Evolutionary debunking arguments start with a premise about the influence of evolutionary forces on our evaluative beliefs, and conclude that we are not justified in those beliefs. The value realist holds that there are attitude-independent evaluative truths. But the debunker argues that we have no reason to think that the evolutionary forces that shaped human evaluative attitudes would track those truths. Worse yet, we seem to have a good reason to think that they wouldn’t: evolution selects for characteristics that increase (...) genetic fitness—not ones that correlate with the evaluative truth. Plausibly, the attitudes and judgments that increase a creature’s fitness come apart from the true evaluative beliefs. My aim in this paper is to show that no plausible evolutionary debunking argument can both have force against the value realist and not collapse into a more general skeptical argument. I conclude that there is little hope for evolutionary debunking arguments. This is bad news for the debunker who hoped that the cold, hard scientific facts about our origins would debunk our evaluative beliefs. And it is good news for the realist. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments move from a premise about the influence of evolutionary forces on our moral beliefs to a skeptical conclusion about those beliefs. My primary aim is to clarify this empirically grounded epistemological challenge. I begin by distinguishing among importantly different sorts of epistemological attacks. I then demonstrate that instances of each appear in the literature under the ‘evolutionary debunking’ title. Distinguishing them clears up some confusions and helps us better understand the structure and potential of evolutionary debunking arguments.

We are fallible creatures, prone to making all sorts of mistakes. So, we should be open to evidence of error. But what constitutes such evidence? And what is it to rationally accommodate it? I approach these questions by considering an evolutionary debunking argument according to which (a) we have good, scientific, reason to think our moral beliefs are mistaken, and (b) rationally accommodating this requires revising our confidence in, or altogether abandoning the suspect beliefs. I present a dilemma for such (...) debunkers, which shows that either we have no reason to worry about our moral beliefs, or we do but we can self-correct. Either way, moral skepticism doesn’t follow. That the evolutionary debunking argument fails is important; also important, however, is what its failure reveals about rational belief revision. Specifically, it suggests that getting evidence of error is a non-trivial endeavor and that we cannot learn that we are likely to be mistaken about some matter from a neutral stance on that matter. (shrink)

We often hear such casual accusations: you just believe that because you are a liberal, a Christian, an American, a woman… When such charges are made they are meant to sting—not just emotionally, but epistemically. But should they? It can be disturbing to learn that one's beliefs reflect the influence of such irrelevant factors. The pervasiveness of such influence has led some to worry that we are not justified in many of our beliefs. That same pervasiveness has led others to (...) doubt whether there is any worry here at all. I argue that evidence of irrelevant belief influence is sometimes, but not always, undermining. My proposal picks out ordinary, non-skeptical cases in which we get evidence of error. It says that, in those cases, evidence of irrelevant influence is epistemically significant. It shows how respecting evidence of error is compatible with the epistemic lives we see ourselves living. We are fallible creatures, yes, but we are also capable and intelligent ones. We can recognize and correct for our own error so as to improve our imperfect, yet nevertheless robust, epistemic lives. (shrink)

Should learning we disagree about p lead you to reduce confidence in p? Some who think so want to except beliefs in which you are rationally highly confident. I argue that this is wrong; we should reject accounts that rely on this intuitive thought. I then show that quite the opposite holds: factors that justify low confidence in p also make disagreement about p less significant. I examine two such factors: your antecedent expectations about your peers’ opinions and the difficulty (...) of evaluating your evidence. I close by proposing a different way of thinking about disagreement. (shrink)

The fact of moral disagreement when conjoined with Conciliationism, an independently attractive view about the epistemic significance disagreement, seems to entail moral skepticism. This worries those who like Conciliationism, the independently attractive view, but dislike moral skepticism. Others, equally inclined against moral skepticism, think this is a reductio of Conciliationism. I argue that they are both wrong. There is no reductio and nothing to worry about.

Zhuangzi purports to follow a particular method of viewing human emotion and suggests freeing oneself from worldly emotions—this is called “doctrine of non-emotion” (wuqing shuo 無情說). This article attempts to show that the idea of non-emotion in Zhuangzi does not in any way conflict with the expression of emotion in poetry, and moreover, it provides a foundation for the poet to express his emotions naturally and freely. We will use the Chinese poetry of the Wei-Jin Period—a period that is strongly (...) influenced by the philosophy of Zhuangzi, yet at the same time emphasizes the expression of the poet's emotion in poetry—as an example to show how fruitful it indeed is when Zhuangzi's philosophy becomes applied to Chinese poetry. (shrink)

It’s intuitive to think that (a) the more sure you are of something, the harder it’ll be to change your mind about it, and (b) you can’t be open-minded about something if you’re very sure about it. If these thoughts are right, then, with minimal assumptions, it follows that you can’t be in a good position to both escape echo chambers and be rationally resistant to fake news: the former requires open-mindedness, but the latter is inimical to it. I argue (...) that neither thought is true and that believing them will get us all mixed up. I show that you can be open-minded and have confidently held beliefs, and that beliefs in which you are less sure are not, thereby, more fragile. I close with some reflections on the nature of rational belief change and open-mindedness and a brief sketch about what might actually help us in the fight against misinformation and belief polarization …. [please read below the rest of the article]. (shrink)

In this article, I show why it is necessary to abolish the use of predictive algorithms in the US criminal justice system at sentencing. After presenting the functioning of these algorithms in their context of emergence, I offer three arguments to demonstrate why their abolition is imperative. First, I show that sentencing based on predictive algorithms induces a process of rewriting the temporality of the judged individual, flattening their life into a present inescapably doomed by its past. Second, I demonstrate (...) that recursive processes, comprising predictive algorithms and the decisions based on their predictions, systematically suppress outliers and progressively transform reality to match predictions. In my third and final argument, I show that decisions made on the basis of predictive algorithms actively perform a biopolitical understanding of justice as management and modulation of risks. In such a framework, justice becomes a means to maintain a perverse social homeostasis that systematically exposes disenfranchised Black and Brown populations to risk. (shrink)

This paper reframes the issue of appropriation, extraction, and dispossession through AI—an assemblage of machine learning models trained on big data—in terms of enclosure and foreclosure. While enclosures are the product of a well-studied set of operations pertaining to both the constitution of the sovereign State and the primitive accumulation of capital, here, I want to recover an older form of the enclosure operation to then contrast it with foreclosure to better understand the effects of current algorithmic rationality. I argue (...) that the act of enclosing is to be understood as a set of fundamental operations that consist in producing structural distinctions between inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion—whether by drawing lines on a map, constructing border walls, or by algorithmically categorizing and (mis)recognizing people and things. Tracking the transformation of an enclosure-logic into one of foreclosure, I show how current AI perpetuates and at the same time expends forms of extraction, exclusion, and dispossession toward a totalizing horizon. For, while the outside is essential and constitutive to the logic of enclosure, foreclosure, by contrast, is characterized by the “totalizing desire” to not leave anything out of it. The totalizing desire to move beyond the logic of the enclosure forecloses that the enclosure has just gotten bigger and that the operations of exclusion have been masked and displaced, making them harder to contest. (shrink)

This paper reframes the issue of appropriation, extraction, and dispossession through AI—an assemblage of machine learning models trained on big data—in terms of enclosure and foreclosure. While enclosures are the product of a well-studied set of operations pertaining to both the constitution of the sovereign State and the primitive accumulation of capital, here, I want to recover an older form of the enclosure operation to then contrast it with foreclosure to better understand the effects of current algorithmic rationality. I argue (...) that the act of enclosing is to be understood as a set of fundamental operations that consist in producing structural distinctions between inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion—whether by drawing lines on a map, constructing border walls, or by algorithmically categorizing and (mis)recognizing people and things. Tracking the transformation of an enclosure-logic into one of foreclosure, I show how current AI perpetuates and at the same time expends forms of extraction, exclusion, and dispossession toward a totalizing horizon. For, while the outside is essential and constitutive to the logic of enclosure, foreclosure, by contrast, is characterized by the “totalizing desire” to not leave anything out of it. The totalizing desire to move beyond the logic of the enclosure forecloses that the enclosure has just gotten bigger and that the operations of exclusion have been masked and displaced, making them harder to contest. (shrink)

Based on the analysis of Zhuangzi, this paper attempts to illustrate the positive aspects of Zhuangzi’s idea concerning contented acceptance of fate, whi...

Can citizens impact the broader discourse about an organization and its legitimacy? While social media have empowered citizens to publicly question firms through large volumes of online evaluations, the high heterogeneity of their evaluations dilutes their impact. Our empirical study applying a threshold vector autoregressive model (TVAR) analysis of 2.5 million tweets and 1,786 news media articles tests the condition by which the heterogeneity of online evaluations converges and influences the broader media discourse. Although social media evaluations do not initially (...) influence media legitimacy, they become influential after reaching a tipping point of refracted attention, which is created by high volume and convergence of individual evaluations around few aggregative frames. Thus, social media storms may influence the broader discourse about an organization when this discourse converges and reaches a tipping point, rather than merely through the massive participation of citizens. (shrink)

The article aims to define the role assumed by Paul Cézanne’s pictorial landscape within aesthetic reflections on landscape. Starting with the testimonies of Emile Bernard, Joachim Gasquet and Maurice Denis, the aim is to identify those concepts and components that aesthetically constitute and characterise the landscape of Mont Sainte-Victoire. In this sense we wish to proceed with an investigation aimed at the aesthetic-perceptual reading provided by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, focusing on the parameters of vision, colour and depth, and then turn our (...) attention to the motif analysed by Henri Maldiney, through the concepts of form and rhythm. (shrink)

Sociolinguistics is a young and vigorous branch of linguistics. Brought to life in the late 1960s through the pioneering work on urban dialects by William Labov and his students, it developed rapidly. From the end of the 1970s, it expanded to include a vast range of studies focusing on various relations between language and society. From sociolinguistics in the narrow sense—the study of correlations between linguistic and nonlinguistic variables—it came to be used as an umbrella term of loosely connected research (...) into the interdependence and mutual influence of language and social life. Nowadays, sociolinguistics is an interdisciplinary field, focusing on such issues as social dialects, multilingualism, language planning, and language reform and change. (shrink)

RESUMO Esta pesquisa aborda o ato interpretativo e tem como objetivo conhecer melhor a atuação do intérprete de língua brasileira de sinais (Libras), que atua na modalidade simultânea, no contexto de Conferências acadêmicas. A reflexão sobre esta prática baseia-se em autores que se fundamentam em conceitos bakhtinianos. Assim, foi desenvolvida pesquisa descritiva de abordagem qualitativa, usando a técnica da autoconfrontação simples na coleta de dados. O estudo mostrou que a conferência é um contexto complexo de atuação para esses profissionais, quanto: (...) (i) ao tempo necessário para tomada de decisões; (ii) à exposição resultante do destaque físico; (iii) à posição, ao lado ou um pouco à frente no palco, e (iv) ao preparo, que por vários motivos nem sempre é possível ser previamente executado. A compreensão mais aprofundada do contexto de interpretação em Conferência favorece a proposição de ações formativas adequadas às demandas e indica a necessidade de novos estudos nesse campo. (shrink)

In the late 1990s, computational technology had advanced sufficiently that astrophysicists were able to construct reasonably high resolution computer simulations of the Local Group of galaxies. These simulations indicated there should be around 250 small satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way and Andromeda. In the real Local Group, however, only around 40 satellites had been observed, and only twenty or so more have been discovered since then. Despite this discrepancy in numbers, claims have been made in recent years that the (...) ‘missing satellites problem’ has been solved. Using the examples of the constructed luminosity curve, and hydrodynamic simulations, this paper explores how simulations are used in conjunction with observation to ‘solve’ the missing satellites problem. It is suggested that the simulated universes have sufficient complexity to be understood as worlds in their own right, ones that can be measured and observed. By demonstrating that these virtual worlds are sufficiently ‘realistic’ with respect to observations, astrophysicists are able to make a robust argument for the existence of ‘dark’, non-observable astrophysical objects. Observational and simulated data are combined to demonstrate the plausibility—a term that develops more ontologically meaningful connotations—of both the existence and the maintenance of dark satellites. It is thus through the conflation of the real and virtual worlds, the blending of simulation data with empirical data, that the missing satellites problem is ‘solved’. (shrink)

Todas as teorias fundacionistas assumem que algumas crenças justificadas são básicas porque sua justificação não se deve ao fato de terem sido inferidas de outras crenças justificadas, interrompendo assim o regresso epistêmico. A versão internalista do fundacionismo sustenta que uma crença só pode ser justificada quando o fator justificador está cognitivamente disponível ao sujeito que crê com base nele. Tendo em vista esta dupla exigência – dar por encerrado o regresso epistêmico em crenças que são justificadas de modo não inferencial, (...) e assegurar a consciência do item que contribui para a justificação de tais crenças básicas epistemicamente independentes – alguns críticos levantaram objeções contra o fundacionismo internalista. Neste artigo me ocupo de uma dessas objeções, tendo em vista especificamente a teoria proposta por Laurence BonJour: o dilema apresentado por Michael Bergmann. (shrink)

RESUMO: A música ocupa um lugar de destaque como um dos principais meios de imitação. A utilização da música como ferramenta para suscitar e representar afetos, preconizada desde os antigos, chega integralmente ao século XVIII, podendo ser observada claramente nas obras dos compositores alemães ligados à doutrina composicional da Musica Poetica3 e, sobretudo, na obra de Johann Sebastian Bach. Porém, diversas são as espécies de imitação musical, de forma que o intuito deste trabalho foi categorizar e definir a função das (...) espécies imitativas, com base na concepção aristotélica de imitação e nas categorias de imitação propostas por Johann Mattheson, um dos principais teóricos da Musica Poetica, tentando demonstrar que, desde a concepção musical da antiguidade, música e poética são inseparáveis. ABSTRACT: Music occupies a prominent place as a means of imitation. The use of music as a tool to inspire and represent affections, which has occurred since ancient times, was integral to eighteenth century music. This can be clearly seen in the works of German composers linked to the compositional doctrine of musica poetica, and especially in the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. However, there are several kinds of musical imitation. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to categorize and define the function of imitation, based on the Aristotelian concept of imitation and on the categories of imitation proposed by Johann Mattheson, one of the main theoreticians of musica poetica. We try to show that ever since the musical conceptions of antiquity, music and poetics have been inseparable. (shrink)

Este artigo argumenta em favor do uso de textos extraídos de obras filosóficasoriginais com alunos de ensino médio. Apesar das críticas que esta propostatem recebido, e sem ignorar as dificuldades que dela advêm, procura-semostrar a necessidade de se ter como aspecto central das aulas a leitura einterpretação de fragmentos retirados de obras de filósofos. This article argues for the use of texts from philosophical works with highschool students. Despite criticism that the proposal has suffered, and withoutignoring the difficulties it implies, (...) it attempts to show the necessity of havingas a central aspect of classroom reading and interpretation of fragments takenfrom the works of philosophers. (shrink)

Le présent article se propose de revenir sur l’apport de la psychanalyse à l’élaboration de la théorie sociale critique développée par Adorno et Horkheimer. Pour en éclairer la spécificité, il se consacre à l’étude de la théorie des besoins que ces auteurs élaborent dans les années 1940, qui vise à élucider comment il est possible de satisfaire socialement les besoins de tous sans reconduire la domination de la nature. L’article démontre la contribution de la psychanalyse au développement de cette théorie, (...) qui se constitue dans un dialogue avec les notions freudiennes d’autoconservation et d’étayage. Il entend détailler comment la théorie des besoins permet de mettre en lumière la façon dont cette théorie sociale critique met à l’épreuve la théorie freudienne des pulsions : le concept de besoin s’établit dans la théorie sociale par l’intermédiaire d’une confrontation avec la naturalité propre à la pulsion, et permet à la théorie sociale d’élaborer un concept de nature dans lequel nature interne et nature externe sont articulées et différenciées. (shrink)

As crianças participam de corpo inteiro nos seus mundos de vida, visibilizando a natureza incorporada da ação humana. A partir de uma pesquisa etnográfica com crianças em nível de doutorado, sua empiria e bases teóricas, vimos que o corpo das crianças está na base de toda sua experiência social, mediador das relações, das práticas, dos discursos, das apropriações do Outro e do mundo. Tal ideia precisa ser considerada nas práticas pedagógicas, para que vençamos os fortes mecanismos de controle e dominação (...) que instituem e orientam um ordenamento social normativo do modelo ideal de corpo disciplinado e obediente, que marginaliza e exclui o corpo da criança ávido por descobrir e descobrir-se na sua relação novidável e embrionária com o mundo. As crianças como atores sociais de corpo inteiro têm na sua ação incorporada uma de suas formas de participar dos contextos coletivos de educação pela qual expressam seus pontos de vista. Palavras-chaves: Corpo. Criança. Educação Infantil. Direitos. Direitos de participação. (shrink)

Ce livre étudie comment la philosophe Hannah Arendt pense la cité, ou encore le politique, cette dimension essentielle de la vie des hommes. Cheminant dans la tradition, avec des penseurs politiques comme Machiavel, Montesquieu et Tocqueville, Arendt bouleverse les rapports entre philosophie et politique. La pensée politique telle qu'elle la définit, en opposition à la philosophie politique classique, doit recevoir ses normes de l'expérience : le discours est second et puise à l'événement. Née en 1906 en Allemagne où elle s'est (...) formée à la philosophie, juive, exilée en France puis aux États-Unis, Hannah Arendt a été projetée dans l'étude de la pensée politique par la force de l'histoire. Longtemps considérée comme une historienne, une journaliste ou une essayiste, Hannah Arendt est désormais reconnue comme penseur central du XXe siècle. Il s'agit de comprendre à la fois le travail théorique qu'elle a mené et sa revendication d'être, non pas une « philosophe », mais une théoricienne du politique. Sa volonté de pratiquer la philosophie en se situant hors champ n'est pas une simple critique de la tradition : elle inaugure une nouvelle manière de philosopher, où l'expérimentation conceptuelle ouvre de nouveaux champs pour la pensée. (shrink)

How can the visual and textual data about an image – the image of a work of art – on recto and verso of a picture be interpreted? An analogical-art-documentary photograph represents a palimpsest to be considered layer by layer. The examples discussed in this article, which refer to both Aby Warburg himself and the first nucleus of the Warburg Institute Photographic Collection, contribute to effectively outline elements of the debate around the question of the photographic reproduction of the work (...) of art as well as of the position of photography in relation to the perception of the work of art. (shrink)

In June 1927, the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg celebrated "forty years of bibliophily". On the occasion of the sixtieth birthday of his brother Max, Aby Warburg organized a guided tour of his library and a photographic exhibition presented with original documents: one example of the practical side of the "Bild und Wort" method. These two terms were used by Aby Warburg to describe a theme of his research, namely the complex relation between iconographic and textual tradition and the theory of the (...) function of the human visual memory. At the same time, "image and word" were research tools, experimented by Warburg in structuring his lectures as reading plus slideshow plus guided visit of the panels and in creating a photographic collection in his Library. It was from this lecturing and exhibiting practice, and from the desire to collect and disseminate his research in a suitable manner, that Warburg’s project for an atlas-book, entitled Mnemosyne, took its origin and form. "The" Mnemosyne was intended to be a work dedicated to the investigation of the dynamics of the Western tradition and its cultural memory, focusing on the examples provided by the "posthumous life" of antiquity during the Renaissance. (shrink)

En el marco de los estudios sobre las emociones, abordamos en este trabajo la compasión en la Antigüedad griega_._ Realizamos una revisión de aspectos centrales que caracterizan la compasión y establecemos algunas precisiones que orientan nuestro análisis; entre otros aspectos, revisamos los términos griegos para nombrar esta emoción, _éleos_ y _oíktos_, y los sentidos implicados en cada uno de ellos desde Homero. El análisis sobre la compasión toma como fuentes _Traquinias_ y_ Edipo Rey_ de Sófocles. En ambos casos, el punto (...) de partida es el acontecimiento patético o _páthos_, que en _Poet_. 1452b11-13 refiere no a una experiencia subjetiva de la emoción en un personaje trágico, sino a una especie de acción que formaría parte del léxico teatral y que implica escenas de dolor físico, de heridas o de muerte. El análisis atiende luego a otros pasajes que, en el curso de la pieza y mediante la imitación, incorporan esta emoción. (shrink)

This article explores Futurist technophilia and some more or less latent technophobia, in the period after 1918. Fuelled by the economic and industrial advancements of the so-called “Giolittian age,” as well as an extensive employment of war technology in the First World War, the Futurist technological imagination remains both robust and wide-ranging in the postwar period. Resonant of nineteenth-century French and Italian literary traditions, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's official position clusters round the powerful, if hackneyed, images of the steam train and (...) the motorcar. A number of fellow Futurists, however, explore technology in more original and, in some cases, more persuasive fashions. From the technology of flying employed first-hand by Fedele Azari to Enrico Prampolini's mechanical applications on the European stage, from Anton Giulio Bragaglia's experimental cinema to Ivo Pannaggi's and Vinicio Paladini's technological rebirth in marxian key, the Futurists' approach to technology is characterised throughout by a problematic counterpoint of modernity and tradition. If the Futurist officialdom ultimately relies on the latter, numerous alternative experiences testify to their vibrant strife towards the former. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to develop the concept of the dignified death of children in Brazilian pediatric intensive care units (PICUs). The Hybrid Model for Concept Development was used to develop a conceptual structure of dignified death in PICUs in an attempt to define the concept. The fieldwork study was carried out by means of in-depth interviews with nine nurses and seven physicians working in PICUs. Not unexpectedly, the concept of dignified death was found to be a complex (...) phenomenon involving aspects related to decisions made by the multidisciplinary team as well as those related to care of the child and the family. Knowledge of the concept’s dimensions can promote reflection on the part of healthcare professionals regarding the values and beliefs underlying their conduct in end-of-life situations. Our hope is that this study may contribute to theoretic and methodological development in the area of end-of-life care. (shrink)