the various schools of interdisciplinarity is offered according to an anthropological criterion, where the persistence of a partial and reductive approach to human knowledge in various modalities is generally detected. The consequence of this way (...) of understanding knowledge is firstly the fragmentation of reality, but also of social life and above all of human existence itself. Thus, the need for a theory of interdiscipline is discovered, that not only transcends the epistemological approach, but also that of action and its ontological dimension. We propose that this expansion is achieved through a radical interdiscipline anchored in personal existence. (shrink)

Despite the growing recognition for the need to improve the health of prisoners in Canada and the need for health research, there has been little discussion of the ethical issues with regards to health research with prisoners in Canada. The purpose of this paper is to encourage a national conversation about what it means to conduct ethically sound health research with prisoners given the current realities of the Canadian system. Lessons from the Canadian system could presumably apply in other jurisdictions. (...) Any discussion regarding research ethics with Canadian prisoners must begin by first taking into account the disproportionate number of Indigenous prisoners and the high proportion of prisoners suffering from mental illnesses. The main ethical challenges that researchers must navigate are the power imbalances between them, the correctional services staff, and the prisoners, and the effects this has on obtaining voluntary consent to research; and, the various challenges associated to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of study participants who are prisoners. In order to solve these challenges, a first step would be to develop clear and transparent processes for ethical health research, which ought to be informed by multiple stakeholders, including prisoners, the correctional services staff, and researchers themselves. Stakeholder and community engagement ought to occur in Canada with regards to ethical health research with prisoners that should also include consultation with various parties, including prisoners, correctional services staff, and researchers. It is important that national and provincial research ethics organizations examine the sufficiency of existing research ethics guidance and, where there are gaps, to develop guidelines and help craft policy. (shrink)

Zonulin is a physiological modulator of intercellular tight junctions, which upregulation is involved in several diseases like celiac disease (CeD). The polyQ gliadin fragment binds to the CXCR3 chemokine receptor that activates zonulin upregulation, leading to increased intestinal permeability in humans. Here, we report a general hypothesis based on the structural connection between the polyQ sequence of the immunogenic CeD protein, gliadin, and enteric coccidian parasites proteins. Firstly, a novel interaction pathway between the parasites and the host is described based (...) on the structural similarities between polyQ gliadin fragments and the parasite proteins. Secondly, a potential connection between coccidial infections as a novel environmental trigger of CeD is hypothesized. Therefore, this report represents a promising breakthrough for coccidian research and points out the potential role of coccidian parasites as a novel trigger of CeD that might define a preventive strategy for gluten‐related disorders in general. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/oMaQasStcFI. (shrink)

Reduction between theories in physics is often approached as an a priori relation in the sense that reduction is often taken to depend only on a comparison of the mathematical structures of two theories. I argue that such approaches fail to capture one crucial sense of “reduction,” whereby one theory encompasses the set of real behaviors that are well-modeled by the other. Reduction in this sense depends not only on the mathematical structures of the theories, but also on empirical facts (...) about where our theories succeed at describing real systems, and is therefore an a posteriori relation. (shrink)

Il lavoro di Kari Palonen è rimasto negli anni una fonte di ispirazione per gli storici concettuali e intellettuali e per i teorici politici. La sua carriera e i suoi contributi lo rendono un interlocutore ideale per una conversazione sulla pratica congiunta della storia concettuale e dello studio del pensiero politico. Questa intervista, condotta da Rosario López e José María Rosales, si è svolta come una delle sessioni del seminario online _On the Joint Practice of Conceptual History and the (...) Study of Political Thought_, organizzato da Concepta: Research Seminars in Conceptual History and Political Thought l’8 e il 9 gennaio 2024. (shrink)

This essay explores the idea of experience and its epistemological and practical role in maintaining the health of a household among early modern English Royalists. A number of prominent royalists during the mid-seventeenth century British Civil Wars expended quite some effort in the collection of medical recipes, including Queen Henrietta Maria herself, as well as William and Margaret Cavendish, and the Talbot sisters—Elizabeth Grey and Alethea Howard. This essay looks at these Royalists and four of their collections: three published (Henrietta (...) Maria, Grey, Howard), and one manuscript (the Caven­dishes), in order to determine how they conceptualized experience and its role in medical practice. The claim that such recipe collections represent a new, anti-Aristotelian idea of experience as a specific, particular event is disputed through a quantitative and qualitative analysis of these collections. Instead, it is argued that there a number of related conceptions of experience found in these Royalist recipe collections, but the basic idea is one where experience indicates long experience or expertise, an idea that can traced back at least to humanist medicine of the Renaissance, and likely back to Galen. (shrink)

Metacognition refers to any knowledge or cognitive process that monitors or controls cognition. We highlight similarities between metacognitive and executive control functions, and ask how these processes might be implemented in the human brain. A review of brain imaging studies reveals a circuitry of attentional networks involved in these control processes, with its source located in midfrontal areas. These areas are active during conflict resolution, error correction, and emotional regulation. A developmental approach to the organization of the anatomy involved in (...) executive control provides an added perspective on how these mechanisms are influenced by maturation and learning, and how they relate to metacognitive activity. (shrink)

A conventional wisdom about the progress of physics holds that successive theories wholly encompass the domains of their predecessors through a process that is often called reduction. While certain influential accounts of inter-theory reduction in physics take reduction to require a single "global" derivation of one theory's laws from those of another, I show that global reductions are not available in all cases where the conventional wisdom requires reduction to hold. However, I argue that a weaker "local" form of reduction, (...) which defines reduction between theories in terms of a more fundamental notion of reduction between models of a single fixed system, is available in such cases and moreover suffices to uphold the conventional wisdom. To illustrate the sort of fixed-system, inter-model reduction that grounds inter-theoretic reduction on this picture, I specialize to a particular class of cases in which both models are dynamical systems. I show that reduction in these cases is underwritten by a mathematical relationship that follows the broad prescriptions of Nagel/Schaffner reduction, and support this claim with several examples. Moreover, I show that this broadly Nagelian analysis of inter-model reduction encompasses several cases that are sometimes cited as instances of the "physicist's" limit-based notion of reduction. (shrink)

This article examines the anatomy and circuitry of skills that, like reading, calculating, recognizing, or remembering, are common abilities of humans. While the anatomical areas active are unique to each skill there are features common to all tasks. For example, all skills produce activation of a small number of widely separated neural areas that appear necessary to perform the task. These neural areas relate to internal codes that may not be observed by any external behavior nor be reportable by the (...) performer. There is considerable plasticity to the performance of skills. Task components can be given priority through attention, which serves to increase activation of the relevant brain areas. Attention can also cause reactivation of sensory areas driven by input, but usually only after a delay. The threshold for activation for any area may be temporarily reduced by prior activation . Skill components requiring attention tend to cause interference resulting in the dual tasks effects and unified focus of attention described in many cognitive studies. Practice may change the size or number of brain areas involved and alter the pathways used by the skill. By combining cognitive and anatomical analyses, a more general picture of the nature of skill emerges. (shrink)

I distinguish two types of reduction within the context of quantum-classical relations, which I designate “formal” and “empirical”. Formal reduction holds or fails to hold solely by virtue of the mathematical relationship between two theories; it is therefore a two-place, a priori relation between theories. Empirical reduction requires one theory to encompass the range of physical behaviors that are well-modeled in another theory; in a certain sense, it is a three-place, a posteriori relation connecting the theories and the domain of (...) physical reality that both serve to describe. Focusing on the relationship between classical and quantum mechanics, I argue that while certain formal results concerning singular \ limits have been taken to preclude the possibility of reduction between these theories, such results at most provide support for the claim that singular limits block reduction in the formal sense; little if any reason has been given for thinking that they block reduction in the empirical sense. I then briefly outline a strategy for empirical reduction that is suggested by work on decoherence theory, arguing that this sort of account remains a fully viable route to the empirical reduction of classical to quantum mechanics and is unaffected by such singular limits. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Exploring the Depth of Dream Experience: The Enactive Framework and Methods for Neurophenomenological Research” by Elizaveta Solomonova & Xin Wei Sha. Upshot: Neurophenomenology requires a first-person report at the sub-personal level. Thus, the neurophenomenology of dreaming and sleep can be figuratively located in a model of perspectives and levels of analysis. Even when Solomonova and Sha do admit creativity to explain bizarreness and emphasize dreams’ enaction and, especially, dreams’ perception-dependence, an innate and developmental framework (...) of neurophenomenology becomes a requirement to understand fully its sub-personal counterpart, i.e., sleep, especially the evidence derived from innate processing observed during the sleep of neonates - even without the dreaming counterpart. Finally, precisions about the depth of dreaming in Hobson’s work are presented. (shrink)

The will as first mover created in Francisco Suárez: The aim of this paper is to show that Francisco Suarez’s claim that the will is the prime mover of the human actions is grounded in his own metaphysical system. For that purpose, I argue that the will is not necessitated to act by any extrinsic efficient cause: nor by God’s grace, neither by the intellect, the law or fate. For all these active principles are either just a necessary condition for (...) the will’s act or something that necessitates the practical act of the intellect by which it guides the will, but does not affects the will itself. On the other hand, I argue that Suárez’s account on potency and act allows conceiving an efficient cause that is able to determine itself. Besides Suárez distinction between the transcendental sense of potency and act and the predicamental one –among which only the latter is relevant for this matte—, for him act does not perfect potency. Then the will can simultaneously be denominated patient and agent regarding its own action since it does not imply that the will can give itself something it previously lacked. (shrink)

Kentridge and Heywood (this issue) extend the concept of metacognition to include unconscious processes. We acknowledge the possible contribution of unconscious processes, but favor a central role of awareness in metacognition. We welcome Shimamura's (this issue) extension of the concept of metacognitive regulation to include aspects of working memory, and its relation to executive attention.

In this paper, I will argue that Logics of Formal Inconsistency $$ can be used as very sophisticated and powerful methods of classical recapture. I will compare $LFIs$ with the well-known non-monotonic logics by Batens and Priest and the ‘shrieking’ rules of Beall. I will show that these proposals can be represented in $LFIs$ and that $LFIs$ give room to more complex and varied recapturing strategies.

Based on the philosophic hermeneutics, this text wants to open horizons of meaning around the dialogue between social sciences and philosophy, from what I have called in this work hermeneutic subjectivity. In the first part, there is an approximation to Heidegger concept of dasein, as an antithesis of the modern subject. Then, based on memory, utopia, self-understanding and narration, it presents a theoretical contribution to understand how hermeneutic subjectivity isconstituted. Finally, it makes an invitation to a necessary dialogue between social (...) sciences and philosophy. (shrink)

This thesis is a defense of the Content View on perceptual experience, of the idea that our perceptual experiences represent the world as being a certain way and so have representational content. Three main issues are addressed in this work. Firstly, I try to show that the Content View fits very well both with the logical behaviour of ordinary ascriptions of seeing-episodes and related experiential episodes, and with our pretheoretical intuitions about what perceiving and experiencing ultimately are: that preliminary analysis (...) speaks for the prima facie plausibility of such a view. Secondly, I put forward a detailed account of perceptual episodes in semantic terms, by articulating and arguing for a specific version of the Content View. I provide arguments for the following theses: Perceptual content is two-layered so it involves an iconic level and a discrete or proto-propositional level. Perceptual content is singular and object-dependent or de re, so it includes environmental objects as its semantic constituents. The phenomenal character of perceptual experience is co-determined by the represented properties together with the Mode, but not by the perceived objects: that is what I call an impure representationalism. Perceptual content is 'Russellian': it consists of worldly objects, properties and relations. Both perceptual content and phenomenal character are 'wide' or determined by environmental factors, thus there is no Fregean, narrow perceptual content. Thirdly, I show that such a version of the Content View can cope with the objections which are typically moved against the Content View as such by the advocates of disjunctivism. I myself put forward a moderately disjunctivist version of the Content View, according to which perceptual relations must be told apart from hallucinations as mental states of a different kind. Such a disjunctivism is 'moderate' insofar as it allows genuinely relational perceptual experiences and hallucinations to share a positive phenomenal character, contrary to what Radical Disjunctivism cum Naïve Realism holds. Showing that the Content View vindicates our pre-theoretical intuitions and does justice of our ordinary ascriptive practices, articulating a detailed and argued version of the Content View, and showing that such a version is not vulnerable to the standard objections recently moved to the Content View by the disjunctive part, all that can be considered as a big, multifaceted Argument for the Content View. (shrink)

One of the most important contributions of Einstein to the philosophy of science is the distinction between two types of scientific theories: ‘principle’ and ‘constructive’ theories. More recently, Flores proposed a more general distinction, classifying scientific theories by their functional role into ‘framework’ and ‘interaction’ theories, attempting to solve some inadequacies in Einstein’s proposal. Here, based on an epistemic criterion, we present a generalised distinction which is an improvement over Flores approach. In this work (i) we evaluate the shortcomings related (...) to Flores’s proposal, (ii) we present an epistemological criterion that opens the door for a more general classification of any scientific theory in all of the natural science into two distinct groups, which we call ‘mechanistic theories’ and ‘structural theories’, and (iii) we show that such a criterion is connected to Flores’ proposal while overcoming issues of all previous approaches. (shrink)

El presente escrito es la primera parte de un trabajo cuyo cometido es reconstruir la Teoría de los Regímenes Alimentarios (TRA), con base en un aparato reconstructor inspirado en la teoría de categorías. En esta primera entrega se discute por qué se ha decidido abordar esta reconstrucción y por qué se ha seleccionado una herramienta diagramática para hacerlo. Se describe TRA en términos generales: una perspectiva que periodiza el modo de producción capitalista de los últimos ciento cincuenta años, en relación (...) con la producción y comercio mundial de alimentos básicos. Dada su restringida aplicación al comercio capitalista de alimentos del último siglo y medio, se discute también si acaso se trata de una teoría empírica u otro tipo de producto cognoscitivo. Luego se pormenoriza el aparato reconstructor que se emplea en la segunda parte del trabajo. Aunque dicho instrumental se basa en la teoría de categorías, más específicamente en la categoría de los conjuntos, la reconstrucción es deudora la de la Metateoría Estructuralista, y no propone desarrollar una metateoría categorial distinta. De cualquier manera, en las páginas finales del presente texto se mencionan algunas iniciativas de otros autores que sugieren una Metateoría Categorial diferente. (shrink)

Context: Research in the contemplative field has focused on trainable capacities that foster self-regulation and integration. From a psychological perspective, mindfulness and personality research ….

"Diego Marconi analizza in questo saggio alcune tappe fondamentali della riflessione di Wittgenstein, illlustrando i motivi per cui gran parte della discussione filosofica odierna risalga all'esperienza intellettuale del filosofo di Vienna: dal "sapere senza fondamenti" al "pensiero debole", dalla filosofia analitica all'ermeneutica.

Putnam and others have argued that semantic externalism extends to artifactual kind words such as “pencil” or “doorstop”. I first show that, even with natural kinds, externalism applies to words for ground level kinds. The issue then arises of which categories of artifacts should be identified as kinds in the relevant, restricted sense. I argue that, though there are natural taxonomies of artifactual categories at least some of which have well-defined ground levels, even words for such kinds do not appear (...) to have externalist semantics, as they do not support ignorance or error arguments. Some think that membership to any kind is determined by objective features. Against this, I argue that the makers’ productive intentions are often crucial in selecting which pattern of features counts as constitutive of a kind. Though externalists may insist that membership to a kind is ultimately determined by sharing objective features, the resulting version of externalism can hardly be distinguished from internalism. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the possibility of applying the methods and results of Judgement Aggregation to the problem of logical disagreement. I develop and evaluate different ways in which individuals who logically disagree can generate a collective logic. I prove a version of the discursive paradox, where the majority voting of a group of structural logicians can give rise to a substructural logic; then I develop a more general impossibility result. After this, I analyze different ways to avoid the (...) paradox, in particular some methods which appeal to domain restrictions. Finally, I consider the application of these results to the discussion on semantic paradoxes. (shrink)

In a much-discussed article, Gillian Russell claimed that “logic isn’t normative”: according to her, the usual bridge principles for logic are just derived from general principles for truth and falsity, such as “believe the truth” or “avoid falsity.” For example, we ought to believe tautologies just because we ought to believe the truth. Russell argues that this rejection of logical normativity can avoid the collapse objection for logical pluralism, which typically presupposes the normativity. In the last part of his new (...) book Logical Pluralism and Logical Consequence, Erik Stei responds that even if logic is normative in this weak derivative sense, the collapse objection re-emerges. His main point is that the collapse argument can still work even if the bridge principles are derivative (they just need to be true). In this paper I will argue against Stei’s point. I will show that there is a possible strategy which maintains the derivative normativity of logic and provides a non-trivial logical pluralism. The key to my approach is the possibility of having different normative sources for different logics. I will argue that the distinction between classical and relevant logic can be understood in this way. (shrink)

Two theories of implicit domain restriction have gained considerable prominence over the last two decades. According to von Fintel (Restrictions on quantifier domaines, Ph.D. thesis, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1994), quantifiers come with covert restrictors and, as a result of this, induce domain restriction; according to Stanley [in Gerhard and Peter (eds) Logical form and language, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2002; Stanley and Szabó (Mind Lang 15(2–3):2192–2161, 2000)], by contrast, nouns, as opposed to quantifiers, come with covert restrictors. In this (...) article, I do three things. First, I assess the arguments that have been given for and against these two accounts and show that none of them is conclusive. Second, I advance a novel empirical argument based on the observed pragmatic behaviour of bare nouns, an argument that falsifies Stanley’s theory while providing clear evidence in support of von Fintel’s (1994). Finally, I discuss the relevance of the bare noun data in the context of another important debate—namely, whether domain restriction is a local mechanism only, or whether it can also be achieved by global means. (shrink)

El presente trabajo indaga las condiciones históricas e ideológicas de la excomunión de Spinoza en 1656, y la vinculación de este episodio con las discutidas influencias de Van den Enden, Juan de Prado o Isaac la Peyrère en la temprana heterodoxia del joven Baruch, según las clásicas tesis de investigadores como Madelaine Francès, I. S. Rèvah, Jacob Teicher, Carl Gebhardt o, más recientemente, Richard Popkin, Josef Kaplan y Steven Nadler. A partir de este relevamiento historiográfico se sugiere una motivación “democrática” (...) en el fondo de la segregación de Spinoza por la Sinagoga y su puesta fuera de comunidad. (shrink)

Eva Picardi was a critic of both Chomskyan naturalism and Davidsonian semantic individualism. Though basically agreeing with her on both counts, I reject her identification of Chomsky’s notion of “tacit knowledge” of language with Dummett’s notion of implicit knowledge, and I argue that Eva’s criticism of the latter notion does not apply to the former. In the second part of the paper, I take Eva’s side in criticizing individualism, providing further reasons for the existence of a semantic standard and trying (...) to explain what it is and why we are committed to it. (shrink)

An objection that has been raised to the conciliatory stance on the epistemic significance of peer disagreement known as the Equal Weight View is that it is self-defeating, self-undermining, or self-refuting. The proponent of that view claims that equal weight should be given to all the parties to a peer dispute. Hence, if one of his epistemic peers defends the opposite view, he is required to give equal weight to the two rival views, thereby undermining his confidence in the correctness (...) of the Equal Weight View. It seems that the same objection could be leveled against those who claim to suspend judgment in the face of pervasive unresolvable disagreements, as do the Pyrrhonian skeptics. In this paper, I explore the kind of response to the objection that could be offered from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, with the aim of better understanding the intriguing character of Pyrrhonian skepticism. (shrink)

I show explicitly how concerns about wave function collapse and ontology can be decoupled from the bulk of technical analysis necessary to recover localized, approximately Newtonian trajectories from quantum theory. In doing so, I demonstrate that the account of classical behavior provided by decoherence theory can be straightforwardly tailored to give accounts of classical behavior on multiple interpretations of quantum theory, including the Everett, de Broglie-Bohm and GRW interpretations. I further show that this interpretation-neutral, decoherence-based account conforms to a general (...) view of inter-theoretic reduction in physics that I have elaborated elsewhere, which differs from the oversimplified and often ambiguous picture that treats reduction simply as a matter of taking limits. This interpretation-neutral account rests on a general three-pronged strategy for reduction between quantum and classical theories that combines decoherence, an appropriate form of Ehrenfest's Theorem, and a decoherence-compatible mechanism for collapse. It also incorporates a novel argument as to why branch-relative trajectories should be approximately Newtonian, which is based on a little-discussed extension of Ehrenfest's Theorem to open systems, rather than on the more commonly cited but less germane closed-systems version. In the Conclusion, I briefly suggest how the strategy for quantum-classical reduction described here might be extended to reduction between other classical and quantum theories, including classical and quantum field theory and classical and quantum gravity. (shrink)

In the discussion about Yablo’s Paradox, a debated topic is the status of infinitary proofs. It is usually considered that, although a realist could (with some effort) accept them, an anti-realist could not do it at all. In this paper I will argue that there are plausible reasons for an anti-realist to accept infinitary proofs and rules of inference. En la discusión sobre la Paradoja de Yablo, un tópico debatido es el estatus de las pruebas infinitarias. Se suele considerar que, (...) aunque un realista podría (con cierto esfuerzo) aceptarlas, un anti-realista no podría hacerlo en absoluto. En este artículo, argumento que hay razones plausibles para que un anti-realista acepte pruebas y reglas de inferencia infinitarias. (shrink)

En este artículo, analizo las principales respuestas que se han dado al argumento finitista de Etchemendy, y muestro que ninguna de ellas es exitosa. Primero, describo y critico las propuestas que intentan resolverlo apelando a consideraciones modales. Estas soluciones fallan porque presuponen un finitismo demasiado débil, donde se acepta la existencia de infinitos conjuntos o de mundos posibles con infinitos objetos. Pero hay versiones más fuertes del finitismo que reintroducen el problema. Luego considero las soluciones que apelan a categorías semánticas. (...) Una de ellas categoriza incorrectamente este problema como un desacuerdo sobre el significado de los cuantificadores. La otra solución falla porque, si fuera tomada en serio, tendría efectos muy nocivos para la lógica en general. Finalmente argumento que la mejor solución es morder la bala y aceptar que la lógica no debería ser fuertemente independiente de algunos asuntos que tradicionalmente fueron considerados como 'extralógicos'. In this paper, I analyze the main replies that have been given to Etchemendy's finitist argument, and I show that none of them is successful. First, I describe and criticize the proposals that try to solve the problem by appealing to modal considerations. These solutions fail because they presuppose a very weak finitism, where the existence of infinitely many sets, or possible words with infinitely many objects, is accepted. But there are stronger versions of finitism that reintroduce the problem. Then I consider the solutions which appeal to semantical categories. One of them incorrectly categorizes the problem as a disagreement in the meaning of the quantifiers. The other fails because, if taken seriously, it would have harmful effects on logic in general. Finally I argue that the best solution is to bite the bullet and accept that logic shouldn't be strongly independent from some issues which were traditionally considered as 'extra-logical'. (shrink)

Some authors have called into question the normativity of logic, using as an argument that the bridge principles for logical normativity (MacFarlane, In what sense (in any) is logic normative for thought, 2004 )? are just by-products of general epistemic principles for belief. In this paper, I discuss that suggestion from a formal point of view. I show that some important bridge principles can be derived from usual norms for belief. I also describe some possible ways to block this derivation (...) by modifying the epistemic norms or weakening the bridge principles. Finally, I discuss different philosophical interpretations of these results. (shrink)

Although the Republic of Letters has become today a main area of interdisciplinary research, early North America has remained largely impermeable to this new body of scholarship. In this article I use the category of the Republic of Letters to overcome some of the limitations of the “Atlantic world” paradigm and to shed new light on the intellectual history of eighteenth-century America. Along with studying the means through which American savants gathered information about scholarly trends and recent publications, I also (...) bring to light the strategies they used to actively contribute to the production and organization of knowledge. (shrink)

Suppose that a team of neurosurgeons and bioengineers were able to remove your brain from your body, suspend it in a life-sustaining vat of liquid nutrients, and connect its neurons and nerve terminals by wires to a supercomputer that would stimulate it with electrical impulses exactly like those it normally receives when embodied. According to this brain-in-a-vat thought experiment, your envatted brain and your embodied brain would have subjectively indistinguishable mental lives. For all you know—so one argument goes—you could be (...) such a brain in a vat right now.1 Daniel Dennett calls this sort of philosophical thought experiment an “intuition pump” (Dennett 1995). An intuition pump is designed to elicit certain intuitive convictions, but is not itself a proper argument: “intuition pumps are fine if they’re used correctly, but they can also be misused. They’re not arguments, they’re stories. Instead of having a conclusion, they pump an intuition. They get you to say ‘Aha! Oh, I get it!’ (Dennett 1995, p. 182). Philosophers have used the brain-in-a-vat story mainly to raise the problem of radical skepticism and to elicit various intuitions about meaning and knowledge (Putnam 1981). The basic intuition the story tries to pump is that the envatted brain, though fully conscious, has systematically false beliefs about the world, including itself. Some philosophers reject this intuition. They propose that the envatted brain’s beliefs are really about its artificial environment or that it.. (shrink)

According to methodological anti-exceptionalism, logic follows a scientific methodology. There has been some discussion about which methodology logic has. Authors such as Priest, Hjortland and Williamson have argued that logic can be characterized by an abductive methodology. We choose the logical theory that behaves better under a set of epistemic criteria. In this paper, I analyze some important discussions in the philosophy of logic, and I show that they presuppose different methodologies, involving different notions of evidence and different epistemic values. (...) I argue that, rather than having a specific methodology such as abductivism, logic can be characterized by methodological pluralism. This position can also be seen as the application of scientific pluralism to the realm of logic. (shrink)