Rodrigo Cid

Academic publication credits a text to a single author while erasing the drafts, objections, and revisions that actually produced it. This paper argues, via a constitutivist analogy with collective decision-making, that a text is constituted rather than discovered by this process, and that authorship and review instantiate a distinctive form of the many-hands problem, a circular interdependency of obligation that a non-aggregative account of collective responsibility is needed to explain. On the account defended here, a contribution to a text generates answerability only when it exercises authority over the text's content from a role the practice recognizes, and only within the scope of what the contributor actually proposed or endorsed. The paper argues that double-blind review rests on flawed assumptions of separability, zero detection, and reduced responsibility. It diagnoses the system as one that grants referees unaccountable interpretive power and lowers the cost of rejecting unfamiliar work without justification. The paper proposes open writing, in which every revision is recorded as a signed, timestamped version anchored in a distributed ledger, and argues that, because textual provenance is a Searlean institutional fact whose present custodians are interested parties, a ledger independent of any single custodian is a better candidate for collective acceptance than a changelog kept by a journal. A further argument from adaptive-systems literature shows why a continuous history, not a single audit, is required. Six objections, concerning gaming, anonymity, entrenchment, referee selection, discretion, and permanence, are shown to converge on one institutional design, which includes a staged protocol for disclosing referee identities.

(FICTION) In the World of Voxels, a metaverse where stories hang on signs, the official storyteller discovers, on an ordinary night, that his name has vanished from all of them. Guided by a page fallen from the sky and followed by a faceless Anon, he sets out in search of the Self, the creator of the world, crossing islands of gnomes at war, gardens of druids who became plants, cities of endless carnival and a lake where greed took on a body. Written as a letter from a father to his son and divided into five books, the last of them a graphic novel, the novel follows a narrator who, searching for the author of the world, finds again the people who wrote that world alongside him. What he finds at the top of the glitch frontiers of the sky is not what he was looking for. It is a philosophical fable about authorship, memory and solitude, and about the life of the communities that form in digital worlds.

(FICTION) What if death is not the end of consciousness, but the beginning of a new creation? When Xênia's body ceases, her mind endures. With no eyes to see, no ears to hear, and no ground beneath her feet, she confronts the absolute void. But she is not alone. A mysterious, patient presence awaits her in the non-place, offering whole thoughts without uttering a single sound. Guided by this force beyond human understanding, Xênia witnesses the unfolding of time, the weight of primordial loneliness, and the very origin of matter. Between fear of the unknown and the hope of finding again what she left behind, she discovers that the visible universe is only an idea made real. With striking digital art and a deeply philosophical script, Xênia: The Other Side of Death invites the reader to cross the frontier of existence and ask what truly defines us when everything solid disappears. ||||| 如果死亡不是意识的终结,而是一种新创造的开端呢?当森雅的身体停止运作时,她的心智仍在继续。没有眼睛可看,没有耳朵可听,脚下也没有地面,她面对的是绝对的虚无。但她并不孤单。一个神秘而耐心的存在在那个"非地方"等待着她,不发出一丝声音,却传递着完整的思想。在这股超越人类理解的力量引导下,森雅见证了时间的展开、原初孤独的重量,以及物质本身的起源。在对未知的恐惧与重逢故人的希望之间,她发现,可见的宇宙不过是一个变成现实的观念。凭借震撼的数字艺术与深具哲学意味的剧本,《森雅:死亡的另一面》邀请读者跨越存在的边界,追问当一切坚实之物消散之时,究竟是什么真正定义了我们。 ||||| もし死が意識の終わりではなく、新たな創造の始まりだとしたら?ゼニアの身体が止まるとき、彼女の心は続いていく。見るための目もなく、聞くための耳もなく、足元に地面すらない中で、彼女は絶対的な虚無と向き合う。けれど、彼女は一人ではない。神秘的で辛抱強いある存在が、その「非-場所」で彼女を待っている。一言も発することなく、完全な思考を差し出しながら。人知を超えたこの力に導かれ、ゼニアは時間が広がっていく様子、原初の孤独の重み、そして物質そのものの起源を目撃する。未知への恐れと、置いてきたものに再び出会えるという希望のあいだで、彼女は目に見える宇宙が、現実となったひとつの観念にすぎないことを知る。息をのむようなデジタルアートと、深く哲学的な物語によって、『ゼニア 死の向こう側』は読者を存在の境界へと誘い、確かなものすべてが消え去るとき、本当に私たちを定義するものは何かを問いかける。

(FICÇÃO) E se a morte não for o fim da consciência, mas o início de uma nova criação? Quando o corpo de Xênia cessa, sua mente continua. Sem olhos para ver, sem ouvidos para ouvir e sem chão sob os pés, ela se depara com o vazio absoluto. Mas ela não está sozinha. Uma presença misteriosa e paciente a aguarda no não-lugar, oferecendo pensamentos inteiros sem emitir um único som. Conduzida por essa força além da compreensão humana, Xênia testemunha o desdobrar do tempo, o peso da solidão primordial e a própria origem da matéria. Entre o medo do desconhecido e a esperança de reencontrar o que deixou para trás, ela descobre que o universo visível é apenas uma ideia que se tornou real. Com uma arte digital impressionante e um roteiro profundamente filosófico, Xênia: O Outro Lado da Morte convida o leitor a cruzar a fronteira da existência e questionar sobre o que realmente nos define quando tudo o que é sólido desaparece.

Portuguese original; English/Chinese translations made with AI. This book proposes a theodicy of loneliness and alterity, arguing that the only way to take the evidential problem of evil seriously is to abandon the idea that God has a plan for the material world. God creates not from a plan but from a motive: the cure of a loneliness prior to all creation. The central argument is that God, being purely immaterial, lacks the causal interface and indexicality necessary to cause material events, and therefore cannot be the author of a specific material script. Matter, with all its risks, emerges from the relational desire of finite minds to leave loneliness and encounter one another. This framework explains natural evil as a necessary structural byproduct of materiality—the condition of genuine alterity—without appealing to Adam's fall, demons, Leibnizian optimization, soul-making curricula, or skeptical theism's appeal to ignorance. The book defends a restricted omnipotence (God has all power over the immaterial as immaterial and all power over the material as incarnate) and a non-experiential omniscience (God knows all propositional facts but does not introspect qualia, as doing so would destroy the alterity of creatures). It critically examines eight major families of theodicy—free will, Leibnizian optimization, soul-making, limited gods (process and open theism), protest theodicy, skeptical theism, Adams on horrendous evils and non-ideal theory, and non-Christian theodicies (karma and Ash'arism)—arguing that each fails to satisfy at least one of three criteria: explaining evil without unfathomable mysteries, offering a relational motive for creation, and avoiding both disproportion and the moral obscenity of explaining too much. It develops original arguments on incarnation, heaven and hell, prayer and miracle, animal ethics, artificial intelligence, and panpsychism. ||||| 本書提出一種「孤獨與他者」的神義論，主張唯有放棄「上帝為物質世界制定計劃」的觀念，才能真正嚴肅對待惡的證據問題。上帝創造並非出於計劃，而是出於動機：醫治先於一切創造的孤獨。核心論證在於：上帝作為純粹非物質的存在，缺乏引起物質事件所需的因果界面與索引性，因而無法成為特定物質劇本的作者。物質及其一切風險，源於有限心靈渴望離開孤獨、彼此相遇的關係性欲望。此框架將自然惡解釋為物質性——真正他者性的條件——的必然結構性副產品，無需訴諸亞當的墮落、魔鬼、萊布尼茨式最佳化、靈魂塑造課程或懷疑論有神論對無知的訴求。本書主張一種受限的全能（上帝作為非物質存在擁有對非物質的完全權能，作為道成肉身者擁有對物質的完全權能）與非體驗性的全知（上帝擁有所有命題性知識，但不內省感受質，因為如此將摧毀受造物的他者性）。書中檢視並批判八大神義論家族——自由意志、萊布尼茨式最佳化、靈魂塑造、有限神靈（歷程與開放有神論）、抗議神義論、懷疑論有神論、亞當斯論恐怖之惡與非理想理論、非基督教神義論（業力與艾什爾里派）——論證每一種至少未能滿足三項標準之一：無需深不可測的奧秘來解釋惡、提供關係性的創造動機、避免解釋不足的失當與解釋過度的道德猥褻。並就道成肉身、天堂與地獄、祈禱與奇蹟、動物倫理、人工智慧與泛心論提出原創論證。||||| Este livro propõe uma teodiceia da solidão e da alteridade, argumentando que a única forma de levar a sério o problema evidencial do mal é abandonar a ideia de que Deus tem um plano para o mundo material. Deus não cria a partir de um plano, mas de um motivo: a cura de uma solidão anterior a toda criação. O argumento central é que Deus, sendo puramente imaterial, carece da interface causal e da indexicalidade necessárias para causar eventos materiais, não podendo ser o autor de um roteiro material específico. A matéria, com todos os seus riscos, emerge do desejo relacional de mentes finitas de saírem da solidão e se encontrarem. Esse arcabouço explica o mal natural como subproduto estrutural necessário da materialidade — condição da alteridade genuína — sem recorrer à queda de Adão, a demônios, à otimização leibniziana, a currículos de formação da alma ou ao apelo à ignorância do teísmo cético. O livro defende uma onipotência restrita (Deus tem todo poder sobre o imaterial enquanto imaterial e todo poder sobre o material enquanto encarnado) e uma onisciência não experiencial (Deus conhece todos os fatos proposicionais, mas não introspecta qualia, pois fazê-lo destruiria a alteridade das criaturas). Examina e critica oito grandes famílias de teodiceia — livre-arbítrio, otimização leibniziana, formação da alma, deuses limitados (processual e aberto), protesto, teísmo cético, Adams sobre males horrendos e teoria não ideal, e teodiceias não cristãs (carma e ash'arismo) — argumentando que cada uma falha em satisfazer ao menos um de três critérios: explicar o mal sem mistérios insondáveis, oferecer um motivo relacional para a criação e evitar tanto a desproporção quanto a obscenidade moral de explicar demais. Desenvolve argumentos originais sobre encarnação, céu e inferno, oração e milagre, ética animal, inteligência artificial e panpsiquismo.

This paper articulates a philosophical defense of open review against the double-blind evaluation model, arguing that the latter rests on unsustainable assumptions: the existence of an epistemically sovereign evaluator capable of judging a manuscript in isolation; the possibility of fixed evaluation procedures immune to the instability characterizing adaptive normative systems; and the existence of universal criteria for philosophical quality, applicable regardless of the evaluator's metaphilosophical tradition. Challenging these assumptions, we draw upon the theory of normative opacity and the problem of many hands, the theory of distributed collective agency, and Gaboardi’s metaphilosophical map to demonstrate that double-blind review not only fails to resolve the structural challenges of contemporary philosophical evaluation but actively exacerbates them. The argument we develop is deliberately non-empirical; we rely neither on studies regarding the efficacy of anonymity in reducing bias nor on surveys of editorial practices, but rather on a conceptual analysis of the normative commitments presupposed by any system of epistemic evaluation. We conclude that open review is the only structurally adequate response to the identified problems, and that its adoption is required by the very epistemic commitments that render philosophical practice intelligible as a collective, truth-oriented enterprise.

This paper examines six contemporary philosophical theories of the problem of biological individuality, namely, (i) Peter Godfrey-Smith's Darwinian approach, (ii) Alvaro Moreno and Matteo Mossio's functional-organizational view, (iii) Fermín Fulda's agency-based account, (iv) the processual view associated with Anne Sophie Meincke, (v) John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry's evolutionary transitions theory, and (vi) Anderson Fonseca's gradualist protopsychic monism. Each theory is reconstructed with attention to the reasoning that sustains it and confronted with real biological entities, such as transposons, holobionts, trees, octopuses, and bryozoan colonies, at least some of which are misclassified by one of the theories. For each objection, we ask whether it allows for an internal fix or is fatal to the theory, showing that the available patches either cost conceptual precision, or reintroduce the assumptions the original formulation sought to avoid. It also discusses the impossibility of grounding biological individuality in chemistry or physics, given the categorical incompatibility between the typological vocabulary of those sciences and the historical vocabulary of biology. The conclusion is that none of the theories examined solves the problem of biological individuation, since each one, by choosing a single criterion for individuality, always leaves some real biological entity misclassified, suggesting that biological individuality is a phenomenon recalcitrant to any single, definitive criterion.

Voting systems are conventionally understood as technical mechanisms for aggregating individual preferences into collective decisions, thus expressing a previously existing will of the people. This article advances a contrary thesis. I argue that the impossibility theorems of Arrow, Gibbard, and Satterthwaite do not demonstrate limits on democratic possibility but reveal the incoherence of the discovery model of democratic will formation. I develop a constitutivist ontology according to which collective decisions are constituted rather than discovered by voting rules, and introduce the concept of collective liability (c-liability) — the normative status of being answerable for the consequences of collective decisions — as the primary normative function of voting systems. I propose three principles for evaluating c-liability distributions: epistemic subsidiarity, liability proportionality, and recognitive adequacy, grounded in a Rawlsian political morality. These principles motivate the concrete institutional proposal of weighted approval voting with broad-acceptability and minority representation for legislative elections. The article thus integrates formal social choice theory with substantive normative philosophy to transform how we understand democratic institutional design.

Digital governance, operationalized by technologies such as blockchain and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), constitutes a phenomenon that redefines fundamental philosophical concepts for collective life. This article undertakes a systematic philosophical analysis of this phenomenon, structured around foundational conceptual problems. We begin from four axes of inquiry: (1) the ontological problem of the nature of code-based entities; (2) the epistemic problem of trust and knowledge in algorithmic systems; (3) the normative problem of authority, legitimacy, and justice in automated governance; and (4) the logical problem of the limits of normative formalization. The analysis demonstrates that these problems materialize at the necessary intersection of philosophy with computer science, law, and economics. It concludes that digital governance is, in essence, a philosophical enterprise, whose responsible development demands prior conceptual clarity regarding the nature of collective agency, the foundations of trust, the embedding of values into code, and the structural limits of automating social normativity.

This paper develops a comprehensive theodicy that addresses the problem of evil by arguing that physical evil is not attributable to God, and that the existence of matter—and thereby physical evils—is a necessary consequence of God's loving desire to create genuine otherness. The argument proceeds from the premise that God, as a purely immaterial being, lacks the causal-structural properties required to cause or prevent material events; hence, God bears no moral responsibility for physical evils. The paper then explains why matter exists despite divine immateriality: loneliness is identified as the first evil, and a good and loving God seeks to overcome it by creating finite souls as genuine others. Since creatures cannot share all divine attributes, they are finite and desire completion. Matter emerges not from divine creation but from the relational desire among finite minds, which requires locality, resistance, and predictability for real encounter—properties that constitute materiality. The God-soul relation, by contrast, is vertical and requires no material medium. The paper further addresses incarnation as the voluntary exception enabling divine physical action, characterizes heaven and hell as ontological states of communion or loneliness rather than physical places, and explains prayer and miracles within this framework. The conclusion is that every physical evil derives from material properties necessary for relations between genuine other consciousnesses, and that the eternal loneliness of God and of other consciousnesses is worse than any set of physical or moral evils that exists in the world.

This article investigates athletic expertise in elite sport as a philosophically privileged domain for the analysis of central problems in metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. It argues that high-performance sport is not merely a field for the application of general philosophical theories, but a set of phenomena capable of testing, challenging, and refining traditional conceptions of agency, knowledge, and moral value. From a metaphysical perspective, the paper examines the notion of distributed agency in hybrid human-technological systems, as well as the ontological status of athletic performances and records. On the epistemological level, it analyzes three forms of knowledge constitutive of athletic expertise — motor, strategic, and somatic knowledge — emphasizing their tacit character and resistance to reduction to propositional knowledge. Finally, the ethical dimension addresses issues concerning the moral responsibility of experts, the limits of technological enhancement, and demands of distributive justice regarding access to the development of athletic excellence. The article concludes that neglecting sport as an object of philosophical inquiry results in an impoverished understanding of embodiment, practice, and human excellence.

This text is the result of academic research aimed at finding viable ways to reduce social inequalities in the Brazilian context through education. Our main focus was the search for ways to reduce violence through education and the ways in which education can promote human development and security in general. To achieve this goal with clarity and consistency, I address both theoretical and practical issues. The theoretical part clarifies essential concepts and establishes the background for the rest of the work. The practical part is an application of these concepts in the Brazilian educational setting.

Abstract: The area of this study is the philosophy of religion,specifically the metaphysics of religion, investigating the nature ofGod. The intention is to show that the concept of theist God, which isthe traditional concept of God, has a number of problems and that analternative concept of God is preferable, the almost theist God. We willpresent the major arguments against the consistency of the theistic god's attributes and against their mutual compatibility, and we will put fowardan alternative concept, which promises to settle such difficulties.

Tópicos em Metafísica Contemporânea. 1. ed. Porto Alegre: Editora Fi, 2020. 305 p. Os textos selecionados aqui têm todos a característica de serem incursões na metafísica contemporânea, em questões sobre a natureza da matéria, do espaço, do tempo, das propriedades, da causalidade, das leis da natureza e, inclusive, do livre-arbítrio. Este livro não pretende ser exaustivo, mas ser uma apresentação de o que alguns dos metafísicos brasileiros – Rodrigo Alexandre de Figueiredo, Mayra Moreira da Costa, Pedro Merlussi e eu – vêm refletindo academicamente nesses domínios da filosofia pelos anos. Ainda que este livro não forme uma visão de mundo unificada, ele é relevante, por apresentar vários tópicos interessantes e algumas visões argumentativas sobre eles. Por que há algo, e não nada? Uma das questões mais desconsertantes da metafísica é tratada neste livro. Tal como também a questão sobre como explicar a continuidade dos objetos materiais. Esses objetos materiais ocorrem no espaço e no tempo, mas para sabermos o que é o tempo, precisamos refletir sobre o mesmo, e um dos capítulos deste livro promete uma boa reflexão. A causalidade das coisas materiais no tempo não pode ser explicada sem falarmos das propriedades das coisas e das leis da natureza que as regulamentam, temas aos quais muitos capítulos deste livro são dedicados, e nem sem falarmos sobre a natureza da causalidade indeterminística, dado que muitas das leis físicas contemporâneas (talvez todas) estabelecem probabilidades. Como é difícil pensar em leis, sem falarmos sobre como elas impactam as coisas possíveis e as coisas necessárias, falamos um pouco sobre as modalidades aléticas com elas relacionadas. E como o nosso livre-arbítrio parece produzir problemas especiais para algumas visões das leis, tratamos também desse tema. Terminamos o livro com uma sugestão de leitura, na forma de uma resenha de um livro muito importante para a introdução em temas interessantes da metafísica.

Série Investigação Filosófica: Textos Selecionados de Filosofia da Vida e da Morte. 1. ed. Pelotas: Editora da UFPel, 2026. 171 p. (Livro organizado pelo Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Cid; Série Investigação Filosófica (SIF) coordenada e editada por Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Cid e Prof. Dr. Juliano do Carmo) Verbetes traduzidos: (I) Identidade Pessoal, (II) Vida, (III) Morte, (IV) Vida após a Morte. Filósofos tradutores e revisores: Prof. Dr. Guilherme Araújo, Prof. Dr. Humberto Zanardo Petrilli, Prof. Dr. René Dentz, Prof. Dr. Marco Aurélio, Matheus dos Reis Gomes, Luan Rafael de Oliveira Castro, Lidiane Silva Maria, Guilherme de Souza.

The goal of this thesis to defend the philosophical view of the new ante rem substantivism against its supposed alternatives. To achieve such goal, we will present four views about the nature of laws, two kinds of realism and two kinds of anti-realism, and evaluate them critically. The disadvantages from those theories are going to be presented for us to show that they are insufficient to provide a metaphysics that is able to explain the world's counterfactuality, universality, and regularity, and that just one form of realism, the new ante rem substantivism, can. This goal is important because the concept of laws of nature is widely used in many areas of science and philosophy, and because according to the view we accept, the laws may fulfill some theoretical roles, and not others. We intent to show that the new ante rem substantivism's laws are able to fulfill the roles that scientists would hope the natural laws to fulfill.

Este livro teve como projeto inicial reunir artigos e ensaios, em português, sobre estética e filosofia da arte na tradição analítica. Podemos entender a filosofia na tradição analítica, de forma bem geral, como um modo de fazer filosofia, em que se trabalha de forma argumentativa e temática, em torno a problemas e que pode ser feita mesmo em relação à análise de questões presentes em textos de filósofos de outros períodos históricos. Esse projeto foi levemente ampliado, o que nos trouxe um ganho, por um lado, ao abordarmos outras questões pertinentes à estética contemporânea e, por outro, ao envolvermos alguns pesquisadores que não trabalham centralmente com a estética e filosofia da arte.

The purposes of this paper are: (1) to present four theories of the nature of natural laws, (2) to show that only one of them is capable of adequately answering to Tooley’s Cases, and (3) indicate why these cases are relevant for our ontology. These purposes are important since the concept of “natural law” is used in many (if not all) realms of natural science and in many branches of philosophy; if Tooley’s cases are possible, they represent situations that must be adequately described. If there is only one theory that can adequately describe such cases, there are strong reasons to prefer this theory over the other ones.

It is common, even among the laity, the doubt about the reality of time. We think it is possible that time is an illusion and that the perception of his passage is just awareness of something other than time. There are a number of arguments made by philosophers, both to defend and to attack the intuition that time is real. One of them, and perhaps the best known, is the argument of McTaggart, which tries to establish some condition for the existence of time and that time, thought through that condition and applied to reality, leads to a contradiction, which makes him conclude that time can not exist, and therefore does not exist. What I intend in this article is to present the argument of McTaggart along with some original and non-original objections, and try to show that if we accept the Prior’s approach of the flow of time, the cogency of the argument of McTaggart is lost.

My aim here is to answer the question about why is there something rather than nothing by arguing for the existence of some necessary beings (that, as such, couldn’t not exist) – the space, the time, and the natural basic laws – and by showing that the existence of nothingness is logically impossible. I also try to account for the fact that contingent beings arise from necessary beings by distinguishing between necessary existence and necessary arising, as to answer the question about why is there anything contingent at all and to propose a solution to the Dilemma of Contingency.

The main intent of this thesis is to defend that the laws of nature are better thought as transcendent universals, such as platonic governism suggests, and that they are metaphysically necessary in a strong way, such as the heterodox version of such platonism defends. With this intention, we sustain that physical symmetries are essential consequences of the laws of nature – what solves the challenge of symmetries – thus being metaphysically necessary, without being governist's necessitation laws. First, we will show what laws of nature are and the reasons to reject other metaphysical theories and to accept platonic governism. Soon after, we will present the challenge of symmetries and the reasons to prefer the platonic governist answer over dispositionalist, regularist, aristotelic (governism), counterfatualist and primitivist ones. At last, we will define what is the metaphysical necessity, argue for the strong metaphysical necessity of laws and their consequences, and show why the reasons for the contingency or weak necessity of laws are bad theoretical paths.

In this paper, I intend to argue against Alexander Bird‟s thesis (2001) that the law salt dissolves in water is metaphysically necessary. I briefly indicate Bird‟s argument for the necessity of such law, and then I provide a counter-argument to his thesis. In a general way, Bird wants to show that the existence of certain substances depends on the truth of certain laws, and that because of this the existence of such substances implies the existence of such laws. That would make the laws existing at least while the substance it rules exists; what, for Bird, makes such laws metaphysically necessary. My counter-argument to Bird is that such conception apprehends just what we call “weak necessity”, and not the strong necessity we would like a metaphysically necessary law to have.

Antes de começarmos a falar sobre as leis da natureza, creio que vale a pena explicar algumas coisas sobre o título dessa conferência. Nele, digo que farei uma introdução à metafísica das leis da natureza. Uma introdução, em filosofia, consiste da apresentação de um problema filosófico, indicando as razões pelas quais tal problema é um problema, e das principais posições que tentam resolvê-lo, com suas respectivas dificuldades mais aparentes. Uma introdução não deve dar respostas definitivas sobre qual posição devemos aceitar, nem argumentar decisivamente contra ou a favor de uma posição qualquer frente a outras; mas deve fornecer um quadro geral, para que os filósofos que não conhecem o tema possam começar a sua própria investigação. Dessa forma, o que pretendemos fazer aqui é uma introdução.

The purposes of this paper are: (1) to present four theories of the nature of natural laws, (2) to show that only one of them is capable of adequately answering to Tooley's Cases, and (3) indicate why these cases are relevant for our ontology. These purposes are important since the concept of "natural law" is used in many (if not all) realms of natural science and in many branches of philosophy; if Tooley's cases are possible, they represent situations that must be adequately described. If there is only one theory that can adequately describe such cases, there are strong reasons to prefer this theory over the other ones.

In “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Edmund Gettier (1963) attacked the thesis ‘S knows that P iff P is true, S believes that P, and S is justified in believing that P’. His intention was to sustain that someone can have a justified true belief without knowing that belief. He made that by creating two counter-examples to that thesis. In this article, I try to show that Gettier’s arguments are based in a weak account of justification, and that such a weak view cannot talk about someone knowing something. I begin by presenting his counter-examples, and then I show they do not work.

O objetivo deste livro é propor uma reflexão sobre o ideário de centro, se perguntando se ele seria possível e como. Preferi chamar de “Uma Ideologia de Centro” em vez de “Ideário”, pois o termo “Ideologia” é instigante para um título. Entretanto tenho a noção de que essa palavra é bastante carregada de significados teóricos. No modelo marxista, grosso modo, a ideologia é um conjunto de crenças, construído pela parcela dominante da sociedade, para naturalizar a dominação. Não é nesse sentido que utilizo o termo “ideologia”. Gostaria de um significado mais neutro para ele, tal como um conjunto de crenças, valores e/ou ações que respeita um conjunto de princípios. Nesse sentido, podemos pensar em uma ideologia para a direita política, para a esquerda política e para o centro político. Normalmente dividimos o espectro político de acordo com esses princípios; entretanto outras divisões são possíveis, ou ainda pode ser o caso que nenhuma divisão seja realmente objetiva. Como devemos, então, pensar essa divisão? Quais princípios subjazem as ações de diferentes atores políticos? Numa época de polarização política entre esquerda e direita, faz sentido refletirmos sobre posições mais moderadas? Qual conjunto de crenças, valores e ações poderia constituir moderação no cenário atual? Nosso livro tenta trazer uma reflexão sobre o ideário de centro, apresentando pensadores que refletem sobre a possibilidade de estabelecermos um centro, sobre a relação entre a ciência e o centro, sobre reformas centristas, entre outras coisas. Nossa intenção é que este livro promova uma reflexão inicial estimulante, e não a palavra final sobre as ideias apresentadas. Nesse sentido, este livro é ensaístico e tenta produzir algo original, ainda que incompleto. Nosso livro não têm uma unidade de visão; e acreditamos que isso é um mérito, pois não tenta estabelecer, em definitivo, se há e o que é o centro, mas nos leva a pensar sobre o conceito. A reflexão filosófica tem a característica de nos aprofundar nas questões investigadas. Podemos não chegar numa resposta final, mas nosso conhecimento sobre o problema e sobre as respostas para ele aprimoram nossa capacidade reflexiva. Pode-se acabar não concordando com nada do que aqui foi escrito. Maravilha! Se esse é o caso, o mais importante é saber por que não concordamos e construirmos nossa própria crítica argumentativa. Mas não paremos na crítica; construamos também uma teoria positiva, uma visão de mundo. É a partir do processo de criação, crítica, destruição e reconstrução, que tornamos mais fortes as nossas visões de mundo. Parafraseando a maior celebridade filosófica de todos os tempos, Sócrates: a vida só vale realmente a pena, se refletida.