A combination of spiritual insight and outrageous behavior, wisdom and childishness, joyous high spirits and deep loneliness, Alan Watts (1915-1973) touched the lives of many with his teachings. In this penetrating biography, Furlong reveals how Watts was instrumental in introducing Eastern philosophy and religion to Western minds.

In his influential work, The Concept of Law, H. L. A. Hart levels several criticisms at the traditional natural law principle: lex iniusta non est lex. Although some of his criticisms have received a great deal of careful evaluation, others have not. In this paper I will focus on several ways in which Hart attempts to undermine the value of this principle. I will pay particularly close attention to his claims concerning the unfortunate effects that follow from either scholars’ or (...) ordinary citizens’ acceptance of this principle. It is my aim to show that his criticisms of this principle fail. It must be noted that my end is a modest one. I do not attempt to clear all possible objections to this principle, nor conclusively prove its value, but merely show that one set of arguments against it fails. Although this aim is surely modest, it is, I contend, nonetheless important. Investigating the relationship between morality and legality is undoubtedly one of the central tasks of legal philosophy. Since the time of Plato, natural law theories, although differing on various particulars, have proposed a powerful answer concerning this relationship. It is clear that these theories no longer receive the attention they once did, at least in part because of Hart’s objections. I intend to show that these objections fail to show the inadequacy of the lex iniusta principle. (shrink)

The party registration of tenure‐track faculty at 11 California universities, ranging from small, private, religiously affiliated institutions to large, public, elite schools, shows that the “one‐party campus” conjecture does not extend to all institutions or all departments. At one end of the scale, U.C. Berkeley has an adjusted Democrat:Republican ratio of almost 9:1, while Pepperdine University has a ratio of nearly 1:1. Academic field also makes a tremendous difference, with the humanities averaging a 10:1 D:R ratio and business schools averaging (...) 1.3:1, and with departments ranging from sociology (44:1) to management (1.5:1). Across all departments and institutions, the D:R ratio is 5:1, while in the “soft” liberal‐arts fields, the ratio is higher than 8:1. These findings are generally in line with comparable previous studies. (shrink)

The logicality of language is the hypothesis that the language system has access to a ‘natural’ logic that can identify and filter out as unacceptable expressions that have trivial meanings—that is, that are true/false in all possible worlds or situations in which they are defined. This hypothesis helps explain otherwise puzzling patterns concerning the distribution of various functional terms and phrases. Despite its promise, logicality vastly over-generates unacceptability assignments. Most solutions to this problem rest on specific stipulations about the properties (...) of logical form—roughly, the level of linguistic representation which feeds into the interpretation procedures—and have substantial implications for traditional philosophical disputes about the nature of language. Specifically, contextualism and semantic minimalism, construed as competing hypotheses about the nature and degree of context-sensitivity at the level of logical form, suggest different approaches to the over-generation problem. In this paper, I explore the implications of pairing logicality with various forms of contextualism and semantic minimalism. I argue that to adequately solve the over-generation problem, logicality should be implemented in a constrained contextualist framework. (shrink)

The classification of ageing as a disease is fundamental to developing new pharmacological strategies that can target said phenomenon. The European Medicines Agency does not do this and maintains a questionable perspective based on the traditional naturalistic argument and the value-free ideal. An alternative is proposed which, inspired by consequentialism, is committed to considering ageing as a disease in European regulatory contexts as long as the ethical consequences are desirable. Within a realistic framework, I show that making this decision would (...) have moderate positive effects such as increased knowledge about antiageing pharmacology or potential greater chances of completing vital projects. Furthermore, we will see that the main arguments used by critics to show that the negative effects outweigh the positive ones are not sound. Therefore, I conclude that it would be beneficial for the European Medicines Agency to change its position on ageing. (shrink)

We present a mathematical approach to defeasible reasoning based on arguments. This approach integrates the notion of specificity introduced by Poole and the theory of warrant presented by Pollock. The main contribution of this paper is a precise, well-defined system which exhibits correct behavior when applied to the benchmark examples in the literature. It aims for usability rather than novelty. We prove that an order relation can be introduced among equivalence classes of arguments under the equi-specificity relation. We also prove (...) a theorem that ensures the termination of the process of finding the justified facts. Two more lemmas define a reduced search space for checking specificity. In order to implement the theoretical ideas, the language is restricted to Horn clauses for the evidential context. The language used to represent defeasible rules has been restricted in a similar way. The authors intend this work to unify the various existing approaches to argument-based defeasible reasoning. (shrink)

Seventeen essays make up the body of this anthology. Most of the authors are Latin Americans (although some of them work in other regions), and thus we might say that this volume is, in a very approximate sense, a showcase of recent Latin-American ontology and metaphysics. The remaining authors—Pierre Aubenque, Barry Smith, Lorenzo Peña and James Hamilton—are distinguished teachers who have had important contacts with the Latin-American philosophical community. The articles in this anthology address some of the central questions in (...) ontology and metaphysics: the possibility of a science of being (Aubenque), the different possible approaches to ontology (Hurtado), the recent application of ontology to informatics (Smith), guise theory and its Leibnizian antecedents (Herrera), the reduction of space and time to phenomenological properties (Rodríguez Larreta), the Newtonian ontology of space and time (Benítez and Robles), the relation between truth and the so-called “truth-makers” (Rodríguez Pereyra), the ontological position of the Pyrrhonic skeptic (Junqueira Smith), the limits and difficulties of metaphysical realism (Cabanchik, Pereda), the defense of physicalist or emergentist positions regarding the mental (Pérez), the metaphysical nature of persons (Naishtat), the ontology of cultural entities (Peña), political ontology (Nudler), the relation between ontology and literature (Hamilton), the ontology of art (Tomasini). Some of the works (e.g., those Aubenque and Robles) approach the question from a historical perspective: others examine the most recent philosophical literature on the problems focalized (e.g., those by Pérez and Rodríguez Pereyra), and others offer new approaches (e.g., those of Rodríguez Larreta, Peña or Nudler) to a specific problematic area. (shrink)

KOINONIA/ASETT MINGA/MUTIRÃO DE REVISTAS DE TEOLOGIA LATINO-AMERICANAS Teología de la Liberación y movimiento ecuménico: breve reflexión desde una práctica (Liberation Theology and ecumenical movement: a brief reflection from praxis).

This volume unites established authors and rising young voices in philosophical theology and philosophy of religion to offer the single most wide-ranging examination of theological determinism-in terms of both authors represented and issues investigated-published to date. Fifteen contributors present discussions about theological determinism, the view that God determines everything that occurs in the world. Some authors provide arguments in favor of this position, while others provide considerations against it. Many contributors investigate the relationship between theological determinism and other philosophical issues, (...) theological doctrines, or moral attitudes and practices. This book is essential reading for all those interested in the relationship between theological determinism and philosophical thought. (shrink)

The author addresses two questions concerning hume's philosophy: (1) why is imagination so prominent in hume's thought? and (2) what exactly did hume mean by imagination? (staff).

O artigo – desde uma perspectiva da educação como direito humano universal que reconhece a diversidade – realiza um recorrido panorâmico por uma série de dimensões da educação intercultural no ensino superior do Chile, especialmente universitária, discute criticamente a situação atual da interculturalização na universidade – entendida genericamente – e conclui com algumas perguntas que podem orientar pesquisas ou decisões que levem a que o ensino superior considere os direitos indígenas, permita a expressão de sua cultura, promova a interculturalidade, forme (...) os técnicos e profissionais que requerem o desenvolvimento da sociedade e das comunidades e enriqueça a docência e a ciência com outros paradigmas de conhecimento. Desse modo, que reconheça e valide a interculturalidade e os aportes das culturas indígenas a sua identidade, formação e produção de conhecimento. Trata das comunidades e dos estudantes indígenas em geral, mas aprofunda a situação desde o povo mapuche, embasando-se em projetos de pesquisa e desenvolvimento e em experiências em e desde a Região da Araucanía. A proposta se centra na ideia de que o direito à educação, desde a lei e inconstitucionalidade atual, se centra no sistema escolar formal de ensino básico e médio e não considera a educação superior ou a um sistema de educação continuado como direito universal, no qual poderia se especificar uma condição especial aos estudantes indígenas. Por isso, hoje se luta pela igualdade de oportunidades de inclusão entre indígenas e não indígenas. Palavras-chave: Ensino Superior. Interculturalidade. Cultura mapuche. (shrink)

This paper analyzes an unpublished theory about the origin of global injustices that consider developing countries ethically responsible ontological units. The empirical case studies concern the relationships between multinational companies from developed states and Latin American states. These cases are analyzed based on a qualitative methodology of applied political philosophy and correspond to twelve instances of injustice judged by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights between 1980 and 2014. The article concludes that the distortions in an emerging Ethics of the (...) interdependence of the States, as the acting in bad faith of the governments of developing countries, largely explains the origins of the unfair global distribution of wealth and the economic refugees that it produces. (shrink)

The meaning that expressions take on particular occasions often depends on the context in ways which seem to transcend its direct effect on context-sensitive parameters. ‘Truth-conditional pragmatics’ is the project of trying to model such semantic flexibility within a compositional truth-conditional framework. Most proposals proceed by radically ‘freeing up’ the compositional operations of language. I argue, however, that the resulting theories are too unconstrained, and predict flexibility in cases where it is not observed. These accounts fall into this position because (...) they rarely, if ever, take advantage of the rich information made available by lexical items. I hold, instead, that lexical items encode both extension and non-extension determining information. Under certain conditions, the non-extension determining information of an expression e can enter into the compositional processes that determine the meaning of more complex expressions which contain e. This paper presents and motivates a set of type-driven compositional operations that can access non-extension determining information and introduce bits of it into the meaning of complex expressions. The resulting multidimensional semantics has the tools to deal with key cases of semantic flexibility in appropriately constrained ways, making it a promising framework to pursue the project of truth-conditional pragmatics. (shrink)

The book contributes to the refutation of the separation of philosophy in the 20th century into analytic and continental. It is shown that Edmund Husserl was seriously concerned with issues of so-called analytic philosophy, that there are strict parallelisms between Husserl's treatment of philosophical subjects and those of authors in the analytic tradition, and that Husserl had a strong influence on Rudolf Carnap's 'Aufbau'.

Recent work in formal semantics suggests that the language system includes not only a structure building device, as standardly assumed, but also a natural deductive system which can determine when expressions have trivial truth‐conditions (e.g., are logically true/false) and mark them as unacceptable. This hypothesis, called the ‘logicality of language’, accounts for many acceptability patterns, including systematic restrictions on the distribution of quantifiers. To deal with apparent counter‐examples consisting of acceptable tautologies and contradictions, the logicality of language is often paired (...) with an additional assumption according to which logical forms are radically underspecified: i.e., the language system can see functional terms but is ‘blind’ to open class terms to the extent that different tokens of the same term are treated as if independent. This conception of logical form has profound implications: it suggests an extreme version of the modularity of language, and can only be paired with non‐classical—indeed quite exotic—kinds of deductive systems. The aim of this paper is to show that we can pair the logicality of language with a different and ultimately more traditional account of logical form. This framework accounts for the basic acceptability patterns which motivated the logicality of language, can explain why some tautologies and contradictions are acceptable, and makes better predictions in key cases. As a result, we can pursue versions of the logicality of language in frameworks compatible with the view that the language system is not radically modular vis‐á‐vis its open class terms and employs a deductive system that is basically classical. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDo truth tables—the ordinary sort that we use in teaching and explaining basic propositional logic—require an assumption of consistency for their construction? In this essay we show that truth tables can be built in a consistency-independent paraconsistent setting, without any appeal to classical logic. This is evidence for a more general claim—that when we write down the orthodox semantic clauses for a logic, whatever logic we presuppose in the background will be the logic that appears in the foreground. Rather than (...) any one logic being privileged, then, on this count partisans across the logical spectrum are in relatively similar dialectical positions. (shrink)

Through the study of the behaviour of the protagonists in the work of Franz Kafka, we will try to expose the control mechanisms used by the administrative authorities, providing at the same time with an antidote to uncritical submission. A thorough observation of the configuration of diegetic situations will allow to reverse the situations of forced compliance to proffer, in the voice of the so-called secondary figures, a critical understanding to enable the recovery of individual freedom.

This book focuses the collective attention of psychotherapists, the legal community, social scientists, and ethicists on the moral, legal, and clinical problems of confidentiality in psychotherapeutic practice. By providing timely and important interdisciplinary contributions, the book opens the way to understanding, if not resolving, the conflicting interests and values at stake in the debate on confidentiality.

Theory of health care ethics -- Principles of health care ethics -- The moral status of gametes and embryos : storage and surrogacy -- The ethical challenges of the new reproductive technology -- Ethics and aging in America -- -- Healthcare ethics committees : roles, memberships, structure, and difficulties -- Ethics in the management of health information systems -- Technological advances in health care : blessing or ethics nightmare? -- Ethics and safe patient handling and mobility -- Spirituality and healthcare (...) organizations -- A new era of health care : the ethics of healthcare reform -- Health inequalities and health inequities -- The ethics of epidemics -- Ethics of disasters : planning and response -- Domestic violence : changing theory, changing practice -- Looking toward the future. (shrink)

How are biases encoded in our representations of social categories? Philosophical and empirical discussions of implicit bias overwhelmingly focus on salient or statistical associations between target features and representations of social categories. These are the sorts of associations probed by the Implicit Association Test and various priming tasks. In this paper, we argue that these discussions systematically overlook an alternative way in which biases are encoded, that is, in the dependency networks that are part of our representations of social categories. (...) Dependency networks encode information about how features in a conceptual representation depend on each other. This information determines the degree of centrality of a feature for a conceptual representation. Importantly, centrally encoded biases systematically disassociate from those encoded in salient-statistical associations. Furthermore, the degree of centrality of a feature determines its cross-contextual stability: in general, the more central a feature is for a concept, the more likely it is to survive into a wide array of cognitive tasks involving that concept. Accordingly, implicit biases that are encoded in the central features of concepts are predicted to be more resilient across different tasks and contexts. As a result, the distinction between centrally encoded and salient-statistical biases has important theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

Na carta 12 de sua correspondência, Spinoza expõe sua con-cepção do infinito atual. Nesse contexto, ele desenvolve certos aspectos de sua ontologia de imanência, assim como o significado que para ele possuem os conceitos de eternidade, duração e tempo. Este texto tor-na-se então central para qualquer estudioso da questão da temporalidade em Spinoza. Nosso autor distancia-se da perspectiva cartesiana que, na mesma questão, expôs —não sem críticas— nos Princípios da Filosofia Cartesiana e nos Pensamentos Metafísicos, ambos publicados em 1663. Neste (...) artigo nos propomos estudar a distinção entre duração e tempo, para sublinhar a perspectiva propriamente spinozista da carta 12, e assim mostrar o significado que para Spinoza esses conceitos possuem no con-texto de uma discussão científica sobre o infinito atual. (shrink)

Recent work in formal semantics suggests that the language system includes not only a structure building device, as standardly assumed, but also a natural deductive system which can determine when expressions have trivial truth-conditions (e.g., are logically true/false) and mark them as unacceptable. This hypothesis, called the `logicality of language', accounts for many acceptability patterns, including systematic restrictions on the distribution of quantifiers. To deal with apparent counter-examples consisting of acceptable tautologies and contradictions, the logicality of language is often paired (...) with an additional assumption according to which logical forms are radically underspecified: i.e., the language system can see functional terms but is `blind' to open class terms to the extent that different tokens of the same term are treated as if independent. This conception of logical form has profound implications: it suggests an extreme version of the modularity of language, and can only be paired with non-classical---indeed quite exotic---kinds of deductive systems. The aim of this paper is to show that we can pair the logicality of language with a different and ultimately more traditional account of logical form. This framework accounts for the basic acceptability patterns which motivated the logicality of language, can explain why some tautologies and contradictions are acceptable, and makes better predictions in key cases. As a result, we can pursue versions of the logicality of language in frameworks compatible with the view that the language system is not radically modular vis-a-vis its open class terms and employs a deductive system that is basically classical. (shrink)

According to Kratzer’s influential account of epistemic must and might, these operators involve quantification over domains of possibilities determined by a modal base and an ordering source. Recently, this account has been challenged by invoking contexts of ‘epistemic tension’: i.e., cases in which an assertion that must\ is conjoined with the possibility that \, and cases in which speakers try to downplay a previous assertion that must\, after finding out that \. Epistemic tensions have been invoked from two directions. Von (...) Fintel and Gillies :351–383, 2010) propose a return to a simpler modal logic-inspired account: must and might still involve universal and existential quantification, but the domains of possibilities are determined solely by realistic modal bases. In contrast, Lassiter :117–163, 2016), following Swanson, proposes a more revisionary account which treats must and might as probabilistic operators. In this paper, we present a series of experiments to obtain reliable data on the degree of acceptability of various contexts of epistemic tension. Our experiments include novel variations that, we argue, are required to make progress in this debate. We show that restricted quantificational accounts à la Kratzer fit the overall pattern of results better than either of their recent competitors. In addition, our results help us identify the key components of restricted quantificational accounts, and on that basis propose some refinements and general constraints that should be satisfied by any account of the modal auxiliaries. (shrink)