El artículo trata de acometer una aproximación intelectual al concepto de teoría conspirativa, a fin de explorar tentativamente posibles cartografías para una adecuada comprensión de su significatividad y pregnancia contemporáneas. Para ello, se procederá a un somero repaso de las aportaciones recientes al estudio de las teorías conspirativas desde una pluralidad de disciplinas (estudios culturales, teoría política, psicoanálisis, psicología social o filosofía) y a una exploración de sus mecanismos de funcionamiento y sus posibles funciones dentro del campo de fuerzas configurado (...) alrededor de la relación existente entre neoliberalismo y populismo. Finalmente, se propone una concepción de la teoría conspirativa contemporánea como una forma de teodicea, en cuanto a que cumple funciones de explicación del mal y de desplazamiento de la responsabilidad. (shrink)

While the problem of the philosophical significance of Riemann's theorem on conditionally convergent series has been discussed in detail for some time, specific versions of it have appeared in the literature very recently, over which there have been widespread disagreements. I argue that such discrepancies can be clarified by introducing a rather conventional type of composition rule for the treatment of some infinite systems (as well as supertasks) while analysing and clarifying the role of the concept of continuity by stripping (...) it of the excesses that its application by the Leibnizian tradition has led to. The conclusion reached is that the indeterminacy associated with conditional convergence has a clear philosophical significance, but no fundamental ontological significance. (shrink)

I discuss three recent counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding due to Jonathan Schaffer. I argue that the counterexamples don’t work and draw some conclusions about the relationship between grounding and explanation.

The concept of dignity is proliferating in ethical, legal, and policy discussions of AI, yet dignity is an elusive term with multiple philosophical interpretations. The authors argue that the unspecific and uncritical employment of the notion of dignity can be counterproductive for AI ethics.

Panic buying of toilet rolls in Australia began in early March 2020. This was related to the realisation that the novel coronavirus was spreading across the country. To the general population the impact of the virus was unknown. Gradually the federal government started closing the country’s borders. The panic buying of toilet rolls was not unique to Australia. It happened across all societies that used toilet paper rather than water to clean after defecation and urination. However, research suggests that the (...) panic buying was most extreme in Australia. This article argues that the panic buying was closely linked to everyday notions of Western civilisation. Pedestal toilets and toilet paper are key aspects of civilisation and the fear of the loss of toilet paper is connected to anxiety about social breakdown, the loss of civilisation. This is the fear manifested in the perceived threat posed by the virus. (shrink)

A logic of grounding where what is grounded can be a collection of truths is a “many-many” logic of ground. The idea that grounding might be irreducibly many-many has recently been suggested by Dasgupta. In this paper I present a range of novel philosophical and logical reasons for being interested in many-many logics of ground. I then show how Fine’s State-Space semantics for the Pure Logic of Ground can be extended to the many-many case, giving rise to the Pure Logic (...) of Many-Many Ground. In the second, more technical, part of the paper, I do two things. First, I present an alternative formalization of plg; this allows us to simplify Fine’s completeness proof for plg. Second, I formalize plmmg using an infinitary sequent calculus and prove that this formalization is sound and complete. (shrink)

Although modern modal logic came about largely after Peirce's death, he anticipated some of its key aspects, including strict implication and possible worlds semantics. He developed the Gamma part of Existential Graphs with broken cuts signifying possible falsity, but later identified the need for a Delta part without ever spelling out exactly what he had in mind. An entry in his personal Logic Notebook is a plausible candidate, with heavy lines representing possible states of things where propositions denoted by attached (...) letters would be true, rather than individual subjects to which predicates denoted by attached names are attributed as in the Beta part. New transformation rules implement various commonly employed formal systems of modal logic, which are readily interpreted by defining a possible world as one in which all the relevant laws for the actual world are facts, each world being partially but accurately and adequately described by a closed and consistent model set of propositions. In accordance with pragmaticism, the relevant laws for the actual world are represented as strict implications with real possibilities as their antecedents and conditional necessities as their consequents, corresponding to material implications in every possible world. (shrink)

In bioethics, the first decade of the twenty-first century was characterized by the emergence of interest in the ethical, legal, and social aspects of neuroscience research. At the same time an ongoing extension of the topics and phenomena addressed by neuroscientists was observed alongside its rise as one of the leading disciplines in the biomedical science. One of these phenomena addressed by neuroscientists and moral psychologists was the neural processes involved in moral decision-making. Today both strands of research are often (...) addressed under the label of neuroethics. To understand this development we recalled literature from 1995 to 2012 stored in the Mainz Neuroethics Database (i) to investigate the quantitative development of scientific publications in neuroethics; (ii) to explore changes in the topics of neuroethics research within the defined time interval; (iii) to illustrate the interdependence of different research topics within the neuroethics literature; (iv) to show the development of the distribution of neuroethics research on peer-reviewed journals; and (v) to display the academic background and affiliations of neuroethics Researchers ... (shrink)

Could φ’s partially grounding ψ itself be a partial ground for ψ? I show that it follows from commonly accepted principles in the logic of ground that this sometimes happens. It also follows from commonly accepted principles that this never happens. I show that this inconsistency turns on different principles than the puzzles of ground already discussed in the literature, and I propose a way of resolving the inconsistency.

Using only uncontentious principles from the logic of ground I construct an infinitely descending chain of ground without a lower bound. I then compare the construction to the constructions due to Dixon and Rabin and Rabern.

This paper identifies an ethical dilemma generated by He Jiankui’s return to public and scientific life: what kind of spotlight does he deserve after his reappearance? In addition to an informative update on this case of worldwide significance, the paper offers ethical reflections that can be extrapolated to other scientific scandals about how to manage the public presence of past rogue scientists. The author defends that temporary marginalisation is the most ethical strategy today to deal with the controversial figure of (...) He Jiankui. (shrink)

The place of pedagogy -- Public education -- The interpretive tradition -- Becoming thoughtful: Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) -- Becoming attentive: John Berger (born1926) -- Becoming worldly: Edward W. Said (1935-2003) -- Becoming responsive: Martha C. Nussbaum (born1947) -- Open futures -- Educated publics -- Pedagogic spaces.

Although modern modal logic came about largely after Peirce’s death, he anticipated some of its key aspects, including strict implication and possible worlds semantics. He developed the Gamma part of Existential Graphs with broken cuts signifying possible falsity, but later identified the need for a Delta part without ever spelling out exactly what he had in mind. An entry in his personal Logic Notebook is a plausible candidate, with heavy lines representing possible states of things where propositions denoted by attached (...) letters would be true, rather than individual subjects to which predicates denoted by attached names are attributed as in the Beta part. New transformation rules implement various commonly employed formal systems of modal logic, which are readily interpreted by defining a possible world as one in which all the relevant laws for the actual world are facts, each world being partially but accurately and adequately described by a closed and consistent model set of propositions. In accordance with pragmaticism, the relevant laws for the actual world are represented as strict implications with real possibilities as their antecedents and conditional necessities as their consequents, corresponding to material implications in every possible world. (shrink)

Seemingly natural principles about the logic of ground generate cycles of ground; how can this be if ground is asymmetric? The goal of the theory of decycling is to find systematic and principled ways of getting rid of such cycles of ground. In this paper—drawing on graph-theoretic and topological ideas—I develop a general framework in which various theories of decycling can be compared. This allows us to improve on proposals made earlier by Fine and Litland. However, it turns out that (...) there is no unique method of decycling. An important upshot is that the notion of asymmetric ground may be indeterminate. (shrink)

Jon Erling Litland’s “Meta-Ground” is concerned with the question: If A grounds B, what grounds the fact that A grounds B? His chapter begins by discussing what turns on this question. The chapter then compares the two main existing solutions to the problem of meta-ground. It ends by discussing how the problem of meta-ground is connected to other issues in the theory of ground and what are the main issues for future research.

Tome I: Afrikaans to Dutch -- Tome II: English -- Tome III: Estonian to Hebrew -- Tome IV: Hungarian to Korean -- Tome V: Latvian to Ukrainian -- Tome VI: Figures A-H -- Tome VII: Figures I-Z.

This paper provides a game-theoretic analysis of contrastive focus, extending insights from recent work on the role of noisy communication in prosodic accent placement to account for focus within sentences, sub-sentential phrases and words. The shared insight behind these models is that languages with prosodic focus marking assign prosodic prominence only within elements which constitute material critical for successful interpretation. We first take care to distinguish the information-structural notion of focus from an ontologically distinct notion of givenness marking, and then (...) outline the core properties of focus. We then introduce a signaling game between a speaker and hearer in which the goal is to transmit semantic content with the smallest signal possible. We apply the Iterated Best Response method of Franke to find equilibrium strategies in this game, where a unique equilibrium strategy in this case picks out the “critical information” of an utterance, which by hypothesis constitutes its focus. We show that iterating this game at different syntactic levels of a sentence makes correct predictions about the role of contrast in determining stress within words and phrases, and can be extended to account for association and second occurrence focus effects. (shrink)

This essay examines Perth as portrayed through the lyrics of popular songs written by people who grew up in the city. These lyrics tend to reproduce the dominant myths about the city: that it is isolated, that it is self-satisfied, that little happens there. Perth became the focus of song lyrics during the late 1970s time of punk with titles such as ‘Arsehole of the Universe’ and ‘Perth Is a Culture Shock’. Even the Eurogliders’ 1984 hit, ‘Heaven Must Be There’, (...) is based on a rejection of life in Perth. However, Perth was also home to Dave Warner, whose songs in the 1970s and early 1980s offered vignettes, which is itself a title of one of Warner’s tracks, of the youthful, male suburban experience. The essay goes on to examine songs by the Triffids, Bob Evans, Sleepy Township and the Panda Band. (shrink)

Jon Roffe shows how Empiricism and Subjectivity is the precursor for some of Deleuze's most well-known philosophical innovations. For those already familiar with Deleuze, he emphasises its novelty within his corpus. And, for all readers, he shows how it outlines Deleuze's powerful and striking theory of subjectivity, and of philosophy itself. Empiricism and Subjectivity is Gilles Deleuze's first book, and yet it is infrequently read and poorly understood. In fact, it constitutes a unique project in its own right, deserving of (...) the same close study that is now widely given to other, more well-known works. (shrink)

The purpose of critical thinking, according to this text, is rethinking: that is, reviewing, evaluating, and revising thought. The approach of Critical Thinking for College Students is pragmatic and pluralistic: truth is viewed in terms of public confirmation and consensus, rather than with regard to naive realism, relativism, or popular opinion. The value of empathy and the legitimacy of diverse points of view are stressed. Nevertheless, it is necessary to use specific linguistic, logical, and evidential standards in order to evaluate (...) thought. (shrink)

The claim that corporations are not people is perhaps the most frequently voiced criticism of the United States Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. There is something obviously correct about this claim. While the nature and extent of obligations with respect to group agents like corporations and labor unions is far from clear, it is manifest in moral understanding and deeply embedded in legal practice that there is no general requirement to treat them like natural persons. Group (...) agents may be denied rights to marry, vote, or run for public office. More generally the need to guard against discrimination, the core injustice in racism and sexism, has no direct application to the case of group agents. There is also something obviously incorrect about the claim that corporations are not people. The legal practice of treating some group agents as persons under law is ancient, found already in Roman law at the time of Justinian. In this essay I propose that reflection on this tension reveals that fundamental revision to the doctrine of legal personhood is needed. More specifically I propose that legal personhood be decomposed into at least two elements—standing and liability—and that legal systems reject the principle that an entity possesses one just in case it possesses the other. The import of this change ramifies broadly. Decomposing legal personhood not only enables a satisfactory account of the status of corporations and labor unions, who as such have liability but not standing, it also enables a satisfactory account of the status of those who as such have standing but not liability: severely mentally disabled persons, very young children, and non-human animals with phenomenal consciousness but lacking capacities to understand reasons and justifications. (shrink)

With contributions by scholars from different religions and specializations, this volume explores the potential of nondualism as a fundamentally unifying concept. In every case, we find that nondualism is universal in its relevance yet distinctive and original in its contribution.

Hegel is known for coining the word “phenomenology” as a description of the methodological approach that he pursues in the famous work that bears this title. It has long been an open question the degree to which the later philosophical school of phenomenology in fact follows the actual method developed by Hegel or if it merely co-opted the name and applied the term in a new context. While Husserl was dismissive of Hegel, the French phenomenologists were generally receptive to Hegel’s (...) conception of phenomenology. This chapter argues that there are in fact some important points of continuity and that the French phenomenological school’s understanding of Hegel as a forerunner of their movement is quite legitimate. (shrink)

In “Proof-Theoretic Justification of Logic”, building on work by Dummett and Prawitz, I show how to construct use-based meaning-theories for the logical constants. The assertability-conditional meaning-theory takes the meaning of the logical constants to be given by their introduction rules; the consequence-conditional meaning-theory takes the meaning of the logical constants to be given by their elimination rules. I then consider the question: given a set of introduction rules \, what are the strongest elimination rules that are validated by an assertability (...) conditional meaning-theory based on \? I prove that the intuitionistic introduction rules are the strongest rules that are validated by the intuitionistic elimination rules. I then prove that intuitionistic logic is the strongest logic that can be given either an assertability-conditional or consequence-conditional meaning-theory. In “Grounding Grounding” I discuss the notion of grounding. My discussion revolves around the problem of iterated grounding-claims. Suppose that \ grounds \; what grounds that \ grounds that \? I argue that unless we can get a satisfactory answer to this question the notion of grounding will be useless. I discuss and reject some proposed accounts of iterated grounding claims. I then develop a new way of expressing grounding, propose an account of iterated grounding-claims and show how we can develop logics for grounding. In “Is the Vagueness Argument Valid?” I argue that the Vagueness Argument in favor of unrestricted composition isn’t valid. However, if the premisses of the argument are true and the conclusion false, mereological facts fail to supervene on non-mereological facts. I argue that this failure of supervenience is an artifact of the interplay between the necessity and determinacy operators and that it does not mean that mereological facts fail to depend on non-mereological facts. I sketch a deflationary view of ontology to establish this. (shrink)

En el cristianismo, un elemento se eleva por sobre los demás en su darse: la gracia, dación gratuita que Dios otorga a su criatura. Principalmente, la gracia se entiende y estudia como aquel don dado a la naturaleza de la criatura para su complementación o perfección. Sin embargo, el tema no encuentra su agotamiento ahí, pues la gracia también puede ser dispensada para la finalización de un designio intrahistórico, tal como narran los Evangelios.

ABSTRACTCritical Theory and contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives share many compatibilities in offering a constructive critique of society. Psychoanalysis teaches us that whatever values and ideals societies adopt, they are always mediated through unconscious psychic processes that condition the collective in both positive and negative ways, and in terms of relations of recognition and patterns of social justice. Contemporary critical theory may benefit from engaging post-classical and current trends in psychoanalytic thought that have direct bearing on the ways we conceive of and (...) observe how individuals operate within social collectives. In particular, Axel Honneth relies on psychoanalytic sources that are dated. Critical theory would profit from engaging post-object relations schools such as self psychology, analytical psychology, psychoanalytic intersubjectivity theory, relationality, and contemporary attachment theory that are more nuanced yet can supplement Winnicottian perspectives. Implications for contemporary theory need to reflect upon how the psychosocial matrix of self and society both facilitate and hinder optimal social arrangements and fabrics of justice as it takes up the question of normativity. It is within this context that I hope to introduce contemporary psychoanalytic paradigms that move beyond classical models yet complement redirecting shifts in emphasis both psychoanalysis and Critical Theory attempt to accomplish. I suggest that an applied psychoanalytic explication on social phenomenology can expand the interpretive depth and breadth of human relations and open up a permissible space for interdisciplinary discourse. Here new vistas emerge for a proposed synthesis between the two schools of thought. (shrink)

This paper examines a number of questions about the degree to which the clinical practice of medicine is affected, if at all, by the legal systems in four countries: Chile, Germany, Japan and the United States. The focus on these four countries in four different regions of the world offers a unique perspective within which to examine medical treatment decisions made by patients and their proxies or surrogates, the potential role for universal written instruments such as advance directives, the cross-professional (...) tensions between clinical and legal concerns in very distinct cultures, and the degree to which legal activities can change or affect clinical realities in the context of these different political and health care systems. We have incorporated, whenever relevant, the insights of many disciplines, including the social sciences, in analyzing the existing interrelations between law and behavior in this specific context. Der Beitrag untersucht, inwieweit die klinische Praxis in vier Ländern mit unterschiedlichen Rechtssystemen und Berufskulturen durch Rechtsnormen oder das Verständnis von Recht beeinflußt wird. Es wird gefragt, welche Funktion rechtliche Interventionen bei der Veränderung von Verhaltensnormen in unterschiedlichen Gesundheitssystemen haben können. Folgende Themenbereiche werden diskutiert: Entscheidungen über die medizinische Behandlung, die von Patienten und ihren Angehörigen oder Stellvertretern getroffen werden; die mögliche Rolle umfassender schriftlicher Verfügungen wie z.B. der Patiententestamente ; die berufsübergreifenden Spannungen zwischen medizinischen und rechtlichen Belangen in sehr unterschiedlichen Kulturen; der Einfluß, den gesetzgeberische Aktivitäten im Kontext der verschiedenen politischen und Gesundheitssysteme auf die medizinische Wirklichkeit haben. Bei ihrer Analyse der in diesem Zusammenhang bestehenden Beziehungen im Verhältnis von Recht und Verhalten haben die Autoren die Erkenntnisse vieler Disziplinen unter Einschluß der Sozialwissenschaften, soweit sie als relevant erscheinen, in ihren Beitrag eingearbeitet. (shrink)

© The Authors 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] key virtue of Vague Objects and Vague Identity is how it includes so many essays that consider the particular ways vagueness manifests in different kinds of entities, including meanings, part-whole relations, the very small as understood by quantum mechanics, people, sensations, sets, ordinals, cardinals and abstractions. In every case, the author has something interesting to say not just (...) about vagueness but about the metaphysical category in question.One theme that unifies the diverse discussions is Gareth Evans’s brief 1978 note, ‘Can There Be Vague Objects?’ Let ‘▽’ stands for ‘it is indeterminate whether’, ‘λ’ stands for what it does in the lambda calculus, and ‘⊥’ be the absurdity constant. Then, Evans’s initial argument is: ▽ assumptionλx[▽]b 1... (shrink)