Palestra

Language and Liberation: How Can Changing our Language Change the World?

A Lógica como disciplina filosófica tem ambições tanto teóricas quanto práticas: possui objetos de estudo sobre os quais produz teorias, e ao mesmo tempo se apresenta como uma metodologia. Como teoria, não há consenso sobre o que exatamente está sendo descrito; como metodologia, não há consenso sobre qual seu escopo normativo. O presente minicurso retoma as origens dialógicas da lógica para tentar reformular discussões em epistemologia da lógica para além dessa dicotomia do descritivo versus normativo. Busca-se explorar, historicamente, questões acerca de quem, do como e do porquê em torno da prática da lógica, para enfim discutir o papel do ensino de lógica no Brasil no século XXI.

Comunicação

For Old Questions, New and Better Answers: From Conceptual Engineering to Erotetic Amelioration

In this paper, I present a position that I call erotetic amelioration, according to which we must evaluate and, eventually, improve our answers to questions of the form “What is x?”. Such a position is offered as an alternative to the idea—sometimes called conceptual engineering—according to which we should evaluate and, eventually, seek to improve our concepts.

Comunicação

Emphasis on mental states idealizes the debate about moral responsibility

The asymmetry in moral responsibility attribution is a problem generated by the idealization of the moral responsibility debate. To de-idealize the debate, it is important to emphasize the circumstances of the action, which requires moving away from the emphasis commonly given to the agent’s mental states in the literature. This change of focus makes room for the circumstances expressed in the description of the action, and it makes it possible to address the complexity of cases in which the action depends on social structures. Typically, philosophical discussions about actions are centered on the details of the agent’s mental states, even when they involve social contexts and structures. On the other hand, Anscombe’s investigation into intentional actions offers an approach that moves away from the paradigm focused on the agent’s mental states by treating intentional action as a description that fits into a teleological order, and imposes demands of coherence and intelligibility on the description of the action. Satisfying the coherence requirement depends on the intelligibility of the description and how it fits into a teleological order, therefore the description of the action must be in accordance with the circumstances of human life, its institutions, conventions, and practices. It would make no sense, for example, if the agent rejected the description of the action “S signed his divorce” stating that he did not do that, he only signed a paper. Suppose that S is a healthy adult, who grew up in our society, and who works as a lawyer. It would be very strange for him to describe his action as “just signing a paper”, while rejecting “getting divorced” as a description of the action. It must be accepted that, given the circumstances in which the paper was signed, in a notary’s office, after his spouse filed for divorce, and that it was written on the paper that the parties are divorced, the agent must accept that he signed the paper to get divorced. Getting divorced is, after all, the purpose of the action. This approach has repercussions for moral responsibility and makes it possible to hold responsible agents who, according to the mental states approach, could evade moral responsibility. Consider the case of the factory owner who pays too little for high-risk jobs, but who considers that he is only “giving opportunities to anyone who wants to work.” Since the description of the action fits into an order that aims to extract maximum profit with minimum financial expense, no matter the worker’s conditions, the description “exploit” also fits into the order, and the agent can be held responsible for his intentional action.

Comunicação

Intuition vs. Understanding

Abstract: Proponents of intuition-based accounts appeal to a special faculty of rational intuition to explain the a priori: a priori knowledge is possible because we have a faculty of rational intuition that, somehow, enables us to discover truths about the world without looking at it. Proponents of analyticity-based accounts appeal to the notion of analyticity to explain the a priori: a priori knowledge is possible because it is mere knowledge of analytic truths—i.e., truths made true by meanings alone (metaphysically analytic) or such that just by understanding them we are justified in believing them (epistemically analytic). But despite the historical dominance of intuition-based accounts of the a priori, these accounts are nowadays regarded with much suspicion, and analyticity-based accounts have become widely held. This shift, however, is mostly based not on a direct argument for analyticity-based accounts, but rather on a profound scepticism regarding the faculty of rational intuition. I argue that analyticity-based accounts of the a priori are in no better position to explain the a priori than intuition-based accounts.

Comunicação

On Metalinguistic Negotiations and Reflexive Equilibrium in the Revision of Logic

How can we rationally justify our logical principles if the very possibility of rational justification presupposes them? How can we ground a set of basic principles of reason as correct without circularity or infinite regress? If all argumentation presupposes logical principles, how can one argue for or against the fundamentality of logical principles? To what extent is it legitimate or possible to revise something as basic as a principle of logic, since every rational revision already presupposes principles of logic? This project aims to investigate these issues of the epistemology of logic from a theoretical approach in which disagreements about the revision of logic must be seen as metalinguistic negotiations and not as merely verbal disputes where interlocutors would simply express trivially true contents in their own language . To do so, I will use here a neo-pragmatist, expressivist, inferentialist and normative reading inspired by works by Plunkett and Sundell (2013), Thomasson (2016), Wittgenstein (1969) and Brandom (1994, 2000). Furthermore, I will investigate the possibility of combining the epistemology of metalinguistic negotiations with another pragmatist theory revision technique, namely, reflective equilibrium as a non-foundationalist justification of deductive practices as proposed by Goodman (1983), Prawitz (1978) and Peregrin & Svoboda (2017).

Key-words: Revision of logic; normativity; logic; epistemology

Comunicação

Racial Skepticism and Constitutive Racial Constructivism

There are two basic ways for a racial skeptic to criticize constitutive racial constructivism. On the one hand, by contrasting constitutive constructivism with the problems of causality, conceptual competence, disagreement, passing, travelling, and reality. On the other hand, by invalidating the real definition of race. In this case, the criticism is against the form of the real definition of race and the notion of observation. The real definition of race has the form of an equivalence. As such, it requires both sides of the equivalence to be true.  But it is possible that observation is not a reliable source for inferring geographical location from phenotypical traits. If this is correct, then the real definition is false. This is correct. Therefore, the real definition is false. However, I think it's possible to resolve this. To do so, I must modify the first clause. Instead of “Who are observed or imagined possessing certain bodily characteristics presumed in C that are evidence of ancestry with a certain geographic region”, I write “The privileged group customarily believes that the bodily characteristics of the underprivileged people in C are evidence of ancestry with a certain geographic region”. In this case, even if it is false that phenotypical traits are evidence of ancestry with a certain geographical region, the belief of the privileged group may still be true.