What is infinity? It's reading the last line of a book and imagining the rest. No, wait, it's the instruction manual for the machine that operates the sun and the stars. In unexpected observations, captivating images, and even some equations, celebrated Argentinian author-illustrator Pablo Bernasconi, finalist for the 2018 Hans Christian Andersen Award, offers up verses about what infinity could mean to all of us. Winner of the Grand Prize from the Asociación de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil de (...) la Argentina (ALIJA) in 2018, Infinity is a book children and adults alike will find endlessly fascinating. (shrink)

The ?West? is inclined to blame Asian countries, especially China, for its disrespect of human rights without looking at it's own record of human rights violations! This makes a fair dialogue very difficult till improbable. Social work on the international level can't avoid this dialogue if it wants to live up to its internationally consensual documents which all refer to human rights. The thesis of this article is, that it will only succeed, if it clarifies some philosophical and ethical premisses (...) of so-called ?western? and ?oriental/asian? thinking. Thus, the article tries to show that concepts of ?holism?, ?atomism/individualism? and ?systemic thinking? might be helpful for a ?rejonder? and discussion platform for the analysis of different modes of thinking about ethical issues. A systemic approach tries to avoid the problematic and combine the positive aspects of individualistic and holistic approaches. An example for this combination is the ?Asian Human Rights Charter: A People's Charter? of 1998 which doesn't divide the freedom and participatory versus social rights, a divide which is typical ? and problematic ? for the western version. (shrink)

We say that a sentence A is a permissive consequence of a set X of premises whenever, if all the premises of X hold up to some standard, then A holds to some weaker standard. In this paper, we focus on a three-valued version of this notion, which we call strict-to-tolerant consequence, and discuss its fruitfulness toward a unified treatment of the paradoxes of vagueness and self-referential truth. For vagueness, st-consequence supports the principle of tolerance; for truth, it supports the (...) requisite of transparency. Permissive consequence is non-transitive, however, but this feature is argued to be an essential component to the understanding of paradoxical reasoning in cases involving vagueness or self-reference. (shrink)

How should political power and influence be allocated in democratic systems? That is, roughly, the core of the boundary problem in democratic theory. As of late, some authors have begun paying increased attention to the methodological aspects of this dispute. This paper attempts to make a twofold contribution to this ‘methodological turn’. On the one hand, it identifies and analyzes five desiderata of a successful principle of democratic inclusion. Any such principle, I argue, must be grounded in a clearly identifiable (...) set of values, must provide a clear standard of inclusion, must specify the relevant modalities of inclusion, must provide sound bridging principles, and must be extensionally adequate. In the first half of the paper, these desiderata are developed and critically scrutinized. On the other hand, I also extract three lessons from the previous discussion. First, that a unique answer to the boundary problem (i.e. one grounded in one single principle) is unlikely. Second, that a satisfactory answer to the boundary problem need not necessarily appeal, as some have argued, to distinctively democratic values. And third, that intuitions about political exclusion (i.e. those requiring or permitting the exclusion of some individuals) should be treated with special caution. (shrink)

“But surely if it's not irrational, it can’t be OCD!” my friend exclaimed, when I told them about the paper Carolina Flores and Brent Kious provided their excellent comments for. In all fairness, my friend is not working in philosophy, or psychiatry, or in psychology. Still, I take their sentiment to be expressive of a widely held view: if you have a certain mental illness, then you must be irrational. Conversely, rationality guarantees mental health; the sane life is the rational (...) life. -/- In my paper, I attempted to complicate this picture. My main line of thought was that if the sane life is the rational life, we do not have a good conception of rationality yet. For, our best theories of rationality fail to capture what is going wrong in some cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Addressing the criticisms raised by my commentators will allow me to clear up some misunderstandings and sketch avenues for further work. (shrink)

Grounded in a will to adapt to dangers, and espouse both responsibility and resilience, voluntary measures have largely replaced one of the oldest public health strategies, quarantine. The Covid-19 pandemic, however, elicited a broad sweep of tactics from the archive of public health armoury. On a general level, this review essay addresses the common measures rolled out by various authorities against the pandemic - the lock-downs, reopening process, financial support and vaccination. By relating these measures to 1) the “plague-stricken town”, (...) deployed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe by the Polizeistaat; 2) the “self-regulation strategy” that emerged with liberal ideas at the end of the eighteenth century; and 3) the “minimum security” programmed by neoliberal governmentality in the second half of the twentieth century, it is suggested that tensions between freedom and security during, and after, the pandemic can be better understood. To end, the essay noticed that the pandemic has enforced tensions in the administration and calibration of individual wishes and collective wellbeing, creating a fragile “freedom-security relationship” and new problem space for self-regulation. (shrink)

The bridge between psychiatry and neuroscience is not the only one we have to build; it is also necessary to narrow the gap between neuroscience and philosophy. This does not imply reducing the latter to the former or vice versa, but rather linking each other without eliminating their own characteristics. Taking that into account, Dan Zahavi’s phenomenology of mind can make a great contribution by presenting itself like a different option within philosophy of mind, which up until the last few (...) years was dominated by the analytic tradition. In this chapter I present Zahavi’s proposal in four steps. Firstly, I clarify the term phenomenology. This question is not accidental because nowadays this concept is used by diverse traditions and with different meanings. Secondly, I make the fundamental distinction between first-person-perspective—which corresponds to Phenomenology—and third-person-perspective—compatible with neuroscience. Thirdly, I explain the methodological stages assumed by Zahavi from the Husserlian tradition. These stages enable him to study from the first-person-perspective rigorously: epoché, phenomenological reduction, eidetic variation, and intersubjective verification. Finally, I develop the issue of naturalization of Phenomenology in order to establish a dialogue between science and philosophy. For Zahavi that naturalization does not necessarily imply reductionism, but can be understood as something necessary for a fruitful exchange between those disciplines. (shrink)

Physical and mental training are associated with positive effects on executive functions throughout the lifespan. However, evidence of the benefits of combined physical and mental regimes over a sedentary lifestyle remain sparse. The goal of this study was to investigate potential mechanisms, from a source-resolved event-related-potential perspective, that could explain how practicing long-term physical and mental exercise can benefit neural processing during the execution of an attention switching task. Fifty-three healthy community volunteers who self-reported long-term practice of Tai Chi, meditation (...) + exercise, simple aerobics, or a sedentary lifestyle, aged 47.8 ± 14.6 were included in this analysis. All participants undertook high-density electroencephalography recording during a switch paradigm. Our results indicate that people who practice physical and mental exercise perform better in a task-switching paradigm. Our analysis revealed an additive effect of the combined practice of physical and mental exercise over physical exercise only. In addition, we confirmed the participation of frontal, parietal and cingulate areas as generators of event-related-potential components commonly associated to the performance of switch tasks. Particularly, the N2-like component of the parietal and frontal domains showed significantly greater amplitudes in the exercise and mental training groups compared with aerobics and sedentary groups. Furthermore, we showed better performance associated with greater N2-like amplitudes. Our multivariate analysis revealed that activity type was the most relevant factor to explain the difference between groups, with an important influence of age, and body mass index, and with small effects of educational years, cardiovascular capacity, and sex. These results suggest that chronic combined physical and mental training may confer significant benefits to executive function in normally aging adults, probably through more efficient early attentional processing. Future experimental studies are needed to confirm our results and understand the mechanisms on parieto-frontal networks that contribute to the cognitive improvement associated with practicing combined mental and aerobic exercise, while carefully controlling confounding factors, such as age and body mass index. (shrink)

El artículo tiene como objetivo presentar y valorar críticamente la propuesta de John Rogers Searle sobre la libertad. Para esto, en un primer momento mostraremos que para él la libertad debe entenderse desde la perspectiva de la primera persona, es decir desde la experiencia subjetiva. Desde allí establece que la libertad se expresa en el llamado fenómeno de la brecha, es decir, en el salto que experimentamos entre la causa y el efecto en el proceso de realización de una acción. (...) Este salto se manifiesta en los actos llevados a cabo por razones independientes del deseo, como puede observarse en el altruismo fuerte. Y para Searle, solo un Yo, cuyas características emergen del cerebro, puede asumir estas razones para actuar acorde a ellas. En un segundo momento, dedicado a la valoración crítica de la propuesta de Searle, consideramos la importancia de la perspectiva de primera persona para entender la libertad. Luego mostramos que una noción analógica de causa permite entender mejor el acto libre, como así también evitar el dualismo y el reduccionismo materialista. Esta visión, propia de la tradición aristotélico-tomista y que podríamos denominar de tercera persona, debe complementarse con una reflexión desde la interioridad, como realiza Michele Federico Sciacca, es decir, desde una perspectiva de primera persona. Ambas líneas filosóficas confluyen en la consideración metafísica del hombre. Concluimos luego con una breve reflexión sobre el tema del vínculo interdisciplinar como forma de entender las temáticas antropológicas. (shrink)

The relevance of Martin Heidegger’s thinking to Paul Celan’s poetry is well known. Between Celan and Heidegger proposes that, while the relation between them is undeniable, it is also marked by irreducible discord. Pablo Oyarzun begins with a deconstruction of Celan’s Todtnauberg, written after the poet visited Heidegger in his Schwarzwald cabin. The poem stands as a milestone, not only in the complex relationship between the two men but also in the state of poetry and philosophy in late modernity, (...) in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Discussion then turns to The Meridian, Celan’s acceptance speech for the prestigious Büchner Prize for German language literature. Other issues are insistently addressed—place, art, language, pain, existence, and the Heideggerian notion of dialogue—as Oyarzun revisits several essential poems from Celan’s oeuvre. A rare translation of Oyarzun’s work into English, Between Celan and Heidegger affirms the uniqueness of Celan’s poetry in confrontation both with Heidegger’s discourse on Dichtung (a poetic saying centered in the idea of gathering) and with Western philosophical notions of art, technē, mimesis, poiesis, language, and thinking more broadly. (shrink)

The main purpose of these introductory remarks is to give the reader a sense of Philip Rossi’s philosophical project and its importance. I will then advance an interpretation of what motivates Kant’s commitment to community, and, on its basis, object to Rossi’s views on radical evil –a point which affects how one should conceive the moral vocation of humanity and the role that politics and religion play within it. My reconstruction concludes with a sketch of how the five contributions to (...) this Symposium fit together and deepen our understanding of Rossi’s overall project. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Barrio, Tajer and Rosenblatt establish a correspondence between metainferences holding in the strict-tolerant logic of transparent truth ST+ and inferences holding in the logic of paradox LP+. They argue that LP+ is ST+’s external logic and they question whether ST+’s solution to the semantic paradoxes is fundamentally different from LP+’s. Here we establish that by parity of reasoning, ST+ can be related to LP+’s dual logic K3+. We clarify the distinction between internal and external logic and (...) argue that while ST+’s nonclassicality can be granted, its self-dual character does not tie it to LP+ more closely than to K3+. (shrink)

This article is a critical study of the recently published edition of the young Descartes's texts: Descartes, Étude du bon sens; La recherche de la verité et autres écrits de jeunesse (1616-1631). Edición, traducción, presentación y notas de Vincent Carraud y Giles Olivo, con la colaboración de Corinna Vermeulen, París, PUF, colección Épiméthée, 2013, 453 pp.

Frost's article advocates for universal models of reading and critiques recent models that concentrate in what has been described as “cracking the orthographic code.” Although the challenge to develop models that can account for word recognition beyond Indo-European languages is welcomed, we argue that reading models should also be constrained by general principles of visual processing and object recognition.

Supervaluationism is a well known theory of vagueness. Subvaluationism is a less well known theory of vagueness. But these theories cannot be taken apart, for they are in a relation of duality that can be made precise. This paper provides an introduction to the subvaluationist theory of vagueness in connection to its dual, supervaluationism. A survey on the supervaluationist theory can be found in the Compass paper of Keefe (2008); our presentation of the theory in this paper will be short (...) to get rapidly into the logical issues. This paper is relatively self-contained. A modest background on propositional modal logic is, though not strictly necessary, advisable. The reader might find useful the Compass papers Kracht (2011) and Negri (2011) (though these papers cover issues of more complexity than what is demanded to follow this paper). (shrink)

To what degree can language be acquired from linguistic input alone? This question has vexed scholars for millennia and is still a major focus of debate in the cognitive science of language. The complexity of human language has hampered progress because studies of language–especially those involving computational modeling–have only been able to deal with small fragments of our linguistic skills. We suggest that the most recent generation of Large Language Models (LLMs) might finally provide the computational tools to determine empirically (...) how much of the human language ability can be acquired from linguistic experience. LLMs are sophisticated deep learning architectures trained on vast amounts of natural language data, enabling them to perform an impressive range of linguistic tasks. We argue that, despite their clear semantic and pragmatic limitations, LLMs have already demonstrated that human-like grammatical language can be acquired without the need for a built-in grammar. Thus, while there is still much to learn about how humans acquire and use language, LLMs provide full-fledged computational models for cognitive scientists to empirically evaluate just how far statistical learning might take us in explaining the full complexity of human language. (shrink)

In this chapter we use methods of corpus linguistics to investigate the ways in which mathematicians describe their work as explanatory in their research papers. We analyse use of the words explain/explanation (and various related words and expressions) in a large corpus of texts containing research papers in mathematics and in physical sciences, comparing this with their use in corpora of general, day-to-day English. We find that although mathematicians do use this family of words, such use is considerably less prevalent (...) in mathematics papers than in physics papers or in general English. Furthermore, we find that the proportion with which mathematicians use expressions related to ‘explaining why’ and ‘explaining how’ is significantly different to the equivalent proportion in physics and in general English. We discuss possible accounts for these differences. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate a semantics for first-order logic originally proposed by R. van Rooij to account for the idea that vague predicates are tolerant, that is, for the principle that if x is P, then y should be P whenever y is similar enough to x. The semantics, which makes use of indifference relations to model similarity, rests on the interaction of three notions of truth: the classical notion, and two dual notions simultaneously defined in terms of it, (...) which we call tolerant truth and strict truth. We characterize the space of consequence relations definable in terms of those and discuss the kind of solution this gives to the sorites paradox. We discuss some applications of the framework to the pragmatics and psycholinguistics of vague predicates, in particular regarding judgments about borderline cases. (shrink)

In a previous paper (see ‘Tolerant, Classical, Strict’, henceforth TCS) we investigated a semantic framework to deal with the idea that vague predicates are tolerant, namely that small changes do not affect the applicability of a vague predicate even if large changes do. Our approach there rests on two main ideas. First, given a classical extension of a predicate, we can define a strict and a tolerant extension depending on an indifference relation associated to that predicate. Second, we can use (...) these notions of satisfaction to define mixed consequence relations that capture non-transitive tolerant reasoning. Although we gave some empirical motivation for the use of strict and tolerant extensions, making use of them commits us to the view that sentences of the form ‘ p∨¬p ’ and ‘ p∧¬p ’ are not automatically valid or unsatisfiable, respectively. Some philosophers might take this commitment as a negative outcome of our previous proposal. We think, however, that the general ideas underlying our previous approach to vagueness can be implemented in a variety of ways. This paper explores the possibility of defining mixed notions of consequence in the more classical super/sub-valuationist setting and examines to what extent any of these notions captures non-transitive tolerant reasoning. (shrink)

One way in which we might approach the challenge posed by the Sorites Paradox is considering that Sorites-susceptible predicates have several candidate extensions, or several ways in which these expressions can be made precise. For example, a candidate extension for the predicate ‘is a baby’ is the set of humans of less than two years, but also the set of those less than two years and one second, and of those less than two years and two seconds. In this chapter (...) we present and discuss two theories for vague predicates based on this idea: supervaluationism and subvaluationism. The chapter is structured in three parts. The first presents the super- and subvaluationist theories: their similarities and differences in the semantics, the resulting logics with their most characteristic features. The second reviews the super- and subvaluationist solutions to the Sorites Paradox and provides discussion on several controversies surrounding these theories. The third part introduces proof procedures for s’valuationist logics. (shrink)

Essays exploring the prospects for transnational democracy in a world of increasing globalization.

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 634-645, July 2022.

This paper presents and defends a way to add a transparent truth predicate to classical logic, such that and A are everywhere intersubstitutable, where all T-biconditionals hold, and where truth can be made compositional. A key feature of our framework, called STTT (for Strict-Tolerant Transparent Truth), is that it supports a non-transitive relation of consequence. At the same time, it can be seen that the only failures of transitivity STTT allows for arise in paradoxical cases.

This anthology provides a history of the systemization and canonization of existentialism, a quintessentially antisystemic mode of thought. Situating existentialism within the history of ideas, it features new readings on the most influential works in the existential canon, exploring their formative contexts and the cultural dialogues of which they were a part. Emphasizing the multidisciplinary and global nature of existential arguments, the chosen texts relate to philosophy, religion, literature, theater, and culture and reflect European, Russian, Latin American, African, and American (...) strains of thought. Readings are grouped into three thematic categories: national contexts, existentialism and religion, and transcultural migrations that explore the reception of existentialism. The volume explains how literary giants such as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were incorporated into the existentialist fold and how inclusion into the canon recast the work of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, and it describes the roles played by Jaspers and Heidegger in Germany and the Paris School of existentialism in France. Essays address not only frequently assigned works but also underappreciated discoveries, underscoring their vital relevance to contemporary critical debate. Designed to speak to a new generation's concerns, the collection deploys a diverse range of voices to interrogate the fundamental questions of the human condition. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the claim that supervaluationist consequence is not classical for a language including an operator for definiteness. Although there is some sense in which this claim is uncontroversial, there is a sense in which the claim must be qualified. In particular I defend Keefe's position according to which supervaluationism is classical except when the inference from phi to Dphi is involved. The paper provides a precise content to this claim showing that we might provide complete (and (...) sound) systems of deduction for supervaluationist consequence in which proofs are completely classical with the exception of a single last step (involving the above mentioned inference). (shrink)

Substructural approaches to paradoxes have attracted much attention from the philosophical community in the last decade. In this paper we focus on two substructural logics, named ST and TS, along with two structural cousins, LP and K3. It is well known that LP and K3 are duals in the sense that an inference is valid in one logic just in case the contrapositive is valid in the other logic. As a consequence of this duality, theories based on either logic are (...) tightly connected since many of the arguments for and objections against one theory reappear in the other theory in dual form. The target of the paper is making explicit in exactly what way, if any, ST and TS are dual to one another. The connection will allow us to gain a more fine-grained understanding of these logics and of the theories based on them. In particular, we will obtain new insights on two questions concerning ST which are being intensively discussed in the current literature: whether ST preserves classical logic and whether it is LP in sheep’s clothing. Explaining in what way ST and TS are duals requires comparing these logics at a metainferential level. We provide to this end a uniform proof theory to decide on valid metainferences for each of the four logics. This proof procedure allows us to show in a very simple way how different properties of inferences (unsatisfiability, supersatisfiability and antivalidity) that behave in very different ways for each logic can be captured in terms of the validity of a metainference. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793) is a formidably difficult book, which since its very inception was ripe for controversy. Part of the difficulty in understanding Kant’s text is thematic: in the idea of God and the questions surrounding faith in God’s existence, all interests of reason seem to converge –metaphysics, epistemology, morality, politics, the purposiveness of nature, and the destiny of the human species all unite in Kant’s view of religion and give it a distinctive (...) polyphonic tone. Part of the difficulty is ideological: Kant’s treatment of religious matters—relying on the assumption that a rational a priori core (identical to the principles of his morality) underlies and shapes all historical revelations—distances itself from both dogmatism and atheism. Those who accept religious orthodoxy, no less than those who are committed to a purely secular view of human affairs, are doomed to be displeased with the ambiguities of Kant’s approach, which preserves religion but subverts the meaning of this term so drastically as to make it unrecognizable in its traditional understanding. James DiCenso’s Commentary, “the first complete English language commentary on the work” (according to the dust-jacket), is thus a daring philosophical undertaking: it required not only comprehensive knowledge of Kant’s corpus but also the intellectual versatility to appreciate Kant’s innovative view. (shrink)

En su ensayo de 1784, “Acerca de la pregunta: ¿Qué significa ilustrar?”, Moses Mendelssohn utiliza el término “felicidad nacional” (Nationalglükseligkeit) con un claro sentido negativo. Sin embargo, durante el propio curso de la obra reflexiva de Mendelssohn, la noción de felicidad juega un rol positivo y es bien ponderada en consonancia con muchas otras perspectivas filosóficas de la Ilustración. Este ensayo pretende acercar algunas ideas acerca de los matices que adquiere la idea de felicidad en la obra de Mendelssohn.

This is a collective work of philosophy of science on a topic, even though it could already be considered a classic, of great academic actuality in the field: change and incommensurability in science. The contributors are researchers from Spain, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.

La lectio divina es un ejercicio ascético y espiritual usado por la comunicad cristiana en las asambleas litúrgicas. Desde los Padres del Desierto su práctica nunca se ha extinguido como ejercicio espiritual. Ahora parece haber vuelto con fuerza como ejercicio de lectura de la Palabra de Dios. La primera parte del artículo recrea los datos históricos fundamentales, la segunda explica su validez para los cristianos y las comunidades de nuestro tiempo.

Offering the most comprehensive book-length study to-date of reparation programs, this handbook contains an innovative blend of case-study analysis, thematic papers, and national legislation documents from leading scholars and practitioners. This landmark work will make a genuine contribution to the theory and practice of reparations.

Es muy defendible afirmar que el volumen dedicado a Spinoza de la obra Historia de la filosofía moderna de Kuno Fischer es la mediación más importante –si bien no la única– para comprender la relación Spinoza-Nietzsche. A partir de la lectura de esta obra en 1881, Nietzsche reconoce a Spinoza como precursor e identifica una tendencia en común entre ambos: «hacer del conocimiento el afecto más potente». Los principales objetivos de este trabajo son destacar la exposición que Fischer lleva a (...) cabo de algunos de los contenidos de la filosofía spinociana para poder valorar mejor su influencia en Nietzsche y resaltar la importancia que tiene tulo 22 de la edición de 1865, titulado «La voluntad humana», donde se interpreta la voluntad como deseo consciente, lo que tendrá sus consecuencias en la recepción de Nietzsche de la filosofía spinociana, además de permitir una discusión respecto del rol no siempre atendido de la voluntad en Spinoza. (shrink)

This paper discusses Fara's so-called 'Paradox of Higher-Order Vagueness' concerning supervaluationism. In the paper I argue that supervaluationism is not committed to global validity, as it is largely assumed in the literature, but to a weaker notion of logical consequence I call 'regional validity'. Then I show that the supervaluationist might solve Fara's paradox making use of this weaker notion of logical consequence. The paper is discussed by Delia Fara in the same volume.

At the heart of Sophia Moreau’s theory of wrongful discrimination is the moral duty to treat others as equals. This article raises some challenges regarding the contours of this duty and suggests some ways to make the theory stronger. In particular, it suggests that we incorporate a cosmopolitan view of the duty’s scope, that we illuminate the features at the basis of individuals’ equal moral status to determine its grounds, and that we identify some considerations about important interests to articulate (...) its contents. The relation between Moreau’s theory and human rights discourse is also briefly examined, and more engagement with the latter is recommended. (shrink)

This volume explores some of the more important of Hans-Georg Gadamer's extensive writings on art and literature. The principal text included is 'The Relevance of the Beautiful', Gadamer's most sustained treatment of philosophical aesthetics. The eleven other essays focus particularly on the challenge issued by modern painting and literature to our customary ideas of art, and in turn revitalize our understanding of it. Gadamer demonstrates the continuing importance of such concepts as imitation, truth, symbol, and play for our appreciation of (...) contemporary art, and thereby establishes its continuity with the Western tradition. The essays here are not technical and are readily accessible to the beginning student and the general reader. The collection as a whole serves to illustrate the practice of hermeneutics and to introduce Gadamer's thought. Robert Bernasconi provides an introduction clarifying the central aims of the essays and their relations to Gadamer's major work, Truth and Method, and to the philosophy of art since Kant. A bibliography of Gadamer's writings available in English is also included. (shrink)