The word ‘naturalism’ has a bewildering array of uses in philosophy. Roughly speaking, it connotes pro-scientific attitudes and approaches. This article introduces the subject of naturalism by sketching a history of pro-scientific attitudes and approaches in philosophy, from their origins in the early modern period through to the present day. It then distinguishes a number of distinct families of naturalism: metaphysical, logico-linguistic, epistemological, and methodological. The resulting taxonomy encompasses a plurality of loosely related views rather than a number of variations (...) on a single clear and unified theme. (shrink)

Continued failure to limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are causing global climate change has brought increased attention to climate engineering technologies, which actively modify the global environment to counteract heating and climate disruptions caused by elevated greenhouse gases. Some proposed forms of CE, particularly spraying reflective particles in the upper atmosphere to reduce incoming sunlight, can cool the average temperature of the Earth rapidly and cheaply, thereby substantially reducing climate-related risks. Yet CE interventions provide only (...) imperfect corrections for the climatic and other environmental effects of elevated greenhouse gases, and carry their own environmental risks. Moreover, they may also increase other risks, by weakening political support for essential emissions reductions or providing new triggers for international conflict. These technologies thus require international governance, but also pose novel and severe challenges to current international laws and institutions. Effective governance of CE will require a capacity to make decisions regarding the conditions, if any, under which specific interventions are authorized, plus realtime operational oversight of any interventions that are conducted. Decision processes must be effectively linked with scientific research and assessment, and with institutions to manage and respond to threats of CE-related conflict. We advance preliminary suggestions to address two priority areas for early investigation: how international cooperation on early CE research can help develop shared norms that can grow robust enough to support future decision needs; and how early research and development on CE can be made to complement and encourage, rather than undermine, parallel efforts to reduce climate risks by cutting emissions. (shrink)

This article engages new histories of the black frontline communities of the Underground Railroad to rethink both fugitive democracy and the transformative possibilities of sanctuary as its constitutive twin. We analyze the ways that communities of free blacks and fugitives in the border zones between the Antebellum US North and South crafted themselves as magnetic spaces of creative refuge that suggest we reconceive sanctuary as the generative twin of fugitivity. This insight enables us to theorize new ethical and political dimensions (...) of Sheldon Wolin’s concept fugitive democracy by illuminating how fugitivity as flight away from danger can be interwoven with sanctuary as flight into and toward alternatives. Specifically, we theorize three dimensions of fugitive democracy/transformative sanctuary—sanctuary tending, dramatic sanctuary, and disruptive hospitality. While some theorists have considered key motifs in Wolin’s fugitive democracy to be opposed to vital themes disclosed in contemporary theories of black fugitivity, we argue that the power of black frontline communities stemmed precisely from their capacities to dynamically entangle political approaches (mis)taken to be at odds. For example, we suggest a theory and practice of tending involving both nurturing care and militantly defensive action, dramatic sanctuary performances that amplify public power by oscillating between tricky concealment and flagrant publicity, and disruptive hospitality that interweaves law-breaking harbor with strategies for juridical and institutional change. These insights open onto an alternative imaginary that can also provide a toolbox for building grassroots democratic power today, particularly in the face of emergent neofascism and escalating displacement worldwide. (shrink)

From one end of his philosophical work to the other, Gilles Deleuze consistently described his position as a transcendental empiricism. But just what is transcendental about Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism? And how does his position fit with the traditional empiricism articulated by Hume? In Difference and Givenness , Levi Bryant addresses these long-neglected questions so critical to an understanding of Deleuze’s thinking. Through a close examination of Deleuze’s independent work--focusing especially on Difference and Repetition-- as well as his engagement with (...) thinkers such as Kant, Mai;mon, Bergson, and Simondon, Bryant sets out to unearth Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism and to show how it differs from transcendental idealism, absolute idealism, and traditional empiricism. What emerges from these efforts is a metaphysics that strives to articulate the conditions for real existence, capable of accounting for the individual itself without falling into conceptual or essentialist abstraction. In Bryant’s analysis, Deleuze’s metaphysics articulates an account of being as process or creative individuation based on difference, as well as a challenging critique--and explanation--of essentialist substance ontologies. A clear and powerful discussion of how Deleuze’s project relates to two of the most influential strains in the history of philosophy, this book will prove essential to anyone seeking to understand Deleuze’s thought and its specific contribution to metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

Justice and Power in the Sociolegal Studies asks what interdisciplinary work in the law and society tradition tells us about the relationship of law and justice, as well as the way power operates in and through law. The fundamental concepts of justice and power provide points of departure for leading scholars to explore the various domains of socio-legal research. As they note the explicitness of the engagement with issues of power and the relative silence about -- or indirectness in taking (...) on -- questions of justice found in most law and society research, they ask how engagement with issues of power and silence about justice constituted law and society as a research field caught between a desire to have political impact and, at the same time, to maintain its scientific respectability. (shrink)

This paper aims to better motivate the naturalization of metaphysics by identifying and criticizing a class of theories I call ’free range metaphysics’. I argue that free range metaphysics is epistemically inadequate because the constraints on its content—consistency, simplicity, intuitive plausibility, and explanatory power—are insufficiently robust and justificatory. However, since free range metaphysics yields clarity-conducive techniques, incubates science, and produces conceptual and formal tools useful for scientifically engaged philosophy, I do not recommend its discontinuation. I do recommend, however, ending the (...) discipline’s bad faith. That is, I urge that free range metaphysics not be taken to have fully satisfactory epistemic credentials over and above its pragmatic ones. (shrink)

I introduce the symposium on Anjan Chakravartty’s Scientific Ontology by summarizing the book’s main claims. In my commentary, I first challenge Chakravartty’s claim that naturalized metaphysics cannot be indexed to science simpliciter. Second, I argue that there are objective truths regarding what conduces to particular epistemic aims, and that Chakravartty is therefore too permissive regarding epistemic stances and their resultant ontologies. Third, I argue that it is unclear what stops epistemic stances from having unlimited influence. Finally, I argue that Chakravartty’s (...) epistemic stance voluntarism is inadequately motivated and lacks empirical support for its psychological content. (shrink)

We explored the differential impact of auditory information and written contextual information on the recognition of verbal irony in spontaneous speech. Based on relevance theory, we predicted that speakers would provide acoustic disambiguation cues when speaking in situations that lack other sources of information, such as a visual channel. We further predicted that listeners would use this information, in addition to context, when interpreting the utterances. People were presented with spontaneously produced ironic and nonironic utterances from radio talk shows in (...) written or auditory form, with or without written contextual information. When the utterances were read without written contextual information, all utterances were rated as equally ironic. But when they were heard as opposed to read, or when they were presented in irony-biasing contexts, originally ironic utterances were rated as more sarcastic than originally nonironic utterances. This evidence suggests both acoustic and contextual information are used when inferring ironic intent in spontaneous speech, and validates previous manipulations of intonation in studies of irony understanding. (shrink)

Defends and transforms naturalism and materialism to show how culture itself is formed by nature. Bryant endorses a pan-ecological theory of being, arguing that societies are ecosystems that can only be understood by considering nonhuman material agencies such as rivers and mountain ranges alongside signifying agencies such as discourses, narratives and ideologies.

The history of yoga -- Yoga prior to Patañjali -- The Vdic period -- Yoga in the Upanisads -- Yoga in the Mahabharata -- Yoga and Sankhya -- Patañjali's yoga -- Patañjali and the six schools of Indian philosophy -- The Yoga sutras as a text -- The commentaries on the Yoga sutras -- The subject matter of the Yoga sutras -- The dualism of yoga -- The Sankhya metaphysics of the text -- The goals of yoga -- The eight (...) limbs of yoga -- The present translation and commentary -- Meditative absorption -- Practice -- Mystic powers -- Absolute independence. (shrink)

Este artigo pretende abordar os impactos que a vivência do racismo dentro do ambiente familiar tem na subjetividade dos indivíduos. Interpela, portanto, os modos como essa experiência interfere na formação da identidade do sujeito, na sua autoimagem e na construção da estima por si mesmo. Esses processos, múltiplos e complexos, serão observados a partir da análise do relato das histórias e experiências de vida de uma pessoa, Mariana. Embora trate de Mariana, através de sua voz, muitos outros falam. Muitas famílias (...) brasileiras estão aqui representadas, na vivência dolorida de muitas mulheres e homens que experimentaram o racismo desde a tenra infância. Contado e vivificado por ela, assim como interpretado à luz dos significantes e significados que ela atribui a essas vivências, seu relato permite pensar os efeitos psicossociais da experiência da violência racial e do racismo quando ele é vivido pelos sujeitos negros nos arranjos familiares em que o branco da família é explicitamente racista. (shrink)

Tragic moral conflicts are situations from within which whatever one does—including abstaining from action—will be seriously wrong; even the overall right decision involves violating a moral responsibility. This article offers an account of recovery predicaments, a particular kind of tragic conflict that characterizes the current extinction crisis. Recovery predicaments occur when the human-caused extinction of a species or population cannot be prevented without breaching moral responsibilities to animals by doing violence to or otherwise severely dominating them. Recognizing the harm of (...) acting from within recovery conflicts adds force to appeals for interrogating and dismantling the systems of thinking, valuing, and acting that bring species to the brink of extinction. (shrink)

Although involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) and déjà vu have important shared characteristics, in this commentary, we focus on potential differences that may question the argument that two phenomena lie on a continuum. We propose that differences in their frequency and autonoetic consciousness could be explained by different types of cues and memory representations involved in experiencing IAMs and déjà vu.

Este artigo prolonga a análise do argumento apresentado por Descartes em favor da primeira certeza no início da Segunda Meditação, iniciada em um artigo anterior (Ainda o Cogito). É examinada a passagem subsequente ao referido argumento com vistas a estabelecer que sua compreensão aponta para um debate velado entre Descartes e seus leitores versa- dos na doutrina escolástica, mais particularmente nas concepções da definição como estruturada pela composição do gênero e da diferença e de específica e de conceito universal abstrato. (...) Procuro mostrar que as razões que Des- cartes dispõe para recusar essas concepções podem ser extraídas de certa interpretação do argumento em favor da certeza da proposição eu existo e que essa recusa é imprescindível para a compreensão adequada do penso, logo existo e, portanto, de seu argumento em favor do dualismo. (shrink)

Jan Bryant looks at the strategies visual artists and filmmakers are using to criticise the social and economic conditions shaping our historical moment. She then assesses how the world is being positively re-imagined through their work today.

The focus of this volume is the crisis of the traditional view of the relationship between words and things and the emergence of linguistic arbitrarism in 17th ...

We claim that much of the confusion associated with the "tautology problem" about survival of the fittest is due to the mistake of attributing fitness to individuals instead of to types. We argue further that the problem itself cannot be solved merely by taking fitness as the aggregate cause of reproductive success. We suggest that a satisfying explanation must center not on logical analysis of the concept of general adaptedness but on the empirical analysis of single adapted traits and their (...) causal relationship to changes in allele frequencies. (shrink)

Since Kant, philosophy has been obsessed with epistemological questions pertaining to the relationship between mind and world and human access to objects. In The Democracy of Objects Bryant proposes that we break with this tradition and once again initiate the project of ontology as first philosophy. Drawing on the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman, as well as the thought Roy Bhaskar, Gilles Deleuze, Niklas Luhman, Aristotle, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour and the developmental systems theorists, Bryant develops a realist (...) ontology that he calls “onticology”. This ontology argues that being is composed entirely of objects, properties, and relations such that subjects themselves are a variant of objects. By way of systems theory and cybernetics, Bryant argues that objects are dynamic systems that relate to the world under conditions of operational closure. In this way, he integrates the most vital discoveries of the anti-realists within a realist ontology that does justice to both the material and cultural. Onticology proposes a flat ontology where objects of all sorts and at different scales equally exist without being reducible to other objects and where there are no transcendent entities such as eternal essences outside of dynamic interactions among objects. This work will be of great interest to Continental philosophers, ecologists, cultural theorists, media theorists, and those following recent developments in the thought of speculative realists. (shrink)

Verbal irony constitutes a rough class of indirect intentional communication involving a complex interaction of language-specific and communication-general phenomena. Conversationalists use verbal irony in conjunction with paralinguistic signals such as speech prosody. Researchers examining acoustic features of speech communication usually focus on how prosodic information relates to the surface structure of utterances, and often ignore prosodic phenomena associated with implied meaning. In the case of verbal irony, there exists some debate concerning how these prosodic features manifest themselves in conversation. A (...) form-function approach can provide a valuable tool for understanding speakers' varied vocal strategies in this domain. Here I describe several ways conversationalists employ prosodic contrasts, laughter, and other speech characteristics in their attempts to communicate effectively and efficiently. The presented examples, culled from spontaneous conversation recordings, reveal just a small sample of the enormous variation in delivery styles speakers adopt when communicating with ironic language. (shrink)

Two experiments investigated the reality attributed to hypnotic suggestion through subtle projection of a visual image during simultaneous suggestion for a visual hallucination that resembled the projected image. In Experiment 1, high and low hypnotizable participants were administered either a hypnotic induction or wake instructions, given a suggestion to hallucinate a shape, and then the projected image was subsequently introduced. Although highs in both conditions rated the projected image more vividly than lows, highs in the hypnosis condition made comparable reality (...) ratings when the projected image was absent and present. In Experiment 2, high hypnotizable participants were administered a suggestion to see a shape on a wall. For half the participants the suggested image was projected on the wall and then removed, and for half the projection was initially absent and then introduced. Participants who had the projection absent and then present reported comparable reality and vividness ratings when the projection was absent and present. These findings indicate that elevated hypnotizability and hypnosis are associated with attributions of external reality to suggested experiences. (shrink)

A naturalistic impulse has taken speculative analytic metaphysics in its critical sights. Importantly, the claim that it is desirable or requisite to give metaphysics scientific moorings rests on underlying epistemological assumptions or principles. If the naturalistic impulse toward metaphysics is to be well-founded and its prescriptions to have normative force, those assumptions or principles should be spelled out and justified. In short, advocates of naturalized or scientific metaphysics require epistemic infrastructure. This paper begins to supply it. The author first sketches (...) her conception of suitably naturalized or scientific metaphysics. She then lays out a number of candidate epistemic principles centring around the notion of theoretical constraint. The author offers several arguments for the principles, based on statistical likeliness, agreement, falsity avoidance, and methodological efficiency and inefficiency. Finally, she shows how scientific metaphysics satisfies the epistemic principles and is therefore preferable to its traditional rivals. (shrink)

Some philosophers challenge the advisability of naturalizing social metaphysics by appeal to social science. They argue that social science fails to meet criteria for realist commitment, such as unity and novel predictive power, and that social science would therefore be a poor basis for naturalization. These skeptical challenges are rooted in traditions in the philosophy of science that have held the social sciences in poor esteem. Through a case study that highlights the ways in which archaeology is methodologically converging on (...) hard science, I show that the philosophical bias against social science is outmoded. I suggest that at least some of the methodological advances of archaeology and other social sciences are epistemologically significant and are relevant to the question of realism. However, I conclude with the thought that realist commitment need not be a precondition for naturalization. The paper therefore accomplishes two main things: 1) it allays objections to using social science to naturalize social metaphysics, and 2) it motivates a higher estimation of the epistemological credentials of social science as compared with more skeptical traditions. (shrink)

So-called grand or paradigmatic theories—structural functionalism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, rational-choice theory—provide their proponents with a conceptual vocabulary and syntax that allows for the classification and configuring of wide ranges of phenomena. Advocates for any particular “analytical grammar” are accordingly prone to conflating the internal coherence of their paradigm—its integrated complex of definitions, axioms, and inferences—with a corresponding capacity for representational verisimilitude. The distinction between Theory-as-heuristic and Theory-as-imposition is of course difficult to negotiate in practice, given that empirical observation and measurement are (...) not entirely “theory neutral” or independent of prior analytical conceptualization. Nonetheless, the scientific cogency of any theory is ultimately evaluated by the substantive realism of its foundational assumptions and categorical designations; that is, the accuracy with which it identifies and tracks the determinant properties and processes of the phenomena to be explicated. The paradigm of sociocultural evolutionism—despite extensive revamping by contemporary proponents—does not carry warrant in this regard, as its recourse to an analytical grammar fashioned and derived from another discipline raises doubts about its empirical veridicality. This article revisits the contentious issue of remodeling social phenomena in accordance with biological categories and offers both a theoretical and a substantive critique of the “selectionist” paradigm. The transdisciplinary program of historical social science is affirmed by way of counterpoint. (shrink)

Approximately three decades ago the question was first answered whether parasitoids are able to assess the number or origin of eggs in a host for a solitary parasitoid, Leptopilina heterotoma, by fitting theoretically derived distributions to empirical ones. We extend the set of different theoretically postulated distributions of eggs among hosts by combining searching modes and abilities in assessing host quality. In the models, parasitoids search either randomly (Poisson) (1) or by vibrotaxis (Negative Binomial) (2). Parasitoids are: (a) assumed to (...) treat all hosts equally, (b) able to distinguish them in unparasitised and parasitised hosts only, (c) able to distinguish them by the number of eggs they contained, or (d) able to recognise their own eggs. Mathematically tractable combinations of searching mode (1 and 2) and abilities (a,b,c,d) result in seven different models (M1a, M1b, M1c, M1d, M2a, M2b and M2c). These models have been simulated for a varying number of searching parasitoids and various mean numbers of eggs per host. Each resulting distribution is fitted to all theoretical models. The model with the minimum Akaike's information criterion (AIC) is chosen as the best fitting for each simulated distribution. We thus investigate the power of the AIC and for each distribution with a specified mean number of eggs per host we derive a frequency distribution for classification.Firstly, we discuss the simulations of models including random search (M1a, M1b, M1c and M1d). For M1a, M1c and M1d the simulated distributions are correctly classified in at least 70% of all cases. However, in a few cases model M1b is only properly classified for intermediate mean values of eggs per host. The models including vibrotaxis as searching behaviour (M2a, M2b and M2c) cannot be distinguished from those with random search if the mean number of eggs per host is low. Among the models incorporating vibrotaxis the three abilities are detected analogously as in models with random search. (shrink)

Deleuze's Difference and Repetition is a notoriously difficult work of philosophy. Moreover, it is a work of philosophy that has led to quite divergent interpretations. How are we to account for this phenomenon of generating such distinct interpretations and appropriations? In this article, I apply Deleuze's theory of problems, questions and individuation to Deleuze's text as a way of understanding the stylistic strategy of his writing. Given Deleuze's critique of identity and representation, he would fall into a performative contradiction if (...) his writing were designed to transmit an identical thought from sender to receiver such that the receiver then could be said to represent Deleuze's thought. Rather, I argue, Deleuze aims to write ‘machinic’ or ‘productive’ works that lead to the production of something new through the reader's encounter with the work. Not only does Difference and Repetition theorise the process of creative individuation in the production of beings, I contend, but it also forces the reader to undergo a process of creative individuation, through which they produce a non-identical double of the work in the process of their reading that then takes on a life of its own. It is this phenomenon of the book as a machine for producing difference, I contend, that helps to account for the tremendous creative fecundity it has generated in being appropriated by a wide variety of disciplines and practices. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently highlighted substantial affinities between causation and grounding, which has inclined some to import the conceptual and formal resources of causal interventionism into the metaphysics of grounding. The prospect of grounding interventionism raises two important questions: exactly what are grounding interventions, and why should we think they enable knowledge of grounding? This paper will approach these questions by examining how causal interventionists have addressed (or might address) analogous questions and then comparing the available options for grounding interventionism. I (...) argue that grounding interventions must be understood in worldly terms, as adding something to or deleting something from the roster of entities, or making some fact obtain or fail to obtain. I consider three bases for counterfactual assessment: imagination, structural equation models, and background theory. I conclude that grounding interventionism requires firmer epistemological foundations, without which the interventionist's epistemology of grounding is incomplete and ineffectually rationalist. (shrink)

ResumoAs práticas culturais fundem, a todo o momento, diferentes relações entre sistemas culturais (EVEN-ZOHAR, 1990) que antes eram separados. Tais manifestações híbridas reconfiguram e desterritorializam processos simbólicos. Nesse sentido, o presente artigo realiza uma análise comparatista das relações intertextuais presentes na configuração artística do álbum Esú, do rapper brasileiro Baco Exu do Blues, em especial na faixa “Capitães de Areia” em relação ao romance quase homônimo de Jorge Amado, às referências à mitologia dos Erês, e à série fotográfica Laróyè, de (...) Mario Cravo Neto. Para analisar as implicações dessas inter-relações na configuração cultural e identitária da obra, buscamos aporte teórico-crítico no campo dos Estudos Culturais pela perspectiva de conceitos que tentam dar conta desses processos, acerca do Hibridismo, em Néstor García Canclini, e das reflexões sobre sincretismo religioso em Sérgio Ferretti.Palavras-chave: Capitães da Areia; Hibridismo; sincretismo religioso; práticas culturais. AbstractCultural practices merge, at all times, different relationships with cultural systems (EVENN-ZOHAR, 1991) that were previously separated. Such hybrid manifestations reconfigure and deterritorialize symbolic processes. In this sense, this article performs a comparative analysis of the intertextual relations present in the artistic configuration of the album Esú, by rapper Baco Exu do Blues, especially the track “Capitães de Areia” and references to the mythology of the Erês, to the novel by Jorge Amado and Laróyè photographic series by Mario Cravo Neto. To analyze the implications of these interrelations in the cultural and identity configuration of the work, we seek theoretical-critical support in the field of Cultural Studies from the perspective of concepts that try to account for these processes, about Hybridism in Néstor García Canclini and reflections on religious syncretism in Sérgio Ferreti.Keywords: Capitães da Areia; Hybridity; religious syncretism; cultural practices. (shrink)

The focus in this study is the relationships between one tertiary music academy and four amateur orchestras. In this study the kinds of cooperation that exist, how students benefit from participati...

Neural Stem Cells (NSC) are present in the developing and adult CNS. In both the embryonic and adult neurogenic regions, β1 integrins may act as sensors for the changing extracellular matrix. Here we highlight the integrative functions that β1 integrins may play in the “niche” by regulating NSC growth factor responsiveness in a timely and spatially controlled manner. β1 integrins may provide NSC with the capacity to react to a dynamic “niche”, and to respond adequately by either remaining as stem (...) cells or by differentiating and migrating away to shape the developing cortex. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. BioEssays 27:698–707, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Al centro dell'attenzione degli studiosi nell'ultimo ventennio per l'importanza della testimonianza storica, per il carattere peculiare delle strutture compositive, per varie sfaccettature dell'impostazione ideologica, l'opera di Michele Attaliata non disponeva di un'analisi complessiva né tantomeno di un'edizione critica condotta sulla base degli attuali criteri ecdotici e di una traduzione in una lingua moderna. Lacuna avvertita dai bizantinisti con maggiore evidenza, dal momento che per gli altri storici di primo piano dell'XI secolo, da Michele Psello a Giovanni Scilitza, ci si avvale (...) di strumenti critici agguerriti. Lacuna colmata dal poderoso lavoro di I. Pérez Martín che si presenta come un'edizione dell' Ἱστοϱία di Attaliata, corredata da traduzione in spagnolo, commento, bibliografia, indici, tavole e preceduta da un'ampia introduzione. (shrink)

Em seu exame da teoria da verdade cartesiana, Raul Landim (1993, 2009) enuncia as três questões que toda teoria da verdade deve responder: (a) o sentido de ‘verdade’; (b) a possibilidade de conhecimentos verdadeiros e (c) a possibilidade do reconhecimento de conhecimentos verdadeiros. Os argumentos a serem apresentados dizem respeito sobretudo à terceira questão, mas consideram a necessidade de ser assegurar uma resposta adequada à segunda questão. Para tanto, retomarei (I) brevemente alguns pontos de um artigo anterior sobre o tema (...) (2017) para, em seguida, dar prosseguimento ao estudo ali iniciado, que ainda deverá ser completado em um terceiro texto, sobre atenção, representação e intecionalidade. Com efeito, três contextos argumentativos são relevantes para o exame da noção de atenção: (i) o tratamento psicofísico da atenção; (ii) as condições para a busca da verdade, no qual a atenção designa, prima facie, uma modulação do pensar, que é relevante para o método; (iii) a explicação do caráter intencional do pensar humano, no qual a atenção é um aspecto do pensar concernente à seleção do conteúdo pensado no tempo presente (presença). Somente o segundo será considerado aqui. Após a retomada dos resultados anteriores, apresentarei indícios da relação entre a atenção e o conceito de intenção na história da filosofia que precede Descartes e, em seguida, farei uma breve análise das ocorrências do texto na obra cartesiana (II). Por fim, na seção (III), passarei à análise daquelas ocorrências ligadas ao método do filósofo, tanto no que se refere à sua intervenção na determinação do critério de reconhecimento da verdade (a regra geral da verdade, ou regra do claro e do distinto), quanto no esclarecimento da via analítica do método de demonstração geométrico. (shrink)