For over a decade now epistemologists have been thinking about the peer disagreement problem of whether a person is reasonable in not lowering her confidence in her belief P when she comes to accept that she has an epistemic peer on P who disbelieves P. However, epistemologists have overlooked a key realistic way how epistemic peers can, or even have to, differ epistemically—a way that reveals the inadequacy of both conformist and non-conformist views on peer disagreement by uncovering how the (...) causes of peer disagreement bear on the debate’s core philosophical issue. Part of our argument for this thesis will involve giving a thorough yet entirely informal presentation of mathematical theorems in economics by Robert Aumann :1236–1239,1976) and Polemarchakis and Geneakoplos which represent a formally precise description of how two rational agents must deal with disagreement under certain epistemically interesting circumstances. (shrink)

The paper discusses motivation as the inner lawfulness of consciousness and a central methodological principle of genetic phenomenology, highlighting the problem of its ambiguous status oscillating between a historical-empirical and a transcendental account of consciousness. The focus on motivation allows for the practical character of intentionality to emerge, thus presenting genetic phenomenology as a more comprehensive approach to subjective life which takes into account its constitutive indeterminacy.

This paper explores Husserl’s late manuscripts in order to sketch a phenomenological description of drives and the dimension of passive constitution that belongs to them. Although this topic touches upon psychological issues, it will be shown that a specifically phenomenological approach allows us to recognize the transcendental significance of instincts. By means of the phenomenological reduction, drives reveal a peculiar subject, the ‘original child’, which is described not as a figure of developmental psychology but as a transcendental subject pre-forming the (...) way the world appears to us. Drives work constantly and passively as obscure sources of sense, and the original child is always involved in the constitution of the world. Sharpening our understanding of the inner structure of subjectivity by digging into deeper constitutive levels has important consequences for our view of intersubjectivity: it is not only the individual subject’s consciousness but equally the relation between human subjects which is necessarily rooted in the dimension of drives. Accordingly, collective teleology cannot be considered a late product of human cooperation. Instead, it is an original and pre-predicative impulse. (shrink)

In chapter IX of the Principles, Anne Conway claims that her metaphysics is diametrically opposed to those of Descartes and Spinoza. Scholars have analyzed her rejection of Cartesianism, but not her critique of Spinoza. This paper proposes that two central points of Conway’s metaphysics can be understood as direct responses to Spinoza: (1) the relation between God, Christ, and the creatures in the tripartite division of being, and (2) the individuation of beings in the lowest species. I will argue that (...) Conway, in criticizing Spinoza’s identification between God and nature, defends a paradoxical monism, and that her concept of individuation is a reductio ad absurdum of Spinoza’s criterion of identity in the individuation of finite modes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 66.4 (2005) 527-539 [Access article in PDF] Salvatore Camporeale's Contribution to Theology and the History of the Church Mariangela Regoliosi University of Florence Salvatore Camporeale's research, as rich and varied as it was, revolved around several primary axes and was inspired by several fundamental concerns.1 One of the objectives that certainly oriented his cultural effort was a serious, critical, and passionate desire (...) to reform the church, to recuperate its radical and founding truths, to go beyond all superstructure and pseudo-truth. I believe that, for this very reason, Camporeale engaged with Valla (to whom he devoted most of his scholarly work): because the latter had, with extraordinary lucidity, raised issues and proposed solutions in perfect keeping with his own essential needs.Naturally, arriving at such a perception of the innovativevalue and ideological depth of Valla's thoughtinvolved far more than this. We are indebted to Camporeale for having developed the lesson of his mentor, Eugenio Garin: that is, the view that—against the interpretive limitations widely heldby other scholars and other schools—Lorenzo Valla was not onlythe excellentphilological emender of Livy's text, nor simply the "grammarian" restorer of the Latin language, but that such tangible gifts and capacities were sustained by more general philosophical motives and by an organic project of cultural refounding, that would challenge established categoriesin all fields, from language to history to theology.Camporeale was thus able to identify—beginning with his distinguished book published in 1972, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia—the foundations and ultimate scope of Valla's philosophy of language and, consequently, the unifying elements in his apparently heterogeneous works, which range from historiography to historical criticism, from ethics to linguistics, from [End Page 527] logic to rhetoric, from the philological study of classical works to that of the NewTestament. And he was able to see that, also for Valla, the critical revision of the ecclesiastical tradition, and of the "models" of theological discourse, had been a Leitmotiv or, better yet, an arrival point.It is within this specific, though not limited sphere of inquiry that I intend to situate my study, a personal, brief recollection of the friend we lost. Therefore, I will focus on two particular contributions, one from 1977, Lorenzo Valla tra Medioevo e Rinascimento. "Encomion s. Thomae". 1457, the other from 1988, Lorenzo Valla e il "De falso credita donatione". Retorica, libertà ed ecclesiologia nel '400. As their titles openly declare, they investigate two of Valla's works diverging not only in time but in content as well ("De falso credita donatione" dates from 1440, the "Encomion sancti Thomae" from 1457); the one is intended to denounce the so-called "Donation of Constantine" as a forgery, the other to commemorate Saint Thomas on the day of his liturgical anniversary. And yet, Camporeale correctly identifies a peculiar and intrinsic unity in these works, namely the effort to rediscover an authentic Christianity: an authentic "form" of the church on the one hand, and an authentic "form" of Christian theology on the other.I will start with, and devote special attention to, the Encomion sancti Thomae. Camporeale correctly recognized this short text as Valla's "spiritual testament," not only, or not so much because it is his last piece of writing (he died a few months after the Encomion), but because, in a few dense but clear pages, it sums up Valla's entire logico-linguistic program and, consequently, his stance on the expressive potentialities of human language, up to the highest levels of the expressible, those of metaphysics and of theology. The way Camporeale develops his considerations on the "panegyric" is admirable, as he supports it with the experienced philosophical and theological competence (in the history of theology, and especially Thomistic theology) that he, as a Dominican, mastered so well. (In passing, it is worth noting that such competence alone could allow for a thorough assessment of the historical significance of Valla's discourse, too frequently trivialized or misunderstood by readers lacking the necessary tools). The following... (shrink)

Este artigo buscou analisar alguns aspectos discursivos na obra Tenda dos Milagres, de autoria de Jorge Amado. Parte da percepção de que a discursividade religiosa que permeia a discursividade literária de Jorge Amado apresenta uma simbolização e ressignificação dos processos identitários, culturais e sócio-históricos próprios da matriz africana. Logo, adotando alguns dos procedimentos da análise do discurso sob uma perspectiva foucaultiana, o objetivo foi, por meio das práticas de subjetivação e objetivação, perceber as subjetividades que envolvem as vozes que emergem (...) no discurso religioso, o candomblé, na obra Tenda dos Milagres. As análises oportunizaram a constatação de que os silenciamentos e as subjetividades produzidas nos locais de moradia e no Candomblé constituem sentidos nos movimentos na e da história, na composição dos sujeitos do discurso e suas identidades, demarcando resistências e lutas que preservam a cultura, etnicidade, manifestações de fé e de pertencimentos dos sujeitos-personagens da obra desse escritor baiano. (shrink)

O presente artigo discute a educação de pessoas jovens e adultas privadas de liberdade como um direito humano. Analisa as principais normas nacional e internacionais que fundamentam esse direito e discute o modo precário como ele vem sendo implantado no Brasil, tomando por base empírica a pesquisa realizada pela organização nãogovernamental Ação Educativa e parceiros em quatro penitenciárias e quatro centros de detenção provisória do Estado de São Paulo. As informações levantadas entre os meses de outubro e novembro de 2012 (...) buscaram traçar um diagnóstico sobre as condições físicas para o funcionamento das atividades educativas, as expectativas da população carcerária acerca dos estudos, além de procurar compreender o envolvimento de funcionários com as práticas educativas. Os dados foram analisados tomando-se as dimensões propostas por Tomasevski, ex-relatora da ONU para o direito à educação, com base na noção de educação como um direito humano: disponibilidade, acessibilidade, adaptabilidade e aceitabilidade. O material empírico e as análises apontam para, por um lado, oreconhecimento legal do direito à educação da população encarcerada, seja ela formal ou não formal, e por outro, a precária condição de oferta desse direito. Baseado no conceito “prisão pós-disciplinar” de Chantraine, o texto conclui que o direito à educação tem sido utilizado muito mais como mecanismo de controle das populações encarceradas, estando distante do seu reconhecimento como um processo de promoção humana e reinserção na sociedade. Palavras-chave: Educação nas prisões. Educação de jovens e adultos. Educação como direito humano. Educação escolar. Educação não formal. (shrink)

This paper argues that James Mill is worthy of greater study than he now receives. It outlines the course of scholarship on James Mill, and considers various hypotheses to explain the decline of interest in his writings. Two examples, in education and penal theory, are presented of cases in which James Mill's views differed significantly from Bentham's, and anticipated those of John Stuart Mill.

Este artigo aponta as mudanças de paradigmas que revelam a crise da soberania, conceito central de toda a estrutura teórica e política da modernidade, que tem origem e se sustenta na ideia do poder como fenômeno que transcende a realidade objetiva dos homens. A crise da soberania coloca em evidência o poder como potência que se manifesta através das relações de forças no campo social. É essa mudança de perspectiva que atribui ao poder concretude histórica. E é nela que se (...) assenta o pensamento de alguns autores como Arendt, Foucault e Negri. (shrink)

Este artigo propõe uma leitura da relação entre a cidade, a morte e algumas das religiões que presidiram ou consolidaram a formação das cidades. Tendo por objetivo investigar paradigmas que nortearam a criação e habitabilidade de cidades em diferentes lugares e períodos históricos, pressupõe que uma reflexão sobre esses paradigmas, ainda que breve, fornecerá algum subsídio para uma leitura da cidade contemporânea e da crise que atravessa. Nesse intuito, propõe o cotejamento de textos históricos e míticos, atribuindo igual valor ao (...) que se tem registrado sobre a gênese das cidades, à luz dos estudos culturais. Destacam-se a presença da morte e a maneira como propiciou o desejo de união dos grupos. Nesse contexto, diferentes religiões incidiram como laço e lastro do espaço público, condição necessária para a manutenção da ética. Exerceram seu papel de religar vivos e mortos, a realidade natural e a sobrenatural, mesmo quando manipuladas em busca de poder. Isso se dá, de diferentes maneiras, até o século XIX, quando cedem lugar a outras instituições e novos pressupostos. No século XXI, assistimos a uma crise das cidades, o que, se bem valiado, pode propiciar a construção de outros paradigmas, em consonância com as aspirações contemporâneas. Palavras-chave: Cidade; Morte; Religião. ABSTRACT This article presents a reading of the relation between the city, death and some of the religions that presided over or consolidated the development of cities. Aiming at investigating the paradigms that oriented the creation and viability of cities in various places and historical periods, it assumes that a reflection on those paradigms, however brief, can provide subsidies for a reading of the contemporary city and the crisis it is facing. In that sense, it focuses on historical and mythical texts, attributing equal value to what is recorded concerning the genesis of cities, in the light of cultural studies. Emphasis is given to the presence of death and the way it propitiated an urge for union in groups. In that context, different religions were the bonds and the reservoir of public space, a necessary condition to preserve ethics. They played the role of re-connecting the living and the dead, natural and supernatural reality, even when they were manipulated in the search for power. This happened, in different ways, until the 19th century, when new institutions and presuppositions emerged. In the 21st century, we witness a crisis in the cities, which, if properly assessed, may lead to the construction of other paradigms, in harmony with contemporary expectations. Key words: City; Death; Religion. (shrink)

This essay analyses Leibniz’s criticism of Thomasius’s work Is Heresy a Punishable Crime (1697) which at first glance could be seen as an argument against the inclusion of Leibniz in the history of toleration - a much-discussed topic in the Leibniz literature. Through close examination of Thomasius’s reasons in support of the decriminalization of heresy and Leibniz’s replies to them, I aim to demonstrate that Leibniz’s criticism towards Thomasius was more concerned with the foundation of religious truth than the extent (...) of toleration, which, for Leibniz as well as for Thomasius, should characterise public and, especially, intellectual life. (shrink)

Carlo Levi was a painter, writer, and antifascist Italian from a Jewish family, and his political activism forced him into exile for most of the Second World War. While in exile, he wrote _Christ Stopped at Eboli_, a memoir, and _Fear of Freedom_, a philosophical meditation on humanity's flight from moral and spiritual autonomy and our resulting loss of self and creativity. Brooding on what surely appeared to be the decline, if not the fall of Europe, Levi locates the human (...) abdication of responsibility in organized religion and its ability to turn the sacred into the sacrificial. In doing so, he references the entire intellectual and cultural estate of Western civilization, from the Bible and Greek mythology to Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. This edition features newly published pieces of Levi's artwork and the first English translation of his essay "Fear of Painting," which was appended to a later publication of the work. It also includes an introduction that discusses Levi's life and enduring legacy. Written as war clouds were gathering over Europe, _Fear of Freedom_ not only addresses a specific moment in history and a universal, timeless condition, but it is also a powerful indictment of our contemporary moral and political failures. (shrink)

Far from considering the phenomenon of disagreement across the board, the peer debate in epistemology solely focuses on cases of disagreements that are at least assumed to be genuine. What counts as a genuine disagreement is most of the times kept on the level of a pre-theoretical intuition according to which the peers disagree insofar as they hold incompatible doxastic attitudes with respect to a proposition P (King, 2012). Yet, the pre-theoretical intuition yields the wrong verdict when the bone of (...) contention is a proposition whose truth is relativized. In order to avoid these counter-intuitive results, the peer debate needs to replace the pre-theoretical intuition of genuine disagreement with a full-fledged account of it. In this essay I firstly put forth a possible candidate for the role coming from an ongoing discussion in philosophy of language. Then, I assess how well such an account fares in both an outright and a credal model of belief. (shrink)

This paper aims to focus on certain aspects of two education methods: one initiated in the first half of the twentieth century by Maria Montessori, and the other in the second half of that century by Matthew Lipman. The aim – neither comparative nor analytical – is to shed light on the connections and, more specifically, the elements of the Montessori Method that reflect on Lipman’s proposal. The question this paper aims to answer is: can P4C find fertile ground in (...) schools applying the Montessori Method? The paper will focus, among other elements: on the importance to give space to thinking experience from childhood and on the recognition of the value of childhood. Both Lipman and Montessori have systematically observed children of different ages – the former in the first half, the latter in the second half of the twentieth century. Both characterized, gave value, and focused their scientific contributions on children’s ability to think and express their thoughts through languages. As educational researchers and professionals know, children have the ability to think, but such ability has not always been considered to exist. Even when it is evoked in words, educational choices and proposals seem – still today – to express mistrust towards children’s thought. The two mentioned authors have repeatedly highlighted the importance of an essential right: the right to think and to be given a space – even as children – to exercise thinking with others. In particular, both authors – though envisaging different educational paths – identified the same categories functional to exercising thinking. Their interconnection may guide the actions of teachers, educators, and learning process experts. In fact, P4C might play a role in educational contexts in which the class is already considered a community of inquiry, in which the teacher is assigned the same role as a facilitator. (shrink)

We show a somewhat surprising result concerning the relationship between the Principal Principle and its allegedly generalized form. Then, we formulate a few desiderata concerning chance-credence norms and argue that none of the norms widely discussed in the literature satisfies all of them. We suggest that the New Principle comes out as the best contender.

Estudo bibliográfico, teórico-exploratório sobre memória institucional e sua complexa relação com a memória histórica nacional. Teve por objetivo geral contribuir para a reflexão acerca do modo como a biblioteca do Tribunal de Justiça Militar do Rio Grande do Sul poderia analisar documentos sensíveis para organizar, preservar e disseminar as informações contidas nos processos judiciais históricos atinentes a fatos ocorridos de 1964 a 1985 de forma a torná-las disponíveis para pesquisas futuras. Apresenta breve reflexão sobre memória institucional e sua tensão frente (...) à memória/história. Mostra, como exemplos de processos judiciais sensíveis relevantes, os que foram instaurados durante o regime de exceção de 1964, e alcançaram os chamados grupos “Os Onze da Brigada”, utilizando a metáfora dos “homens infames” de Michel Foucault. Por fim, postula a pertinência de manutenção deste tipo de processo para evitar o apagamento das informações e proporcionar futuras pesquisas. Reconhece lacunas não respondidas acerca da organização propriamente dita deste acervo, motivadas pelo período de fechamento das instituições no contexto da COVID-19, pandemia mundial, e aponta para a conveniência de prosseguimento da pesquisa ou novas pesquisas no rico acervo. (shrink)

Cet article a pour objet de mettre en perspective, selon une approche épistémologique, les théories du _blending _(ou « intégration conceptuelle ») et de l’analogie. Il se situe dans le cadre de la sémantique cognitive (Fauconnier, 1985 ; Fauconnier et Turner, 1996, 1998 et 2002), de la linguistique analogique (Monneret 2004, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2023) et de la psychologie cognitive (Gentner 1983 ; Gentner _et al_., 2001 ; Hofstadter 2001 ; Hofstadter et Fluid Analogies Research Group 1995; Hofstadter (...) et Sander 2013). Plus spécifiquement, la question posée est celle de savoir si le processus analogique est sous-jacent à la formation et à la structuration de l’IC ou si ce dernier n’est qu’un cas particulier de processus analogique. L’article se développera en trois points i) une introduction aux espaces mentaux et à l’IC visant à examiner la place de l’analogie dans le modèle ; ii) une présentation du modèle analogique en linguistique ; iii) une comparaison entre les deux modèles. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine the relationality between life and water in the context of its intercorporeal manifestations. Drawing on key aspects of Merleau-Pontian phenomenology, my concern is to reflect on water’s enfleshment of life and its complex ecologies of intercorporeity. These Merleau-Pontian key aspects, I note, are in close dialogue with a number of Indigenous cosmo-epistemologies that envisage the world as constituted by profound ecologies of intercorporeal relationality. The loci of my analysis are the Sonoran Desert and the lands (...) of the Tohono O’odham people, all situated within the ongoing violent relations of power unleashed by the forces of settler colonialism, including the partitioning of Indigenous nations by the Mexico–US border, the ecological devastation left in the wake of the construction of the Trump border wall and the increasingly fraught situation of undocumented migrants attempting to cross the US border. The bodies of water that I discuss in this essay disclose the cycles of life and death that turn on the presence and absence of water. These cycles are increasingly ensnared in aquapolitical regimes of governmentality that, in settler colonial contexts, unleash lethal effects that kill both bodies of water and the entities that depend on them for life. (shrink)

Joseph A. Bracken, S.J,. is one of the more significant North American theologians of the past 40 years. With 12 monographs, two edited or co-edited volumes, over 150 articles, numerous professional and popular conference presentations and media appearances, he is one of the foremost interlocutors in contemporary theological discourse. Having developed and consistently defended a comprehensive and intellectually rigorous worldview that combines the modern and classical Christian worldviews, Bracken has accomplished an invaluable service to the academy, the church, and the (...) world. He has not favored a particular theological or philosophical system, past or present. Instead, he culls what he judges to be true and good in a myriad of seemingly prima facie noncompossible thinkers and systems with divergent programs. Synthesizing the Catholic intellectual tradition and process-relational metaphysics, Bracken also incorporates aspects of German and Anglo-American Idealism, Pragmatism, recent philosophy of science, and a litany of past and present theologians and philosophers. The present volume is a Festschrift to honor Bracken’s career and accomplishments. It differs from the standard Festschrift genre in that the contributors, while certainly explicating and reflecting upon various aspects of his comprehensive worldview, offer their original contributions n a variety of topics. They do in dialogue with Bracken’s positions, simply as starting points, not as end points. The common theme of the Festschrift, then, is serious reflection on and in some cases critique of Bracken’s comprehensive process-relational, Catholic, and Trinitarian worldview and its pertinence for work in contemporary theology from a given perspective. Yet there is a certain richness coming from the diverse perspectives of the contributors whose work intersects with Bracken’s, and not always in terms of process thought per se. The contributors come from diverse backgrounds, not only in process and Roman Catholic theology but also including even other academic disciplines. They represent a balance of senior and junior scholars, and of genders. (shrink)

Plato's dialogues stand at a transition from orality to literacy. They are living contradictions-partly oral and partly literary. This relationship between orality and writing is one of the most vexed issues in the history of Platonic interpretation and has particular relevance for the progressive erosion of literacy in favour of digitalisation today. This book argues that the relationship between the oral and the written in Plato's dialogues is not a straightforward opposition, but is instead grounded in ontological analysis and exemplified (...) by the ontology of the image, which appears throughout the Platonic canon. (shrink)

Introduction -- Ethics and aesthetics, theories of intersection -- Memory, redemption and salvation -- Disembodied tellers and delayed signification -- Orality and the ethics of telling -- Healing hands, harming hands -- "Body talk": beloved and fragmentation.

This study examined video game–playing aggression among graduate and undergraduate students at Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York. The following three research questions were posed: In the context of video game playing, what differences are there in levels of aggression in relation to sex? What differences are there in levels of aggression and type of video games played? Are aggression and length of video game playing related? A nonprobability sample of students (N = 175) was selected and electronically (...) surveyed. The Buss–Perry Aggression Questionnaire, a widely used self-reported measure, was used to assess aggression. No significant difference was found between men and women with regard to levels of aggression, and no statistically significant relationship was found between aggression and length of video game playing (r = −.05, p =.52). However, significant differences were found in levels of aggression between playing and nonplaying respondents of action role-playing (t = −1.48, df = 175, p =.01) and role-playing video games (t = −1.24, df = 175, p =.02). Players of role-playing games had lower levels of aggression than nonplayers. Since role-playing requires one to take the part of another person, empathy might play a role in reduced levels of aggression. Although exposure to violent video games has been related to decreased empathy, role-playing games show just the opposite. It is suggested that controversies regarding violent video games might best be explained by moral panic theory and that competitive games may attract more aggressive players. (shrink)

Web sites of the 50 state legislatures are evaluated on five criteria: content, usability, interactivity, transparency, and audience. An overall quality score for each site was computed. The evaluation revealed a wide range of quality in the sites, including that of features or aspects that could possibly foster citizen participation. The higher rated sites help define “best practices” in this regard and provide suggestions as to how other states' sites might make improvements and possibly increase participation.

The Internet, not unlike previous communication technologies, has been predicted to dramatically change the nature of democracy. The interactive nature of Web sites, in particular, is seen as the basis for a new cyberdemocracy. Although the definition of interactivity is less than precise, an evaluation of state legislature Web sites finds them lacking many features that could be considered interactive. Furthermore, the degree of a site’s interactivity was not strongly correlated to a site’s use. Web sites can also foster interaction, (...) both on- and off-site, through interactive and noninteractive features. When sites were examined for their potential to foster interaction, there was a strong relationship with site use. The current focus on interactivity may obscure the potential to promote interaction and lead to an overemphasis on interactive features that are sometimes nothing more than high-tech gimmicks. (shrink)

Although the works of the authors of the Golden Age of Latin Literature play an important formative role for Early Modern philosophers, their influence in Early Modern thought is, nowadays, rarely studied. Trying to bring this topic to light once again and following the seminal works of Kajanto (1979), Proietti (1985) and Akkerman (1985), I will target Spinoza’s Latin sources in order to analyze their place in his philosophy. On those grounds, I will offer an overview of the problems of (...) the reception of classical literature in Early Modernity and then dwell on the particular case of Ovid and Spinoza. The present paper will argue that although Spinoza’s references to Ovid fill a rhetorical purpose as suggested by the existing literature, these mentions have a prior philosophical motivation. That is, the references in the Ethics are not merely illustrative; instead, they indicate that Spinoza acknowledges Ovid’s beliefs about human experiences and deliberately elaborates on Ovid’s view to construct and defend his own theses. To this end, the paper will analyze some citations mapped by Proietti (1985) and add a new one in an attempt to enlarge the list of places and topics that merit further investigation. To conclude, I will point out how the references to Ovid are part of Spinoza’s own defense of the powers of imagination. (shrink)