The ontological question goes way back to Plato. In his Teetetus he already searched for the answer to question of “how is it possible that when a man stares at something he would not see anything anyway”. Quine is the author of a doctrine on ontology, “On what there is”. His work follows the path of medieval authors such as William of Ockham, who proposed the methodology that came to be known as Okcham's razor. The excessive proliferation of entities is (...) known as “Plato's beard”. Quine, among others, has shaved Plato's beard searching for logical and scientific simplicity. (shrink)

Los debates sobre el conocimiento, la realidad y la verdad han estado en el centro de la discusión filosófica desde hace décadas. El advenimiento de la Teoría Evolucionista del Conocimiento le ha revestido, no solo de hipótesis interesantes sobre los procesos que subyacen a las capacidades cognitivas en la tarea de conocer el mundo, sino que ha traído consigo nuevos problemas. En este artículo se intenta ofrecer una perspectiva naturalizada del problema del conocimiento, adentrándonos en los debates suscitados desde el (...) realismo y los conceptos de verdad y error a la hora de determinar si el éxito biológico está íntimamente relacionado o no con ambos conceptos, no solo en la especie humana sino también en otras especies animales. (shrink)

Nowadays global inequalities in access to vaccines seem to be a growing problem. Intellectual Property Rights have been playing an important role both in causing and worsening them. Firstly,...

“There’s no need for DNA tests to prove that One Hundred Years of Solitude is Don Quixote’s heir.” G. Rabassa This paper is a personal attempt to relate the concept of language games as portrayed by the Austrian Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein with the literary magic of Gabriel García Márquez. The topic came up to me after reading an essay of the Colombian writer Carlos Patiño Roselli. His exposition on the language games in Wittgenstein triggered a series ofassociations in me that (...) made me see spoken language as the actor that plays the leading role in both authors. In order to address this topic I will first summarize Wittgenstein’s notion of language-games, on one hand, and then I will remind us of what we commonly understand under “magical realism” in GGM; then, I will propose a free interpretation of §103 in PhU relating it to Melquiades’ return from death to live in a story he tells in some papyrus. And now, “Back to the rough ground!”. (shrink)

Si l’« explosion sociale » chilienne a rassemblé une série de mouvements sociaux, il est certain que les féminismes ont joué un rôle fondamental dans l’établissement de revendications contre les abus, les inégalités et la précarité de la vie. Malgré l’échec du rejet de la nouvelle Constitution, cet article approfondit deux normes minimales historiques que les féministes ont réussi à établir au niveau institutionnel et social : la parité dans la participation politique et la condamnation généralisée de la violence à (...) l’égard des femmes. (shrink)

Forms of thinking that involve thinking about thought are only available to creatures participating in a public language. Thoughts can only be the objects of further thoughts if they have suitable vehicle and the only suitable vehicle is public language sentences. These language-dependent cognitive abilities range from second-order reflection on one's own beliefs and desires and the capacity to attribute thoughts to others to the ability to entertain tensed thoughts and to deploy logical concepts. Many of these language-dependent cognitive abilities, (...) however, have primitive analogues that do not involve intentional ascent and hence are available at the nonlinguistic level. This chapter considers the practical implications this has for the scope and limits of nonlinguistic thought. The chapter explores the question: what types of thinking are in principle unavailable to nonlinguistic creatures? There are two types of intentional ascent, which might be termed explicit and implicit intentional ascent respectively. (shrink)

This commentary defends intentionalist accounts of self-deception against Mele by arguing that: (1) viewing self-deception on the model of other-deception is not as paradoxical as Mele makes out; (2) the paradoxes are not entailed by the view that self-deception is intentional; and (3) there are two problems for Mele's theory that only an intentionalist theory can solve.

This paper defends the Quine-Putnam mathematical indispensability argument against two objections raised by Penelope Maddy. The objections concern scientific practices regarding the development of the atomic theory and the role of applied mathematics in the continuum and infinity. I present two alternative accounts by Stephen Brush and Alan Chalmers on the atomic theory. I argue that these two theories are consistent with Quine’s theory of scientific confirmation. I advance some novel versions of the indispensability argument. I argue that these new (...) versions accommodate Maddy’s history of the atomic theory. Counter-examples are provided regarding the role of the mathematical continuum and mathematical infinity in science. (shrink)

I argue against Matthew Slater’s rejection of what he calls the grounding claim in his stable property cluster account of natural kinds. This claim states that the epistemic value of natural kinds depends on the existence of some ground to bind together a kind’s properties. Using two test cases from academic medicine, I show that grounds are genuinely explanatory of scientific epistemic practices and that the SPC account should not do without them in its philosophical analysis of natural kinds.

What is the relation between philosophical theorizing and experimental data? A modest set of naturalistic assumptions leads to what I term the force-field puzzle. The assumption that philosophy is continuous with natural science, as captured in Quine’s force-field metaphor, seems to push us simultaneously towards thinking that there have to be conceptual constraints upon how we interpret experimental data and towards thinking that there cannot be such conceptual constraints, because all theorizing must be accountable to data and observation. The key (...) to resolving the force-field puzzle is to take a more nuanced view of how conceptual constraints can be accountable to data and observation. This can be done by developing conceptual arguments in conjunction with interpretative frameworks for making sense of experimental evidence. This paper shows how attending to important differences between different types of mindreading yields tools for interpreting experimental and observational data in a manner consistent with a (conceptually derived) constraint that I have developed elsewhere. This is the first-order constraint that second-order thinking, or thinking about thinking, is only available to language-using creatures. (shrink)

Perspectives on Kant's teachings on geography and how they relate his understanding of the world.

This paper explores Kornblith's proposal in "Knowledge and its Place in Nature" that knowledge is a natural kind that can be elucidated and understood in scientific terms. Central to Kornblith's development of this proposal is the claim that there is a single category of unreflective knowledge that is studied by cognitive ethologists and is the proper province of epistemology. This claim is challenged on the grounds that even unreflective knowledge in language-using humans reflects forms of logical reasoning that are in (...) principle unavailable to nonlinguistic animals. (shrink)

McTaggart se apoya en el hecho de que no percibimos el tiempo en si mismo, un tiempo vacio de sucesos: lo que en verdad percibimos es el transcurrir de los acontecimientos, tanto de los extemos como los de nuestro propio estado intemo en la conciencia. Todo el desarrollo de McTaggart y tambien su originalidad, consiste en el desentraiiamiento del mecanismo por el cual aprehendemos el caracter temporal del acaecer, a traves del cual tenemos la ilusión de que percibimos el tiempo. (...) De ese analisis se desprende su tesis: La manera de captar lo temporal es contradictoria en si misma, par lo que, si el significante es contradictorio, lo significado, en este caso el tiempo, es nada: el nihil privativum kantiano" Pregunto: no tendra razón McTaggart, en cuyo caso podria decirse que los sucesos "son" el tiempo? (shrink)

Chris Frith’s target chapters contain a wealth of interesting experiments and striking theoretical claims. In these comments I begin by drawing out some of the key themes in his discussion of action and the sense of agency. Frith’s central claim about conscious action is that what we are primarily conscious of in acting is our own agency. I will review some of the experimental evidence that he interprets in support of this claim and then explore the following three questions about (...) the awareness of agency: Should we locate the phenomena that Frith describes as awareness of agency at the personal level or at the subpersonal level? If we are indeed operating at the personal level, then should we think about awareness of agency as something we experience, or as something that we believe? If awareness of agency is to be understood experientially, is there what some authors have called “a sense of agency”, where this is understood to be a distinctive type of experience that accompanies agentive behaviors but is absent in behaviors that are not under the control of the agent? In what follows I argue that awareness of agency should be located at the personal level, and that we should think of it as something we experience. But I will reject the claim that there is a distinctive sense of agency. (shrink)

O presente estudo tem por objetivo contribuir para o projeto de reatualização da Filosofia do Direito hegeliana inaugurado por Axel Honneth, mas de um modo indireto: meu interesse aqui não é investigar tópicos específicos da Filosofia do Direito, nem mesmo examinar a teoria do reconhecimento como proposta por Honneth, mas iniciar uma caminhada no sentido de tornar explícitos os pressupostos ontológicos carregados por tal projeto de reatualização.

This paper explores the relation between two ways of thinking about the sources of self-consciousness. We can think about the sources of self-consciousness either in genetic terms (as the origins or precursors of self-conscious thoughts) or in epistemic terms (as the grounds of self-conscious judgements). Using Christopher Peacocke's account of self-conscious judgements in Being Known as a foil, this paper brings out some important ways in which we need to draw upon the sources of self-consciousness in the genetic sense for (...) a proper understanding of the sources of self-consciousness in the epistemic sense. (shrink)

El siguiente artículo aborda la hegemonía que se ciñe sobre Colombia, mediante un punto de vista político que analiza el poder que ejerce la burguesía internacional y burguesía subordinada nacional sobre las clases subalternas y en particular la clase trabajadora colombiana. Se reflexiona sobre el l..

This article discusses the relation between colonialism and the sovereignty of peoples through a dialogue between Hegel and the thought of the French Revolution. These two sides are relevant to each other not only because of their historical proximity, but also because of the connections that can be established when we approach the topic of colonialism through these two manifestations. Hegel is explicit that his philosophy of history and his philosophy of right are supposed to be philosophies of freedom. Yet (...) despite the importance that he lends to freedom, Hegel also explicitly defends, in the very same text, colonial domination when he deals with the relation between peoples. A similar problem had arisen in the course of the French Revolution. Following the declarations of war, France is confronted on various occasions with the question of how to deal with other peoples and countries. With the foundation of the Republic in 1792, the relation with other peoples becomes central in the revolutionary debates. The topic of colonialism is part of the constituting debates, and not only because of the uprisings in then Saint Domingue leading to the Haitian Revolution. This article is a part of a larger research project that attempts to reassess the relations between Hegel and the French Revolution, and deals with the question of how we can re-read Hegel's interpretation of the French Revolution based on the evolving historiography of the Revolution. After an introduction of both sides of this dialogue, the paper discusses how Hegel's political philosophy can be applied to understand the debates about the emancipation of colonies that take place during the French Revolution. The next part further analyses some issues, such as the notion of sovereignty and, in the concluding remarks, I summarize my discussion and point to some avenues for further research. (shrink)

En el fragmento 44 de Sobre la verdad, Antifonte realiza una seria crítica a la ley y a la práctica judicial ateniense en cuanto medio que promueve el odio y la realización de injusticias. Esto ha llevado a una buena parte de los especialistas a calificarlo como un negador del valor de las instituciones jurídicas. A partir de una revisión del pensamiento de Antifonte, el propósito de este trabajo es examinar la posibilidad de que los espacios de resolución de conflictos, (...) antes que cargar por completo con un sentido negativo vinculado al odio y la injusticia, puedan ser beneficiosos. (shrink)

A riqueza da filosofia de Fichte reside justamente em seus excessos. O presente artigo visa explicitar os impasses metódicos decorrentes dessa forma extremada de idealismo subjetivo. As soluções aventadas por Fichte para enfrentar tais dificuldades influenciaram decisivamente o posterior desenvolvimento do Idealismo Alemão.

Este artigo aborda uma crítica feita alguns anos atrás por Avner Baz sobre o trabalho de contextualistas atuais na filosofia da linguagem. A crítica de Baz enfoca a ideia de que os contextualistas interpretaram mal o ataque feito por J. L. Austin e Wittgenstein à chamada “concepção vigente de significado”. Apesar da insistência deles sobre os fatores contextuais que determinam o contexto de uma declaração, Baz argumenta que os contextualistas ainda explicam nossos enunciados em termos das condições de verdade das (...) sentenças que expressam e, ao enfatizarem a dimensão referencial das palavras, acabam por defender uma concepção de significado como uma entidade teórica, responsável por assinalar os objetos do nosso discurso. Portanto, para Baz, eles mantêm uma visão representacionista ainda intimamente ligada à concepção tradicional de concepção de significado. Descrevendo as bases da visão de Baz, sustento neste artigo que a ligação que ele assevera entre referência e uma teoria de significado como representação, é precisamente o objetivo de contextualistas como Charles Travis. O trabalho deles é apresentado aqui como uma tentativa de explicar a referência de palavras e as condições de verdade de uma sentença após a ocorrência de uma negação radical da noção de significado como representação. Nesse sentido, contrariamente ao que Baz afirma, estão intimamente ligados ao espírito dos pioneiros da filosofia da linguagem comum. (shrink)

In this essay an engineer and a philosopher, after many conversations, develop an argument for why the Aristotelian version of virtue ethics is the most promising way to develop what we call artificial moral, social agents, i.e. robots. This, evidently, applies to humans as well. There are several claims: first, that humans are not born moral, they are socialized into morality; second, that morality involves affect, emotion, feeling, before it engages reason; third, that how a moral being feels is related (...) to some narrative, whether moral or not; and finally, that narrativity is what builds a sense of a “moral” I, namely an authorial moral self. (shrink)

: O presente artigo evidencia, por um lado, o mérito da filosofia de Espinosa, pelo fato de haver submetido a oposição das partes e do todo, do corpo e da alma, da matéria e do espírito, à unidade da substância, já que toda parte singular da substância pertence à sua natureza. Por outro lado, destaca a crítica de Feuerbach a Espinosa, porque a filosofia deste é, na verdade, uma filosofia da identidade, que não reconhece, como Hegel também assinala, a substância (...) como espírito e o espírito como substância, e não determina suficientemente a unidade da matéria e do espírito, já que falta a ela a realidade da diferença, da determinidade. Enquanto Espinosa identifica Deus com a natureza (Deus sive natura) e, mediante a natureza divina (a substância), supera a contradição de Descartes entre matéria (res extensa) e espírito (res cogitans), Feuerbach quer, em oposição ao panteísmo, a diferença entre natureza e Deus (aut Deus aut natura). (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically shown the level of interconnectedness of the human population, the direct relation between human health and the ecosystem, as well as the enormous ethical challenges required for a global response. Relatedly, society has been directly confronted by issues of ‘Global health,’ both in terms of awareness of health conditions and health systems resiliency all around the world, as well as in terms of governance of the worldwide response and its implications at national and local levels. (...) While Global health is often used as a cosmetic label for neocolonial approaches, it is really an interdisciplinary approach consisting of the interaction between globalization and the determinants of health. Thus, it involves the ecosystem and its transformation and implies a systemic ‘One Health’ decolonized approach in the definition of its strategies. The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the inequities and the limits of the current hegemonic Global health system governance; calling for ethics to provide a renewed, comprehensive, inclusive, and decolonized conceptualization of Global health. (shrink)

Resumo: Este estudo analisa as narrativas radiofônicas de Walter Benjamin, como forma e conteúdo através do qual o autor buscou proporcionar para a infância de seu tempo uma possibilidade de experiência com o contemporâneo. Ao se pensar as peças do ponto de vista didático e do ponto de vista da aprendizagem, pode-se encontrar nelas a intencionalidade de Benjamin, bem como a atenção e o cuidado dado por ele a elementos aparentemente irrelevantes para o esclarecimento como Aufklärung, no cotidiano prosaico das (...) massas. Esse cuidado o levou a questionar, a exercitar e a experimentar a transmissão do conhecimento por meios novos e metodologias inovadoras para a época, sem perder de vista a perspectiva dos vencidos, em sua batalha diária, ou seja, em seu cotidiano. As peças, portanto, não são modelos apenas em sua estrutura narrativa, mas também de uma intencionalidade pedagógica emancipadora que pode dialogar com a criança, mediante a ludo-linguagem de domínio e fluência das crianças. A infância, nesse sentido, é signo de uma nova subjetividade fortalecida e, assim, capaz de resistir e de se desviar dos encantos e das promessas do populismo fascista que, no século XXI, não deixou de rondar a todos. Palavras-chave: Narrativas Radiofônicas; Experiência; Walter Benjamin Radiophone tales: the emergency of a modern form of narration in Benjamin Abstract: This study analyzes Walter Benjamin's radio narratives as a form and content through which the author sought to provide the childhood of his time with a possibility of experiencing the contemporary. Whenever thinking about the pieces from the didactic point of view and from the learning point of view, it could find Benjamin's intentionality among it, as well as the attention and care given by him to elements apparently irrelevant to the clarification, such as Aufklärung, in the prosaic daily life of masses. This care led him to question, exercise and experiment with the transmission of knowledge through new means and innovative methodologies for the time, without losing sight of the perspective of the losers, in their daily battle, that is, in their daily lives. The plays, therefore, are not models only in their narrative structure, but also of an emancipatory pedagogical intentionality that can dialogue with the child, through the ludo-language of mastery and fluency of children. Childhood, in this sense, is a sign of a new, strengthened subjectivity and, consequently, capable of resisting and deviating from the charms and promises of fascist populism that, in the 21st century, did not cease to haunt everyone. Keywords: Radio Narratives; Experience; Walter Benjamin Cuentos radiofónicos: la emergencia de una forma moderna de narración en Benjamin Resumén: Este estudio analiza las narrativas radiofónicas de Walter Benjamin, como forma y contenido a través del cual el autor buscó proporcionar para la infancia de su tiempo una posibilidad de experiencia con lo contemporáneo. Al pensar en las piezas, desde el punto de vista didáctico y desde el punto de vista del aprendizaje, se puede encontrar en ellas la intencionalidad de Benjamin, así como la atención y el cuidado dado por él a elementos aparentemente irrelevantes para el esclarecimiento como Aufklärung, en el prosaico diario de las masas. Ese cuidado lo llevó a cuestionar, a ejercitar y a experimentar la transmisión del conocimiento por medios nuevos y metodologías innovadoras para la época, sin perder de vista la perspectiva de los vencidos, en su batalla diaria, o sea, en su cotidiano. Las piezas, por lo tanto, no son modelos solo en su estructura narrativa, sino también de una intencionalidad pedagógica emancipadora que puede dialogar con el niño, mediante el Ludo lenguaje de dominio y fluidez de los niños. La infancia, en ese sentido, es signo de una nueva subjetividad fortalecida y, así, capaz de resistir y de desviarse de los encantos y de las promesas del populismo fascista que, en el siglo XXI, no dejó de rondar a todos. Palabras clave: Narrativas Radiofónicas; Experiencia; Walter Benjamin Data de registro: 07/03/2023 Data de aceite: 22/11/2023. (shrink)

En Das Passagen-Werk Benjamin vuelve sobre el concepto de Ursprung, esta vez como salto genuino de lo que ha sido, como vuelco dialéctico en el instante del Jetztzeit del materialista histórico, instante de legibilidad, pero también como parada e interrupción [Stillstand] de este despliegue, donde la fuerza dialéctica queda suspendida por un instante, en el ahora de su cognoscibilidad. Para llegar a esto, el berlinés ha hecho un recorrido reflexivo, crítico y contundente, el cual comienza a definirse más intensamente desde (...) el prólogo Epistemocrítico de su Trauerspiel. Rastrearemos el recorrido en ambas obras y en las construcciones problemáticas de sus textos y fragmentos anteriores, especialmente en la tensión de la mediación, relación y conexión entre la obra de arte y el arte como despliegue teórico; sobre todo la tensión existente entre los primeros Románticos y Goethe, en la dialéctica entre la forma pura [Idee] y el contenido ideal [Ideale] del arte. También nos inmiscuiremos en las tesis Sobre el concepto de historia y Parque central y algunos fragmentos sobre Baudelaire. Nuestro objetivo principal es mostrar el despliegue de la imagen [Bild] en la escritura filosófica benjaminiana, en medio [Mittel] de los extremos de idea y fenómeno, de verdad y conocimiento, por tanto en la misma construcción conceptual, cuando nombrar y contemplar la realidad histórica, la realidad material debía ser comentada, interpretada y leída en su eterna caducidad [ewige Vergängnis] o hundimiento [Untergang], como exposición [Darstellung] de una experiencia histórica configurada por determinadas constelaciones imaginales. (shrink)

This commentary discusses Pylyshyn's model of perceptual processing in the light of the philosophical distinction between the conceptual and the nonconceptual content of perception. Pylyshyn's processing distinction maps onto an important distinction in the phenomenology of visual perception.

Esta resenha examina a contribuição de Andoni Silva para a divulgação filosófica através de sua obra Los 59 Argumentos Más Extraños de la Filosofía Explicados de Forma Simple Para Todos. O livro de Silva, caracterizado por uma linguagem acessível e uma abordagem direta, visa desmistificar temas filosóficos complexos, tornando-os compreensíveis para o público não especializado. A obra destaca-se pela sua capacidade de estimular a curiosidade e o interesse pela Filosofia mediante a exploração de argumentos peculiares e temas variados, desde questões (...) metafísicas até dilemas éticos e epistemológicos. Apesar de certas limitações, como a organização não sistemática e a presença de erros editoriais, o texto é elogiado por sua fluidez e capacidade de engajar leitores. Silva aborda temas como a natureza da realidade, a existência de Deus, a natureza do tempo, e o conceito de liberdade, entre outros, apresentando um vasto leque de teorias filosóficas de forma que incentiva a reflexão e a busca por conhecimento adicional. A obra é valorizada tanto por sua contribuição educacional quanto pela sua abordagem inovadora na divulgação da Filosofia, demonstrando a importância de iniciativas que buscam democratizar o acesso ao conhecimento filosófico. (shrink)

This review article continues the forum from Tradition and Discovery 47/1 (February 2021) on Gábor Bíró’s book, The Economic Thought of Michael Polanyi (London: Routledge, 2019; 178 pp. Hardback: 9780367245634, £120.00; eBook: 9780429283178, £22.50).