COGNITIO-ESTUDOS

Revista Eletrônica de Filosofia
Philosophy Eletronic Journal
ISSN 1809-8428

São Paulo: Center for Pragmatism Studies
Philosophy Graduate Program
Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo
Available in <http://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/cognitio>

Vol. 11, nº.2, July-December 2014

EDITORIAL

Dear Reader,

As we introduce number 2 of volume 11 of the second 2014 issue of COGNITIO-STUDIES: Electronic Journal of Philosophy, a half-yearly publication of the Center for Pragmatism Studies of the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo - PUC/SP, we wish to thank all those who have been regularly following our publications, as well as to welcome those who are having their first contact with this periodical.

The COGNITIO-STUDIES brings together writings by researchers and scholars, both from Brazil and abroad, focused on philosophical themes in their most diverse ranges. This issue brings to the attention of readers 12 texts (eleven articles and one translation) addressing relevant and current philosophical concepts, such as Language, Materialism, Realism, Synechism, Pragmatism, Pluralism, Dualism, Semiotics, Abduction, Epistemology, Subjectivity, and Solidarity.

The mosaic of concepts and analyses proposals, grounded on and discussed with the depth required for a publication such as this, discusses Galileo's dual strategy of demonstrating the homogeneity between Earth and Moon, viewed as the first step to break up the Aristotelian distinction between the sublunar and supralunar worlds.

It also presents the more general and relevant traces of John Dewey's theory of investigation, highlighting the constituents and the results of the investigative act, the role of logic in research, and the meaning of the term "instrumentalism" employed by the philosopher himself to characterize his thought.

In another article, the author examines David Lewis' theory of chance, analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of this theory, and suggesting that Lewis' objectivism should be tempered to include the regularities of our own cognition.

In Notes on the debate between Putnam and Habermas, some epistemological implications regarding the objectivity of values are explained, showing that Habermas avoids Putnam's criticism by adhering implicitly to the thesis of the linkage between deontological morality and axiological orientation, in terms of vulnerability.

The text that seeks to explain the ideas of subjectivity and introspection, in light of Charles Sanders Peirce's pragmatist philosophy, demonstrates this hypothesis through the use and explanation of the concepts of inquiry, synechism and semiotics itself, whose scope enables to understand the "glassy essence" of man as sign.

Peirce's fundamental abduction explores the connection between Peirce's theory of abduction and his Cosmology, showing how abduction and creativity involve a cosmology and have to be sustained by Synechism to be fully understood and explained.

The important argument on Nature and Space is addressed in an article that discusses Leibniz's concept of relative space and Newton's concept of absolute space, endeavoring to understand the necessity of each project.

The critiques to Rorty's thought by Thelma Lavine, James Gouinlock and David Hall, to whom "Rorty's pragmatism asserts itself as an abandonment of the very attempt to learn more about nature and the conditions of investigative suitability", are clearly presented, as opposed to John Dewey's classic pragmatism.

The pragmatist and pluralistic notions of meaning, according to William James and Jakob Von Uexküll, respectively, are brought together in the study that aims to develop the outline of a philosophy of organism, according to which signification processes occur during the life processes of different organisms.

Professor Ivo A. Ibri's article critiques the contradictory concept of the real present in Charles S. Peirce's text How to make our ideas clear, setting out the reasons why certain forms of solipsism or private experiences do not participate in a semiotic theater that constitutes the true scope of what Peirce considers reality.

The text Richard Rorty's Pragmatism and its political consequences presents the characterization of pragmatism as the doctrine that claims the absence of constraints to investigation, and his non-essentialist defense of what he calls freedom as recognition of contingency and the traditional bourgeois freedoms, based on the concept of solidarity.

Finally, an article that holds that no convincing argument has yet been made for Cartesian-substance dualism, and that standard objections to it can be "credibly" answered.
These are the topics of this new edition of COGNITIO-STUDIES: Electronic Journal of Philosophy, and we wish to invite everyone to share the reading and reflection proposed by these texts, spurring them to delve into the always new and challenging space of philosophical knowledge.

São Paulo, November 2014.

Antonio Nolberto de Oliveira Xavier
PhD. Student in Communication and Semiotics - PUCSP
Assistant Professor "B" - Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz - UESC
Reviewer/COGNITIO-ESTUDOS