Announcements

• Call for Papers: "Memory and Trauma: Philosophical Perspectives"

  2023-01-19

  Monographic Section: "Memory and Trauma: Philosophical Perspectives"

  Guest editors:
  Nathália de Ávila (University of Cologne, Germany)
  Marina Trakas (Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, CONICET, Argentina)
  Em Walsh (Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University, US)

  Deadline: July 31, 2023.

  Traumatic experiences are widespread in today's world, as war affects several countries, as gender violence continues, and the global mental health crisis sharpens after the pandemic. In fact, trauma is originally an Ancient Greek concept that refers to an open physical wound, while psychological trauma is an idea introduced in the late 19th century. While some claim trauma to be a culturally-coerced phenomenon, others believe that our ancestors were not that different from us when it comes to psychological suffering, giving trauma a more universal aspect.

  Nowadays, the notions of trauma, traumatic experiences and traumatic events are actually used in very heterogeneous ways. Traumatic experiences are a polysemy, sometimes involving a diagnosis (one of PTSD), sometimes involving particular ways of being (feeling stuck in time), sometimes involving the unliveability of a particular social life, and capturing much more.

  While conceptual difficulties persist, it is evident that traumatic experiences have the potential to disturb one’s memory, because of their negative emotional charge, for example, and the feeling that one's memory is no longer under one’s control. Nonetheless, philosophers of memory have, to date, largely neglected connections between trauma and memory, failing to see what effects traumatic experiences have on one’s ability to remember the past and envision a future for oneself. Besides the question about the concept of trauma itself, there are many other questions that still remain unanswered: In what ways do traumatic experiences shape memory and the self? Is this shaping always for the worse, or can it be for the better? Does trauma involve a transformative experience? How are traumatic memories embodied by individuals who undergo those experiences? What is the relationship between forgiveness, memory, and trauma? And between traumatic memories and perspective-taking? Does trauma produce epistemic harms?

  We invite researchers from different continents to attempt to answer these difficult but important questions, as well as other similar philosophical questions regarding memory and trauma.

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• CFP Next Monographic Section: “What is psychoanalysis today? A critique of psychoanalytic theory and clinic from the philosophical point of view”

  2022-09-30

  Guest Editors: Nicol A. Barria-Asenjo and Slavoj Zizek

  The RHV, an International Journal of Philosophy, published by the Instituto de Filosofía of the Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile, invites the academic community to collaborate in its next monographic section, first issue 2022, that the intellectuals Nicol A. Barria-Asenjo and Slavoj Zizek will prepare under the title: “What is psychoanalysis today? A critique of psychoanalytic theory and clinic from the philosophical point of view”. The project seeks to contribute to the debate between philosophy and psychoanalysis. What contributions does philosophy make to the reformulation of psychoanalytic theory and clinic?

  In the words of the editors, we find:

  Philosophy and psychoanalysis are not external to each other; they do not relate to each other as a universal worldview and a specific science and practice of mental disorders. But, as it became clear to Lacan and his followers, psychoanalysis compels us to redefine the very domain of philosophy: what is external reality? What is a human being? And vice versa: only philosophy allows us to perceive the most radical dimension of the psychoanalytic discovery, how psychoanalysis shatters our most common view of reality and our place in it. We invite researchers from different continents to try to answer the question guiding this project.

  Deadline: December 15, 2022.

  Publication of the monograph: May 2023.

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• Convocatoria próximo monográfico: "Desafíos de la neurociencia a la filosofía"

  2022-01-29

  Convocatoria próximo monográfico: "Desafíos de la neurociencia a la filosofía"

  Históricamente ciencia y filosofía no han sido dos campos separados como actualmente pueda parecer ateniendo a cómo se han institucionalizado, tanto desde el punto de vista académico como educacional. En su origen la filosofía significaba amor a la sabiduría y constituía todo el campo del saber. Podemos decir que Aristóteles tenía todo el saber en sus manos, tanto el horizontal, es decir, todo lo que después han constituido las disciplinas, desde la astronomía a la sociología, como el vertical, a saber, lo diversos niveles de conceptualización, desde la ciencia a la metafísica. A lo largo de la historia las ciencias particulares se han ido desmembrando de la filosofía, dando lugar a un mayor conocimiento del mundo pero, a la vez, a una fragmentación del mismo. Esta atomización del saber parece haber llegado a un punto de inflexión, por lo que es necesario recurrir a marcos interdisciplinares para abordar fenómenos complejos con los que se enfrenta la ciencia actual. No cabe duda de que las ciencias cognitivas es uno de estos marcos interdisciplinares imprescindible para abordar los fenómenos cognitivos desde la filosofía, la lingüística, la antropología, la ciencia de la computación, la psicología y la neurociencia. El comienzo del siglo XXI está marcado por el desarrollo del estudio del cerebro y por su impacto en las humanidades, muy especialmente en todas las ramas de la filosofía, como no podía ser de otra manera. El estudio del cerebro se ha visualizado a través de la neurociencia, en su sentido más general de la búsqueda de las bases neurológicas de las diversas funciones mentales.

  Abordar la filosofía en el marco de las neurociencias implica situarnos en el programa naturalizador, en el sentido de que aceptamos la relevancia de las ciencias empíricas a la hora de configurar los modelos epistemológicos y éticos que forman parte de la filosofía. La naturalización tiene que ver con la relación entre la filosofía y las ciencias empíricas, admitiendo varias posturas más o menos radicales. En un extremo está la reducción de la epistemología a la psicología, como apuesta W. Quine, o incluso su eliminación, como argumenta P. Churchland, en el sentido de que los problemas filosóficos se irán resolviendo en la medida de que progresen las ciencias cognitivas. En el otro extremo estaría el apriorismo como una posición que considera que la filosofía es ajena a los resultados empíricos de la ciencia. Entre estos dos extremos podemos encontrar planteamientos intermedios a partir de la idea de que los modelos filosóficos no pueden hacer caso omiso de los resultados empíricos de las diversas disciplinas, aunque no necesariamente tengan que quedar supeditados ni eliminados por ellas. Es lo que podríamos llamar ‘tesis minimalista de la naturalización’ que consistiría en lo siguiente: i) abandonar los criterios apriorísticos para la fundamentación del conocimiento; y ii) aceptar que toda norma epistémica ha de ser compatible con lo que las ciencias empíricas nos dicen sobre las capacidades cognitivas de los humanos, teniendo en cuenta las condiciones del entorno físico y social en el que se desenvuelven.
  Lo que no pueden determinar las ciencias empíricas es cuál es la mejor práctica científica entre todas las normas posibles compatibles con nuestras capacidades biológicas y sociales.

  Ahora bien, ¿por qué la neurociencia es especialmente relevante para la filosofía? Fundamentalmente, porque es la ciencia que estudia nuestra capacidad de conocer y de pensar y es precisamente el conocimiento del entorno lo que es esencial para la supervivencia de la especie y la base para las facultades superiores del pensamiento. Es pues obvio que el cerebro tenga un papel preeminente en la naturalización de la filosofía. Si pensamos que la filosofía trata de buscar la fundamentación racional de nuestras creencias cognoscitivas, morales y estéticas, no es de extrañar que sea relevante y de vital importancia la preocupación y el interés por aquellas partes del cuerpo que más directamente están implicadas en el pensamiento. Los conocimientos aportados por las neurociencias afectan a todas las ramas de la filosofía, desde la antropología filosófica a la metafísica pasando por la ética y la epistemología. Es difícil pensar que algún sistema filosófico pueda quedar inmune a los avances de la neurociencia. Por tanto, un proyecto de este tipo bien podemos llamarlo ‘NeuroFilosofía’ (NF), lo cual implica: un marco naturalizador, un punto de vista interdisciplinar y una interrelación entre las culturas científicas y humanistas.

  El objetivo del monográfico es abordar todos los elementos que entran en juego en esta interacción entre neurociencia y filosofía, analizando sus perspectivas más relevantes. Por un lado, está lo que se ha llamado ‘enfoque cognitivo en filosofía’ en el sentido del impacto de las neurociencias a las diversas ramas de la filosofía, desde la epistemología y la ética hasta la antropología filosófica y la estética. En esta línea, se abren nuevas formas de representación del conocimiento, innovaciones metodológicas y tecnológicas en la investigación científica y un largo etcétera fruto de la creatividad. Algunas de las subdisciplinas más trabajadas en la actualidad, pertenecientes a esta línea de investigación, son la ‘Neuroética’ y la ‘Neuroestética’. Por otro, está la ‘filosofía de las neurociencias’, en el mismo sentido de la filosofía de la física, la química, la biología y las ciencias sociales, dando lugar al análisis epistemológico y ético de las neurociencias. En este punto pueden plantearse problemas morales en determinadas investigaciones que incluyen seres vivos, consecuencias medioambientales por la utilización de tecnologías, el impacto social de aplicaciones prácticas de las neurociencias, etc. En conclusión, el monográfico pretende hacerse eco tanto de las principales líneas de pensamiento en el marco de las neurociencias, como de las consecuencias prácticas que puedan derivarse de su desarrollo.

  Editora del número: Anna Estany – Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona

  Fecha límite para presentación de artículos: 31 de agosto de 2022.

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• Call for papers: The role of intuitions in philosophy: New approaches

  2022-01-27

  Call for papers for special issue of Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso

  The role of intuitions in philosophy: New approaches.

  Guest editor: David Bordonaba-Plou (Centro de Estudios en Filosofía, Lógica y Epistemología, Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile; Unidad de Excelencia FiloLab, Universidad de Granada, España)

  Deadline: March 31, 2022

  Intuitions are a source of evidence that many people use to a greater or lesser extent. We rely on them to investigate a wide variety of issues, for example, moral, mathematical, or religious questions, or to examine other people’s opinions on a host of different topics. Although there is debate about the criteria for saying when something is an intuition, a first approximation to the meaning of the term may be to say that we intuit that p when we believe that p is true without any other belief that serves as a basis for believing that p (see Peirce, 1868/1992).That is, a belief or assertion is intuitive when it can serve as evidence to conclude other assertions or beliefs without itself depending on previous assertions or beliefs. In other words, when we do not infer it through theoretical reflection but spontaneously (see Cappelen, 2012, p. 33).

  Appealing to intuitions has been one of the most widely used methods in many areas within analytic philosophy. The accepted view (see Goldman, 2007; Weinberg, 2007; Williamson, 2007, p. 2; Baz, 2012, p. 87; Koopman, 2012; Kornblith, 2014) is that intuitions play a fundamental role. Different authors point to different moments from which philosophers would have started using intuitions (Hintikka, 1999, p. 127; Cohen, 1986, p. 77, quoted by Andow, 2015, pp. 189-190) and, although there is no agreement on exactly when this trend began, what is clear is that the use of intuitions has increased exponentially over the past century (see Andow, 2015; Ashton & Mizrahi, 2018).

  There has been a dispute within analytic philosophy between three different groups of philosophers during the last decades. First, the “autonomists” (see, e.g., Bealer, 1998; Liao, 2008; Sosa, 2013; Chalmers, 2014; Devitt, 2015) defend that introspection and appeal to intuition, the traditional ways of doing philosophy can be used to answer many philosophical questions satisfactorily. Second, those who defend that analytic philosophers do not employ intuitions as evidence in philosophical practice. Following Nado (2016, p. 782), I will call them “intuition deniers” (see, e.g., Williamson, 2007; Deustch, 2009; Cappelen, 2012; Molyneux, 2014). Third, those who think that analytic philosophers use intuitions as evidence but doubt this method, arguing instead for the need to apply more rigorous methods drawn from scientific disciplines such as psychology, the social sciences, or linguistics. They are often called “naturalists” (see, for example, Machery et al., 2004; Knobe and Nichols, 2007; Mallon et al., 2009; Alexander et al., 2010).

  This special issue aims to include novel works addressing how philosophers use intuitions in different areas of analytic philosophy. The papers included are expected to develop novel perspectives or adopt novel approaches that shed light on traditional problems associated with intuitions in analytic philosophy. Both experimental and theoretical papers will be accepted, explicit defenses of any of the above positions, papers that point out desiderata that all three should fulfill, or papers dealing with other issues related to intuitions in analytic philosophy.

  Some questions or possible topics that articles may address are:

  • Intuitions and mental experiments. What role do intuitions play in mental experiments?
  • Intuitions and disagreement. What kinds of disagreements do conflicting intuitions produce? Are they persistent disagreements?
  • Different senses of intuition. In what sense or senses are intuitions used in analytic philosophy? Is there only one sense, or are there several?
  • Role of the vocabulary of intuitions. What role does the vocabulary of intuitions play in philosophers’ arguments? Does it play a central or rather a marginal one?
  • Differences in the use of intuitions in different areas of analytic philosophy. Are intuitions used similarly in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, logic, or the philosophy of science?
  • Intuitions and justification. To what extent are intuitions used in analytic philosophy to defend theories? Are they always used as evidence in justification contexts, or are there other types of contexts in which intuitions play a central role?
  • Empirical analyses of philosophical practices that make use of intuitions.
  • Intuitions and experimental philosophy. What is the position of experimental philosophy regarding the use of intuitions in analytic philosophy? Is it possible to conjugate intuitions having adopted an experimental position and methodology?

  We welcome abstracts of 500-800 words on the above topics or other issues that fit the theme and spirit of the special issue, in English or Spanish. The deadline for submitting abstracts is March 31, 2022. Abstracts must be anonymized, i.e., without any information that would allow the author to be identified (also anonymize self-citations), must include 3 to 5 keywords, and must have a section that includes only the bibliographic references used effectively in the abstract (not included in the word count).

  Around April 30, 2022, we will communicate whether the abstract has been accepted. From that moment on, authors will have six months to send the complete article (8,000 words maximum). External reviewers will evaluate the papers in a double-blind review process. The reviewers may recommend acceptance, rejection, or ask the author(s) to modify the article. Acceptance of the abstract does not imply the acceptance of the article.

  Abstracts should be sent to the following email: davidbordonaba@gmail.com, specifying the following subject: The Role of Intuitions in Analytic Philosophy: New Approaches, and indicating in the text of the email the following information: name of the article, full name of the author(s), and institutional affiliation of the author(s).

  For any questions, please write to davidbordonaba@gmail.com.

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• COVID-19 and impact on peer review

  2021-01-03

  As a result of the significant disruption that is being caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we are very aware that many researchers will have difficulty meeting the timelines associated with our peer review process. Our systems will continue to remind you of the original timelines to reviewers but we intend to be highly flexible. We ask authors for understanding and patience at this time. Read More Read more about COVID-19 and impact on peer review