Este artigo analisa e compara os modos como Joseph Chan e Jonathan Quong relacionam liberalismo e perfeccionismo, mostrando que nenhum deles consegue formular adequadamente uma das possibilidades dessa relação, o perfeccionismo político. Inicialmente, será mostrado que aquilo que Chan apresenta e defende é um perfeccionismo liberal abrangente e intuicionista, que ele classifica adequadamente como moderado, mas nomeia equivocadamente como político. Em seguida, a análise constata que Quong consegue apontar a possibilidade formal do perfeccionismo político, mas de modo inconsistente, na medida (...) em que recua repetidamente para uma posição em que ele se confunde com um perfeccionismo abrangente. Como conclusão, busca mostrar que o perfeccionismo político ainda precisa ser adequadamente formulado como uma possibilidade concreta e promissora para as democracias liberais. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article1 reports an ongoing experience involving the application of research to teaching that articulates various disciplines and curricular contexts within a Post-graduate Program in Literature and Literary Criticism. Through the use of active teaching-learning methodologies and digital information and communication technologies, we seek to put some core dilemmas of literary studies into dialogue with notions and practices of open science. Throughout this process, we laid the groundwork for a digital platform that would bring together the results of research (...) developed in the context of these various disciplines and make them readily available to their respective audiences and sociocultural territories. By raising awareness concerning the social impact of the program’s research, this report should prompt reflection on how to foster articulation between heterogeneous academic and social contexts, both within the classroom connected to other environments and in open scientific productions, accessible to different audiences. (shrink)

Le recueil Salut gnostique et métaphysique plotinienne contient cinq études portant sur les relations entre Plotin et différents courants gnostiques, plus particulièrement celui des séthiens platonisants. L’ouvrage est le résultat de rencontres et de discussions intervenues entre les auteurs, mais aussi de la volonté de poursuivre la réflexion entamée par Zeke Mazur sur ce sujet à la suite de son décès en 2016. Les articles de ce recueil cherchent à relier entre elles plusieurs idées de même nature que l’on découvre (...) entre plusieurs traités plotiniens et des textes appartenant au courant séthien platonisant, des thèmes communs, fruits sans doute d’échanges qui eurent lieu avant ou même pendant que Plotin enseignait à Rome. (shrink)

Novello, Henry We all know that these are difficult times for the Catholic Church in Australia as it grapples with the scandalous and painful issue of child sexual abuse by some clergy, religious, and lay church personnel. The Commonwealth Royal Commission investigating institutional responses to child sexual abuse, announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard on 12 November 2012, has made life for the faithful even more difficult, as the Catholic Church in Australia comes under intense and continual public scrutiny. (...) The church's Towards Healing protocol for responding to incidents of child sexual abuse acknowledges that not just the victims and their families but the 'whole Church community has been affected by incidents of abuse, for all Catholic people have been dismayed by the stories they have heard'. Thankfully, a spirit of sincere cooperation with the work of the Royal Commission is discernible on the part of the Catholic Church today, as both share in the objective of providing satisfaction to the victims and improving institutional responses as best they might. (shrink)

Novello, Henry The New Testament is undoubtedly a book of joy. The verb chairein, which means to rejoice, occurs seventy-two times in the New Testament and the noun chara, which means joy, occurs sixty times. The word chairein is found both at the beginning of the gospel story and at the end: at the annunciation the angel greets Mary by saying, 'Joy be with you', and on the resurrection morning the risen Jesus greets the women who had come to (...) mourn him by saying, 'Joy be with you'. The triumphant message of joy forms the framework of the gospel story and rings resoundingly throughout the pages of the New Testament. Paul makes it very clear in his letters to the Corinthians that he is committed to helping them in their progress and joy in the faith and almost the last thing that he writes to the Corinthians is: 'Joy be with you!'. When Paul writes to his Philippian friends, again joy is a constant theme: 'Rejoice in the Lord'. This command is repeated in Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians. In a key text in his letter to the Colossians, Paul prays that they may increase in their knowledge of God and live a virtuous life worthy of the Lord, and his prayer ends with the words 'with joy'. The hallmark of the Christian life for Paul is that every virtue and every tribulation and all knowledge should be irradiated with joy. (shrink)

The article turns to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of state capitalism and their theorization of money and debt in their critique of capitalism to develop an analysis of the governmental management of the current crisis determined by ordo- and neoliberalism. The paper argues that analyses which fail to properly recognize the power of capital to determine both state apparatuses and economic policy thereby fail to grasp the real functioning of money, debt and the Euro in the crisis and end up (...) unwittingly supporting liberalism. This is true of positions such as heterodox theory that, though critical of conventional and neoliberal political economy, nevertheless continue to uphold the state as an independent or mediating mechanism in relation to the power of capital. The neglect of the role which money plays in the strategies of capital to control both the creation of value and the functioning of the state is to be found even in Foucault’s genealogy of neoliberalism, a neglect which undermines his analysis of power. The paper highlights the implications of the standpoint of state capitalism for a more incisive analysis of the current crisis that reveals what is at stake for political struggles. (shrink)

La formación inicial docente resulta clave para una educación inclusiva. Sin embargo, esta formación suele orientarse por estándares de la política y estar desvinculada de las experiencias de sus actores. Mediante un estudio de caso de un programa de Pedagogía en Artes Visuales chileno, se interrogan las propuestas formativas a partir de experiencias biográficas de formadores y profesores en formación. Se describen aspectos no considerados sobre la concepción de diversidad e inclusión, la corporalidad, la identidad y la autonomía docente. Asimismo, (...) se delinean posibilidades de hacer sentido a las experiencias de los actores y orientar su enseñanza desde la inclusión. (shrink)

1Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, 9 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TB, UKScience Without Laws Ronald Giere Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press 1999 x + 285 Hardback£17.50.

Sustainability in systems refers to applying sustainable principles and practices to create more resilient, efficient, and equitable systems that promote the well-being of people and the planet. Sustainability is an essential topic in contemporary software engineering, and its relationship with the characteristics and properties of a system or product called quality attributes is still an open question since each researcher has established their definition of sustainability in software. This has created diverse terms and concepts for distinct application environments and scopes, (...) creating ambiguity and misconceptions. This work defines a domain ontology of Sustainability in Software named SinSO to address these issues. SinSO was implemented in OWL, using competency-based questions to validate. The findings show that this proposal satisfies several quality and content requirements. Also, using Protégé and the Hermit reasoner, we verified that SinSO is consistent since the ontology statements are coherent and do not lead to conflicting or contradictory conclusions. In addition, competency questions allowed us to demonstrate that SinSO does fulfill its purpose. FOCA methodology allowed us to evaluate SinSO quality. Also, SinSO was used in two case studies, one about software for senior-citizen smart-home, and the other, a simulator to develop and test smart-city applications, achieving positive outcomes. To verify its accuracy, completeness, and maintainability, further evaluations of SinSO are needed in real case studies. We conclude that SinSO can significantly contribute to reducing ambiguity and enhancing comprehension in this area. Furthermore, SinSO can be an effective tool for engineers to recognize the concepts and relationships in the sustainable domain to consider in the systems development life cycle to build sustainable systems. (shrink)

Rapid individual cognitive phenotyping holds the potential to revolutionize domains as wide‐ranging as personalized learning, employment practices, and precision psychiatry. Going beyond limitations imposed by traditional lab‐based experiments, new efforts have been underway toward greater ecological validity and participant diversity to capture the full range of individual differences in cognitive abilities and behaviors across the general population. Building on this, we developed Skill Lab, a novel game‐based tool that simultaneously assesses a broad suite of cognitive abilities while providing an engaging (...) narrative. Skill Lab consists of six mini‐games as well as 14 established cognitive ability tasks. Using a popular citizen science platform (N = 10,725), we conducted a comprehensive validation in the wild of a game‐based cognitive assessment suite. Based on the game and validation task data, we constructed reliable models to simultaneously predict eight cognitive abilities based on the users’ in‐game behavior. Follow‐up validation tests revealed that the models can discriminate nuances contained within each separate cognitive ability as well as capture a shared main factor of generalized cognitive ability. Our game‐based measures are five times faster to complete than the equivalent task‐based measures and replicate previous findings on the decline of certain cognitive abilities with age in our large cross‐sectional population sample (N = 6369). Taken together, our results demonstrate the feasibility of rapid in‐the‐wild systematic assessment of cognitive abilities as a promising first step toward population‐scale benchmarking and individualized mental health diagnostics. (shrink)

Depersonalization is characterised by a profound disruption of self-awareness mainly characterised by feelings of disembodiment and subjective emotional numbing.It has been proposed that depersonalization is caused by a fronto-limbic suppressive mechanism – presumably mediated via attention – which manifests subjectively as emotional numbing, and disables the process by which perception and cognition normally become emotionally coloured, giving rise to a subjective feeling of ‘unreality’.Our functional neuroimaging and psychophysiological studies support the above model and indicate that, compared with normal and clinical (...) controls, DPD patients show increased prefrontal activation as well as reduced activation in insula/limbic-related areas to aversive, arousing emotional stimuli.Although a putative inhibitory mechanism on emotional processing might account for the emotional numbing and characteristic perceptual detachment, it is likely, as suggested by some studies, that parietal mechanisms underpin feelings of disembodiment and lack of agency feelings. (shrink)

In analogy with Planck’s construction of fundamental quantities in gravitation, we construct fundamental quantities associated with (1) theories of electrodynamics in which the electromagnetic field has a maximum value (e.g. Born-Infeld theory), and (2) the Fermi interaction. This gives us a maximum intensity of the electromagnetic field, and also reveals a close relationship between the fundamental lengths associated with the gravitational and weak interactions, supporting the connection between these two interactions.

Novello, Henry The concept of culture has assumed much importance in the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council and it has also become a topic of crucial importance for the World Council of Churches. For the first time in church history, an ecumenical council debated at length on the issue of culture, and the result was that culture is now recognised as not only integral to the flourishing of the human person but also to the revelation of God (...) and Christian evangelisation. The Catholic notion of the 'inculturation' of the Gospel of Christ captures the crucial relationship that obtains between evangelisation and culture. Perhaps Pope John Paul II expressed the matter most succinctly when he asserted that: 'The synthesis between culture and faith is not just a demand of culture, but also of faith... A faith which does not become culture is a faith which has not been fully received, not thoroughly thought through, not faith fully lived out'. The idea of a private faith, so central to modernity, has no place in current Catholic thinking on faith and culture. (shrink)

Novello, Henry In the past it was customary to conceive of human nature according to a dualistic anthropology where 'body' and 'spirit' were treated as two separate substances, with spirit viewed as a divine immaterial substance inhabiting the physical body and giving the human person the functional capacity to relate to God. With the development of the various natural sciences, however, a variety of perspectives on human nature have emerged, most of which are monistic, not dualistic, in character. In (...) contemporary Christian thought, the label 'nonreductive physicalism' has been coined to describe a particular form of monism that represents a concerted effort to bring Christianity into constructive dialogue with scientists and philosophers. 'Physicalism' denotes a basic agreement with scientists and philosophers who maintain that there is no need to postulate a second metaphysical entity (that is, a spiritual soul) to account for the 'higher' human capacities, while 'non-reductive' indicates a rejection of the position that regards the human person as 'nothing but' a physical body. (shrink)

Novello, Henry The word 'eschatology' means doctrine about the eschata or 'last things.' In the neo-Scholastic manual style of theology that dominated Catholic theology before the twentieth century, eschatology was the doctrine of those things that awaited the individual person beyond death, as well as those things that awaited the whole of humanity at the end of time. The teaching on the last things appeared as an appendix at the end of dogmatic theology where it led a rather barren (...) existence as instruction on what comes 'after' the pilgrim life, with the result that it had little critical and transforming effect upon the state of the present world. Since the manual style of eschatology treated the last things as objects, Yves Congar described it as a 'physical' style of eschatology. Dermot Lane makes a further noteworthy observation when he criticizes the physical style of eschatology for appearing 'to claim too much' and seeming 'far too certain on matters of detail.' In no sense should eschatology be regarded as providing factual information about the details of our future existence. (shrink)

In “The Toolbox of Science” (1995) together with Towfic Shomar we advocated a form of instrumentalism about scientific theories. We separately developed this view further in a number of subsequent works. Steven French, James Ladyman, Otavio Bueno and Newton Da Costa (FLBD) have since written at least eight papers and a book criticising our work. Here we defend ourselves. First we explain what we mean in denying that models derive from theory – and why their failure to do so should (...) be lamented. Second we defend our use of the London model of superconductivity as an example. Third we point out both advantages and weaknesses of FLBD’s techniques in comparison to traditional Anglophone versions of the semantic conception. Fourth we show that FLBD’s version of the semantic conception has not been applied to our case study. We conclude by raising doubts about FLBD’s overall project. (shrink)

This Element has two main aims. The first one is an historically informed review of the philosophy of probability. It describes recent historiography, lays out the distinction between subjective and objective notions, and concludes by applying the historical lessons to the main interpretations of probability. The second aim focuses entirely on objective probability, and advances a number of novel theses regarding its role in scientific practice. A distinction is drawn between traditional attempts to interpret chance, and a novel methodological study (...) of its application. A radical form of pluralism is then introduced, advocating a tripartite distinction between propensities, probabilities and frequencies. Finally, a distinction is drawn between two different applications of chance in statistical modelling which, it is argued, vindicates the overall methodological approach. The ensuing conception of objective probability in practice is the 'complex nexus of chance'. (shrink)

This paper defends an inferential conception of scientific representation. It approaches the notion of representation in a deflationary spirit, and minimally characterizes the concept as it appears in science by means of two necessary conditions: its essential directionality and its capacity to allow surrogate reasoning and inference. The conception is defended by showing that it successfully meets the objections that make its competitors, such as isomorphism and similarity, untenable. In addition the inferential conception captures the objectivity of the cognitive representations (...) used by science, it sheds light on their truth and completeness, and it explains the source of the analogy between scientific and artistic modes of representation. (shrink)

Scientific representation is a currently booming topic, both in analytical philosophy and in history and philosophy of science. The analytical inquiry attempts to come to terms with the relation between theory and world; while historians and philosophers of science aim to develop an account of the practice of model building in the sciences. This article provides a review of recent work within both traditions, and ultimately argues for a practice-based account of the means employed by scientists to effectively achieve representation (...) in the modelling sciences. (shrink)

Los desarrollos actuales del escepticismo moderno han representado unresurgimiento de algunas de los problemas presentados por Descartes en laPrimera Meditación. Dentro de estos desarrollos son de especial interés lasreconstrucciones del escepticismo cartesiano apoyadas en el principio decierre lógico bajo implicación conocida del concepto. Estas reconstruccionespermiten desembarazar al escepticismo cartesiano de presupuestosontológicos y metafísicos y permiten, además, ver cierta continuidad conel escepticismo pirrónico. El objetivo de este artículo es el de ofrecer unareconstrucción del escepticismo cartesiano de la Primera Meditaciónapoyado en el (...) principio de cierre lógico y analizar sus implicaciones en eldebate contemporáneo. (shrink)

El presente texto tiene por objetivo cuestionar el modo habitual en el que se enseña la ética, y apoyar el uso de las narraciones como una herramienta pedagógica importante en la formación moral. Dado que la ética busca menos la adquisición de unos conocimientos y más una disposición a la acción, bien pudiera servirse de formatos narrativos para desarrollar la sensibilidad debida para la construcción de ciudadanos reflexivos, críticos y empáticos. Al fin y al cabo, la naturaleza antropológica de los (...) seres humanos es ya de hecho narrativa, y toda forma de vida buena reclama, en últimas, la posibilidad de ser contada. La práctica de relatar se constituye como una defensa por la búsqueda y construcción de sentido, en medio de una sociedad en donde la celeridad y la información fragmentada parecieran marcar la única posibilidad de constitución del sí mismo. (shrink)

I argue against theories that attempt to reduce scientific representation to similarity or isomorphism. These reductive theories aim to radically naturalize the notion of representation, since they treat scientist's purposes and intentions as non-essential to representation. I distinguish between the means and the constituents of representation, and I argue that similarity and isomorphism are common but not universal means of representation. I then present four other arguments to show that similarity and isomorphism are not the constituents of scientific representation. I (...) finish by looking at the prospects for weakened versions of these theories, and I argue that only those that abandon the aim to radically naturalize scientific representation are likely to be successful. (shrink)

This paper defends the deflationary character of two recent views regarding scientific representation, namely RIG Hughes’ DDI model and the inferential conception. It is first argued that these views’ deflationism is akin to the homonymous position in discussions regarding the nature of truth. There, we are invited to consider the platitudes that the predicate “true” obeys at the level of practice, disregarding any deeper, or more substantive, account of its nature. More generally, for any concept X, a deflationary approach is (...) then defined in opposition to a substantive approach, where a substantive approach to X is an analysis of X in terms of some property P, or relation R, accounting for and explaining the standard use of X. It then becomes possible to characterize a deflationary view of scientific representation in three distinct senses, namely: a “no-theory” view, a “minimalist” view, and a “use-based” view – in line with three standard deflationary responses in the philosophical literature on truth. It is then argued that both the DDI model and the inferential conception may be suitably understood in any of these three different senses. The application of these deflationary ‘hermeneutics’ moreover yields significant improvements on the DDI model, which bring it closer to the inferential conception. It is finally argued that what these approaches have in common – the key to any deflationary account of scientific representation – is the denial that scientific representation may be ultimately reduced to any substantive explanatory property of sources, or targets, or their relations. (shrink)

IntroductionThe idea of video recording in the operating room with panoramic cameras and microphones is a new concept that is changing the approach to medical activities in the OR. However, VR in the OR has brought up many concerns regarding patient privacy and has highlighted legal and ethical issues that were never previously exposed.AimTo review the literature concerning these aspects and provide a better ethical and legal understanding of the new challenges concerning VR in the OR.ConclusionsThere is a disparity between (...) the two main legal models concerning VR in the OR, namely the European legal system ) and the American legal framework ). This difference mainly deals with two distinct bioethical paradigms: GDPR places a strong emphasis on protecting patients’ privacy to improve the public health system, whereas HIPAA indicates the need to generate protocols to safeguard the risks connected to medical activity and patient privacy. Following from this point, we may argue that, at the ethical and bioethical level, GDPR and HIPAA depend mainly on two different ethical models: a perspective based on moral acquaintances and weak proceduralism, respectively. It is worth noting the importance of developing additional guidelines concerning different world regions to avoid the ethical problems that may emerge when simply applying a foreign paradigm to a very different culture. (shrink)

El autor intenta mostrar que en la filosofía cristiana de Bartolomé de las Casas sobresalen la afirmación de la dignidad del hombre y la fundamentación que en ella reciben los derechosnaturales o humanos. Las Casas reconoce esa dignidad en los indios tanto por motivos escolásticos como renacentistas y toda su labor en la defensa de los derechos de los indios y de los españoles era en realidad una labor dedicada a la teorización y defensa práctica de los derechos del hombre. (...) Lo que ahora llamamos "derechos humanos" son para Las Casas derechos naturales de todos los hombresy, pese a las limitaciones "ideológicas" que leimponía su época,la fuerza con que los defendióy promovió sigue siendo un ejemplo para el presente. (shrink)

Introduction: an 'untimely' political thought for serious times -- The twentieth-century politics of contempt -- 'Undisguised influences' -- Tragic beginnings mystic 'communion' with nature -- An artist's point of view -- Rethinking participation beyond 'romanticism' -- A stranger to the world of ressentiment -- Commencement of freedom -- Sisyphus or happiness in hell -- Nothing is possible, everything is permitted -- The absurd and power -- Combat with nihilism -- Between Sade and the Dandy -- Conclusion.

This paper reviews four attempts throughout the history of quantum mechanics to explicitly employ dispositional notions in order to solve the quantum paradoxes, namely: Margenau's latencies, Heisenberg's potentialities, Maxwell's propensitons, and the recent selective propensities interpretation of quantum mechanics. Difficulties and challenges are raised for all of them, and it is concluded that the selective propensities approach nicely encompasses the virtues of its predecessors. Finally, some strategies are discussed for reading similar dispositional notions into two other well-known interpretations of quantum (...) mechanics, namely the GRW interpretation and Bohmian mechanics. (shrink)

Mauricio Suárez and Agnes Bolinska apply the tools of communication theory to scientific modeling in order to characterize the informational content of a scientific model. They argue that when represented as a communication channel, a model source conveys information about its target, and that such representations are therefore appropriate whenever modeling is employed for informational gain. They then extract two consequences. First, the introduction of idealizations is akin in informational terms to the introduction of noise in a signal; for (...) in an idealization we introduce ‘extraneous’ elements into the model that have no correlate in the target. Second, abstraction in a model is informationally equivalent to equivocation in the signal; for in an abstraction we “neglect” in the model certain features that obtain in the target. They conclude that it becomes possible in principle to quantify idealization and abstraction in informative models, although precise absolute quantification will be difficult to achieve in practice. (shrink)

This paper argues for a broadly dispositionalist approach to the ontology of Bohmian mechanics . It first distinguishes the ‘minimal’ and the ‘causal’ versions of Bohm’s theory, and then briefly reviews some of the claims advanced on behalf of the ‘causal’ version by its proponents. A number of ontological or interpretive accounts of the wave function in BM are then addressed in detail, including configuration space, multi-field, nomological, and dispositional approaches. The main objection to each account is reviewed, namely the (...) ‘problem of perception’, the ‘problem of communication’, the ‘problem of temporal laws’, and the ‘problem of under-determination’. It is then shown that a version of dispositionalism overcomes the under-determination problem while providing neat solutions to the other three problems. A pragmatic argument is thus furnished for the use of dispositions in the interpretation of the theory more generally. The paper ends in a more speculative note by suggesting ways in which a dispositionalist interpretation of the wave function is in addition able to shed light upon some of the claims of the proponents of the causal version of BM. (shrink)

Essay Review of Tim Maudlin's "The Metaphysics within Physics", Oxford University Press, 2007.

Abstract: It is often assumed without argument that fictionalism in the philosophy of science contradicts scientific realism. This paper is a critical analysis of this assumption. The kind of fictionalism that is at present discussed in philosophy of science is characterised, and distinguished from fictionalism in other areas. A distinction is then drawn between forms of fictional representation, and two competing accounts of fiction in science are discussed. I then outline explicitly what I take to be the argument for the (...) incompatibility of scientific realism with fictionalism. I argue that some of its premises are unwarranted, and are moreover questionable from a fictionalist perspective. The conclusion is that fictionalism is neutral in the realism-antirealism debate, pulling neither in favour nor against scientific realism. (shrink)

This paper expands on, and provides a qualified defence of, Arthur Fine's selective interactions solution to the measurement problem. Fine's approach must be understood against the background of the insolubility proof of the quantum measurement. I first defend the proof as an appropriate formal representation of the quantum measurement problem. The nature of selective interactions, and more generally selections, is then clarified, and three arguments in their favour are offered. First, selections provide the only known solution to the measurement problem (...) that does not relinquish any of the explicit premises of the insolubility proofs. Second, unlike some no-collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics, selections suffer no difficulties with non-ideal measurements. Third, unlike most collapse interpretations, selections can be independently motivated by an appeal to quantum propensities. IntroductionThe problem of quantum measurement2.1 The ignorance interpretation of mixtures2.2 The eigenstate–eigenvalue link2.3 The quantum theory of measurementThe insolubility proof of the quantum measurement3.1 Some notation3.2 The transfer of probability condition (TPC)3.3 The occurrence of outcomes condition (OOC)A defence of the insolubility proof4.1 Stein's critique4.2 Ignorance is not required4.3 The problem of quantum measurement is an idealisationSelections5.1 Representing dispositional properties5.2 Selections solve the measurement problem5.3 Selections and ignoranceNon-ideal selections6.1 No-collapse interpretations and non-ideal measurements6.2 Exact and approximate measurements6.3 Selections for non-ideal interactions6.4 Approximate selections6.5 Implications for ignoranceSelective interactions test quantum propensities7.1 Equivalence classes as physical ‘aspects’: a critique7.2 Quantum dispositions7.3 Selections as a propensity modal interpretation7.4 A comparison with Popper's propensity interpretation. (shrink)

This paper argues for a representational semantic conception of scientific theories, which respects the bare claim of any semantic view, namely that theories can be characterised as sets of models. RSC must be sharply distinguished from structural versions that assume a further identity of ‘models’ and ‘structures’, which we reject. The practice-turn in the recent philosophical literature suggests instead that modelling must be understood in a deflationary spirit, in terms of the diverse representational practices in the sciences. These insights are (...) applied to some mathematical models, thus showing that the mathematical sciences are not in principle counterexamples to RSC. (shrink)

Resenha do livro: OLIVEIRA, Jelson; VASCONCELOS, Thiago; FROGNEUX, Nathalie. Terra Nenhuma: Ecopornografia e Responsabilidade. Caxias do Sul: EDUCS, 2020, pp. 64.

In most academic works laughter is praised because of its social, religious, and psychological benefits. However, when laughter’s morality has been historically discussed it usually has been condemned. To assign human responsibility to the act of laughing, it must be acknowledged as voluntary. However, studies indicate that laughter is not a voluntary action, but rather a neurophysiological reaction. If this is so, there is no basis on which to ground the moral relevance of laughter. In this article, I will put (...) forward an argument that can help to ground the ethics of spontaneous laughter at least. I claim that humans have the power to avoid laughing or suspend it because they can voluntarily prevent some of the circumstances that are necessary for it to happen. If humans fail to do so when they are expected to, laughter becomes relevant as a kind of negligent omission. (shrink)

Review of Bas Van Fraassen, Scientific Representation, Oxford University Press, 2008.

Friedrich Nietzsche dizia que a transcendência e a negação da vida, próprias do niilismo reativo que caracteriza a autofagia do Ocidente, eram subprodutos do excesso de memória, plasmado em ressentimento e “espírito de vingança”. Por outro lado, o xamã yanomami Davi Kopenawa, liderança indígena e autor, junto ao antropólogo Bruce Albert, do livro _A queda do céu_, responsabiliza o esquecimento dos brancos por sua própria derrocada — derrocada que leva todos os povos não-brancos consigo, em um vertiginoso cataclisma ambiental e (...) pandêmico de dimensões planetárias que Kopenawa e os Yanomami chamam de “queda do céu”. Neste artigo, pretendemos lidar com essa equivocidade perspectiva do olvido, vislumbrando nela uma questão filosófica crucial: como compreender esse duplo cruzamento entre olvido e memória, quando saímos do discurso filosófico ocidental e partimos para o discurso de um pensador yanomami? Haveria em jogo, aqui, uma equivocidade do olvido, no sentido em que o esquecimento é outro, a depender de sua direção? (shrink)

: This paper outlines a genuinely pragmatist conception of propensity, and defends it against common objections to the propensity interpretation of probability, prominently Humphreys’ paradox. The paper reviews the paradox and identifies one of its key assumptions, the identity thesis, according to which propensities are probabilities. The identity thesis is also involved in empiricist propensity interpretations deriving from Popper’s influential original proposal, and makes such interpretations untenable. As an alternative, I urge a return to Charles Peirce’s original insights on probabilistic (...) dispositions, and offer a reconstructed version of his pragmatist conception, which rejects the identity thesis. – Correspondence to: [email protected]. (shrink)