Este estudo objetivou conhecer o pensamento de toxicômanos sobre o uso de maconha durante o tratamento para abuso do crack. Participaram 10 sujeitos do sexo masculino, entre 15 e 36 anos, em tratamento nos CAPSi e CAPSad na cidade de Santa Maria/RS. Foram realizadas entrevistas semi-estruturadas e s..

A partir del contrapeso que Ortega encuentra en la contradictoria vida de Goethe, se atreve con una nueva definición para la biografía como interrelación de tres elementos que se enfrentan: circunstancia, vocación y azar. Con lo que la enmarca en su propuesta filosófica, desde su ontología, como drama, como género literario, con ese matiz de construcción, que pretende ser una propuesta más audaz que la del ser idealista, porque incluye el entorno en el yo. Como una ética del ser que (...) se enmarca, como escribió ya Aranguren, en una metafísica de nuestra vida, que Ortega entiende como quehacer. (shrink)

This full-length study of Plato's dialogue Phaedrus, now in paperback, is written in the belief that such concerted scrutiny of a single dialogue is an important part of the project of understanding Plato so far as possible 'from the inside' - of gaining a feel for the man's philosophy. The focus of this account is on how the resources both of persuasive myth and of formal argument, for all that Plato sets them in strong contrast, nevertheless complement and reinforce each (...) other in his philosophy. Not only is the dialogue in its formal structure a dovetail of myth and argument, but the philosophic life that it praises is also shaped by an acknowledgement of the limitations of argument and the importance of mythical understanding. By means of this correlation of form and content Plato invites his readers, through the very act of reading, to take a first step along the path of the philosophical life. (shrink)

In this paper I offer some critical comments to MacFarlane's recent book "Assessment Sensitivity". I focus primarily on MacFarlane's understanding of the normative aspects of enquiry—in particular I take issue with the phenomena of retraction and disagreement as preclusion of joint accuracy. I argue that both notions are problematic and that—at least in the case of basic taste—they are not needed in order to account for our intuitions.

I present a novel strategy to account for two thoughts concerning disagreements about taste: (i) that they need not involve any substantive fault (faultlessness); (ii) that the faultlessness of a contrary opinion can be coherently appreciated from within a committed perspective (parity). Under the assumption that judgments of taste are truth-apt and governed by the truth-norm, I argue that understanding how exactly truth is normative offers a strategy for accounting for both thoughts. I distinguish between different ways in which truth (...) governs judgment to substantiate the thesis that truth’s normative function varies according to the subject matter at issue. I then argue that truth’s normative guidance in the domain of taste is characteristically weak. I introduce an intuitive distinction between basic and refined taste, and show how this distinction affects questions of faultlessness and parity. Last, I discuss the idea of alethic suberogation in connection with disagreement about refined taste. (shrink)

Since the publication of Truth, Paul Horwich’s ‘Minimalism’ has become the paradigm of what goes under the label ‘the deflationary conception of truth’. Despite the many theoretical virtues of Horwich’s minimalism, it is usually contended that it cannot fully account for the normative role that truth plays in enquiry. As I see it, this concern amounts to several challenges. One such challenge—call it the axiological challenge—is about whether deflationists have the theoretical resources to explain the value of truth. Some philosophers (...) have argued that they do not. The thought is that by being valuable in the way it is, truth plays a non-trivial explanatory role with respect to core phenomena of enquiry. In order to account for this aspect of truth, the challenge goes, we need to inflate truth’s nature to an extent incompatible with core tenets of the minimalist conception. In this paper, I first provide some clarifications of what we mean exactly when we say that truth is valuable. By borrowing important distinction from the current debate in axiology, I elaborate a framework within which to conduct investigations into the value of truth. With reference to Horwich’s discussion of the issue, I then discuss the link between questions concerning the explanatory role of truth and the issue of its metaphysical inflation. I conclude by briefly exploring a few strategies on behalf of minimalists to address the axiological challenge. (shrink)

In this article I defend two theses. The first is that the centrality of recording in the social world is manifested through the production of documents, a phenomenon which has been present since the earliest phases of society and which has undergone an exponential growth through the technological developments of the last decades. The second is that the centrality of documents leads to a view of normativity according to which human beings are primarily passive receptors of rules manifested through documents. (...) We are not intentional producers of values. The latter, as I shall suggest in my conclusion, should be viewed as being ‘socially dependent’ rather than ‘socially constructed’. (shrink)

We provide a framework for understanding agnosticism. The framework accounts for the varieties of agnosticism while vindicating the unity of the phenomenon. This combination of unity and plurality is achieved by taking the varieties of agnosticism to be represented by several agnostic stances, all of which share a common core provided by what we call the minimal agnostic attitude. We illustrate the fruitfulness of the framework by showing how it can be applied to several philosophical debates. In particular, several philosophical (...) positions can be aptly conceived of as instances of agnosticism whilst retaining their differences and distinguishing features. (shrink)

Truth and Norms develops a novel pluralistic view of the normative role that truth exerts on judgements. This view, labeled normative alethic pluralism, provides the best explanation of the variable normative significance that disagreement exhibits in different areas of discourse and is fully compatible with a minimalist conception of truth.

First published in 2000, this translation of one of the great works of Western political thought is based on the assumption that when Plato chose the dialogue form for his writing, he intended these dialogues to sound like conversations - although conversations of a philosophical sort. In addition to a vivid, dignified and accurate rendition of Plato's text, the student and general reader will find many aids to comprehension in this volume: an introduction that assesses the cultural background to the (...) Republic, its place within political philosophy, and its general argument; succinct notes in the body of the text; an analytical summary of the work's content; a full glossary of proper names; a chronology of important events; and a guide to further reading. The result is an accomplished and accessible edition of this seminal work, suitable for philosophers and classicists as well as historians of political thought at all levels. (shrink)

L'idea che le avanguardie e il classicismo si pongano rispettivamente agli antipodi della storia dell’arte è un’opinione comunemente accettata. Tuttavia, ad una analisi più approfondita, essa risulta inconsistente e superficiale. Le caratteristiche fondamentali dell'opera artistica contemporanea sono normalmente riconosciute nel “dogma della indifferenza estetica” - ossia nella decisione di abbandonare il canone della bellezza ideale – e nella centralità del concetto a scapito della perfezione formale e tecnica. Eppure, queste categorie si rivelano familiari anche al mondo classico, per nulla estraneo (...) all’interesse verso il brutto e il grottesco, e all’arte antica, radicalmente concettuale (si pensi alle piramidi o a Stonehenge). Se da un lato il classicismo si avvicina quindi al moderno, dall'altro il moderno, nella sua serialità sacrale, nella sua trasfigurazione dell'oggetto comune in oggetto artistico e nella sua consacrazione del Museo, si accosta a un classicismo di cui pare impossibile liberarsi fino in fondo. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the impact of non-epistemic factors, such as social identity and cultural biases, on the formation and revision of beliefs. This type of impact is evident in contexts of opinion polarisation where the acceptance of scientific theses by groups of non-experts is at stake. Im these contexts digital media and social networks often play a central role. To analyse the impact of non-epistemic factors from an epistemological perspective, we employ a non-ideal approach to epistemology that takes (...) into account some key non-epistemic factors through the concept of epistemic filter. By means of this concept we explain the selective acceptance of information, and we show how background assumptions and social values which are deeply rooted in an inquiring subject influence the selection and evaluation of evidence and sources of information. Through this non-ideal approach, we analyse the dynamics of scientific denialism, framing it as an epistemic phenomenon in which social and cultural influences shape and distort epistemic practices. We conclude that understanding these underlying mechanisms is crucial to addressing the challenges posed by misinformation and the deep social divisions that result from it. (shrink)

In this series of dialogues, Derrida discusses and elaborates on some of the central themes of his work, such as the problems of genesis, justice, authorship and death. Combining autobiographical reflection with philosophical enquiry, Derrida illuminates the ideas that have characterized his thought from its beginning to the present day. If there is one feature that links these contributions, it is the theme of singularity - the uniqueness of the individual, the resistance of existence to philosophy, the temporality of the (...) singular and exceptional moment, and the problem of exemplarity. The second half of this book contains an essay by Maurizio Ferraris, in which he explores the questions of indication, time and the inscription of the transcendental in the empirical. A work of outstanding philosophy and scholarship, the essay is developed in close proximity to Derrida and in dialogue with figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant, Hegel and Heidegger. It thereby provides a useful introduction to the philosophy of one of Italy's most prominent philosophers as well as an excellent complement to Derrida's own ideas. A Taste for the Secret consists of material that has never before appeared in English. It will be of interest to second-year undergraduates, graduate students and academics in philosophy, modern languages, literature, literary theory and the humanities generally. (shrink)

Animals and TechnoscienceThe essays in the section “Animals in technoscientific developments” have been collected from the submissions to the 3rd European Conference of Critical Animal Studies that I organized in Karlsruhe on 28–30 November 2013. The aim of the conference was to stimulate critical scholars to engage on the multifaceted relationships between animals and technosciences, an under-researched topic.Technoscience has become an important concept in the current debate on the epistemic and normative changes taking place in how scientific and technological research (...) is currently being conducted. Although there are different modes of describing technoscience , generally speaking the term refers to a means of developing knowledge in which it is not possible to separate the scientific from the technological . In contrast to the “traditional mode o .. (shrink)

Some philosophers have argued that truth is a norm of judgement and have provided a variety of formulations of this general thesis. In this paper, I shall side with these philosophers and assume that truth is a norm of judgement. What I am primarily interested in here are two core questions concerning the judgement-truth norm: (i) what are the normative relationships between truth and judgement? And (ii) do these relationships vary or are they constant? I argue for a pluralist picture—what (...) I call Normative Alethic Pluralism (NAP)—according to which (i) there is more than one correct judgement-truth norm and (ii) the normative relationships between truth and judgement vary in relation to the subject matter of the judgement. By means of a comparative analysis of disagreement in three areas of the evaluative domain—refined aesthetics, basic taste and morality—I show that there is an important variability in the normative significance of disagreement—I call this the variability conjecture. By presenting a variation of Lynch’s scope problem for alethic monism, I argue that a monistic approach to the normative function of truth is unable to vindicate the conjecture. I then argue that normative alethic pluralism provides us with a promising model to account for it. (shrink)

All natural goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish. Can things whose end is always dust and disappointment be the real goods which our souls require? Back of everything is the great spectre of universal death, the all-encompassing blackness.

ABSTRACTEcumenical Alethic Pluralism is a novel kind of alethic pluralism. It is ecumenical in that it widens the scope of alethic pluralism by allowing for a normatively deflated truth property alongside a variety of normatively robust truth properties. We establish EAP by showing how Wright’s Inflationary Arguments fail in the domain of taste, once a relativist treatment of the metaphysics and epistemology of that domain is endorsed. EAP is highly significant to current debates on the nature of truth insofar as (...) it involves a reconfiguration of the dialectic between deflationists and pluralists. (shrink)

William James published his classic work on the psychology of religion, "The Varieties of Religious Experience", in 1902. To mark the centenary, leading contemporary scholars reflect on changes in our understanding of the questions James addressed.

Can someone who suspends judgement about a certain proposition <p> be in a relational state of disagreement with someone who believes <p> as well as with some- one who disbelieves <p>? This paper argues for an af- firmative answer. It develops an account of the notions of suspended judgement and disagreement that explains how and why the suspender is in a relational state of disagreement with both the believer and the disbeliever about the very same proposition <p>. More specifically, the (...) paper first provides a characterisation of the norma- tive profile associated with the state of suspended judge- ment in terms of the set of normative commitments that it engenders in the context of inquiry. It then provides a characterisation of the notion of disagreement in terms the incompatibility between the sets of normative com- mitments characteristic of the three states in question— belief, disbelief, and suspension. (shrink)

In Truth and Objectivity, Crispin Wright argues that because truth is a distinctively normative property, it cannot be as metaphysically insubstantive as deflationists claim.1 This argument has been taken, together with the scope problem,2 as one of the main motivations for alethic pluralism.3 We offer a reconstruction of Wright’s Inflationary Argument (henceforth IA) aimed at highlighting what are the steps required to establish its inflationary conclusion. We argue that if a certain metaphysical and epistemological view of a given subject matter (...) is accepted, a local counterexample to IA can be constructed. We focus on the domain of basic taste and we develop two variants of a subjectivist and relativist metaphysics and epistemology that seems palatable in that domain. Although we undertake no commitment to this being the right metaphysical cum epistemological package for basic taste, we contend that if the metaphysics and the epistemology of basic taste are understood along these lines, they call for a truth property whose nature is not distinctively normative—contra what IA predicts. This result shows that the success of IA requires certain substantial metaphysical and epistemological principles and that, consequently, a proper assessment of IA cannot avoid taking a stance on the metaphysics and the epistemology of the domain where it is claimed to be successful. Although we conjecture that IA might succeed in other domains, in this paper we don’t take a stand on this issue. We conclude by briefly discussing the significance of this result for the debate on alethic pluralism. (shrink)

Assessment relativism, as developed by John MacFarlane, is the view that the truth of our claims involving a variety of English expressions—‘tasty’, ‘knows’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘might’, and ‘ought’—is relative not only to aspects of the context of their production but also to aspects of the context in which they are assessed. Assessment relativism is thus a form of truth relativism which is offered as a new way of understanding perspectival thought and talk. In this article, I present the main theses of (...) assessment relativism, focusing in particular on highlighting the points of commonality and contrast with other forms of truth relativism. I then offer some critical remarks concerning the motivation of assessment relativism in relation to matters of taste. (shrink)

Nominalism in formal ontology is still the thesis that the only acceptable domain of quantification is the first-order domain of particulars. Nominalists may assert that second-order well-formed formulas can be fully and completely interpreted within the first-order domain, thereby avoiding any ontological commitment to second-order entities, by means of an appropriate semantics called “substitutional”. In this paper I argue that the success of this strategy depends on the ability of Nominalists to maintain that identity, and equivalence relations more in general, (...) is first-order and invariant. Firstly, I explain why Nominalists are formally bound to this first-order concept of identity. Secondly, I show that the resources needed to justify identity, a certain conception of identity invariance, are out of the Nominalist’s reach. (shrink)

In order to understand the system wherein human resource management practices are determined by the interactions of a complex system of actors, it is necessary to have a conceptual framework of analysis. In this respect, the works of scholars concerning stakeholder theory opened new perspectives in management theory. An organisation is understood as being part of a politico-economic system of stakeholders who interact and influence management practices. Each stakeholder tries to optimise and protect his interests, 61-75). The framework of stakeholder (...) analysis enables escape from a purely instrumental approach to HRM, and avoids reducing our understanding of conflicts within companies to mere antagonism between employees and their employers. It enables us to point out the existence of other stakeholders in the relationship. Notably, it allows for the incorporation into management theory of actors from the sphere of politics as well as their dependent administrations. All these actors are considered to be stakeholders who define the legal framework of firm management and guarantee the application of these laws. (shrink)

Realitism: the postmodern attack on reality -- Realism: things that have existed since the beginning of the world -- Reconstruction: why criticism starts from reality -- Emancipation: unexamined life has no value.

En este libro, que aparece en Italia en 1987, publicado muchas veces y muy comentado también en el extranjero, Vincenzo Ferrari analiza las funciones sociales del derecho en una perspectiva relativista, subjetivista y conflictualista, opuesta a la del funcionalismo sociológico. De tal manera, el derecho se revela como un medio de acción social dirigido a lograr los proyectos de seres humanos empeñados en relaciones variables de cooperación y de lucha. Así, se muestra cómo las normas jurídicas pueden orientar las (...) actitudes y desorientarlas; solucionar los conflictos y agravarlos o fomentarlos; legitimar cualquier forma de poder con argumentos tan válidos como ficticios. Solo al nivel de los ideales se redescubre el valor del derecho, su potencialidad libertadora y su naturaleza igualitaria. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to argue for the idea that processes and process-based entities are to be modelled as relational structures. Relational structures are genuine structures, namely entities not committed to the existence of basic objects. My argument moves from the analysis of Whitehead’s original insight about process-based entities that, despite some residual of substance metaphysics, has the merit of grounding the intrinsic dynamism of reality on the holistic and relational characters of process-based entities. The current model of (...) process ontology requires genuine emergence and this, in turn, requires organizations, i.e., emergence in organizations. Another view about processes rely on a structural specification of processes. I suggest that the two views can be made compatible by the help of a specific sort of structures, namely relational structures. The appeal to the mathematical theory of genuine structures, category theory, reveals the formal plausibility of this convergence. According to this formal approach, genuine structures are essentially dynamic entities for they are relational, namely, as well as organizations, they are not existentially committed to particulars. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the ethical discourse surrounding cultivated meat and fish, arguing that it has largely remained confined to theoretical or speculative discussions, neglecting the practical and evolving implications of this emerging technology—particularly in relation to the continued involvement of animals in its production. I demonstrate that a significant gap exists in the assessment of the impact on animal bodies during cell harvesting and cultivation, leading to a distorted or incomplete understanding of the normative dimensions of this innovation. The (...) paper further addresses the often-overlooked issue of “animal futures,” particularly the treatment of animals post-biopsy, and the ethical concerns surrounding the breeding of animals specifically for stem cell production. It critiques the lack of foresight in current ethical discussions, which fail to adequately consider the long-term lives of animals involved in the production of cultivated meat. Advocating for a more comprehensive ethical framework, the paper calls for a deeper, more nuanced consideration of both the immediate and future welfare of these animals. In doing so, the paper stresses that ethical reflection should not be an afterthought but an integral part of technological development—one that must influence both its design and its evolution. Through this analysis, the paper aims to contribute meaningfully to the ongoing discourse on the ethics of cultivated meat, urging a rethinking of the relationship between technological progress and animal welfare and rights. (shrink)