Oficina de Filosofia Analítica

Belief and knowledge are frequent themes in G. E. M. Anscombe's writings, but her remarks on those topics are usually read in isolation as relating to the specific concerns of each of her inquiries into action or moral philosophy. I will provide an overview of her various remarks on epistemology over the course of her work, arguing that the recurrence of these themes and their iterative evolution come together to suggest a relatively coherent epistemological approach.

In the first half of the talk, I will provide a cursory look into the varieties of knowledge explored in Intention and go on to present the points in her published works that are most salient to social epistemology. These include her lesser-known papers on testimony, notable for the classification of testifiers in terms of authority and originality and for an emphasis on the role of trust; and her account of brute facts and institutions, which carries significant implications as to how knowledge is shared within a broad community and assumed in descriptive language through the integration of linguistic and extralinguistic practices. In particular, I will propose a reading of the brute facts account as a structure of questioning and justification which is helpful in determining whether particular instances of such epistemic games are relevant to wider practices by containing the effects of the most commonly encountered defeaters.

In the second half, I will present some recent findings from Anscombe's posthumously published papers and unpublished manuscripts. These include more extensive discussions of belief and assent, as well as on the phenomenon of traditions of information as distinct sources of knowledge that are irreducible to testimony and tightly connected to practice. I will conclude by considering whether one of Anscombe's key points in Intention, that the variety of kinds of knowledge doesn't imply a distinction in the kinds of objects to which they relate, still holds in her later writings, and what bearing that may have on the prospects of a unified Anscombean epistemology.

Traditionalist and revisionist just war theorists diverge about whether the main principles governing International Law are morally founded or justified. Traditionalists believe that the tenets of International Law are morally justified, while revisionists do not. Tantamount to traditionalism is the idea that the morality of war is a story of two moral tales. One tale concerns the moral permissibility of war, another tale concerns the moral permissibility of how a war is conducted. These two tales are independent from one another. This is called the Independence Thesis (IT). In this paper I argue from a novel perspective that (IT) doesn't hold.

The most travelled route to show that (IT) is false is by undermining the intuitively problematic claim that unjust conduct in war isn't unjust in virtue of the war being unjust. Thus, some critics of traditionalism have shown that sometimes the permissibility of combatants' conduct rely on principles governing the reasons for war.

In this paper I want to show that there are good reasons to find the inverse claim problematic too. The inverse claim is that a war isn't unjust in virtue of an impermissible conduct in the war. I argue that sometimes a war is unjust in virtue of it necessitating impermissible conduct in war.

The main reason for a war to be unjust or impermissible is it lacking a just cause. A just cause for a war is an end or purpose which is worth pursuing in spite of all the death and destruction that it causes. A war is unjust if its ultimate aims are unjust. Ultimate aims are the motivations for war, informing the cause for war and, thus, relate with the permissibility or impermissibility of war. Subsidiary aims, however, inform the reasons for particular military operations essential for the military prosecution of some ultimate aim. In this way, subsidiary aims are more closely related with the compliance or non-compliance with the rules of engagement.

The argument showing that the claim a war isn't unjust in virtue of an impermissible conduct in the war is false is fairly straightforward. Consider the following three claims:

1. Some subsidiary aims require operations that don't conform with the rules of engagement and, as a consequence, require impermissible military conduct to manifest.

2. Some subsidiary aims which don't conform with the rules of engagement are required by the ultimate aims they contribute to achieve.

3. If an aim necessitates an impermissible conduct, then that aim is impermissible in virtue of the impermissible conduct it necessitates.

From claims (1–3) it follows that some ultimate aims are impermissible in virtue of the impermissibility of the conduct in war. Since ultimate aims inform whether a cause is just or unjust, it further follows that some wars are unjust in virtue of the impermissible conduct in the war. Thus, showing that some wars are unjust in virtue of impermissible conduct in the war and, consequently, that (IT) is false.

Authors who are sympathetic to taking subject matters as a second component of meaning in its own right typically also subscribe to the thesis that the logical constants, or at the very least the extensional constants of a propositional language, are subject matter transparent. This claim is usually expressed by stating that the subject matter of a sentence featuring a given logical constant is the same as the fusion of the topics of the subsentences of that sentence (in the limit case where a sentence has no subsentences and has been negated, then one says that the topic of ~P is equal to the topic of P).

The guiding idea is that, given the topic neutrality of logic, using logical constants one shouldn't introduce any new topics when making use of them. But if one pays careful attention to the way this idea has been expressed in the literature (roughly in the terms above) one notices that it goes further than what is advertised. For it does not state simply that logical expressions do not add topics to the sentences they feature in, it goes further in saying that it does not alter the subject matter in any other way of the sentences put together. But what if we introduced a connective that connected two sentences and would output a sentence, but which is only about the greatest topic on which they overlap, i.e. their nucleus instead of their fusion? Could that still be counted as a logical connective? Are there instances where we join sentences but somehow we talk about less by adding them together?

With an eye to the ultimate aim of developing a probability-like calculus for degrees of grasp of a subject matter, I'll introduce connectives in a formal language having exactly this feature. Then, I'll present a case for why such connectives have more than a merely formal interest and are plausibly involved in various real-life contexts of inquiry. Afterwards, I'll recap the qualitative notion of partial grasp of a subject matter that I have introduced in [REDACTED] and by analogy with the qualitative and quantitative notions of partial belief, I introduce the natural notion of degrees of grasp of a subject matter. Having defined both logical connectives that are defined by an operation of nucleus and fusion of subject matters, as well as the formal notion of degrees of grasp, I show that the notion of a degree of grasp of a subject matter obeys the usual Kolmogorov axioms if defined in a space of possible worlds with a trivial and maximal subject matter. Afterwards, I derive a number of subject matter-variants of important results in Bayesian epistemology and decision theory. Finally, I show what's distinctive about these results and what role they might play in contemporary epistemology.

Animalism holds that each of us is a human animal (i.e., a biological organism of the Homo sapiens species) that persists over time in virtue of the continuity of its biological life. In this view, which I call Life-Continuity Animalism (LCA), we are living animals (van Inwagen 1990; Olson 1997, 2007).

According to LCA, an animal persists as long as its biological life continues; when it dies, it ceases to exist. This claim – the Termination Thesis (TT) – follows from LCA's commitment to life-continuity as the criterion for biological persistence (Feldman 1992).

Despite its intuitive appeal, TT is highly contentious. In particular, it lies at the center of a significant debate among animalists about how best to characterize the relation between human animals and their corpses.

Ordinarily, when an animal dies, a corpse remains, occupying the same space and initially retaining the animal's shape. What is the relation between the animal and the corpse?

According to LCA, the animal and the corpse cannot be identical. If the corpse survives the animal's death while the animal does not, they must be distinct. But if they are distinct, what exactly is the corpse, and how does it come into existence? Does it begin to exist at death, or did it exist before? This is the Corpse Problem (Carter 1999).

The Corpse Problem is often framed as a dilemma for LC-animalists, who face two competing but seemingly implausible accounts of the animal-corpse relation.

One option, the Production View, holds that the corpse is created by the animal's death – death produces a new, distinct entity: the corpse. The alternative, the Coincidence View, claims that the animal and the corpse are distinct but coincident entities, with the corpse existing alongside the animal even before death.

Some LC-animalists reject both options by denying the existence of corpses altogether and claiming that no corpse remains after an animal's death – Corpse Eliminativism.

Others argue that none of these views satisfactorily explains the animal-corpse relation. Instead, they reject TT and embrace post-mortem survival: an animal may persist as a corpse (i.e., as a dead animal). I call this view Survivalism (Feldman 1992).

The leading survivalist account of biological persistence, the Somatic View, holds that an animal persists as long as its vital parts remain sufficiently physically and organizationally preserved, even if it is no longer alive (Mackie 1999).

This paper advances two main claims. First, I argue that no LC-animalist explanation of the animal-corpse relation is satisfactory, rejecting the Production View, Coincidence View, and Corpse Eliminativism.

Second, I argue animalists should reject TT and adopt Survivalism. However, I contend that the Somatic View faces serious theoretical problems, especially mereological concerns about the destruction and replacement of an animal's vital parts.

I conclude by exploring prospects for an alternative survivalist account. After considering and rejecting several candidates, I propose a novel decomposition-based account of the animal-corpse relation, grounded in biological continuity between animals and their corpses, which emphasizes the role of decomposition in animal persistence.

Neste artigo, defendemos a posição de Daniel Dennett contra a crítica formulada por Jerry Fodor em "A Persistência das Atitudes", sustentando a superioridade da Teoria dos Sistemas Intencionais (TSI), proposta por Dennett, em relação à Teoria Representacional da Mente (TRM) de Fodor. Argumentamos que a TSI, por ser externista, interpretacionista e naturalista, oferece uma resposta mais ajustada aos desafios contemporâneos colocados pelas neurociências, pelas ciências da cognição e pela inteligência artificial.

Fodor, com o seu The Language of Thought, nos anos 70, procurou defender um realismo intencional, seguindo a linha de alguns reconhecidos teóricos empíricos da linguagem e da cognição que concebiam como computacionais, os processos mentais. No entanto, foi mais além, ao propor uma metafísica das leis intencionais baseada na hipótese de uma "linguagem do pensamento": um sistema interno de representações simbólicas. Assente num funcionalismo internista, a sua teoria representacional clássica concebe os estados mentais como definidos pelas suas funções causais, independentemente das suas realizações físicas.

Dennett reconhece algum valor explanatório nesta hipótese, mas considera-a profundamente falha. Critica, em especial, a suposição de que "[...] todos os sistemas intencionais sofisticados devem partilhar pelo menos um traço de design: têm que ter um sistema interno ou linguagem de representação mental". Para Dennett, tal exigência parte de uma compreensão empobrecida da mente, ancorada na psicologia do senso comum (folk psychology), a qual, embora possa servir como ponto de partida, não deve ser tomada como ponto de chegada, já que o senso comum não é capaz de oferecer uma conceção suficientemente sólida de mente. Em contraste, propõe uma abordagem computacional ancorada em padrões reais (real patterns), rejeitando entidades mentais hipotéticas e internistas.

Analisamos, assim, a TRM fodoriana, bem como a crítica que Fodor dirige à TSI. Em seguida, apresentamos a defesa dennettiana, apoiando-nos, para compreender a TSI, nos artigos dennettianos "Real Patterns" e "Précis of The Intentional Stance", na obra Brainstorms, e em excertos da obra homónima de Sofia Miguens — Uma teoria fisicalista do conteúdo e da consciência.

Por fim, contrapomos a crítica de Fodor àquela que Dennett formula em Darwin's Dangerous Idea, sustentando, com base nesta, que Fodor incorre em três problemas fundamentais: (i.) num "fecho cognitivo", por falta de rigor empírico; (ii.) num pseudo-naturalismo, ao tratar a biologia sem atenção à sua real evolução; e (iii.) num essencialismo disfarçado, ao conceber a mente como misteriosa e inata. Neste contexto, consideraremos também as obras fodorianas The Language of Thought e LOT 2, para compreendermos a crítica que Dennett faz a Fodor, e com isso percebermos os problemas do seu posicionamento.

Michael Lynch (2010, 2016) argued that deep epistemic disagreements (DEDs, in what follows) are rationally irresolvable: agents cannot end up agreeing by exchanging epistemic reasons. In DEDs, agents disagree about fundamental epistemic principles. This means two things: i) Agents endorse conflicting epistemic principles that attribute preeminence to different sources to form beliefs; ii) the arguments that each agent has to justify the acceptance of their epistemic principle presuppose the truth of the principle in some way or another (this is what makes these principles fundamental). This presupposition makes the justification of fundamental epistemic principles to be epistemically circular (Alston, 1993). As an example, an agent has an epistemically circular justification to induction whenever he is justified to believe induction is reliable because she believes induction works most of the time. This justification would presuppose the reliability of induction as it generalises from particular facts about the success of induction.

Lynch illustrates his case with an imagined disagreement between Cain and Abel on the age of the Earth, in which they endorse the following conflicting fundamental epistemic principles:

1. Science: Inference to the best explanation (IBE) from the fossil and historical record is the only method to know about facts of the distant past.

2. Holy Book: Consulting the Book is the best method to know about facts of the distant past.

Where Cain accepts Science while Abel accepts Holy Book. Lynch argues that DEDs cannot be resolved by argumentation because the only arguments that disputants can use to resolve are epistemic circular arguments, and these arguments never rationally persuade. For instance, in the face of a challenge, Abel would justify Holy Book by arguing that God wrote it, and, when asked how he knew that God wrote it, he'd say that the Book says so. This argument has little prospect, if any, of being rationally persuasive.

In this presentation, I will argue that the parties in DEDs can do much more than present epistemically circular arguments to each other; in particular, they can present arguments that point to inconsistencies in the other party's set of beliefs, and these arguments can lead them to rational agreement about fundamental epistemic principles. In this way, against Lynch, I will defend that some DEDs are rationally resolvable. In particular, I will show that Cain can present to Abel an argument that can rationally persuade the latter to drop Holy Book and accept Science. This argument concludes Science from the premise that Science is the best explanation of the predictive success of contemporary theories about the evolution of the Earth and the living beings in it. I will conclude by responding to the objection that these kinds of rational resolution cannot happen in DEDs because they require the existence of a shared fundamental epistemic principle by the parties (in this case, the principle that proclaims IBE to be a reliable method to attain knowledge).

This paper will explore the possibility that fiction is a source of knowledge regarding moral reality, with an emphasis on videogames due to their interactive nature. Towards this end, we will attempt to refute counterarguments waged against aesthetic cognitivism by drawing on the works of Noël Carrol and Catherine Elgin.

Noel Carrol dissects anti-cognitivist positions in "The Wheel of Virtue" (2002), arguing that they maintain some core claims:

(P1) fictional works operate in an "alternative realm of application" (Lamarque & Olsen, 2002: 409) disconnected from real-world truth conditions, and

(P2) fictional moral scenarios merely confirm pre-existing moral intuitions rather than generate new knowledge, following Kivy's "banality objection" (Kivy, 1997).

From these premises, anti-cognitivists conclude that fictional works cannot provide genuine propositional knowledge about reality. If this argument succeeds, aesthetic cognitivism, the view that art can offer legitimate epistemic value, can be refuted.

I will investigate the prospect that Catherine Elgin's exemplification theory provides the conceptual resources to refute this anti-cognitivist challenge. According to Elgin's analysis, an artwork exemplifies property P if, and only if, it both instantiates P and refers to P, thereby affording epistemic access to P. Exemplification promotes understanding by employing departures from literal truth that bring real patterns in the world to the forefront. With this strategic mechanism, art can highlight and clarify actual properties. As such, when an artwork exemplifies real features, it offers genuine insight into them, challenging traditional notions of epistemic value and, consequently, anti-cognitivist positions.

I will use the videogame Vampyr (2018) as a primary counterexample to the anti-cognitivist arguments expanded upon by Carrol. This is a roleplaying game in which the protagonist, Jonathan Reid, is a doctor-turned-vampire, living through the Spanish Flu in post WWI England. The player is persistently faced with the moral conflict of being a doctor, with deontological obligation to patients in need, but also the need to kill for food and power. Each choice determines the game's narrative and ultimate ending - every character killed (or not), every question asked, or tool crafted, shape the difficulty and events that occur during gameplay.

The central proposal of this paper will be that some videogames, namely Vampyr, extend Elgin's framework to interactive digital media, and instantiate moral properties in ways that provide access to otherwise elusive understanding through "experiential exemplification", due to the following:

1) it requires active engagement with instantiated properties through choice-making instead of mere observation, and

2) it generates psychological commitment to morally significant decisions, thereby creating stronger epistemic access to moral properties than theoretical consideration alone. Furthermore, different endings provide replayability that allow further exploration of moral complexities, which cannot be done with other forms of media.

The above would enable the player to use it "effectively as a vehicle for exploration and discovery" (Elgin, 1993: 3), as Elgin argues to be the case for art.

This exploration introduces the prospect that artistic cognitivism's scope may go beyond traditional representational media, and include interactive digital forms, increasing the domain of art's potential cognitive contributions.

This paper argues that aesthetic form, in the attempt of being used as a medium for long-term normative warning; such as deterring future civilizations from approaching nuclear waste sites, it's faced by not only interpretive instability, but a deeper aesthetic paradox: the very features meant to evoke fear or hostility may, over time, become alluring. Drawing the case of the U.S. Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), I examine the philosophical viability of using architecture and visual form to communicate danger across deep time, as well as explain why linguistic and cultural continuity cannot be assumed.

I begin by presenting the rationale behind WIPP's proposed hostile architecture: structures designed to provoke an immediate, affective deterrent without relying on language. I then assess this aesthetic strategy through an analytical framework drawing on Wittgenstein's rule-following problem, Goodman's theory of symbol systems, and contemporary neuroaesthetics. While these approaches expose the instability of both verbal and visual symbols over time, my central claim is broader: aesthetic deterrents may not only fail, but invert. What is constructed to repel may be reinterpreted as sacred, monumental, or sublime.

To support this, I turn to Kant's theory of the sublime, in which overwhelming forms; vastness, danger, and ruin can provoke not fear, but awe and attraction. I argue that this aesthetic ambiguity undermines the normative force of the proposed warning encoded in form in the WIPP project. Affect theory and neuroarchitecture show that even biologically grounded aversions (e.g. to sharpness or voids) are context-sensitive and historically mutable.

The paper concludes by highlighting a structural tension: aesthetic design, while seems to be a right choice as cross-temporal vehicle message, cannot secure its normative function. Attempts to "warn the future with form" risk inviting the very actions they aim to prevent. This raises broader philosophical questions about the limits of aesthetics in ethical communication and the conditions under which normativity can persist across radical temporal and cultural discontinuities.