Uma quasi-objetividade na teoria dos valores de David Hume

O objetivo deste artigo consiste em responder à questão de saber se, na filosofia de Hume, o padrão para determinar o valor de verdade dos proferimentos sobre valores morais e estéticos pode ser considerado genuinamente objetivo. Para tal, começo por esclareço três posições que se pode adotar sobre a questão de saber se este padrão é ou não genuinamente objetivo, a saber, subjetivismo, intersubjetivismo e objetivismo (I e II). Em seguida, explico a pertinência da interpretação cognitivista e por que razão a interpretação realista de David Norton falha (III). Por fim, e à luz de uma distinção entre objetividade no sentido forte e fraco (ou quasi-objetividade), concluo que na filosofia de Hume, o padrão para os proferimentos sobre valores é quasi-objetivo (IV).

Theme of Trust Between Epistemology and Ethics

The article aims to clarify the philosophical path around the theme of trust; the relevance of this philosophical category is linked to both the epistemological and ethical dimensions. The problem of the risk of trust is the ethical philosophy of our time, above all because of the phenomenon of migration, the recent pandemic, the economic and political question. Returning to the work of David Hume we try to explain the empirical analysis of this theme in a perspective of a new era of trust. The epistemological foundation of trust clarifies the relationship with justice and pluralism, a source of positive resources but also of important problems.

Reflections on the Yoruba Past: Toyin Falola on Isaac Delano

Toyin Falola remains one of the most illuminating voices with remarkable efforts to reposition the continent of Africa on the appropriate place on the global map. He has provided sufficient evidence that he deserves the accolades he attracts from contemporaries and admirers. More than many of his contemporaries, Toyin Falola continues to demonstrate that knowledge production from Africa is sustainable if past events are interrogated accordingly. In very many ways, he displays quality content that gives him the sort of image he has built for Africans generally, and himself particularly in the world of intellectualism. The debate about the essentialism of African knowledge economy, especially the Yoruba culture, is centuries old, and frozen in its condition. It became prominently popular from the beginning of African’s contact with Europeans and Arabs, and this, ever since then, has attracted deepened engagement by African scholars whose primary intention was to defend their cultural legacy. Understanding that the proliferation of such desecrating rhetoric that Africans are a people without history by Eurocentric scholars like Trevor Roper and David Hume was a consummate attempt to undermine their existence, and then justify their expansionist agenda, makes African scholars of various disciplines to stand in defense of their history, hence decolonization process in pre- and post-independence era. Apparently, it was Edward Said who asserts that, “domination and inequities of power and wealth are perennial facts of human society. But in today’s global setting they are also interpretable as having something to do with imperialism, its history, its new forms.”1 It thus seems that the generations that witnessed such unmistakable assault on their cultural heritage were not ready to accept it in good faith, and this provoked 1 Edward Said. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1993, p.19. 270 Wale Oyedeji corresponding resistance from them. They however reacted intellectually. It was in the spirit of reacting defensively that the first, second and third generations of historians emerged. Their sudden increase in the production of intelligent materials sent such a strong signal to the West so much that the world was compelled to change their erroneous misconception about Africa and Africans. As such, scholars like Samuel Johnson, Isaac Delano, Kenneth Dike, Bala Usman, Obaro Ikime, Bolanle Awe and a host of others took up the challenge of setting the record straight. The trend continues in that fashion even in postcolonial environment. For one thing, it birthed the Ibadan School of History, an intellectual society that achieved beautiful and daunting results in their quest for African cultural redemption. Many contemporary scholars consider the efforts of these pioneer intellectuals purposely because their works provide sufficient background to understanding African cultures and values, its steady evolution and travails. As such, in this writing, I intend to consider the greatness of Yoruba culture, a people in West Africa, visa-a-vie their precolonial undertaking and their colonial experience. Leaning on the works of Isaac Delano, this work will look into the Yoruba past to reflect on the culture, philosophy, ideology, epistemology and ontology of the people, with a view to educating the general public on the inexhaustible items of their knowledge economy and productions. Falola has done exponentially well to relate to us the seemingly beautiful body of works produced by Isaac Delano in journals, newspapers, periodicals, personal records among many other things. All these are indications that ingenuity cannot be covered by the web of power because while power is transient, ingenuity that persists is not.

Of British Representational Practices in the Age of Capitalism/Territorialism (1743-1776)

The issue addressed in this essay is how the notion of history was altered by the embedding of commerce into the discursive field of eighteenth-century Britain. Even though current eighteenth-century, and Enlightenment, studies draw attention to historiographic questions challenging traditional modes of periodization, the methods by which we acquire and organize knowledge, or the extent to which accounts of the eighteenth century have been driven by the imperatives of the times, this project argues that one historiographic issue that has been significantly underplayed is a different concept of history produced in eighteenth-century Britain by the fundamental operation of mercantile society, its logic of exchange, and the predominance of trade within it. David Hume and Adam Smith’s historiographic trajectory was obscured (and, ultimately, eliminated) by the scientific or materialist notion of history advanced in nineteenth-century historiography.

David Hume e o hiato entre o ponto e a linha: os princípios da dimensão espacial

Esse artigo pretende apresentar o princípio da cópia a partir da execução do princípio da separabilidade, com o objetivo de dilucidar as discussões levadas a cabo por Hume na compreensão da composição do espaço e de suas implicações para as ciências que operam com construções espaciais. O ganho epistêmico singular aqui está em se fazer isso no interior de um modelo de empirismo. Posto que há vários descompassos no modo de analisar o complexo e dele extrair seus elementos simples, como será exemplificado aqui, procuraremos mostrar que é inteiramente diferente separar o complexo em vista de suas qualidades simples, e decompor o complexo para se determinar suas quantidades simples. Por conseguinte, procuraremos mostrar como Hume precisou recriar o seu próprio modelo cognitivo, fortemente embasado no registro de nossas percepções, para poder conceber com ele a composição do espaço e as operações da geometria que têm de lhe fazer referência.

The Ethics of Treaties: A Humean Account

<p>This thesis concerns the reasons that states have to comply with their treaty commitments. It aims to answer two questions. Firstly, what reason does signing a treaty give to a state to act in accordance with the treaty? Secondly, assuming that there is such a reason, how does entering into a treaty generate that reason? One answer to these questions is to say that treaties are kinds of promises between states. To enter into a treaty is to make a promise and promises should be kept. But promises are a puzzling way of generating reasons for action. It is not clear how it is possible to create a reason to do something merely by communicating an intention to create a reason. So, to say that treaties are promises seems merely to transpose this puzzle from the relations between individual persons to international affairs and the relations between states. In this thesis I endorse a view of treaty making that understands treaties as promises as the philosopher David Hume understands them. I argue that this provides a plausible account of treaty making. I suggest that the resulting view, which I label ‘Treaty as Humean Promise,’ provides plausible and appealing answers to the two questions mentioned above. Treaty as Humean Promise claims that states entering treaties create self-interested reasons to comply with those treaties. They do this by invoking an independent social convention of treaty making one of the rules of which is that treaties must be kept. Continued access to this social convention is important to states. They jeopardise this continued access by violating their treaties and giving their treaty partners, and potential treaty partners, reason to withdraw future trust in them. I set this out in chapters 1 and 2. In chapter 3 I claim that Treaty as Humean Promise can make sense of the intuition that there are moral reasons to comply with treaties. In chapter 4 I look at what Treaty as Humean Promise has to say about different types of treaty. In chapters 5 and 6 I discuss Hume’s own views on treaty making. I offer a charitable reading of some puzzling remarks by Hume from a section of A Treatise of Human Nature called ‘Of the laws of nations’. In doing so, I defend Hume against a number of his critics. In the final two chapters I discuss a ‘political realist’ account of treaties. I distinguish between ‘act’ and ‘rule’ variants of political realism. Political realists, I suggest, should be rule realists at least about treaties. This means that they should endorse and follow the rule that treaties should be kept all else being equal.</p>

The Ethics of Treaties: A Humean Account

<p>This thesis concerns the reasons that states have to comply with their treaty commitments. It aims to answer two questions. Firstly, what reason does signing a treaty give to a state to act in accordance with the treaty? Secondly, assuming that there is such a reason, how does entering into a treaty generate that reason? One answer to these questions is to say that treaties are kinds of promises between states. To enter into a treaty is to make a promise and promises should be kept. But promises are a puzzling way of generating reasons for action. It is not clear how it is possible to create a reason to do something merely by communicating an intention to create a reason. So, to say that treaties are promises seems merely to transpose this puzzle from the relations between individual persons to international affairs and the relations between states. In this thesis I endorse a view of treaty making that understands treaties as promises as the philosopher David Hume understands them. I argue that this provides a plausible account of treaty making. I suggest that the resulting view, which I label ‘Treaty as Humean Promise,’ provides plausible and appealing answers to the two questions mentioned above. Treaty as Humean Promise claims that states entering treaties create self-interested reasons to comply with those treaties. They do this by invoking an independent social convention of treaty making one of the rules of which is that treaties must be kept. Continued access to this social convention is important to states. They jeopardise this continued access by violating their treaties and giving their treaty partners, and potential treaty partners, reason to withdraw future trust in them. I set this out in chapters 1 and 2. In chapter 3 I claim that Treaty as Humean Promise can make sense of the intuition that there are moral reasons to comply with treaties. In chapter 4 I look at what Treaty as Humean Promise has to say about different types of treaty. In chapters 5 and 6 I discuss Hume’s own views on treaty making. I offer a charitable reading of some puzzling remarks by Hume from a section of A Treatise of Human Nature called ‘Of the laws of nations’. In doing so, I defend Hume against a number of his critics. In the final two chapters I discuss a ‘political realist’ account of treaties. I distinguish between ‘act’ and ‘rule’ variants of political realism. Political realists, I suggest, should be rule realists at least about treaties. This means that they should endorse and follow the rule that treaties should be kept all else being equal.</p>