Author: cful

Fabienne Brugère

University of Paris 8

From Care Ethics to Care Politics in the Neoliberal Moment?

6 February 2024, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

Care can be defined in different ways. In English, it refers first and foremost to the banality of “take care”, which is equivalent to “au revoir” or “à bientôt” in French. From the point of view of the activities themselves, we can take care of a child both “to take care of” and “to care about”. We care for a child, we look after him, we are concerned about him. Care begins with interpersonal relationships that seem to combine dispositions and activities, through an anchoring in ordinary life. But, understood as an ethics and then a politics, it becomes institutional, confronted with national and global crises of care: for example, the crisis of the welfare state (Urban Ward, 2020) which empties collective solidarity of its meaning, and the crisis of migrant reception in Western countries, which turns precarious foreigners into unofficial care workers (Hamington, 2010; Morgan, 2020). How can we characterize this transition from banal interpersonal relations to an ethics and a politics at a time when capitalism has taken on the face of the “neoliberal” moment (Foucault, 1979)? How is it possible to combine an ethics and a politics, a care for the self and a care for others (Foucault, 1984; Benhabib, 2004)?

Beyond Juxtaposition: Mixed Inferences and Anti-Collapse

Carlos Benito-Monsalvo (LanCog, Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon)

15 December 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Logical localism is a thesis within philosophy of logic according to which the correct application of logic is not topic-neutral, domain-neutral or irrespective of subject-matter. That is, logical localism is the thesis stating that different sets of logical principles, forming various alternative logic systems, are required in order to systematically account for correct reasoning in different domains. However, there is a very straightforward problem for anyone defending a localist thesis, a problem that follows from the fact that we reason across domains. This challenge is known as the problem of mixed inferences. The problem is, very roughly, the following: suppose that there are (at least) two components, within the premises or conclusion of an argument, belonging to different domains whose logics are L₁ and L₂, respectively. Then, which is the criterion of validity for the argument? The approach that I will take consists in trying to solve the problem of mixed inferences (more concretely, the version of the problem raised by Chase Wrenn) by making a finer translation of the arguments and using combination mechanisms as the criterion of validity. Among the alternative methods for combining logics, I will focus on the method of juxtaposition and show that there are some mixed inferences with the logical form of bridge principles that seem to be intuitively valid and that are not validated by juxtaposition, which constitutes an anti-collapse problem for juxtaposition. This limitation is what motivates the improvements on the methods that I propose, as a way of extending juxtaposition and allowing the emergence of the justified bridge principles in the combination mechanisms.

Paolo Furia

University of Turin

The Substantivity of Landscape. Learning from the Andes?

5 December 2023, 16h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

In this talk will offer some arguments with a view to overcoming an “aestheticized” conception of landscape, which has been prevalent particularly in European and, to some extent, North American philosophical aesthetics. The main feature of such conception is the reduction of the concept of landscape to a construct based on the isolation of the aesthetic properties of a given portion of space from other kinds of properties, such as geographical, political or ecological ones. I will devote the first part of the talk to reconstructing the main pillars of the “aestheticized” conception of landscape, relying on the influential essay by Joachim Ritter (1963) and the criteria identified by Augustin Berque for the identification of so-called “landscape cultures” (2008). In the second part I will focus on some characteristics of the Andean landscape, referring as much to a field experience lived as part of a visiting period at the Universidad Nacional de Huancavelica and the Universidad para el Desarrollo Andino, as to the philosophical, anthropological and geographical debate around the concept of landscape in the Andean “cosmovision.” In the third and last part I will show how the “aestheticized” conception of landscape is inadequate to understand the landscape culture of the Andean world, in which the aesthetic function, far from being denied, is nonetheless found integrated with other dimensions of spatial reality, such as geographical, ethico-political and ecological. Of such insertion of the aesthetic into the ethical and ecological sphere I will try to show, in conclusion, the intimate urgency in the time of the Anthropocene.

Dirk Michael Hennrich

Praxis-CFUL

Posthuman Landscapes: Pathways through the Anthropocene

28 November 2023, 16h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

The future habitability of landscapes in the context of the current dramatic climate changes worldwide depends on a fundamental paradigm shift in our ethical and political relationships. The Anthropocene, which must be understood not only as a geological phase of natural history but also as a civilizational phase of human history, is characterized by extreme anthropocentric action. Still not officially recognized as a new geological epoch, the term Anthropocene is to be understood above all as an operative term that encourages us to think about the human himself and his future on earth. It is a term that complements the term Gaia and is inextricably linked to Earth system science and the problem of climate change. My lecture assumes that thinking about posthuman landscapes, as a common ground for a future ethics and politics beyond the Anthropocene, must follow a double approach; on the one hand, the Philosophy of Landscape and, on the other, the Animal Philosophy.  The landscape, understood as the specific environment and biome in which humans are inserted alongside all other forms of life; and the non-human beings, the radical alterity and origin of human self-constitution and self-reflection.  Both philosophical disciplines question the relationship of humans to the non-human without closing themselves off to the question of technology.

5^th PLM MASTERCLASS

with Elisabeth Pacherie

Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon

Room B 112.D

November 23 and 24, 2023

Program

Thursday, Nov 23

14h00 -15h45:  Elisabeth Pacherie (Jean Nicod)

Varieties of goal-directedness in intentional action

16h00 -17h10:  Eline Kuipers (Bochum)

 Enhancing Pacherie’s theory of intentional bodily action through a sensorimotor space

Friday, Nov 24

10h00 -11h10:  Daphne Moss (Pompeu Fabra)

Agentive phenomenology and the disappearing agent

11h20 -12h30:  Cato Benschop (Utrecht)

Disorder of agency, or disordered because of agency?

The Life Project Account of Eating Disorders

14h00 -15h10:  Miguel Núñez de Prado (Utrecht) & Manuel Almagro-Holgado (Valencia)

Mindshaping Dispositionalism to Defend Doxasticism About Delusions

15h20 -16h30:  Caroline Stankozi (Bochum)

A predecessor to goal-directed intentions: need-directed bio-intentions

Jan Straßheim

University of Hildesheim

Misunderstanding as the Basis of Social Action: Alfred Schutz’s Pragmatic Phenomenology

21 November 2023, 16h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

According to social phenomenologist Alfred Schutz (1899-1959), individual perspectives and social structures shape one another through the medium of action. His view implies a central place of social action, i.e., action inherently oriented towards other people. Common sense, as well as influential social philosophers (e.g., Habermas, Searle), stress “understanding” as the basis of social action. However, Schutz’s analysis can help us see that misunderstanding plays an even more fundamental role that is often overlooked. What is ordinarily called “understanding” builds on several interrelated levels of misunderstanding. Most fundamentally, the tension between the selectivity of action and the fullness of “lived experience” (Bergson) is a fruitful “self-misunderstanding.” Selectivity enables individuals to mutually coordinate their actions by ignoring most of what they are or could be. Socially shared “types” channel such coordination by abstracting away from contextual and individual differences. However, unlike “rules,” types are flexible and allow us to tap back into the fullness of lived experience to recover these differences. Action is an essentially open process which, in social action, involves a plurality of perspectives. This openness and plurality make social action a critical medium in which fundamental misunderstandings constantly motivate, test, and fine-tune understanding.

Impostor Concepts and Hermeneutical Injustice

Laura Delgado (LanCog, Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon)

17 November 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Hermeneutical injustice, as introduced by Miranda Fricker (2007), occurs when subjects are unable to make some significant experiences intelligible to themselves and to others owing to their being hermeneutically marginalized. Hermeneutical injustice has been widely characterized by Fricker and others as arising because there is a ‘lacuna’ or a ‘gap’ in the collective hermeneutical resources such that the terms or concepts needed to make some experience intelligible and communicable are lacking. This situation constitutes an injustice because this gap or lacuna is due to the fact that these subjects are unfairly denied sufficient participation in the creation or development of concepts or other tools of social interpretation and this exclusion or limitation is caused by some identity prejudice. In this paper we highlight a species of hermeneutical injustice that arises both because there is a conceptual lacuna with regard to certain experiences in the collective interpretative resources and, importantly, also because there is a powerful authoritative concept in place that does render the experience intelligible, albeit incorrectly. We call this an ‘impostor concept’ because it takes a place where a better, more adequate concept should be, and because it deceivingly provides intelligibility to the target experiences; whereas in reality it conceals them, effectively obstructing the possibility of arriving to better interpretations. We analyse the workings of impostor concepts and argue that their use constitute cases of hermeneutical injustice. We compare this with other similar cases discussed in the literature, aiming to widening our understanding of hermeneutical injustice. (Joint work with Claudia Picazo.)

Andrea Oldofredi’s (LanCog) paper “Orthodox or dissident? The evolution of Bohm’s ontological reflections in the 1950s” was selected to be highlighted on the website of the European Physical Journal.

You can find the piece here.

The Instance Theory of Location

Fabrice Correia (University of Geneva)

10 November 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: The concept of location—of something being located at, or occupying, a place or a region—has been an important topic of philosophical investigations in the past fifteen years or so. Despite all the attention that has been paid to the concept, we still do not have a satisfactory general theory of location. By “general theory”, I mean a theory that both (i) does justice to the fact that location goes way beyond location at a spatial or temporal or spatiotemporal region and (ii) does not rule out phenomena whose possibility is a matter of substantial philosophical dispute. My aim is to put forward a general theory of location that fares better than those that have been developed so far. The key ideas of the theory are as follows: (i) there are two kinds of occupants, direct occupants and indirect occupants; (ii) every indirect occupant has at least one instance, which is a direct occupant; and (iii) indirect occupants occupy regions by having instances occupying these regions.