•  2693
    Moral Right to Healthcare and COVID-19 Challenges
    Asia-Pacific Social Science Review 22 (1): 78-91. 2022.
    One fundamental healthcare issue brought to the fore by the current COVID-19 pandemic concerns the scope and nature of the right to healthcare. Given our increasing need for the usually limited healthcare resources, to what extent can we demand provision of these resources as a matter of right? One philosophical way of handling this issue is to clarify the nature of this right. Using the challenges of COVID-19 in the Philippines as the context of analysis, we argue for the view that regards the…Read more
  •  813
    Wittgenstein's Objects and the Theory of Names in the Tractatus
    Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy (2): 29-43. 2021.
    The supposition that Wittgenstein's Tractatus advances a certain metaphysics has given rise to a controversy over the ontological status of his Tractarian objects. It has been debated, for instance, whether these objects consist only of particulars or of both particulars and universals; whether they are physical, phenomenal, or phenomenological entities; and whether they correspond to Russell's objects of acquaintance or Kant's phenomena and substance. In this essay, I endorse Ishiguro's view th…Read more
  •  175
    A Review of Dreyfus on Heidegger's Critique of Husserl's Intentionality
    Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy (Philippine e-journal) 38 (1): 84-104. 2009.
    This essay primarily disputes Dreyfus’s account of Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s theory of intentionality. Specifically, it raises objections to the three central claims of such an account; namely: (1) that Searle’s theory of intentional action can be used as a stand-in for Husserl’s; (2) that Heidegger rejects the primordiality of the intentionality of consciousness; and (3) that Heidegger distinguishes between conscious and unconscious types of intentional actions and he privileges the lat…Read more
  •  359
    Turing and Computationalism
    Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy (Philippine e-journal) 15 (1): 50-62. 2014.
    Due to his significant role in the development of computer technology and the discipline of artificial intelligence, Alan Turing has supposedly subscribed to the theory of mind that has been greatly inspired by the power of the said technology which has eventually become the dominant framework for current researches in artificial intelligence and cognitive science, namely, computationalism or the computational theory of mind. In this essay, I challenge this supposition. In particular, I will try…Read more
  •  16124
    Husserl's Theory of Intentionality
    Philosophia 34 (1): 24-49. 2006.
    This essay is a critical examination of how Edmund Husserl, in his appropriation of Franz Brentano’s concept of intentionality into his phenomenology, deals with the very issues that shaped Brentano’s theory of intentionality. These issues concern the proper criterion for distinguishing mental from physical phenomena and the right explanation for the independence of the intentionality of mental phenomena from the existence or non-existence of their objects. Husserl disagrees with Brentano’s view…Read more
  •  236
    Critical in the computationalist account of the mind is the phenomenon called computational or computer simulation of human thinking, which is used to establish the theses that human thinking is a computational process and that computing machines are thinking systems. Accordingly, if human thinking can be simulated computationally then human thinking is a computational process; and if human thinking is a computational process then its computational simulation is itself a thinking process. This p…Read more
  •  349
    Transcendence and the Elusive Science of the Mind
    Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture 13 (1-3). 2009.
    This essay shows the presence of transcendence in the on-going attempt to come up with a purely scientific account of the workings of the human mind. At the center of the developmental stages of this attempt is the computational theory of mind, which regards the human mind as some kind of computer. With Wittgenstein’s analysis of the limits of linguistic representation in the Tractatus as a framework, it is argued that the various difficulties encountered by this attempt are primarily due to the…Read more
  •  550
    This paper primarily disputes Dreyfus’s account of Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s theory of intentionality. Specifically, it raises objections to the three central claims of such an account; namely: that Searle’s theory of intentional action can be used as a stand-in for Husserl’s; that Heidegger rejects the primordiality of the intentionality of consciousness; and that Heidegger distinguishes between conscious and unconscious types of intentional actions and he privileges the latter over the…Read more
  •  822
    The Phenomenal Concept Strategy and a Master Argument
    Kemanusiaan 22 (1): 53-74. 2015.
    The phenomenal concept strategy (PCS) is widely regarded as the most promising physicalist defence against the so-called epistemic arguments—the anti-physicalist arguments that establish an ontological gap between physical and phenomenal facts on the basis of the occurrence of epistemic gaps in our descriptions of these facts. The PCS tries to undercut the force of the epistemic arguments by attributing the occurrence of the epistemic gaps to the special character of phenomenal concepts—the conc…Read more
  •  344
    John Searle and Roger Penrose are two staunch critics of computationalism who nonetheIess believe that with the right framework the mind can be naturalized. while they may be successful in showing the shortcomings of computationalism, I argue that their alternative noncomputational frameworks equally fail to carry out the project to naturalize the mind. The main reason is their failure to resolve some fundamental incompatibilities between mind and science. Searle tries to resolve the incompatibi…Read more
  • Ethics of Business Ads Directed at Children
    Philosophia 41 (1). 2013.
    This essay shows why children advertising or business ads directed at children cannot be justified on moral grounds. It is argued that while the persuasive intent of business ads in general does not always lead to the manipulation of consumers, children’s yet undeveloped or general lack of the capacity to make autonomous, rational, or free and informed buying decisions renders business ads directed at them necessarily manipulative. Accordingly, it is when ads are manipulative that they are uneth…Read more
  • The Place of Ethics in Business
    Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy (Philippine e-journal) 36 (1). 2007.
    Business is one of the most pervasive elements of society, whose effects on our lives are extensive. As such, business decisions and behaviors need to be guided not only by economic and legal considerations but also by ethical ones. But because of some mistaken views, the place of ethics in business has remained vague and dubious; and this serves as a rationalization for regarding unethical practices in business as mere strategies for a successful business endeavor. This essay aims to establish …Read more
  •  41
    Corporations and the Cause of Environmental Protection
    Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 12 (1): 11-15. 2002.
    This essay deals with the following issues: (1) whether corporations can have moral responsibilities; (2) whether, granting that corporations can have moral responsibilities, nature can be an object of these responsibilities; and (3) what moral theory can appropriately justify why corporations ought to contribute to the cause of environmental protection. It is here argued that while it can be shown that corporations can have moral responsibilities, such responsibilities are limited towards human…Read more