Teorema. International Journal of Philosophy

Competence, Safety and Situation in Virtue Reliabilism

2025-04-21T11:20:58+00:00

This paper presents the debate between two types of virtue reliabilists: robust reliabilists, who envision knowledge as apt belief resulting from the manifestation of the epistemic agent’s reliable cognitive competences, and modest or anti-luck reliabilists, who argue that, in addition to competence, apt belief requires an additional condition, which they identify as the safety condition. After presenting the terms of the debate, an argument is put forth to reject modest reliabilism: the safety condition is already embedded in two fundamental aspects assumed in the concept of competence inherent to robust reliabilism through its situational condition, rendering the safety condition somewhat trivial.

How to Build an Epistemic Echo Chamber

2025-07-01T11:22:59+00:00

The present paper offers an explanatory model of the logical structure of epistemic echo chambers. Most work done so far on echo chambers attributes their cause to epistemic vice: they arise due to poor reasoning or cognitive biases. I argue that instead they are a predictable outcome of rational belief formation. They result from groups aggregating and magnifying the beliefs of their members, and the reflection of group consensus back to individuals who then increase their confidence to better conform with the group. This process is recursive, driving both individuals and epistemic groups to complete conviction. I also argue that not all echo chambers are bad. They are virtuous when they increase credence in the truth for those inside and inoculate them against the falsehoods, corrupt data, and fallacious reasoning outside the chamber. Echo chambers are bad when they start with falsehoods and amplify confidence in them.

Neural representations

2025-07-23T14:53:12+00:00

This article examines Mauricio Suárez's inferentialist account of scientific representation in light of recent advances in neuroscience and artificial intelligence (NeuroAI). While it offers valuable pragmatic insights, I argue it is insufficient to capture the dynamic, computational, and biological nature of neural representations. Drawing on the mechanistic, functionalist, and representationalist (MFR) approach and empirical findings, I maintain they are not mere abstract entities but are embodied in the physical and functional properties of neural systems. I challenge arguments against the necessity and sufficiency of similarity and isomorphism, highlighting computational transformations, functional roles, and the directionality of processing that shape content. The Hodgkin–Huxley model and neurocomputationalism employing artificial neural networks support the MFR and challenge Suárez's inferentialism. I conclude that a mechanistic and computational understanding provides a more comprehensive and empirically grounded framework for modelling and representation in the mind sciences.

Editorial note

2025-03-19T16:40:31+00:00

After five decades of history and strong ties to the universities of Valencia and Oviedo, teorema. An International Journal of Philosophy enters a new phase in 2025 as part of the University of Granada’s collection of academic journals.

Review: Ciencia y método en los siglos XIX y XX

2025-03-13T10:19:24+00:00

Edited by Juan Antonio Valor and María de Paz, Ciencia y método en los siglos XIX y XX (Science and Method in the 19th and 20th Centuries) is a tribute to the distinguished academic career of Dr. Ana Rioja, a specialist in the Philosophy of Nature. The work examines the close relationship between science and philosophy during the 19th and 20th centuries, addressing key topics such as mathematics, physics, Darwinism, epistemology, and the history of science. Through a thematic and reflective structure, it offers an interdisciplinary and profound perspective on scientific advancements and their philosophical underpinnings, highlighting the dialogue and complexity between the two disciplines. As such, it stands as essential reading for those seeking to understand the evolution of scientific and philosophical thought during these two pivotal centuries.

Review: The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Disagreement

2025-03-25T13:50:28+00:00

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Disagreement (2024), edited by Maria Baghramian, J. Adam Carter, and Rach Cosker-Rowland, offers a rigorous and multidisciplinary analysis of the phenomenon of disagreement from the perspectives of epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, science, and public policy. The volume brings together contributions from leading scholars and is structured into six thematic sections that address the nature, scope, and implications of disagreement across multiple domains of thought.

The work stands out both for the quality of its contributions and the diversity of approaches it presents, addressing topics such as skepticism, belief justification, democratic deliberation, and the influence of disagreement in science and public health. Among its merits is its relevance in today's context of growing polarization and misinformation, where a philosophical understanding of disagreement proves to be essential. The book establishes itself as a key reference for the study of philosophical disagreement and its implications for collective decision-making.

Book symposium on Robert Sapolsky’s Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will

2025-07-01T11:26:38+00:00

One of the most influential books of the last years on the debate about free will, and probably the most controversial one, is Robert Sapolsky’s Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will (Penguin Press, 2023). Digging deeper on the biological details the author had explored in previous works, the book meticulously explores how every aspect of our behaviour is determined by events we don’t really have a choice about, and also patiently examines the possible repercussions that the realization that free will is an illusion may have on the moral and legal aspects of our lives. Following the invitation of the editors of Teorema, here we present five papers discussing different arguments and ideas contained in the book, together with professor Sapolsky’s answers and comments.

What Does “Free Will” Mean?

2025-07-31T07:39:13+00:00

Robert Sapolsky argues that free will requires complete independence from uncontrollable influences. We claim this criterion is overly demanding and misaligned with ordinary understandings of free will. To assess folk intuitions, we presented 197 American participants with five scenarios in which a person's behavior was shaped by uncontrollable factors. In four cases—preferences, genetic traits, brain function, and advertising—most participants judged the person to possess free will. A fifth scenario involving a compliance drug served as a control; here, most participants denied free will. These findings suggest that laypeople consider free will compatible with certain external influences. Thus, Sapolsky's conception diverges from common usage. While his strict definition may rule out free will, our results support the viability of a more moderate and widely endorsed conception. Any attempt to refute free will must first demonstrate that the definition used captures its common meaning.

Undetermined: Free will in real time and through time

2025-07-31T07:39:16+00:00

In his book Determined, Robert Sapolsky argues that our cognitive systems are effectively deterministic, such that a preconfigured algorithm will inevitably spit out a single answer for what to do in every scenario we encounter, leaving nothing in that process “up to us”. A more realistic view of the psychology and neuroscience of decision-making undermines this deterministic impression and highlights instead how our cognitive processes are designed to “tune the algorithm” on the fly, precisely so that we can figure out what to do in novel scenarios where all of the contextual relations could not possibly be prestated. Carrying out these cognitive processes – by operating over meaningful patterns of neural activity, figuring the relative salience of various parameters, in a highly contextual and holistic manner, for person-level reasons, as best we can with incomplete, uncertain information and noisy components – just is us deciding what to do. This also undermines the argument that we have no control over how our neural or cognitive systems come to be configured at any moment. Some of the choices we make are about our own cognition and motivations: we shape our own character through time in ways that enable us to act as ourselves in real-time.

Sapolsky-Freedom and Libertarian-Freedom

2025-07-31T07:38:46+00:00

This paper offers a critique of Robert Sapolsky’s book, Determined. More specifically, this paper argues for the following theses. First, the sort of freedom that Sapolsky argues that humans don’t possess (which we can call Sapolsky-freedom) is (a) not free will (i.e., not the ability picked out by the ordinary-language expression ‘free will’) and (b) not worth wanting. Second, Sapolsky’s arguments don’t give us any good reason to doubt that human beings possess various other kinds of freedom that are worth wanting. More specifically, it is argued in this paper that (i) Sapolsky’s arguments don’t give us any good reason to doubt that human beings possess a compatibilist kind of freedom, and, more importantly, (ii) Sapolsky’s arguments don’t give us any good reason to doubt that human beings possess libertarian freedom.

Agency in a Deterministic World

2025-07-31T07:39:00+00:00

En Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Sapolsky defiende que el determinismo y el libre albedrío son incompatibles, y enfatiza que nuestras acciones están determinadas por la genética, la química cerebral y el entorno, no por decisiones conscientes. Esta perspectiva desafía ideas tradicionales de responsabilidad moral, al sugerir que no se debe culpar a las personas por acciones que no pueden controlar debido a influencias biológicas y sociales. A pesar de esto, considero que Sapolsky pasa por alto un posible espacio para la agencia dentro de un marco determinista. En particular, Sapolsky analiza el aprendizaje condicionado, y creo que esto abre un espacio tanto para la agencia individual como colectiva. Si el comportamiento puede ser influido por fuerzas externas, entonces podría haber margen para que moldeemos nuestras acciones individuales y sociales mediante intervenciones ambientales.

The place of choice and norms in a world of inevitable events

2025-06-30T08:57:56+00:00

Some aspects of Robert Sapolsky’s arguments against free will in his book Determined are clarified. In the first place, it is argued that our choices are determined not in the sense that physical laws are always deterministic, but in the sense that, even if random events may happen, our choices cannot be but the ones they have been, given everything that did not depend upon us (including indeterministic events). In the second place, the determination of our choices is not equivalent to their not being conscious, deliberate choices, for the difference between these and other kinds of psychological or physiological events does not consists in an imaginary ontological openness, but just in following different (and more complex) neurological routes. Lastly, it is argued that the inevitability of our choices only precludes moral assessment according to some limited moral theories.

In defense of our lives as biological machines

2025-07-31T07:38:59+00:00

The preceding pieces thoughtfully argue that we possess free will, both of the type that we would want in the moment, and of the type that has determined the sort of person we turned out to be. Moreover, they argue that this overwhelmingly fits our everyday intuition that we can be free at important moments, and that such moments can reflect our ability to consciously choose to amplify or negate the effects of circumstance upon us. In this piece, I heartily and respectfully disagree with all these points.

Critical Note: El libre albedrío es una función biológica evolucionada

2025-03-14T07:09:43+00:00

The book "Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will" by Kevin J. Mitchell defends a bold thesis: free will is a biological function that evolved through natural selection. This critical note examines the proposal from the perspective of philosophy of mind and evolutionary biology, highlighting the relevance of the concept of agency as a foundation for a naturalistic explanation of human consciousness and decision-making. Mitchell proposes a form of cognitive realism in which thoughts have causal efficacy due to their semantic content, thereby laying the groundwork for a scientific understanding of free will.