O breve ensaio de Heidegger O que é isto - a Filosofia? guarda em si as questões essenciais sobre os fundamentos, perspectivas norteadoras e finalidades que possibilitaram o surgimento da filosofia como forma eminente do conhecimento ocidental. Contemplando o modo como Parmênides, Heráclito, Platão e Aristóteles estabelecem o sentido do Ser, Heidegger mostra em que sentido os filósofos gregos depuseram no νoεῖν e no λόγος fundamento essencial de ἀλήθεια. Na exposição que Heidegger faz das continuidades e distinções características de cada (...) um dos filósofos gregos por respeito à questão do sentido do Ser e da Verdade destacaremos concomitantemente os pressupostos do próprio pensamento de Heidegger, os quais o orientaram na abordagem do Ser. (shrink)

A crítica enérgica de Heidegger à Metafísica moderna, a qual funda a possibilidade de determinação do Ser na Subjetividade, levou-o a começar a sua investigação do sentido do Ser voltando-se para a Filosofia grega. Com Aristóteles Heidegger procurou solo conceitual para demonstrar na facticidade do existir, antes que na Consciência, o fundamento da compreensividade de todo, e com Platão, o Filósofo buscou um ponto de partida fundado para legitimar uma investigação positiva do não-Ser – aqui o seu intuito foi precisamente (...) o de conceder uma linhagem à problemática do Nada e da Diferença. A partir de uma breve contextualização de duas questões assumidas por Heidegger em sua abordagem inicial de ambos os Filósofos gregos, propomos, neste Ensaio, indicar uma demarcação, fixada em suas Obras principais, dos saltos capitais do seu percurso investigativo, situado entre os chamados primeiro e o segundo Heidegger, em vista da abertura de uma saída da Metafísica e a sua apresentação de um novo Princípio de abordagem do Ser, com a feição de Acontecimento – a figura do entretecimento de Ser e Tempo fora da perspectiva da Entidade. A referência a essas questões embora de modo apenas indicativo, permitirá manter presente o ponto de partida da problemática ética e ontológica assumida por Heidegger como tarefa determinante de sua Filosofia. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Green Utopia Now! A Transdisciplinary Symposium on How to Deal with the Climate Crisis: November 30, 2022, University of Ferrara, ItalyManuel Sousa Oliveira, Ilenia Vittoria Casmiri, Fabiola Onofrio, Tânia Cerqueira, Francisca Teixeira, and Florian WagnerHow could we come together in transdisciplinary collaboration to deal with the climate crisis? Could utopianism be what brings us together? Last summer (2022) we started asking ourselves these questions, and months later (...) Green Utopia Now! A Transdisciplinary Symposium on How to Deal with the Climate Crisis was our initial attempt at finding an answer. The symposium was an ambitious and challenging venture from the start. Our aspirations for it were perhaps still formulated best in the event program:Green Utopia Now! brings together an outstanding group of early career researchers (ECRs) working on climate and the environment in various fields of study. The symposium will provide a creative space where ECRs can share their transdisciplinary perspectives on how to challenge the limits of monodisciplinary views on sustainability, and how the sciences and the humanities can join forces to tackle the current climate crisis. Each of these scientific and cultural points of view will be brought together by a utopian impulse that insists on the role of collaboration, and the urgency of positive [End Page 368] climate action. In fact, this symposium is guided by our conviction about the importance of (1) transdisciplinary collaboration, (2) innovative research conducted by ECRs, and (3) utopian thinking and practice for engaging with global scale problems.Fortunately, eleven guest speakers accepted the challenge, and their answers were unsurprisingly diverse.1If we are to approach the vicissitudes of the climate crisis, we must, as Hannah Nelson-Teutsch and Lena Pfeifer recently called for, seek “new, entangled form(at)s of scholarship in the humanities.”1 These entanglements have become even more obvious in the ways in which research on the climate and environmental crises challenges the very limits of humanities and monodisciplinary scholarship. Not circumscribed to the humanities, then, Green Utopia Now! similarly aspired to “new, entangled form(at)s” of transdisciplinary research at the intersection of environmental and utopian studies. Thus, it follows that this briefing too should diverge from the conventional form(at) in an attempt to convey the professional, personal and collective entanglements of our projects.Green utopianism, as described in a recent issue of this journal, shares with political ecological movements a radical and urgent “need to live and embody better alternatives within the Now.”2 This idea of “nowness” inspired our symposium down to its title. It would be only fitting, then, that the author, Heather Alberro, would deliver the opening keynote of the Green Utopia Now! symposium. Alberro (Nottingham Trent) joined us online to, on the one hand, (re)introduce the idea of green utopianism and, on the other, propose a new iteration termed “terrestrial ecotopianism.” Drawn for a wide range of both fictional and nonfictional, imaginative and empirical sources, Alberro’s terrestrial ecotopianism redirects our focus toward the here and the now. Providing a further layer to this utopian project is the work being conducted in empirical ecocriticism, as made obvious by W. P. Małecki (Wrocław), who delivered the closing keynote, which was based on “hot off the press” research on environmental communication, environmental psychology, as well as affective (and, of course, empirical) ecocriticism. It inquired into the possibilities of utopian cli-fi in general, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020) in particular, to change attitudes toward the climate crisis. [End Page 369]Most of our speakers, were far from being utopian scholars. Still, by the end of the symposium it was becoming clear that many (if not all) were in fact unwitting utopians. Regardless of the fields—from literature to genetics, biology to sociology, or economics to architecture—collectively the proposals that were put forth constitute a fresh and wide-ranging utopian project exploring both more and less exact ways of dealing with the climate crisis now. Not wishing to have the project become monolithic, much of the utopian aspirations for the symposium were placed in the process, the relationships, and the conversations. Even if to admittedly mixed results, the panels too... (shrink)

Teleological explanations (TEs) account for the existence or properties of an entity in terms of a function: we have hearts because they pump blood, and telephones for communication. While many teleological explanations seem appropriate, others are clearly not warranted-for example, that rain exists for plants to grow. Five experiments explore the theoretical commitments that underlie teleological explanations. With the analysis of [Wright, L. (1976). Teleological Explanations. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press] from philosophy as a point of departure, we examine (...) in Experiment 1 whether teleological explanations are interpreted causally, and confirm that TEs are only accepted when the function invoked in the explanation played a causal role in bringing about what is being explained. However, we also find that playing a causal role is not sufficient for all participants to accept TEs. Experiment 2 shows that this is not because participants fail to appreciate the causal structure of the scenarios used as stimuli. In Experiments 3-5 we show that the additional requirement for TE acceptance is that the process by which the function played a causal role must be general in the sense of conforming to a predictable pattern. These findings motivate a proposal, Explanation for Export, which suggests that a psychological function of explanation is to highlight information likely to subserve future prediction and intervention. We relate our proposal to normative accounts of explanation from philosophy of science, as well as to claims from psychology and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Both philosophers and psychologists have argued for the existence of distinct kinds of explanations, including teleological explanations that cite functions or goals, and mechanistic explanations that cite causal mechanisms. Theories of causation, in contrast, have generally been unitary, with dominant theories focusing either on counterfactual dependence or on physical connections. This paper argues that both approaches to causation are psychologically real, with different modes of explanation promoting judgments more or less consistent with each approach. Two sets of experiments isolate the (...) contributions of counterfactual dependence and physical connections in causal ascriptions involving events with people, artifacts, or biological traits, and manipulate whether the events are construed teleologically or mechanistically. The findings suggest that when events are construed teleologically, causal ascriptions are sensitive to counterfactual dependence and relatively insensitive to the presence of physical connections, but when events are construed mechanistically, causal ascriptions are sensitive to both counterfactual dependence and physical connections. The conclusion introduces an account of causation, an "exportable dependence theory," that provides a way to understand the contributions of physical connections and teleology in terms of the functions of causal ascriptions. (shrink)

Following the “Encountering Human Rights” conference in January 2007, Emily Grabham interviewed Tania Pouwhare, a women’s rights activist working at the Women’s Resource Centre in London. Their discussion engaged with the professionalisation of activism, funding constraints and New Labour policies and their impact on immigrant women. Against a background of financial insecurity and huge demand for their services, many women’s organisations in the United Kingdom struggle to use human rights law to advance women’s rights. Nevertheless, the rhetoric of human rights (...) remains powerful within women’s activism, and law remains relevant as a potential form of ‘direct action’ and “another way of making a really big fuss”. (shrink)

Recent theoretical and empirical work suggests that explanation and categorization are intimately related. This paper explores the hypothesis that explanations can help structure conceptual representations, and thereby influence the relative importance of features in categorization decisions. In particular, features may be differentially important depending on the role they play in explaining other features or aspects of category membership. Two experiments manipulate whether a feature is explained mechanistically, by appeal to proximate causes, or functionally, by appeal to a function or goal. (...) Explanation type has a significant impact on the relative importance of features in subsequent categorization judgments, with functional explanations reversing previously documented effects of [”]causal status’. The findings suggest that a feature’s explanatory importance can impact categorization, and that explanatory relationships, in addition to causal relationships, are critical to understanding conceptual representation. (shrink)

En este articulo se examina la tradicional caracterización de la filosofía de la ciencia como una disciplina normativa. Se discuten varias concepciones de esta disciplina, cada una de las cuales ofrece una respuesta diferente a la pregunta de si es posible, y cómo, una filosofía de la ciencia genuinamente normativa. De entre esas concepciones, se opta por una forma de naturalismo que se diferencia de otras en la exigeneia de que la normatividad de la filosofía de la ciencia inc!uya la (...) discusión de los objetivos y valores, epistémicos o no, de la ciencia. La necesidad de esta inc!usión se ilustra, finalmente, con el ejemplo de la aetividad conocida como “cicncia reguladora”.This article examines the traditional characterization of the philosophy of science as a normative discipline. Several understandings of this discipline are discussed; each of them offering a different answer to the question whether, and how, a genuinely normative philosophy of science might be possible. Among these views, I choose one variety of naturalism that differs from others in its commitment with the discussion of science’s aims and values, either epistemic or non-epistemic. Finally, the need for this inclusion is illustrated with the example of the so-called “regulatory science”. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo principal presentar y discutir el concepto de las hiperescrituras del yo como prácticas de producción de memorias. A partir de estas escrituras, practicadas y compartidas en la pandemia, se pretende pensar la ficción como táctica de (re)existencia. Finalmente se presenta una experiencia en la plataforma Moodle, diseñada con estudiantes durante el 2020, que tuvo la ficción como punto de partida de la propuesta didáctica.

The manner in which a person views the universe originates from her/his culture. If someone were asked of the predominant element found in every culture that has for centuries given people their perspective of the universe, certainly, the answer would be, Religion! The responsibility of generating and preserving the elements of one’s perspective of the universe has rested with religious institutions such as Methodist, Protestant, or Roman Catholic churches or spiritual leaders such as the Buddha. Whether the element is developed (...) through the teaching of the Holy Bible, Catechism, Vedas, or Koran, people in the universe, including the Garífuna-speaking people of Central America, have always felt the need to .. (shrink)

En este trabajo se propone una síntesis de la concepción agustiniana trinitaria de la mens con la teoría dual de las relaciones intencionales y de los géneros de potencias del alma que profesa la tradición aristotélica. En este sentido, se analiza el conocimiento existencial y esencial del alma en San Agustín, la "duplex cognitio" en Tomás de Aquino, así como alarmas de las aportaciones y claves interpretativas del agustinismo tomista de Jaime Bofill relativas a su concepto de "memoria de sí" (...) o "sentimiento fundamental". (shrink)

Scientific and ‘intuitive’ or ‘folk’ theories are typically characterized as serving three critical functions: prediction, explanation, and control. While prediction and control have clear instrumental value, the value of explanation is less transparent. This paper reviews an emerging body of research from the cognitive sciences suggesting that the process of seeking, generating, and evaluating explanations in fact contributes to future prediction and control, albeit indirectly by facilitating the discovery and confirmation of instrumentally valuable theories. Theoretical and empirical considerations also suggest (...) why explanations may nonetheless feel intrinsically valuable. The paper concludes by considering some implications of the psychology of explanation for a naturalized philosophy of explanation. (shrink)

The readiness of Buddhists to dialogue with and embrace modern science has caused some to worry that this encounter will deform Buddhist traditions for the sake of acceptance by the West. But their strong tradition of epistemological skepticism and intellectual pluralism makes it unlikely that Buddhists will embrace scientific positivism. Given the tensions between religion and science in contemporary western society, it is perhaps this feature of Buddhism that can make the most fruitful contribution in its dialogue with science.

In pedagogical contexts and in everyday life, we often come to believe something because it would best explain the data. What is it about the explanatory endeavor that makes it essential to everyday learning and to scientific progress? There are at least two plausible answers. On one view, there is something special about having true explanations. This view is highly intuitive: it’s clear why true explanations might improve one’s epistemic position. However, there is another possibility—it could be that the process (...) of seeking, generating, or evaluating explanations itself puts one in a better epistemic position, even when the outcome of the process is not a true explanation. In other words, it could be that accurate explanations are beneficial, or it could be that high-quality explaining is beneficial, where there is something about the activity of looking for an explanation that improves our epistemic standing. The main goal of this paper is to tease apart these two possibilities, both theoretically and empirically, which we align with “Inference to the Best Explanation” and “Explaining for the Best Inference”, respectively. We also provide some initial support for EBI and identify promising directions for future research. (shrink)

I provide a new way of thinking of questions using an expanded space of FDE worlds. This allows both for non-exclusive and non-exhaustive answers to questions concerning one’s gender identity. Further, and most crucially for the purposes of this paper, it allows for a new, more general definition of question-inclusion that makes it possible to identify a new form of hermeneutical injustice. This form of injustice, I argue, affects trans people by keeping them in a prolonged state of gender questioning (...) and confusion in which they only grasp the part of the question Am I a member of gender G? that corresponds to the question Do I want to be a member of gender G?. (shrink)

Information and computer technology has come to play an increasingly important role in medicine, to the extent that e-health has been described as a disruptive innovation or revolution in healthcare. The attention is very much focused on the technology itself, and advances that have been made in genetics and biology. This leads to the question: What is changing in medicine today concerning e-health? To what degree could these changes be characterized as a ‘revolution’? We will apply the work of Thomas (...) Kuhn, Larry Laudan, Michel Foucault and other philosophers—which offers an alternative understanding of progress and revolution in medicine to the classic discovery-oriented approach—to our analysis. Nowadays, the long-standing curative or reactive paradigm in medicine is facing a crisis due to an aging population, a significant increase in chronic diseases and the development of more expensive diagnostic tools and therapies. This promotes the evolution towards a new paradigm with an emphasis on preventive medicine. E-health constitutes an essential part of this new paradigm that seeks to solve the challenges presented by an aging population, skyrocketing costs and so forth. Our approach changes the focus from the technology itself toward the underlying paradigm shift in medicine. We will discuss the relevance of this approach by applying it to the surge in digital self-tracking through health apps and wearables: the recognition of the underlying paradigm shift leads to a more comprehensive understanding of self-tracking than a solely discovery-oriented or technology-focused view can provide. (shrink)

Unscharfe Grenzen und fließende Übergänge kommen in allen Registern der Erfahrung vor. Von einer positiven Unbestimmtheit kann indes nur dort die Rede sein, wo diese gleichsam zur Sache selbst gehört und nicht nur unserem begrenzten Erkenntnisstand oder mangelnden Realisierungsmöglichkeiten zuzu-rechnen ist. Die gewachsene technologische Verfügungsmacht des Menschen, die sich mittlerweile auf die menschliche Lebenssubstanz selbst erstreckt, hat zu tiefgreifenden Veränderungen des Naturbegriffs geführt, in deren Verlauf die Grenzen zwischen Naturprodukten und Artefakten ständig verschoben werden. Damit tauchen neue Formen von Unbestimmtheit (...) auf, deren begriffliche Bewältigung uns vor besondere Probleme stellt. Wann genau beginnt das zu schützende menschliche Leben? Sind Hirntote wirklich tot? Kann ich eine Gehirntransplantation überleben, meine Existenz sogar in einem Klon fortsetzen? (shrink)

Le terme ktitor accompagne souvent la représentation d'un acte de don dans la peinture murale byzantines et post-byzantines. Même si le terme "ktitor" a été traduit le plus souvent par "fondateur", sémantiquement et historiquement, on retrouve dans le mot le sens de possession. Les ktitores - des propriétaires modaux, offrent leurs dons, dont le destinataire final est Dieu. Les panneaux votifs de Théodore Métochite , du sebastokrator Kalojan , de Stefan Uroš III , de Mircea l'Ancien témoignent des droits, des (...) intentions et de la foi du ktitor. Avec le christianisme, le sens du don s'est inversé et out don humain n'est qu'un contre-don à Dieu pour son sacrifice premier. (shrink)

Este artículo propone una mirada más incluyente en relación al concepto de Racismo Ambiental, combatido tanto por marxistas ortodoxos -que ven en él la negación de la lucha de clases- como por gran parte de los movimientos negros -que identifican en él una tentativa de minimizar el combate al racismo en sí. Partiendo de ejemplos ligados a la realidad brasileña, muestra que racismo y prejuicio transcienden el color de nuestras pieles y están incuestionablemente ligados a un modelo de desarrollo que (...) presupone la desigualdad y la negación de la ciudadanía como esenciales para su perpetuación. Sin dejar de lado nuestras luchas específicas y las conquistas inherentes a ellas, el concepto de Racismo Ambiental nos desafía a ampliar nuestras visiones de mundo y a luchar por un nuevo paradigma civilizatorio, por una sociedad igualitaria y justa, en la cual democracia plena y ciudadanía activa no sean derechos de pocos privilegiados, independientemente del color, origen o etnia. (shrink)

The main object of this project is how it can become possible to sense an invisible element such as the air. An installation will be created that will aim to provide a sensorial way of dealing with the air and the wind – that is air in motion – with the help of a computer-assisted environment. The objective is to engage the spectator in the navigation of semantic and sensual space that has its own quasi-mythical structure. The attention is focused (...) on the cognition dimension of the human body and senses and the enlargement of perception through the application of new technologies. The wind is a highly abstract phenomenon, with many physical and metaphysical aspects and is one of the basic elements of the physical universe. At the same time, the wind has an enormous impact on our lives, which we perceive, visually and acoustically only through its effects. That is why it has provided material for mythology and art throughout the centuries. In this project, the intention is to create a place where the visitor will be immersed into the landscapes of the winds of the world in order to increase his awareness and knowledge about them by merging technology, myth and body. The research is going to deal with both physical and metaphysical/mythological dimensions of the phenomenon. This starts with an investigation of references to winds and wind phenomena in mythologies world-wide, and extends over the scientific or causal explanations of the wind, as well as the investigation of its auditory and visual manifestations. Data from the Internet will be converted to audio and visual forms in a physical space, in real time. The online data that will be fed into the system are the intensity and direction of the winds at specific default locations on the planet. The visitor’s movements and his/her path in this given area will affect these audio-visual forms. The deliverables of the project (still in its definition phase) are:A study including the research methodology and the outcomes from the researchAn audio-visual interactive installation based on web data. (shrink)

An increasing shortage of transplant donor organs currently results in an escalating number of preventable human deaths. Xenotransplantation. the use of animal organs for transplantation into humans, is now heralded as medicine's most viable answer to the urgent and insurmountable human organ scarcity. Although claimed to be a biomedical prerogative, xenotransplantation is a cultural phenomenon - a procedure engaging both the physical and symbolic manipulation of human and nonhuman bodies, thereby transforming corporeality, identity, and culture. Biomedical and scientific discourses about (...) xenografts have obscured issues related to nonhuman animals and also could be distressful to human organ recipients, revealing that the xenograft may not be widely embraced. (shrink)

Use of electronic health records within clinical encounters is increasingly pervasive. The digital record allows for data storage and sharing to facilitate patient care, billing, research, patient communication and quality-of-care improvement—all at once. However, this multifunctionality is also one of the main reasons care providers struggle with the EHR. These problems have often been described but are rarely approached from a philosophical point of view. We argue that a postphenomenological case study of the EHR could lead to more in-depth insights. (...) We will focus on two concepts—transparency and multistability—and translate them to the specific situation of the EHR. Transparency is closely related to an embodiment relation in which the user becomes less aware of the technology: it fades into the background, becoming a means of experience. A second key concept is that of multistability, referring to how a technology can serve multiple purposes or can have different meanings in different contexts. The EHR in this sense is multistable by design. Future EHR design could incorporate multistable information differently, allowing the provider to focus on patient care when interacting with the EHR. Moreover we argue that the use of the EHR in the daily workflow should become more transparent, while awareness of the computer in the specific context of the patient-provider relationship should increase. (shrink)

This essay positions the figure and thought of T.W. Adorno in relation to Mulk Raj Anand, and the latter’s foundational contributions to the modern Indian novel in English. In Adorno’s musical writings, “late style” features as a methodological premise, or an expository mode that removes the work from conventional norms of evaluation. Late style is directed especially toward canonized works that seem to lack current artistic or social relevance, despite their culturally privileged standing. The essay approaches Adorno and Anand, accordingly: (...) Their affiliations with European modernism and postcolonial realism, respectively, are read in late style, or, as largely obsoleted formations of the previous century. Focussing on Anand’s historical fiction, Across the Black Waters, my essay recuperates the novel’s vision of a single if internally differentiated twentieth-century: By imagining the Great War as world-historical crisis, Anand’s novel stage... (shrink)

We have to gain from recognizing a relation between epistemic agents and the parts of subject matters that play a role in their cognitive lives. I call this relation “grasping”. Namely, I zone in on one notion of having a partial grasp of a subject matter—that of agents grasping part of the subject matter that they are attending to—and characterize it. I propose that giving up the idealization that we fully grasp the subject matters we attend to allows one to (...) more realistically characterize the epistemic life of agents. To show this, I propose an epistemic logic with partial grasp that has in mind considerations from first-order aboutness theory with the aim of avoiding certain forms of logical omniscience, and which provides an alternative to immanent closure (Yablo Aboutness, Princeton University Press, 2014). (shrink)

Traditional approaches to moral psychology assumed that moral judgments resulted from the application of explicit commitments, such as those embodied in consequentialist or deontological philosophies. In contrast, recent work suggests that moral judgments often result from unconscious or emotional processes, with explicit commitments generated post hoc. This paper explores the intermediate position that moral commitments mediate moral judgments, but not through their explicit and consistent application in the course of judgment. An experiment with 336 participants finds that individuals vary in (...) the extent to which their moral commitments are consequentialist or deontological, and that this variation is systematically but imperfectly related to the moral judgments elicited by trolley car problems. Consequentialist participants find action in trolley car scenarios more permissible than do deontologists, and only consequentialists moderate their judgments when scenarios that typically elicit different intuitions are presented side by side. The findings emphasize the need for a theory of moral reasoning that can accommodate both the associations and dissociations between moral commitments and moral judgments. (shrink)

The understanding of a wide array of practices related to fraud, bribery, corruption, and more widely, illicit practices have been capturing the attention of practitioners and management researchers worldwide. A substantial portion of the extant research has used university students to measure their actual or intended cheating behaviours and often studies have tested for variations across countries and cultures. We highlight some major concerns in this stream of inquiry and discuss both the definition and some inconclusive results in prior studies, (...) namely those deriving from differences in cheating behaviour across different cultural contexts. We suggest the need to examine intentionality, and further advance that intentionality may assume a reactive or a proactive essence. Depending on the social and formal contexts of different countries, both reactive and proactive intentions lead to distinct moral concerns, which we name in this work omorality (meaning ‘our morality’) or immorality (in the traditional sense). (shrink)

Many of the actual bioethical discussions start from the assumption that we have absolute dominance/disposition over our body. Based on the thesis of autonomy, control over one's own life and the freedom to do anything, at least with one's body, the goodness or legitimacy of acts such as suicide and euthanasia are often justified. Considering the last statements, this paper seeks to approach the question of the nature of the disposition –main attribute of dominion or property– over the body. It (...) will be argued on the basis of Thomas Aquinas' theory and Immanuel Kant's exposition, often wrongly considered, in my opinion, as rival doctrines. The whole writing will be oriented to review the relations of the modern principle of autonomy with the problem of the morality of suicide. (shrink)

n order to disclose possible affinities between the oeuvres of Emmanuel Levinas and René Girard that run deeper than both the apparently opposite quarters in which they deploy their thought—difference and sameness—and their patently shared view—an ethical concern for victims— their analogue account of the mythical dynamics of undifferentiation should be explored. Due to their very similar endeavor—to pinpoint the circumstances in which mythical violence arises—Levinas’s notion of the il y a as a neutral and saturated field of forces and (...) Girard’s description of the final paroxysm of the mimetic crisis can be equated with very instructive results. Furthermore, because both instances are linked to the primeval situation in which the subject as such emerges, these authors’ descriptions reinforce each other and provide us with a critical account of a realm that should be transcended—the domain of the violent sacred in which force becomes the ultimate criteria—lest we run the risk of a total social involution. (shrink)

Machery emphasizes the centrality of explanation for theory-based approaches to concepts. I endorse Machery's emphasis on explanation and consider recent advances in psychology that point to the of explanation, with consequences for Machery's heterogeneity hypothesis about concepts.