PhilArchive
Not a member yet
119355 research outputs found
Sort by
Multiculturalism and Climate Change: a Bioethical Inquiry into Reconciling Divergent Cultural Values for a Common Ecological Future
No full textThe climate crisis is a global concern, yet how societies respond are often shaped by their distinct cultural values, worldviews, and ethical traditions. This paper offers a bioethical exploration of the intersection between multiculturalism and climate change, examining how differing cultural perspectives influence environmental behaviour, policymaking, and
collective action. While Western approaches to environmentalism frequently emphasise scientific and technological solutions, many indigenous and non-Western cultures uphold principles of spiritual, communal, and ecological interconnectedness. These differences present both a challenge to global cooperation and an opportunity to draw from a rich diversity of values in shaping a more inclusive and sustainable future. Grounded in African communal ethics, indigenous ecological wisdom, and global environmental movements, this paper argues for a pluralistic bioethical framework, one that treats cultural diversity not as an obstacle but as a vital resource for ethical engagement with ecological issues. It calls for intercultural dialogue that fosters mutual respect, shared responsibility, and environmental solidarity. Through the lens of eco-bioethics, the discussion advocates a shift from fragmented efforts to a more culturally sensitive and ethically grounded response to the climate emergency. In conclusion, the paper contributes to the broader discourse on environmental bioethics by proposing a collaborative, human-centred approach to sustainability, one that embraces both
the richness of human cultures and the urgent need to care for our shared planet
Immersion as Fiction: Divergent Uses of Emotion in Artistic and Occupational Virtual Reality
No full textThis paper investigates the relationship between immersion, emotion, and imagination in virtual reality (VR), focusing on two seemingly distant domains: Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s installation Carne y Arena (2017) and VR-based workplace safety training. Both cases demonstrate that simulated environments can elicit authentic emotional responses – such as fear, stress, or vulnerability – yet the implications of these experiences diverge sharply. Drawing on theories of presence and the “paradox of fiction”, we argue that VR should be understood not as a substitute for imagination but as a heightened form of fiction that depends on the user’s willingness to engage in make-believe. While Carne y Arena frames affect as an entry point for moral imagination within an explicit artistic and symbolic context, occupational safety training instrumentalizes emotion as a means of behavioral conditioning within a productivist framework. The danger in both domains lies not in immersive experience itself but in mistaking a single simulation for the fullness of lived reality
Suspensive Wronging
No full textAccording to the thesis of doxastic wronging, we can wrong people in virtue of having certain beliefs about them. In this chapter, I motivate and defend a similar view, the thesis of suspensive wronging, that we can wrong people in virtue of bearing an indecision attitude towards certain questions that bear on certain people. I explore the extent to which the thesis of suspensive wronging fits with certain prominent conceptions of suspension of judgment, including the sui generis attitude, higher-order, and credence views, and argue that it aligns with each of them. I then argue that reflection on cases of suspensive wronging reveals that the common characterization of suspension of judgment as a kind of ‘neutrality’ is nevertheless problematic, arguing that we should distinguish between attitudinal neutrality and property neutrality—i.e., neutrality on the truth of an answer to a question vs. the neutrality of the properties of the attitude that responds to a question, which accommodates the sense in which 'being neutral' in a debate can sometimes be unjust but also still a genuine sort of neutrality. Finally, I consider whether widespread views about the involuntariness of belief and the right-kind of reasons for belief refutes the suspensive wronging thesis, arguing that this is not the case, concluding with some reflections on the relationship between the suspensive wronging thesis and moral encroachment on suspension of judgment
A Defense of Explanationism against Recent Objections
No full textIn the recent literature on the nature of knowledge, a rivalry has emerged between modalism and explanationism. According to modalism, knowledge requires that our beliefs track the truth across some appropriate set of possible worlds. Modalists tend to focus on two modal conditions: sensitivity and safety. According to explanationism, knowledge requires only that beliefs bear the right sort of explanatory relation to the truth. In slogan form: knowledge is believing something because it's true. In this paper, we aim to vindicate explanationism from some recent objections offered by Gualtiero Piccinini, Dario Mortini, and Kenneth Boyce and Andrew Moon. Together, these authors present five purported counterexamples to the sufficiency of the explanationist analysis for knowledge. In addition, Mortini devises a clever argument that explanationism entails the violation of a plausible closure principle on knowledge. We will argue that explanationism is innocent of all these charges against it, and we hope that the strength of the defense we offer of explanationism is evidence in its favor, and a reason to investigate explanationism further as the long-elusive truth about the nature of knowledge
What is the point of solidarity?
No full textIn response to activist movements like Black Lives Matter and global events such as the Covid-19 pandemic, philosophers have shown a renewed interest in the value and practice of solidarity. However, this surge of interest has also highlighted some notable disagreements in the literature. This article proposes a novel understanding of the practice of solidarity and its value. On this approach, solidarity is characterized functionally as the practice that offers a unique way of bringing into greater harmony our moral and our personal reasons. Under social conditions of pervasive injustice, we often face a conflict between pursuing a flourishing life—e.g., by investing time and energy in personal projects and relationships—and doing what is morally required. I suggest that through solidarity commitments, we align our need to advance morality-given causes with our need to pursue personal projects and relationships. Viewing solidarity through the lens of this ‘positive alignment’ idea allows us to better understand its unique characteristics. Moreover, the account can clarify (and potentially resolve) some disagreements that have besieged recent debates. Finally, this approach deepens our grasp of solidarity’s value and its deontic status, contributing to its recognition as a central ideal in moral and political theory
Is There a Woman in Los Candidatos? Gender Perception with Masculine “Generics” and Gender-Fair Language Strategies in Spanish
No full textThis study examines how several gender-encoding strategies in Spanish and social factors influence gender perception, reinforcing or mitigating a sexist male bias. Using an experimental design, we tested four linguistic conditions in a job recruitment context: masculine forms (theoretically generic), gender-splits, epicenes, and non-binary neomorpheme “-e”. After reading a profile in one of these conditions, 837 participants (52% women) selected an image of a woman or man. Results show that masculine forms lead to the lowest selection of female candidates, manifesting a male bias. In contrast, gender-fair language (GFL) strategies, particularly the neomorpheme (les candidates), elicited the highest selection of female images. Importantly, not only did linguistic factors and participants’ gender identity influence results —with male participants selecting significantly more men in the masculine condition—, but affinity with feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements or positive attitudes towards GFL also modulated responses —increasing female selections in GFL, but reinforcing male selections in the masculine—. Additionally, no extra cognitive cost was found for GFL strategies compared to masculine expressions. These findings highlight the importance, not only of linguistic forms, but of social and attitudinal factors in shaping gender perception, with implications for reducing gender biases in language use and broader efforts toward social equity. Keywords: Male bias; gender-fair language; masculine generics; Spanish; non-binary neomorphemes; gender splits; sexism; feminism; attitudes
The Symbolic Lock-in of the Self; Reality’s Struggle to Understand and Remember Itself
No full textThe problem of symbolic lock-in has long plagued the study of culture, institutions, and ideology, where systems of language, ritual, or politics stabilize into closed loops. Once established, these lattices judge signals not by their correspondence with adaptive reality but by their compatibility with the code of the order itself. But what is often overlooked is that the most intimate and persistent form of symbolic lock-in is not external, but internal, the self. The “I” is not an irreducible fact of being, but a symbolic compression of recursive processes, flows of sensation, memory, prediction, and cultural coding, that we mistake for the ground of subjectivity. This compression is adaptive in its emergence. It allows for coordination, continuity, and accountability. Yet once crystallized, it becomes a self-validating attractor, privileging internal narrative over external reality, creating prohibitive switching costs, and demanding that all incoming signals be assimilated into its categories. Humanity’s civilizational lock-ins, whether they be theological, political, or economic, are all fractal extensions of this primordial closure
Self-Determination on Indigenous Terms: The Tribal College as Institutional Site of Healing and Resilience
No full textTribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) have a unique position in the landscape of higher education vis-à-vis trauma-informed pedagogy insofar as nearly all of their students identify with a cultural group that has experienced genocide, that continues to experience discrimination and poverty, and whose families are inevitably affected by serious psychological problems that plausibly might be considered as responses to trauma. In this paper, we principally concern ourselves with the healing role that TCUs are playing in the quest to repair the historical damage that has been done and also that continues to be done. Accordingly, we detail the important work they do. But, in doing so, we also closely examine the Indigenous historical trauma theoretical framework, which figures prominently in the thinking of many TCU staff, and suggest that a resiliency focus can helpfully assist with resolving a number of theoretical difficulties. We then move to assess the practical dimensions of healing and resilience in the Tribal College as staff members tackle the myriad challenges facing not only their students, but Tribal Nations more generally in the 21st century and beyond
Ontology of the Difference Between Truth and Fiction
No full textThis article proposes an ontological approach to the distinction between truth and falsehood, shifting the debate from moral and epistemic registers to the material plane of language. Drawing on a critical reading of metaphysical traditions—from Plato to Kant—and their contemporary crisis, the text argues that truth is not a static property but a degree of exposure to the real, measured by the symbolic reor-ganization that occurs in response to friction. Falsehood, in turn, is treated as a structural possibility of language, characterized by the suspension of proof and temporal economy. The distinction between truth and fiction is explored through its temporal, ethical, and political dimensions, engaging with the Ontology of Emerg-ing Complexity, pragmatist philosophy, and critiques of symbolic acceleration. The article defends that to think today is to inhabit friction, resist performative efficacy, and cultivate institutions capable of sustaining the duration required for proof
The philosophical significance of Gödel's _Dialectica_ interpretation
No full textHilbert's Program in the 1920s aimed to give finitary consistency proofs for infinitary mathematics, thus putting infinitary mathematics on a more secure footing. There is a popular narrative that Hilbert's Program was decisively refuted by Gödel's incompleteness theorems in 1931. However, Gödel himself, in a remarkable paper of 1958, pursues a modified version of Hilbert's Program: he presents his Dialectica interpretation as a new, Hilbert‐style consistency proof for arithmetic based on “an extension of the finitary standpoint,” and he clearly regards this proof as epistemologically significant. In this essay, I explain and assess the epistemological project that Gödel sets out in his Dialectica paper. Ultimately, I argue that the Dialectica interpretation is best understood, not as a consistency proof, but as a way of assigning a constructive meaning to arithmetic