The Problem of Post-Truth. Rethinking the Relationship between Truth and Politics

‘Post-truth’ is a failed concept, both epistemically and politically because its simplification of the relationship between truth and politics cripples our understanding and encourages authoritarianism. This makes the diagnosis of our ‘post-truth era’ as dangerous to democratic politics as relativism with its premature disregard for truth. In order to take the step beyond relativism and ‘post-truth’, we must conceptualise the relationship between truth and politics differently by starting from a ‘non-sovereign’ understanding of truth

Spectral Characterization of Suspected Acid Deposition Damage in Red Spruce (picea Rubens) Stands from Vermont

In an attempt to demonstrate the utility of remote sensing systems to monitor sites of suspected acid rain deposition damage, intensive field activities, coupled with aircraft overflights, were centered on red spruce stands in Vermont during August and September of 1984. Remote sensing data were acquired using the Airborne Imaging Spectrometer, Thematic Mapper Simulator, Barnes Model 12 to 1000 Modular Multiband Radiometer and Spectron Engineering Spectrometer (the former two flown on the NASA C-130; the latter two on A Bell UH-1B Iroquois Helicopter). Field spectral data were acquired during the week of the August overflights using a high spectral resolution spectrometer and two broad-band radiometers. Preliminary analyses of these data indicate a number of spectral differences in vegetation between high and low damage sites. Some of these differences are subtle, and are observable only with high spectral resolution sensors; others are less subtle and are observable using broad-band sensors

Conflictividad laboral en épocas de 'resistencia' : Los trabajadores de los frigoríficos rosarinos tras el Golpe de Estado de 1955

A partir del golpe de Estado perpetrado en 19551, la autodenominada “Revolución Libertadora” se propuso realizar las transformaciones necesarias para garantizar la tan mentada ‘necesidad’ empresaria de aumentar la productividad y la racionalización del trabajo. Uno de los principales pilares de su política fue la ofensiva antiperonista con la proscripción de dirigentes, intervenciones y represión al sindicalismo. En respuesta a esta ofensiva, distintos sectores sociales, con destacado protagonismo de los trabajadores, desarrollaron masivas acciones de resistencia que incluyeron desde alzamientos cívicos militares organizados por fuerzas leales a Perón, pasando por numerosas huelgas y manifestaciones espontáneas en los distritos obreros, hasta la resistencia cotidiana ofrecida por los trabajadores en los lugares de trabajo. En esta ponencia nos detenemos en los primeros cinco años del golpe de estado y focalizamos en la conflictividad protagonizada por los obreros de la industria frigorífica de Rosario. Se trata de una primera aproximación analítica donde procuramos bucear en torno de las prácticas de los trabajadores ponderando las experiencias de lucha y organización al interior de los lugares de trabajo y en los barrios circundantes a la fábrica. Para ello nos centraremos en los barrios del sur de la ciudad, en las inmediaciones de la planta de Swift que está emplazada en un paraje de inmejorable accesibilidad fluvial entre el arroyo Saladillo y el río Paraná, en la vecina ciudad de Villa Gobernador Gálvez.Mesa 11: De la Revolución Libertadora al menemismo. Lucha de clases y conflictos políticos en Argentina (1955-1989)Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Steigeisen fürs Theoriegebirge : zwei Neuerscheinungen zum 80. Geburtstag von Jürgen Habermas

Rezensionen zu: Michael Funken (Hrsg.) : Über Habermas. Gespräche mit Zeitgenossen. Darmstadt 2008, Primus Verlag, ISBN 978-3-89678-645-6, 192 Seiten, 24,90 Euro. Stefan Müller-Doohm : Jürgen Habermas. Frankfurt 2008, Suhrkamp Verlag, BasisBiographien 38, ISBN 978-3-518-18238-3, 157 Seiten, 7,90 Euro

Liberale Subjekte. Eine affirmative Streitschrift

n diesem Beitrag zum Scherpunkt "Politische Theorie in der Krise" untersuche ich das von liberalen Theorien produzierte Wissen. Der Beitrag folgt dazu drei Selbstbeschreibungen des politischen Liberalismus, der sich erstens selbst als dominierendes Zentrum der gegenwärtigen Politischen Theorie sieht, der zweitens Anspruch darauf erhebt, mit seinem Wissen die politischen Selbstverständnisse von Bürger_innen anleiten und verändern zu können, und der schließlich drittens seine eigene Wirksamkeit in der Wirklichkeit im Rahmen der Diskussion um ideale und nicht-ideale Theorie verhandelt. Im affirmativen Nachvollzug dieser drei Selbstbeschreibungen zeigt der Artikel, wie das Wissen des politischen Liberalismus eine von politischen Konflikten befreite Wirklichkeit erzeugt und zugleich die politischen Selbstverständnisse der Bürger_innen mithilfe dieser Wirklichkeitskonstruktion lenkt. Damit zielt das Wissen des politischen Liberalismus darauf ab, eine Subjektivität zu formen, die sich zugunsten einer rechtsförmigen Verwaltung von Politik verabschiedet

Representation and Phenomenalism in the Critique of Pure Reason

Kant has often been accused of being a phenomenalist, i.e., of reducing spatial objects to representations that exist only in our minds. I argue against this reading. Given Kant’s claim that appearances are mere representations, the only way to avoid the accusation of phenomenalism is to provide an alternative conception of “representation” according to which the claim that something is a mere representation does not entail that it is a mere mental item (or an organized collection of mental items). I offer evidence that Kant does not conceive of representations as mental items and outline an alternative conception of representations

Can we make sense of free harmony?

Despite its centrality to Kant's account of judgments of taste, the notion of free harmony is remarkably hard to grasp. The difficulty springs, I argue, from the fact that any interpretation of this notion has to account for two desiderata that conflict under the assumption that concepts restrict imagination's freedom in composing the manifold of intuition: (a) that free harmony is compatible with a determinate cognition of the beautiful object and (b) what concept the object is subsumed under is irrelevant to determine whether or not it elicits free harmony. Guyer has objected to a number of interpretations on the ground that they cannot account for (a). I argue that Guyer's own metacognitive interpretation fails because it cannot account for (b). Based on some claims in the General remark on the first section of the Analytic, I outline an interpretation of free harmony that can make (a) and (b) compatible

Willing and wanting : a volitionalist account of motivation

O objetivo desse trabalho é motivar e defender a tese de que a vontade é a fonte de nossas ações. De acordo com o modelo volicionalista que defenderei, nós somos dotados de vontade, uma capacidade de tomar decisões. Quando agimos intencionalmente e por uma razão, a atividade da vontade é parte da etiologia da ação. Isto é, parte do que explica a ação é o fato de que o agente exercitou sua vontade de maneira a decidir agir à luz de certa consideração. Ademais, de acordo com esse modelo, a atividade da vontade não pode ser reduzida às operações de desejos ou juízos normativos. O agente, por meio de sua vontade, desempenha um papel irredutível na produção de suas ações. Minha defesa desse modelo emerge gradualmente da crítica de modelos alternativos. Em primeiro lugar, eu rejeito a ideia de que somos movidos por desejos compreendidos como forças motivacionais. Eu argumento que essa ideia é incompatível com a existência de casos de incentivos múltiplos (isto é, casos nos quais o agente tem mais de um incentivo para agir mas nos quais seu motivo corresponde a apenas um desses incentivos). Para dar conta de tais casos, nós temos que atribuir a agentes a capacidade de determinar ativamente os objetivos visados por suas ações. Essa capacidade é a vontade do agente. Em segundo lugar, eu sustento que casos de incentivos múltiplos mostram que a vontade não pode ser compreendida como a capacidade de identificar razões para ação e pesá-las de modo a chegar a um veredicto normativo sobre o que devemos fazer. Antes, devemos conceber a vontade como razão prática, entendida como a capacidade de se engajar em episódios de raciocínio que concluem não em juízos normativos mas em intenções. Após argumentar em favor da concepção da vontade como razão prática, me volto para o modelo padrão da ação, segundo o qual nossas ações são causadas por pares desejo-crença. Sustento que uma vez que recusamos a noção de forças motivacionais, desejos (no sentido amplo que defensores do modelo padrão usam o termo) apenas podem ser compreendidos como disposições para decidir agir à luz de certas considerações e que, consequentemente, o modelo padrão colapsa no modelo volicionalista. Isso encerra minha defesa da tese de que nós não somos movidos por nossos desejos, mas antes determinamos nosso próprio comportamento por meio do exercício da nossa vontade. Por fim, argumento que devemos compreender a vontade não como a capacidade de decidir à luz de nossas crenças, mas antes como a capacidade de decidir à luz de fatos – uma capacidade que não é perfeitamente exercitada quando decidimos agir à luz de uma crença (mesmo que verdadeira).The goal of this work is to motivate and defend the view that the will is the source of our actions. According to the volitionalist model I will defend, we are endowed with a will, a capacity to make decisions. When we act intentionally and for a reason, the activity of the will is part of the etiology of the action. That is, part of what explains an action is the fact that the agent has exercised her will so as to decide to act in light of a particular consideration. Furthermore, according to this model, the activity of the will cannot be reduced to the operation of desires or normative judgments. The agent, through her will, plays an irreducible role in the production of her actions. My defense of this model emerges gradually from the criticism of alternative models. First, I reject the idea that we are moved by desires conceived of as motivational forces. I argue that this idea is incompatible with the existence of multipleincentives cases (i.e., cases in which the agent has more than one incentive to act but in which her motive corresponds to only one of these incentives). In order to account for such cases, we have to ascribe to agents the capacity to actively determine the goals at which their actions aim. This capacity is the agent’s will. Second, I argue that multiple-incentives cases show that the will cannot be understood as the capacity to identify reasons to action and to weigh them in order to reach normative verdicts about what we should do. Rather, we should conceive of the will as practical reason, understood as the capacity to engage in pieces of reasoning that conclude not in normative judgments but in intentions. Having argued for the conception of the will as practical reason, I turn to the standard model of action, according to which our actions are caused by belief-desire pairs. I argue that once we abandon the notion of motivational forces, desires (in the broad sense in which supporters of the standard model use the term) can only be understood as dispositions to decide to act in light of certain considerations and, consequently, that the standard model collapses on the volitionalist model. That concludes my defense of the view that we are not moved by desires, but rather determine our own behavior through the exercise of our will. Lastly, I argue that the will should be understood not as a capacity to decide in light of our beliefs, but rather as a capacity to decide in light of facts – a capacity that is not perfectly exercised when we decide to act in light of a belief (even if it is true)