This paper examines a novel notion of causality, namely, fuzzy-set-theoretic causality. Over the last decade, a number of conceptual models of causality, in the language of fuzzy-set theory, have appeared in the scientific literature and have been applied to empirical research. They have circulated widely from one scientific discipline to another, weaving a unifying thread through them. However, they have received no philosophical attention. In this paper, I will discuss the value and limitations of this type of model and will (...) read into its application several dimensions of philosophical significance. (shrink)

This book offers a philosophical account of memory. Memory is remarkably interesting from a philosophical point of view. Our memories interact with mental states of other types in a characteristic way. They also have some associated feelings that other mental states lack. Our memories are special in terms of their representational capacity too, since we can have memories of objective events, and we can have memories of our own past experiences. Finally, our memories are epistemically special, in that beliefs formed (...) on the basis of our memories are protected from certain errors of misidentification and justified in a way which does not rely on any cognitive capacity other than memory. The aim of the book is to explain these features of memory. It proposes that memories have a particular functional role which involves past perceptual experiences and beliefs about the past and suggests that memories have a particular content as well; they represent themselves as having a certain causal origin. The book then accounts for the feelings associated with our memories as the experience of some of the things that our memories represent; things such as our own past experiences, or the fact the memories originate in those experiences. It also accounts for the special justification for belief afforded by our memories in terms of the content that memories have. The resulting picture is a unified account of several philosophically interesting aspects of memory. (shrink)

Four distinguished authors have been brought together to produce this elegant study of a much-neglected figure. The book is divided into three sections: Neurath's biographical background and the economic and social context of his ideas; his theory of science; and the development of his role in debates on Marxist concepts of history and his own conception of science. Coinciding with the emerging serious interest in logical positivism, this timely publication will redress a current imbalance in the history and philosophy of (...) science. (shrink)

Resumen Se discute el principio de simpatía que Smith desarrolla en la primera edición de La teoría de los sentimientos morales, enfatizando en qué sentido lo considera insuficiente para lograr cohesión en la sociedad comercial. Se argumenta que Smith concibe a La riqueza de las naciones como parte de su misión por desarrollar una teoría de la jurisprudencia, y que en dicha obra enfatiza los peligros que se engendran en la sociedad comercial y las consecuentes dificultades para que esta logre (...) ser una sociedad civilizada. Se arguye que tales peligros y dificultades conducen a Smith a trabajar en el campo de la ética de la virtud, incorporando la Parte VI de la última edición de la TSM.The sympathy principle that Smith develops in the first edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments is discussed, emphasizing in the sense he considers it insufficient to achieve cohesion in commercial society. It is argued that Smith conceives of The Wealth of Nations as part of his mission to develop the theory of jurisprudence, and that in this work he emphasizes the dangers that are engendered in commercial society and the consequent difficulties for it to become a civilized society. It is argued that such dangers and difficulties lead Smith to work in the field of virtue ethics, incorporating Part VI of the latest edition of the TSM. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a novel interpretation of Wittgenstein's claim that ‘ethics is transcendental’. Initially, I set out to offer said interpretation by resorting to both Wittgenstein's understanding of ethics and his understanding of the transcendentality of logic—which entails taking Wittgenstein as endorsing a Kantian understanding of the notion ‘transcendental’. This leads to the claim that ethics is transcendental insofar as it is the condition of a certain ethical experience. Nevertheless, this interpretation involves some inadequacies due to certain incompatibilities (...) between the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the aforementioned Kantian understanding of the notion ‘transcendental’. I identify the peculiarities of Wittgenstein's understanding of the notion ‘transcendental’, and on this basis, I set forth a novel interpretation of 6.421. Specifically, I argue that ethics is transcendental insofar as it is internal to or constitutive of a certain mystical view: viewing the world sub specie aeterni as something valuable. (shrink)

The conceptualization of the notion of subjectivity within the Anthropocene finds in Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanism one of its most explicit and profuse modulations. This essay argues that Braidotti’s model powerfully accounts for the Anthropocene’s subjectivity by conceiving the “self” as a transversal multiplicity and its relationality to the “others” and the “world” as non-hierarchized by nature–culture distinctions; however, by being ontologically grounded on a neo-Spinozistic monism, Braidotti’s model blurs the notions of finitude, agency, and change, obscuring the possibility of critical (...) dissent while decreasing the overall theory’s consistency. An alternative ontological model capitalizing on these elements can be found in Object-Oriented Ontology and its notion of withdrawal. By associating OOO’s non-onto-taxonomical pluralism with Braidotti’s posthuman subjectivity, this essay aims at ontologically discretizing the latter in order to overcome these limitations. Grounded on this association and invoking a narrative imaginary propelled by the Greek terms xenos and xenia, the article paves the way for a form of subjectivity deviating from Braidotti’s ecological model and defined as xenological, arguing that, within the context of the Anthropocene, it constitutes an adequate alternative to Braidotti’s subjectivity. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it analyses the similarities that stem from Wittgenstein’s (Philosophical Investigations (1953)) and Brandom’s (Making it Explicit (1994)) commitment to pragmatics in the philosophy of language to account for moral utterances. That is, the study of the meaning of moral utterances is carried out resorting to the study of the acts being performed in producing or exhibiting these utterances. Both authors offer, therefore, a pragmatic solution in order to account for the meaning of (...) our moral vocabulary and discursive practices. Secondly, it argues that both approaches lead to differing understandings of the role of “truth” and “falsity” in moral discourse. On the one hand, Wittgenstein’s remarks on ethics demonstrate a dismissive attitude towards the notions of truth and falsity in moral discourse. On the other hand, Brandom seems to be committed to a weak version of moral cognitivism: he takes assertions (which express beliefs, i.e. doxastic commitments) as the fundamental linguistic activity in the game of giving and asking for reasons and provides an anaphoric theory of truth to account for “truth” and “falsity” in our discourse. Additionally, it analyses how these differences bear on the Frege–Geach problem. (shrink)

Although most consumers are positive about socially responsible companies, in order to benefit from CSR efforts, effective and clear CSR communication is important. However, due to the constantly rising profusion of eco-labels, based on either own claims from the organization or claims made by an external third party, consumers may encounter difficulties in identifying truly responsible firms, which could result in less effective CSR initiatives, even for those responsible firms. Therefore, building on attribution theory, this study seeks to identify how (...) uncertified internal CSR claims and external third-party CSR labels should be used in order to deter greenwashing and increase positive consumer evaluations. Within a 3 × 2 design, respondents are exposed to different coffee product packages measuring their attitude toward the brand, corporate credibility, purchase intention, and scent perception, as well as perceived attributional CSR motives. Overall, findings indicate that especially an external CSR label affects consumer responses toward the firm. Moreover, perceived CSR motives serve as a mediator between an external CSR label and corporate credibility and brand attitude, respectively. These findings warrant further consideration of introducing an external multilevel rating systems by governmental law. (shrink)

The ontological abyss that separates real objects from sensual objects is one of the central principles of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), which has its most explicit and profuse modulation in Timothy Morton’s notion of rift. This article argues that, despite succeeding in explaining the radical difference that inhabits every object, Morton’s rift fails to explain the object’s unification, rendering the overall theory inconsistent. An alternative approach that accounts simultaneously for disjunction and conjunction between essences and appearances can be found in Eugenio (...) Trías’s philosophy of the limit, a term widely ignored in OOO despite its deeply non-relational conception of the reality of things. The article further argues that the reinterpretation of Trías’s twofold liminal approach in light of OOO successfully addresses the inconsistencies found in Morton’s rift, paving the way for a theory of limits within Harman’s ontological framework. (shrink)

Base-of-the-pyramid business models aim to achieve profitability and poverty reduction by including poor people into corporate value chains. This goal duality creates tensions. Actors’ responses to these tensions are influenced by their cognitive frames of the phenomena building the tension. Applying a cognitive perspective, I investigate how corporate actors with different frames of poverty respond proactively or defensively to the poverty–profitability tension by adapting business model elements. I find that proactive and defensive responses differ for actors holding different cognitive frames (...) of poverty. The responses have consequences for the poverty impact potential of BOP business models. (shrink)

If I remember something, I tend to believe that I have perceived it. Similarly, if I remember something, I tend to believe that it happened in the past. My aim here is to propose a notion of mnemonic contentaccounts for these facts. Certain proposals build perceptual experiences into the content of memories. I argue that they Have trouble with the second belief. Other proposals build references to temporal locations into mnemonic content. I argue that they have trouble with the second (...) one. I propose a notion of mnemonic Content that can account for the rationality of both beliefs. (shrink)

El presente artículo investiga de qué forma la centralidad del sufrimiento en la filosofía de Schopenhauer sirve para fundamentar su pesimismo. Tres son los argumentos analizados: el lugar del sufrimiento en el mundo, su lugar en la conciencia humana y su lugar frente a la felicidad. A la luz de estos tres argumentos, se destaca que el vínculo indisoluble entre el sufrimiento y la esencia del mundo, la determinación del sufrimiento en la conciencia, tanto en su génesis como en su (...) intensidad, y su anterioridad ontológica frente a la felicidad hacen del pesimismo una categoría necesaria. Finalmente, se señala una posible contribución del pesimismo schopenhaueriano a la crítica social contemporánea, considerando la idea de mundo que el capitalismo tardío promueve. (shrink)

Recent research on autonoetic consciousness indicates that the ability to remember the past and the ability to project oneself into the future are closely related. The purpose of the present study was to confirm this proposition by examining whether the relationship observed between personality and episodic memory could be extended to episodic future thinking and, more generally, to investigate the influence of personality traits on self-information processing in the past and in the future. Results show that Neuroticism and Harm Avoidance (...) predict more negative past memories and future projections. Other personality dimensions exhibit a more limited influence on mental time travel . Therefore, our study provide an additional evidence to the idea that MTT into the past and into the future rely on a common set of processes by which past experiences are used to envision the future. (shrink)

In jurisprudential literature, the adjective ‘defeasible’ appears as a predicate of many terms: concepts, laws, rules, reasoning, justification, proof, and so on. In this paper, we analyze the effects of some versions of the thesis of the defeasibility of legal norms on the reconstruction of the notion of legal validity. We analyze some possible justifications of this thesis considered as a claim concerning validity, and enquire into two possible sets of problems related to the defeasibility of the criteria of identification (...) of a legal system. We also provide a formalization of some options regarding defeasible criteria of identification, which can be used as a tool for meta-jurisprudential analysis. Finally, the thesis according to which defeasibility is better conceived of as a feature of legal application is examined and questioned. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary volume gathers selected, refereed contributions on various aspects of public health from several disciplines and research fields, including the philosophy of science, epidemiology, statistics and ethics. The contributions were originally presented at the 1st Barcelona conference of “Philosophy of Public Health”. This book is intended for researchers interested in public health and the contemporary debates surrounding it.

My purpose in this essay is to clarify and evaluate Arthur Schopenhauer's grounds for the view that happiness is impossible. I shall distinguish two of his arguments for that view and argue that both of them are unsound. Both arguments involve premises grounded on a problematic view, namely, that desires have no objects. What makes this view problematic is that, in each of the two arguments, it conflicts with Schopenhauer's grounds for other premises in the argument. I shall then propose (...) a way of fixing both arguments. The solution involves substituting the view that desires have no objects with the view that we have a desire to have desires. The latter view, I shall argue, can do the grounding work that the former does in Schopenhauer's arguments but, unlike it, the view that we desire to desire is consistent with Schopenhauer's grounds for the rest of premises in those arguments. (shrink)

Ante los indicadores de insostenibilidad ambiental y social, se busca un enfoque educativo eficaz que contribuya a revertirla. A tal efecto, se propone una educación moral, que no se centre tanto en contenidos como en facilitar que cada estudiante aprenda a buscarlos, hacerlos propios y los traduzca en compromisos de conducta personal. La propuesta educativa se presenta ejemplificada en una asignatura concreta, que sirve de hilo expositivo y ejemplo de aplicación. Tras una breve introducción sobre los indicadores de insostenibilidad, se (...) presenta la planificación, metodología y objetivo de la asignatura. A continuación, se reflexiona sobre dos de los obstáculos a los que se enfrenta la educación moral en la actualidad: la fragmentación del saber y la dificultad para que los aprendizajes teóricos se traduzcan en conductas. Por último, se exploran dos oportunidades para la educación moral que pueden facilitar ese vínculo: la búsqueda de las causas profundas de problemas ambientales y sociales actuales, y el empleo de la belleza. (shrink)

The original version of the article missed to include an acknowledgments. The missing information is provided below.

The aims of this study were to analyze the peak physical demands in elite futsal by quantifying the most demanding scenarios of match play and to identify the differences between playing positions and the seasonal trend for five different rolling average time windows. The most demanding scenarios of external load from distance, speed, acceleration, and deceleration variables were obtained from 14 elite futsal players using a local positioning system during 15 official matches in the premier Spanish Futsal League. The results (...) showed an extremely large effect of the time window for all dependent variables in all positional groups. Another important finding of this study was that, in regard to the seasonal trend, only defenders reported clear moderate-large positive trends for high-speed running efforts, high-acceleration efforts, and high-deceleration efforts. Finally, moderate-large individual differences in player means for all dependent variables and clear differences between games for most dependent variables were found, suggesting how likely contextual factors may exert an influence on how “demanding” the most demanding scenarios are. The findings of this study provide coaches and strength and conditioning coaches further knowledge of the peak physical demands in elite futsal competition. This valuable information may lead to a more precise position-specific training prescription. (shrink)

This article analyses Roberto Schwarz’s contributions to understanding the significance of Brazilian culture in relation to the way in which it is embedded in the dynamics of global capitalism. At first, it analyses to what extent his approach to Latin American culture can be understood as a dialectical alternative to postcolonial and subaltern studies. Then, based on his analysis of the intertwining of artistic form and social reality, it focuses on how Schwarz reveals the significance of Machado de Assis’ late (...) narrative, which goes far beyond the strictly local. Finally, it offers some insights into his understanding of the evolution of the peripheral ‘maladjustment’ in the recent evolution of global capitalism on the basis of Paulo Lins’ novel Cidade de Deus. (shrink)

L’enjeu de cet article ne concerne pas les thèses sociniennes pour elles-mêmes, mais l’usage qui est fait de la référence au socinianisme dans les controverses théologiques en France au XVIIe siècle. Cet usage est essentiellement polémique, il sert avant tout à discréditer l’adversaire. L’erreur du socinianisme ne réside en fait plus dans ses thèses christologiques, mais dans son rationalisme indu appliqué à la lecture de la Bible. Cette question devient centrale en contribuant à réaménager les frontières confessionnelles. La lettre biblique, (...) plus que la nature du Christ, devient la question sensible des oppositions religieuses à la fin du Grand Siècle. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to defend the view that judgments based on episodic memory are immune to error through misidentification. I will put forward a proposal about the contents of episodic memories according to which a memory represents a perception of a past event. I will also offer a proposal about the contents of perceptual experiences according to which a perceptual experience represents some relations that its subject bears to events in the external world. The combination of the (...) two views will yield the outcome that the subject is always an intentional object of her own memories: In episodic memory, one remembers being the subject whose extrinsic properties were experienced in some past perception. For that reason, one cannot misidentify oneself in memory unless one is having an inaccurate memory. Thus, the source of immunity to error through misidentification in memory lies in the nature of mnemonic content. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to determine how we should construe the content of memories or, in other words, to determine what the intentional objects of memory are.1 The issue that will concern us is, then, analogous to the traditional philosophical question of whether perception directly puts us in cognitive contact with entities in the world or with entities in our own minds. As we shall see, there are some interesting aspects of the phenomenology and the epistemology of memory, (...) and I shall aim at a specification of the content of memories that is in accordance with those aspects of them. (shrink)

This chapter discusses interesting connections that hold between time and memory. It helps to pull temporal aspects of memory apart, and to tries to clarify them. Discussions in the chapter focus on memory for events, concentrating on a specific kind of memory for events, the “episodic” memory. The chapter first addresses a question on the metaphysics of memory. Then, it tries to specify which conditions an experience must fulfill in order to count as a memory experience. Next, the chapter tries (...) to determine whether memories represent any temporal properties of remembered events and, if so, which properties exactly. It purports to characterizes the content of memories, and determine whether time is somehow represented in mnemonic content. The chapter moves on to explain that, in memory, remembered events are not really experienced as being in the past. It concludes that the notions of time and memory are closely related. (shrink)

My purpose in this essay is to clarify the notion of explanation by computer simulation in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. My contention is that computer simulation may be understood as providing two different kinds of explanation, which makes the notion of explanation by computer simulation ambiguous. In order to show this, I shall draw a distinction between two possible ways of understanding the notion of simulation, depending on how one views the relation in which a computing system that performs (...) a cognitive task stands to the program that the system runs while performing that task. Next, I shall suggest that the kind of explanation that results from simulation is radically different in each case. In order to illustrate the difference, I will point out some prima facie methodological difficulties that need to be addressed in order to ensure that simulation plays a legitimate explanatory role in cognitive science, and I shall emphasize how those difficulties are very different depending on the notion of explanation involved. (shrink)

Our memories elicit, in us, both beliefs about what the external world was like in the past, and beliefs about what our own past experience of it was like in the past. What explains the power of memories to do that? I tackle this question by offering an account of the content of our memories. According to this account, our memories are ‘token-reflexives’, in that they represent their own causal origin. My main contention will be that our memories are able (...) to provide us with evidence for the two types of beliefs due to the self-referential nature of their content. First, I will put forward a series of thought-experiments intended to raise several intuitions about the veridicality of memories. Next, I will introduce the view that memories are token-reflexives, and I will motivate it by pointing out that the view accommodates the relevant intuitions. And, then, I will return to the two types of beliefs prompted by our memories, and argue that conceiving memories as token-reflexives allows us to explain why memory has the power to elicit the two types of beliefs in us. (shrink)

Episodic memory has a distinctive phenomenology. One way to capture what is distinctive about it is by using the notion of mental time travel: When we remember some fact episodically, we mentally travel to the moment at which we experienced it in the past. This way of distinguishing episodic memory from semantic memory calls for an explanation of what the experience of mental time travel is. In this paper, I suggest that a certain view about the content of memories can (...) shed some light on the experience of mental time travel. This is the view that, when a subject remembers some fact episodically, their memory represents itself as coming from a perception of that fact. I propose that the experience of mental time travel in memory is the experience of representing one of the elements in this complex content, namely, the past perceptual experience of the remembered fact. In defence of this proposal, I offer two considerations. Firstly, the proposal is consistent with the idea that memories enjoy a temporal phenomenology (specifically, a feeling of pastness). Secondly, the proposal is consistent with the possibility that some of our other cognitive capacities might yield an experience of mental time travel which can be oriented towards the future. I argue that the received conception of mental time travel is in tension with those two ideas. (shrink)

I offer an account of thought insertion based on a certain model of self-knowledge. I propose that subjects with thought insertion do not experience being committed to some of their own beliefs. A hypothesis about self-knowledge explains why. According to it, we form beliefs about our own beliefs on the basis of our evidence for them. First, I will argue that this hypothesis explains the fact that we feel committed to those beliefs which we are aware of. Then, I will (...) point to one feature of schizophrenia that suggests that subjects with thought insertion may not be able to know their own beliefs in that way. (shrink)

Algunas formulaciones de la filosofía política reciente han descuidado el carácter históricamente indexado de conceptos como libertad política, propiedad o soberanía, propiciando un uso anacrónico e impreciso de su significado. No obstante, su posición académica y social dominante informa el «sentido común» filosófico- político de nuestra época. Locke constituye un ejemplo de cómo la coyuntura interpretativa liberal, que se desplegó en el siglo XIX y se consolidó en el XX, ha oscurecido una parte de la complejidad y pluralidad de las (...) tradiciones intelectuales y normativas que heredó. La reconstrucción de la filosofía política lockeana a partir de su concepción fiduciaria de la libertad política contribuye a hacer de nuevo visible el significado de algunas concepciones fundamentales para la teorización normativa presente. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose an account of self-knowledge for desires. According to this account, we form beliefs about our own desires on the basis of our grounds for those desires. First, I distinguish several types of desires and their corresponding grounds. Next, I make the case that we usually believe that we have a certain desire on the basis of our grounds for it. Then, I argue that a belief formed thus is epistemically privileged. Finally, I compare this account (...) to two other similar accounts of self-knowledge. (shrink)

Previous discussions of Robb’s work on space and time have offered a philosophical focus on causal interpretations of relativity theory or a historical focus on his use of non-Euclidean geometry, or else ignored altogether in discussions of relativity at Cambridge. In this paper I focus on how Robb’s work made contact with those same foundational developments in mathematics and with their applications. This contact with applications of new mathematical logic at Göttingen and Cambridge explains the transition from his electron research (...) to his treatment of relativity in 1911 and finally to the axiomatic presentation in 1914 in terms of postulates. At the heart of Robb’s physical optics was the model of the light cone. The model underwent a transition from a working mechanical model in the Maxwellian Cambridge sense of a pedagogical and research tool to the semantic model, in the logical, model-theoretic sense. Robb tracked this transition from the 19th- to the 20th-century conception with the earliest use of the term ‘model’ in the new sense. I place his cone models in a genealogy of similar models and use their evolution to track how Robb’s physical researches were informed by his interest in geometry, logic and the foundations of mathematics. (shrink)

À partir de l'analyse de la diversité des réactions réformées à l'édit de Fontainebleau, cet article se propose de suivre l'avènement de deux des concepts fondateurs de la modernité politique, la distinction des sphères religieuse et politique d'une part, la souveraineté populaire d'autre part. Toutefois, l'analyse généalogique soulignera l'émergence distincte de ces deux notions, en fonction de logiques croisées et apparemment paradoxales dont il faudra chercher la cohérence dans les positions anthropologiques qui les sous-tendent. L'étude des débats théologiques modernes dessine (...) de la sorte l'une des voies par laquelle les concepts politiques modernes ont été formés. (shrink)