I defend a weak version of the Pigou-Dalton principle for chances. The principle says that it is better to increase the survival chance of a person who is more likely to die rather than a person who is less likely to die, assuming that the two people do not differ in any other morally relevant respect. The principle justifies plausible moral judgements that standard ex post views, such as prioritarianism and rank-dependent egalitarianism, cannot accommodate. However, the principle can be justified (...) by the same reasoning that has recently been used to defend the core axiom of ex post prioritarianism and egalitarianism, namely, Pigou-Dalton for well-being. The arguably biggest challenge for proponents of Pigou-Dalton for chances is that it violates State Dominance for social prospects. However, I argue that we have independent reason for rejecting State Dominance for social prospects, since it prevents a social planner from properly respecting people's preferences. (shrink)

According to the class of de minimis decision principles, risks can be ignored (or at least treated very differently from other risks) if the risk is sufficiently small. In this article, we argue that a de minimis threshold has no place in a normative theory of decision making, because the application of the principle will either recommend ignoring risks that should not be ignored (e.g., the sure death of a person) or it cannot be used by ordinary bounded and information-constrained (...) agents. (shrink)

Recently, Martin Smith defended a view he called the “normic de minimis expected utility theory”. The basic idea is to integrate a ‘normic’ version of the de minimis principle into an expected utility-based decision theoretical framework. According to the de minimis principle some risks are so small (falling below a threshold) that they can be ignored. While this threshold standardly is defined in terms of some probability, the normic conception of de minimis defines this threshold in terms of abnormality. In (...) this article, we present three independent arguments against the normic de minimis expected utility theory, focusing on its reliance on the de minimis principle. (shrink)

The main aim of this book is to introduce the topic of limited awareness, and changes in awareness, to those interested in the philosophy of decision-making and uncertain reasoning.

This paper discusses a challenge for Comparativists about belief, who hold that numerical degree of belief (in particular, subjective probability) is a useful fiction, unlike comparative belief, which they regard as real. The challenge is to make sense of claims like ‘I am twice as confident in A as in B’ in terms of comparative belief only. After showing that at least some Comparativists can meet this challenge, I discuss implications for Zynda’s [2000] and Stefánsson’s [2017] defences of Comparativism.

This article presents Hanna Arendt’s theory about political judgement, i.e., the expresion of the discursive reason in the political sphere. A certain lack of faith in the public exercise of discursive reason, motivated by her negative experience of totalitarism, leads Arendt to adopt a skeptical and Kantian conception of judgement, which only leaves place for a human action and freedom shorn of rationality in the political arena.

O Projeto de Pesquisa realizado através do NIQ – Núcleo de Ilustrações e Quadrinhos, pelo Centro de Estudos em Design da Imagem da UEMG – UNIVERSIDADE DO ESTADO DE MINAS GERAIS, tem a pretensão de incentivar alunos da Escola Municipal Secretário Humberto de Almeida em Belo Horizonte-Minas Gerais-Brasil a comunicar a cultura brasileira, em especial às raízes culturais da Capital mineira, através de levantamento e análise de material em quadrinhos na Internet. O objetivo principal é inserir e incentivar esses alunos (...) do 9º ano do Ensino Fundamental na pesquisa científica, utilizar de meios que os faça terem interesse por pesquisa. A História em Quadrinho (HQ) como mediadora na transmissão da mensagem entre pesquisadores, professores e alunos do Ensino Fundamental e do Ensino Superior. A internet passa a ser o meio potencial para realização da análise de imagens e de conteúdos textuais existentes nessas Revistas em Quadrinhos. Ao despertarmos suas curiosidades, pensamos em fazê-lo refletir sobre o assunto, buscamos colocar em questão: como abordar a cultura brasileira através dos quadrinhos existentes na Internet? Verificamos que estimula, impulsiona e fortalece o aluno do Ensino Fundamental ao conhecimento e aprendizado cultural, além de mostrar caminhos mais confiáveis para a informação através da internet. O estudo mostra que existe contexto socio-cultural presente nas HQs e que servem de estímulo para jovens estudantes na iniciação cientifica. (shrink)

L. A. Paul has recently argued that the epistemically transformative nature of certain experiences makes it impossible to rationally decide whether to have the experience or not. We start by explaining why, contrary to what Paul claims, epistemically transformative experiences do not pose a general problem for the possibility of rational choice. However, we show there is a particular type of agent for whom the problem identified by Paul does arise. With this agent in mind, we examine Paul’s own suggestion (...) for how to approach a transformative decision problem, namely, that one should decide based on whether one would like to come to know the experience in question, and we conclude that Paul’s suggestion is no solution for this particular agent. In other words, Paul’s solution does not work for the only type of agent for whom the problem she has identified arises. (shrink)

Population axiology concerns how to evaluate populations in terms of their moral goodness, that is, how to order populations by the relations “is better than” and “is as good as”. The task has been to find an adequate theory about the moral value of states of affairs where the number of people, the quality of their lives, and their identities may vary. So far, this field has largely ignored issues about uncertainty and the conditions that have been discussed mostly pertain (...) to the ranking of risk-free outcomes. Most public policy choices, however, are decisions under uncertainty, including policy choices that affect the size of a population. Here, we shall address the question of how to rank population prospects—that is, alternatives that contain uncertainty as to which population they will bring about—by the relations “is better than” and “is as good as”. We start by illustrating how well-known population axiologies can be extended to population prospect axiologies. And we show that new problems arise when extending population axiologies to prospects. In particular, traditional population axiologies lead to prospect-versions of the problems that they praised for avoiding in the risk-free settings. Finally, we identify an intuitive adequacy condition that, we contend, should be satisfied by any population prospect axiology, and show how given this condition, the impossibility theorems in population axiology can be extended to (non-trivial) impossibility theorems for population prospect axiology. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility has become a much-discussed subject in the business world. The Internet has become one of the main tools for CSR information disclosure, allowing companies to publicise more information less expensively and faster than ever before. As a result, corporations are increasingly concerned with communicating ethically and responsibly to the diversity of stakeholders through the web. This paper addresses the main question as whether CSR information disclosure on corporate websites is influenced by country of origin and/or industry sector. (...) Analysing the websites of 127 corporations from emerging countries, such as Brazil, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand and South Africa, it becomes evident that both country of origin and industry sector have a significant influence over CSR information disclosure on the web . Based on the data studied, country of origin has a stronger influence over CSRIDOW than industry sector. (shrink)

We begin with the history of the discovery of computability in the 1930’s, the roles of Gödel, Church, and Turing, and the formalisms of recursive functions and Turing automatic machines . To whom did Gödel credit the definition of a computable function? We present Turing’s notion [1939, §4] of an oracle machine and Post’s development of it in [1944, §11], [1948], and finally Kleene-Post [1954] into its present form. A number of topics arose from Turing functionals including continuous functionals on (...) Cantor space and online computations. Almost all the results in theoretical computability use relative reducibility and o-machines rather than a-machines and most computing processes in the real world are potentially online or interactive. Therefore, we argue that Turing o-machines, relative computability, and online computing are the most important concepts in the subject, more so than Turing a-machines and standard computable functions since they are special cases of the former and are presented first only for pedagogical clarity to beginning students. At the end in §10–§13 we consider three displacements in computability theory, and the historical reasons they occurred. Several brief conclusions are drawn in §14. (shrink)

This paper defends two related claims about belief. First, the claim that unlike numerical degrees of belief, comparative beliefs are primitive and psychologically real. Second, the claim that the fundamental norm of Probabilism is not that numerical degrees of belief should satisfy the probability axioms, but rather that comparative beliefs should satisfy certain constraints.

This paper takes issue with an influential interpretationist argument for physicalism about intentionality based on the possibility of radical interpretation. The interpretationist defends the physicalist thesis that the intentional truths supervene on the physical truths by arguing that it is possible for a radical interpreter, who knows all of the physical truths, to work out the intentional truths about what an arbitrary agent believes, desires, and means without recourse to any further empirical information. One of the most compelling arguments for (...) the possibility of radical interpretation, associated most closely with David Lewis and Donald Davidson, gives a central role to decision theoretic representation theorems, which demonstrate that if an agent’s preferences satisfy certain constraints, it is possible to deduce probability and utility functions that represent her beliefs and desires. We argue that an interpretationist who wants to rely on existing representation theorems in defence of the possibility of radical interpretation faces a trilemma, each horn of which is incompatible with the possibility of radical interpretation. (shrink)

1. Barry and Cullity (2022b) argue that when morally assessing a person’s climate actions,1 we should ask how these actions affect other people’s prospects.2 For the present purposes, we can unders...

The present study uses EEG time-frequency representations with a Flanker task to investigate if and how individual differences in bilingual language experience modulate neurocognitive outcomes in two bilingual group types: late bilinguals and early bilinguals. TFRs were computed for both incongruent and congruent trials. The difference between the two was then compared between the HSs and the L2 learners, modeled as a function of individual differences with bilingual experience within each group separately and probed for its potential symmetry between brain (...) and behavioral data. We found no differences at the behavioral and neural levels for the between-groups comparisons. However, oscillatory dynamics of inhibition and cognitive control were found to be modulated by individual differences in bilingual language experience, albeit distinctly within each bilingual group. While the results indicate adaptations toward differential brain recruitment in line with bilingual language experience variation overall, this does not manifest uniformly. Rather, earlier versus later onset to bilingualism—the bilingual type—seems to constitute an independent qualifier to how individual differences play out. (shrink)

It is shown that for every nonzero r.e. degree c there is a linear ordering of degree c which is not isomorphic to any recursive linear ordering. It follows that there is a linear ordering of low degree which is not isomorphic to any recursive linear ordering. It is shown further that there is a linear ordering L such that L is not isomorphic to any recursive linear ordering, and L together with its ‘infinitely far apart’ relation is of low (...) degree. Finally, an analogue of the recursion theorem for recursive linear orderings is refuted. (shrink)

Parfit (Theoria 82:110–127, 2016) responded to the Sequence Argument for the Repugnant Conclusion by introducing imprecise equality. However, Parfit’s notion of imprecise equality lacked structure. Hájek and Rabinowicz (2022) improved on Parfit’s proposal in this regard, by introducing a notion of degrees of incommensurability. Although Hájek and Rabinowicz’s proposal is a step forward, and may help solve many paradoxes, it can only avoid the Repugnant Conclusion at great cost. First, there is a sequential argument for the Repugnant Conclusion that uses (...) weaker and intuitively more compelling assumptions than the Sequence Argument, and which Hájek and Rabinowicz’s proposal only undermines, in a principled way, by allowing for implausible weight to be put on the disvalue of inequality. Second, if Hájek and Rabinowicz do put such implausible weight on the disvalue of inequality, then they will have to accept that a population A is not worse than another same sized population B even though everyone in B is better off than anyone in A. (shrink)

According to a common judgement, a social planner should often use a lottery to decide which of two people should receive a good. This judgement undermines one of the best-known arguments for utilitarianism, due to John C. Harsanyi, and more generally undermines axiomatic arguments for utilitarianism and similar views. In this paper we ask which combinations of views about (a) the social planner’s attitude to risk and inequality, and (b) the subjects’ attitudes to risk are consistent with the aforementioned judgement. (...) We find that the class of combinations of views that can plausibly accommodate this judgement is quite limited. But one theory does better than others: the theory of chance-sensitive utility. (shrink)

A current issue in psycholinguistic research is whether the language difficulties exhibited by children with developmental language disorder [DLD, previously labeled specific language impairment ] are due to deficits in their abilities to pick up patterns in the sensory environment, an ability known as statistical learning, and the extent to which explicit learning mechanisms can be used to compensate for those deficits. Studies designed to test the compensatory role of explicit learning mechanisms in children with DLD are, however, scarce, and (...) the few conducted so far have led to inconsistent results. This work aimed to provide new insights into the role that explicit learning mechanisms might play on implicit learning deficits in children with DLD by resorting to a new approach. This approach involved not only the collection of event-related potentials, while preschool children with DLD [relative to typical language developmental controls] were exposed to a continuous auditory stream made of the repetition of three-syllable nonsense words but, importantly, the collection of ERPs when the same children performed analogous versions of the same auditory SL task first under incidental and afterward under intentional conditions. In each of these tasks, the level of predictability of the three-syllable nonsense words embedded in the speech streams was also manipulated to mimic natural languages closely. At the end of both tasks’ exposure phase, children performed a two-alternative forced-choice task from which behavioral evidence of SL was obtained. Results from the 2-AFC tasks failed to show reliable signs of SL in both groups of children. The ERPs data showed, however, significant modulations in the N100 and N400 components, taken as neural signatures of word segmentation in the brain, even though a detailed analysis of the neural responses revealed that only children from the TLD group seem to have taken advantage of the previous knowledge to enhance SL functioning. These results suggest that children with DLD showed deficits both in implicit and explicit learning mechanisms, casting doubts on the efficiency of the interventions relying on explicit instructions to help children with DLD to overcome their language difficulties. (shrink)

In the last five years there have been a number of results about the computable content of the prime, saturated, or homogeneous models of a complete decidable theory T in the spirit of Vaught's "Denumerable models of complete theories" combined with computability methods for degrees d ≤ 0′. First we recast older results by Goncharov, Peretyat'kin, and Millar in a more modern framework which we then apply. Then we survey recent results by Lange, "The degree spectra of homogeneous models," which (...) generalize the older results and which include positive results on when a certain homogeneous model of T has an isomorphic copy of a given Turing degree. We then survey Lange's "A characterization of the 0-basis homogeneous bounding degrees" for negative results about when does not have such copies, generalizing negative results by Goncharov, Peretyat'kin, and Millar. Finally, we explain recent results by Csima, Harizanov, Hirschfeldt, and Soare, "Bounding homogeneous models," about degrees d that are homogeneous bounding and explain their relation to the PA degrees. (shrink)

Este texto quer examinar como Kant a partir da sua concepção de _cogito_ procura refutar o idealismo problemático de Descartes. Em primeiro lugar, quer verificar se Kant, ao entender a consciência de si como dependente da consciência de objeto, não estaria assumindo pressupostos metafísicos e epistemológicos diferentes dos assumidos por Descartes em sua concepção de _cogito_. Em segundo lugar, tenta formular o problema do alcance das noções de representação e reflexividade em cada um dos referidos filósofos. Para enfrentar essa problemática, (...) elege como metodologia de investigação a análise da Refutação do Idealismo da Analítica dos Princípios da _Crítica da Razão Pura_, bem como de alguns textos de Descartes que explicitam a sua concepção de _cogito_. (shrink)

O que Foucault entende por jornalismo e como ele se relaciona com a filosofia? Para responder à questão, escrutinamos declarações do autor francês acerca do assunto, especialmente sobre dois personagens: Nietzsche “o primeiro filósofo-jornalista” e Kant “o responsável por introduzir o hoje na filosofia”. Detalhando nuances, pretendemos mostrar em que o pensamento de Foucault se avizinha de um jornalismo radical, e em que deste ele se diferencia.

“Positivista feliz”ou “hipermilitante pessimista”? Sobre os atos de problematização em Michel Foucault1 Resumo: Através do escrutínio de duas noções centrais do pensamento de Michel Foucault – crítica e genealogia–, este texto elucida o conceito de problematização, dando ênfase a seu possível caráter performativo. Numa primeira parte, construímos uma perspectiva do que seria a tarefa do pensador crítico, para, num segundo momento, elucidar a diferença entre uma história das soluções e uma genealogia dos problemas. A provocativa interrogação do título remete a (...) duas atitudes aludidas pelo filósofo. Ao pensar os atos de problematização, esperamos fornecer uma posição acerca deles, e mostrar um modo particular do autor de moldar as noções centrais abordadas anteriormente. Palavras-Chave: Crítica. Genealogia. Atos de Fala. Filosofia. Problematização. 1 Financiamento de pesquisa: CNPq Michel Foucault: “Happy positivist” or “Hyperactivist pessimist”? On its acts of problematization: Scrutinizing two main notions of Michel Foucault’s thinking – Critique and Genealogy -, this paper elucidates the concept of problematization, with an emphasis in its hypothetical performative aspect. Firstly, we build a perspective on the task of a critical thinker to, in a second moment, elucidate the difference between a history of solutions and a genealogy of problems. The provocative question mark in title refers to two attitudes alluded by Foucault. Reflecting about acts of problematization, we hope to offer a position about them, and show the particular way of this author to shape those central notions approached before. Keywords: Critique. Genealogy. Speech Acts. Philosophy. Problematization. ¿"Positivista feliz" o "hipermilitante pesimista"? Sobre los actos de problematización de Michel Foucault Resumen: Mediante el escrutinio de dos nociones centrales del pensamiento de Michel Foucault – crítica y genealogía – este texto elucida el concepto de problematización, enfatizando su posible carácter performativo. En la primera parte, construimos una perspectiva del que sería la tarea del pensador crítico, para en un secundo momento, elucidar la diferencia entre una historia de las soluciones e una genealogía de los problemas. La provocativa interrogación del título remite a dos actitudes de Foucault. Pensando los actos de problematización, nosotros intentamos fornecer una posición acerca de ellos, y mostrar un modo particular del autor de moldar las nociones centrales abordadas anteriormente. Palabras clave: Crítica. Genealogía. Actos del habla. Filosofía. Problematización. Data de registro: 03/10/2019 Data de aceite: 27/05/2020. (shrink)

Topologists Nabutovsky and Weinberger discovered how to embed computably enumerable (c.e.) sets into the geometry of Riemannian metrics modulo diffeomorphisms. They used the complexity of the settling times of the c.e. sets to exhibit a much greater complexity of the depth and density of local minima for the diameter function than previously imagined. Their results depended on the existence of certain sequences of c.e. sets, constructed at their request by Csima and Soare, whose settling times had the necessary dominating properties. (...) Although these computability results had been announced earlier, their proofs have been deferred until this paper. Computably enumerable sets have long been used to prove undecidability of mathematical problems such as the word problem for groups and Hilbert's Tenth Problem. However, this example by Nabutovsky and Weinberger is perhaps the first example of the use of c.e. sets to demonstrate specific mathematical or geometric complexity of a mathematical structure such as the depth and distribution of local minima. (shrink)

The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature.

Este livro apresenta Comte e seu Positivismo em linguagem clara e despretensiosa, pois é de alguém que conhece o que está escrevendo. A vida, a obra, a religião, a difusão e a irradiação do Positivismo no RS e no Brasil, e mais a educação e arte positivista em Porto Alegre são temas desenvolvidos com maestria por Mozart Pereira Soares.

Esta investigação trata da diferença entre as áreas da filosofia, mas essa diferenciação necessita de uma forma plausível e não dogmática em seu proceder. Para encontrar uma forma de diferenciar cada área interna da filosofia, utilizou-se uma comparação inicial com as ciências e se buscou oprocesso argumentativo como um fator principal de diferenciação. Isso se expressa mais diretamente no problema de pesquisa, que visa a investigar se as diferentes áreas filosóficas também possuem diferentes processos deargumentação. A relevância desta investigação se (...) encontra na identificação de determinadas tensões entre as áreas filosóficas. O resultado mostra que os diferentes conteúdos tratados pelas distintas áreas filosóficas exercem um efeito importante sobre os processos argumentativos. Para fins de delimitação, optou-se por duas áreas da filosofia: a lógica e a ética. (shrink)

Este artigo trata sobre a filosofia de Agamben com o enfoque no tema dos processos de subjetivação. A investigação busca responder a seguinte interrogação: o que significam tais processos para Agamben? Compreende-se que Agamben possui uma definição diferente daquela usada por Focault. Assim, a exposição recupera elementos relacionados aos processos de subjetivação. Entre estes elementos estão os dispositivos e o sujeito. Através da análise dos dispositivos, mostra-se que Agamben amplia o conceito, primeiramente elaborado por Focault, inserindo-o na análise do mundo (...) capitalista atual. Através desse aprofundamento a respeito do dispositivo, chega-se a uma definição dos processos de subjetivação. Na segunda parte, os resultados dos processos de subjetivação, isto é, o sujeito capturado frente o seu destino político. Isto permite consolidar a explicação dos processos de subjetivação que foi alcançada. O resultado final mostra que os processos de subjetivação devem ser não ignorados, mas superados para que o sujeito possua uma vida em potência. (shrink)

We consider the informal concept of "computability" or "effective calculability" and two of the formalisms commonly used to define it, "(Turing) computability" and "(general) recursiveness". We consider their origin, exact technical definition, concepts, history, general English meanings, how they became fixed in their present roles, how they were first and are now used, their impact on nonspecialists, how their use will affect the future content of the subject of computability theory, and its connection to other related areas. After a careful (...) historical and conceptual analysis of computability and recursion we make several recommendations in section §7 about preserving the intensional differences between the concepts of "computability" and "recursion." Specifically we recommend that: the term "recursive" should no longer carry the additional meaning of "computable" or "decidable;" functions defined using Turing machines, register machines, or their variants should be called "computable" rather than "recursive;" we should distinguish the intensional difference between Church's Thesis and Turing's Thesis, and use the latter particularly in dealing with mechanistic questions; the name of the subject should be "Computability Theory" or simply Computability rather than "Recursive Function Theory.". (shrink)

According to one reading of the thesis of Humean Supervenience, most famously defended by David Lewis, certain ‘fundamental’ (non-modal) facts entail all there is but do not supervene on less fundamental facts. However, in this paper I prove that it follows from Lewis' possible world semantics for counterfactuals, in particular his Centring condition, that all non-modal facts supervene on counterfactuals. Humeans could respond to this result by either giving up Centring or abandoning the idea that the most fundamental facts do (...) not supervene on less fundamental facts. I argue that either response should in general be acceptable to Humeans: the first since there is nothing particularly Humean about Centring; the latter since Humeans should, independently of the result I present, be sceptical that the supervenience of one fact upon another by itself says anything about ‘fundamentality’. (shrink)

Post in 1944 began studying properties of a computably enumerable set A such as simple, h-simple, and hh-simple, with the intent of finding a property guaranteeing incompleteness of A . From the observations of Post and Myhill , attention focused by the 1950s on properties definable in the inclusion ordering of c.e. subsets of ω, namely E = . In the 1950s and 1960s Tennenbaum, Martin, Yates, Sacks, Lachlan, Shoenfield and others produced a number of elegant results relating ∄-definable properties (...) of A , like maximal, hh-simple, atomless, to the information content of A . Harrington and Soare gave an answer to Post's program for definable properties by producing an ∄-definable property Q which guarantees that A is incomplete and noncomputable, but developed a new Δ 3 0 -automorphism method to prove certain other properties are not ∄-definable. In this paper we introduce new ∄-definable properties relating the ∄-structure of A to deg, which answer some open questions. In contrast to Q we exhibit here an ∄-definable property T which allows such a rapid flow of elements into A that A must be complete even though A may possess many other properties such as being promptly simple. We also present a related property NL which has a slower flow but fast enough to guarantee that A is not low, even though A may possess virtually all other related lowness properties and A may simultaneously be promptly simple. (shrink)

We settle a question in the literature about degrees of models of true arithmetic and upper bounds for the arithmetic sets. We prove that there is a model of true arithmetic whose degree is not a uniform upper bound for the arithmetic sets. The proof involves two forcing constructions.

Com o rápido desenvolvimento da técnica e da tecnologia, o campo educacional tem se mostrado estratégico para transformar a racionalidade humana em racionalidade tecnológica, alterando a consecução dos fins da própria Educação. O objetivo do artigo é analisar as contradições entre o processo de reprodução da vida material nas sociedades capitalistas e a perda de liberdade dos indivíduos inseridos e ajustados aos seus critérios e, da mesma forma, o ajustamento dos estudantes às demandas socialmente úteis ao sistema em decorrência da (...) pretensa extinção dos cursos de Ciências Humanas dos currículos, que tende a afastar a Educação de sua prerrogativa fundamental que é educar para a emancipação. A Teoria Crítica do filósofo frankfurtiano Herbert Marcuse refere que o restabelecimento da razão humana é tarefa para uma Pedagogia Radical como forma de resistência em tempos de mercantilização da Educação. Seus argumentos contribuem para uma análise crítica e contextualizada da Educação brasileira em tempos de contrarreformas. (shrink)

We shall revisit a debate which has been going on at least since pioneering British Indologists like William Jones first encountered the ‘Brahmanic theology’ we now know as Vedānta, namely, the nature of the relationship—if any—between certain forms of ‘western’ and ‘Indian’ idealisms, and how these metaphysical systems have influenced Christian theology. Specifically, we look at the question of possible thematic and conceptual convergences between Neoplatonism and Advaita Vedānta, and argue that significant parallels can be found in their common conception (...) of the Absolute as Being. Rather than attempt a comprehensive overview of the two systems, we take the divine ‘I AM’ revealed to Moses in Exodus 3.14 as the locus classicus of Christian philosophical interpretations of God as Being itself, and explore how four seminal figures read this passage in light of Neoplatonic and Vedāntic influences. We shall see that similarities and divergences in the readings of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart and Henri Le Saux can be understood in terms of how they negotiate the relation between the One and the many, or between ‘being’ and ‘knowing’. The more these figures allow themselves to be influenced by Neoplatonism and Advaita Vedānta, the more we see any clear ontological distinction between creature and Creator start to break down. This verse, therefore, proves to be an unusually fruitful test case for exploring the relation between the underlying Neoplatonic and Vedāntic metaphysics which structure varying Christian interpretations of it. (shrink)

In 1986 the Russian Woprossy Filosofii published three Kant's Autographs. This paper analyses one of them: the Leningrad Reflection "On the internal sense". This Reflection adds knew arguments to these central topics of the Critique of Pure Reason: space and time and their relation to the constitution of subjectivity.

This paper presents a new kind of problem in the ethics of distribution. The problem takes the form of several “calibration dilemmas,” in which intuitively reasonable aversion to small-stakes inequalities requires leading theories of distribution to recommend intuitively unreasonable aversion to large-stakes inequalities. We first lay out a series of such dilemmas for prioritarian theories. We then consider a widely endorsed family of egalitarian views and show that they are subject to even more forceful calibration dilemmas than prioritarian theories. Finally, (...) we show that our results challenge common utilitarian accounts of the badness of inequalities in resources. (shrink)

O presente trabalho trata de analisar a fala do famoso comediante grego Aristófanes, trazida por Platão em seu Simpósio. A fala da personagem aqui é interpretada considerando sua descrição da natureza humana a partir do famoso mito dos andróginos e as implicações do desejo (Eros) para a felicidade humana. Estranhamente, ao término da fala do comediante não há risos, provavelmente, porque o conteúdo falado foi um assunto sério que revelou a dimensão trágica de Eros para a vida humana.

A visão de Hegel como um pensador conservador não é um fenômeno isolado. Para alguns críticos, Hegel é comumente considerado um apologeta do Estado prussiano e um filósofo daquilo que comumente se denomina estatismo. Eric Weil, contudo, não considera essa definição como condizente com uma retratação fiel do filósofo alemão, assemelhando-se mais a uma caricatura. Nesse sentido, Weil defende uma leitura do pensamento político hegeliano que põe em xeque essa visão, fazendo uma crítica da crítica que, tal como Kant é (...) o rigorista moral, ou Platão é o filósofo das Idéias, coloca Hegel como o filósofo do estatismo e para quem o indivíduo é nada e o Estado é tudo. Para determinar até que ponto essa perspectiva possui lastro, Weil advoga em favor de uma análise do pensamento político de Hegel, inquirindo sobre a real dimensão que o Estado possui no seio desse pensamento. É dessa maneira que é possível delimitar até que ponto esse retrato comumente traçado de Hegel corresponde com a realidade. (shrink)

This paper has two aims: to realize a survey and a critique of the models of interaction between the polis and the resident aliens which were formulated by Ancient historians in XIX and XX centuries, and to analyze some indications which could overcome the theoretical insufficiencies of that models.