Hilan Bensusan

O seguinte ensaio escrito em texto corrido é uma breve apresentação da Filosofia do Amor no Cristianismo e na Antiguidade Clássica. Partimos do pressuposto que a palavra ‘filosofia’ tem uma dívida não apenas etimológica, mas conceitual com as definições de Amor, de forma que se faz pertinente uma investigação mais detida sobre o assunto. Começamos então com a interpretação cristã de C.S. Lewis sobre a Afeição, Amizade, Eros e Caridade para em seguida introduzir a visão pagã greco-romana. Concluímos com a indagação sobre o amor ser outra coisa que uma definição estanque ou indeterminação abstrata.

This work explores the impact of negative X-Phi in the philosophical practice of relying on intuitions. After analyzing how intuitions work, their different types and how they orient thought, I argue that there are several interesting ways for philosophy to deal with the abundance of intuitions that sometimes are in conflict. The emerging image is one where philosophy responds directly or indirectly to truth and doesn't have in intuitions its sole evidential basis.Resumo: O texto explora o impacto da filosofia experimental negativa na prática filosófica de se balizar em intuições. Após uma análise de como funcionam as intuições, dos seus diferentes tipos e de como elas orientam o pensamento, argumento que há modos interessantes da filosofia conviver com a abundância de intuições, muitas vezes contrastantes e em conflito. A imagem que emerge é que a filosofia não tem nas intuições sua única base de evidência e que ela responde, antes, direta ou indiretamente à verdade de suas teses.

Neste texto examino algumas consequências da afirmação de Porchat de que o fenômeno no neopirronismo não precisa ser precisamente definido. Ao deixar o fenômeno variar ao sabor das circunstâncias, a abordagem de Porchat então parece deixar um dos elementos da dupla articulação que forma a epokhé neopirronista — a aceitação do fenômeno sem que ele comande crenças e que forma um par com a suspensão do juízo acerca do que não é fenômeno — imerso em imprecisões e, com isso, a posição neopirronista vulnerável. Argumento que esta vulnerabilidade é uma de suas virtudes pois apresenta um ceticismo situado, dependente de circunstâncias variáveis e que combate sistematicamente a ideia de que uma tese que imunize a variabilidade do fenômeno pode ser concebida e eventualmente formulada. Para tanto detenho-me na ideia de que o fenômeno é antes de tudo uma manifestação circunstanciada das coisas e é precisamente a ele, em um irremediável torvelinho, que o neopirronismo é enfaticamente leal.

This paper sketches a metaphysical view according to which the furniture of the universe is made of indexicals. The view draws from work in the philosophy of language and thought concerning demonstratives, proper names and other deictic operations. It also draws on Levinas‘ conception of the Other as beyond any substantive description. Indexicalism, as I call it, is compared with object-oriented views such as Harman‘s and Garcia‘s. Indexicalism lapses into paradox concerning totality and proves to be self-destructive. It is defended, however, as a paradoxico-metaphysics.

In this paper we advocate the thesis that qualia are tropes (or qualitons), and not (universal) properties. The main advantage of the thesis is that we can accept both the Wittgensteinian and Sellarsian assault on the given and the claim that only subjective and private states can do justice to the qualitative character of experience. We hint that if we take qualia to be tropes, we dissolve the problem of inverted qualia. We develop an account of sensory concept acquisition that takes the presence of qualia as an enabling condition for learning. We argue that qualia taken to be qualitons are part of our mechanism of sensory concept acquisition

This presentation has been performed in the conference “Performance Philosophy,” University of Surrey, Guilford in 2013. In the original, parts that are here in bold have been struck out by the author but unfortunately this website does not support strikethrough characters. We are sorry for the inconvenience. Tic. Right now. Tac. Something irrupts. At this moment. Something takes place. Something occupies the place. Something takes over the place. The place where things happen. The land of - Philosophie – Nouvel article

It is common to criticize the idea of objectivity by claiming that we cannot make sense of any cognitive contact with the world that is not constituted by the very materials of our thinking, and to conclude that the idea must be abandoned and that the world is ‘well lost’. We resist this conclusion and argue for a notion of objectivity that places its source within the domain of thoughts by proposing a conception of facts, akin to McDowell’s, as thinkable while independent of any act of thinking. However, we do so without any empiricist commitment.

McDowell’s minimal empiricism holds that experience, understood as providing conceptually articulated contents, plays a role in the justification of our beliefs. We question this idea by contrasting the role of perceptual experience in moral and non-moral judgments and conclude that experience per se is irrelevant in the former case and should also be so in the latter one: only with the help of adequate beliefs experience can provide a connection with the world. We conclude with some remarks concerning the importance of experience.

In this paper I consider two related threats to the idea that our beliefs compose a genuine worldview the global skeptic challenge to the clam that our beliefs are somehow grounded and the suspicion that our beliefs have no relation to the world whatsoever I consider these two threats from the point of view of our activity of doubting m order to establish what follows from our capacity to doubt any claim although not at once I argue that the two threats can be dispelled if we attend to a careful consideration of what is involved in doubting Once these threats are dismissed we find ourselves in a Position that enables us to critique both a naturalist conception of our worldviews and the conception of reasons that has been recommended by Brandom.

Richard Moran has argued, convincingly, in favour of the idea that there must be more than one path to access our own mental contents. The existence of those routes, one first-personal —through avowal— the other third-personal —no different to the one used to ascribe mental states to other people and to interpret their actions— is intimately connected to our capacity to respond to norms. Moran’s account allows for conflicts between first personal and third personal authorities over my own beliefs; this enable some instances of Moore-paradoxical cases to be meaningful. In this paper we reflect on the consequences of this view for the acquisition of beliefs, and argue that, as in the moral case, excessive concentration on a third-personal understanding of thought undermines the very idea of being directed to the world and of being capable to fully own our own beliefs. We suggest that maybe too much attention to epistemic virtues or to justification is misdirected and could produce beliefs that are themselves not first-personal enough.

O trabalho considera as relações entre a escrita e o reconhecimento. Os esforços de Derrida começaram a mostrar que a distinção entre a oralidade e a escrita é filosoficamente importante – e que muitos problemas filosóficos são problemas da escrita. A partir dessa perspectiva, considero a distinção entre conotação e denotação e a ideia – abraçada por Mill e, mais recentemente, por teorias da denotação inspiradas em Kripke – de que a denotação prescinde, em grande medida, de conotação. A diferença entre conotação e denotação é então associada à diferença entre a oralidade e a escrita. Nesse contexto, o tema do reconhecimento aparece. O reconhecimento, tal como identificado em uma tradição kantiana, também tem nuances relativas à escrita e à oralidade e estas nuances são exploradas. As queixas de Lévinas com respeito ao reconhecimento são então exploradas e analisadas desde um ponto de vista gramatológico (isto é, um ponto de vista que dá atenção à escrita). O trabalho termina com algumas considerações gerais sobre o reconhecimento, a escrita e a

Transparency is commonly held to be a property of one’s beliefs: it is enough for me to examine an issue to establish my beliefs about it. Recent challenges to first-person authority over the content of one’s beliefs potentially undermine transparency. We start considering some consequences in terms of variations of Moore’s paradox. Then we study cases where, in the process of acquiring and managing beliefs, one pays excessive attention to how reliable, empirically adequate, coherent, or widely accepted they are from a third-personal point of view. We show that beliefs formed in a way that is insufficiently first-personal may not be transparently accessible to those holding them.

Schaffer (2010) argues that the internal relatedness of all things, no matter how it is conceived, entails priority monism. He claims that a sufficiently pervasive internal relation among objects implies the priority of the whole, understood as a concrete object. This paper shows that at least in the case of an internal relatedness of all things conceived in terms of physical intentionality - one way to understand dispositions - priority monism not only doesn't follow but also is precluded. We conclude that the internal relatedness of all things is compatible with several different ontologies (including varieties of pluralism) but entails nothing concerning dependence between concrete objects.

A imagem de que restrições do mundo às nossas crenças e enunciados não são internas ao pensamento parece motivar a separação entre verdades de razão e verdades de fato. Esta separação parece ser crucial para entendermos argumentos em favor de certas versões de externismo. Neste texto, depois de considerar como pode ser feita a separação entre verdades de fato e verdades de razão, apresento uma distinção entre duas formas de externismo e defendo uma delas. Termino recomendando uma específica abordagem, holista e externalista, da relação entre nossos pensamentos e o mundo

Richard Moran has argued, convincingly, in favour of the idea that there must be more than one path to access our own mental contents. The existence of those routes, one first-personal —through avowal— the other third-personal —no different to the one used to ascribe mental states to other people and to interpret their actions— is intimately connected to our capacity to respond to norms. Moran’s account allows for conflicts between first personal and third personal authorities over my own beliefs; this enable some instances of Moore-paradoxical cases to be meaningful. In this paper we reflect on the consequences of this view for the acquisition of beliefs, and argue that, as in the moral case, excessive concentration on a third-personal understanding of thought undermines the very idea of being directed to the world and of being capable to fully own our own beliefs. We suggest that maybe too much attention to epistemic virtues or to justification is misdirected and could produce beliefs that are themselves not first-personal enough