Search results for "Piste"
showing 10 items of 1658 documents
Action and Deontology
2015
This chapter is concerned with the deontology of actions. According to the presented approach, actions and not propositions are deontologically loaded. Norms direct actions and define the circumstances in which actions are permitted, prohibited, or mandated. Norms are therefore viewed as deontological rules of conduct. The definitions of permission, prohibition, and obligatoriness of an action are formulated in terms of the relation of transition of an action system. A typology of atomic norms is presented. To each atomic norm a proposition is associated and called the normative proposition corresponding to this norm. A logical system, the basic deontic logic, is defined and an adequate sem…
Knowledge and Mistakes
2015
This chapter is about how we attain knowledge, and how we fail to do so. I argue that a true thought counts as a piece of knowledge if and only if it has the right sort of causal history. I also argue that these so-called cognitive thoughts are the criteria of truth in the sense that they are guaranteed to be true and able to guarantee the truth of that which can be inferred from them. So I argue that there are three kinds of knowledge, namely the information conveyed by our senses, the information contained in our preconceptions and the conclusions that can be inferred from our sense-perceptions and our preconceptions. I then argue that we fail to attain knowledge if we assent to a thought…
Religion, Empathy, and Cooperation: A Case Study in the Promises and Challenges of Modeling and Simulation
2019
The Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) is developing a sophisticated naturalistic account of religion, grounded in empirical research. However, there are limitations to establishing an empirical basis for theories about religion’s role in human evolution. Computer modeling and simulation offers a way to address this experimental constraint. A case study in this approach was conducted on a key theory within CSR that recently has come under serious challenge: the Supernatural Punishment Hypothesis, which posits religion facilitated the shift from small, homogeneous social units to large, complex societies. It has been proposed that incorporating empathy as a proximate mechanism for cooperati…
Models and Phenomena: Bas van Fraassen’s Empiricist Structuralism
2013
Bas van Fraassen’s recent endorsement of empiricist structuralism is based on a particular approach to representation. He sharply distinguishes between what makes a scientific model M a successful representation of its target T from what makes M a representation of T and not of some other different target T’. van Fraassen maintains that embedment (i.e.: a particular sort of isomorphism which relates structures) gives the answer to the first question while the user’s decision to employ model M to represent T accounts for the representational link. After discussing the rationale for this approach, I defend that indexical constraints like those favoured by van Fraassen cannot be the last word …
Piero Sraffa on utility and the 'subjective method' in the 1920s: A tentative appraisal of Sraffa's unpublished manuscripts
2001
The paper reconstructs Sraffa's assessment of utility-based and individualistic explanations of demand in Marshallian economics in the light of some fresh evidence provided by Sraffa's unpublished manuscripts of the 1920s. It is shown that Sraffa criticised the standard Marshallian explanation of individual consumption choices, emphasised the independent measurement requirement in explanation, lacked enthusiasm for the heuristic potentialities of the 'subjective method' in economic theorising and strove for an analysis of the phenomena of interdependence in the sphere of production as well as in the sphere of consumption.
A relevância ética da contemplação estética
2012
Schopenhauer organized his philosophy of the world as will and representationsystematically, dividing the work into four sections. The unity of the essence of the worldarises in different ways, according to the four books of the main work, by means of ournatural volitional and purposive cognition (book 1), the recognition of the “objectity” of thewill, experienced on the own body (book 2), the possibility of ideal cognition, freed fromthe will, in aesthetic contemplation (book 3) up to the understanding (“Durchschauung”)of the principium individuationis: the self-knowledge of the will (book 4). In this article,the theory of aesthetic contemplation is regarded as a philosophy of consciousnes…
Die Wissenschaftsübersetzung als Generator symbolischen Kapitals
2021
ZusammenfassungThis paper investigates the function of translation in the context of scientific communication, examining the correspondence between the Italian universal scientist Lazzaro Spallanzani, his translator Jean Senebier, and the Swiss naturalist Charles Bonnet. The main thesis is that the function of scientific translation goes far beyond the simple communication of scientific content and that it in fact played a complex role in the system of exchange and circulation of symbolic capital within the scientific community in the Early Modern Period. To illustrate the complexity of scientific translation, the paper focusses on Spallanzani’s remarkable adoption of a twofold perspective:…
Introduction: Situatedness and Place
2018
Over the last two or three decades, the spatio-temporal contingency of human life has become an important topic of research in a broad range of different disciplines including the social sciences, the cultural sciences, the cognitive sciences, and philosophy. Significantly, however, this research topic is referred to in quite different ways: While some researchers refer to it in terms of the “situatedness” of human experience and action, others refer to it in terms of “place”, emphasizing the “power of place” and advocating a “topological” or “topographical turn” in the context of a larger “spatial turn”. In this chapter, we will first give a short introduction to place and situatedness as …
How not to Resist the Natural Kind Talk in Biology
2019
Abstract: After the dawn of the traditional, essentialist view of natural kinds in contemporary philosophy (exacerbated in philosophy of biology by “population thinking”), non-essentialist cluster conceptions of natural kinds have been extensively supported and applied to numerous biological categories. However, salient philosophers have put forward two challenging arguments against cluster kind theories. I argue that, in both cases, discontent with a cluster conception of natural kinds is motivated by tacit and previous assumptions that can be challenged. I conclude that the concerns expressed in the objections do not make good reasons to resist natural kinds talk in biology unless one is …
Introduction: Conceptualizing Language Policy, Higher Education and New Nationalism
2020
This chapter outlines higher education language policies as historically and politically layered and contingent. I will first discuss the way in which I understand language both as a proxy for policies and ideologies and as a means for construing those policies and ideologies. My focus is on the layered and intertwined nature of history, politics, language and nation. The subchapter closes with a methodological discussion of “looking beyond” language—i.e. the ways in which we can take our focus from language to the underlying societal structures. I will then present the higher education context and the role of language in higher education. From there, a discussion of the main concepts relat…