Free Public Reason examines the idea of public justification, stressing its importance but also questioning the coherence of the concept itself. Although public justification is employed in the work of theorists such as John Rawls, Jeremy Waldron, Thomas Nagel, and others, it has received little attention on its own as a philosophical concept. In this book Fred D'Agostino shows that the concept is composed of various values, interests, and notions of the good, and that no ranking of these is (...) possible. The notion of public justification itself is thus shown to be contestable. In demonstrating this, D'Agostino undermines many current political theories that rely on this concept. Having broken down the foundations of public justification, D'Agostino then offers an alternative model of how a workable consensus on its meaning might be reached through the interactions of a community of interpreters or delegates at a constitutional convention. (shrink)

The first modern edition of the Instituzione d’ogni stato lodevole delle donne cristiane (1575), and the Ricordi di Monsignor Agostino Valier Vescovo di Verona lasciati alle monache nella sua visitazione fatta l’anno del santissimo Giubileo 1575 (1575) by Cardinal Agostino Valier (Venice, 7 April 1531 – Rome, 23 May 1606). The Instituzione includes three texts meant respectively for unmarried women, widows, and married women (Del modo di vivere delle vergini che si chiamano demesse; Della vera e perfetta viduità; (...) Instruzione delle donne maritate), while the Ricordi is a book for nuns on monastic life. The texts by Agostino Valier are an important example of conduct literature for and about women in Counter-Reformation Italy. Contents include: a historical introduction to the author and his works; the Italian texts with notes; an index of names cited in the treatises; a bibliography. (shrink)

Where does the human aesthetic come from? How does it develop? By introducing the notion of the ‘niche’ as a key term in an empirically and evolutionarily informed aesthetics, this paper aims to take a fresh look at these and similar questions. It also aims to shed new light on the development and functioning of the aesthetic capacity in humans and its trans-generational transmission. Drawing on recent research developments in evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, and cognitive sciences, I shall argue that (...) the human aesthetic capacity—which I understand as the capacity, involving perceptual, cognitive and emotional processes, to enter into a pleasurable/non-pleasurable and expressive relation with objects, artworks, natural phenomena, or other people—relies on constructed environmental resources for its emergence and its ontogenetic development. (shrink)

This books offers an annotated edition of Nifo’s De intellectu (1503), including an extensive analytical summary of the contents, as well as a chronology of Nifo’s life and works, and a full index of the chapters of this work.

This paper is mainly intended to provide some insights into the relationship between the aesthetic dimension, human practical/habitual knowledge and the environment ; more specifically, I shall shed some light on that variety of problems, issues and questions that arise when we examine role and functioning of our human aesthetic attitude – considered as an anthropological constant result of both biological evolution and cultural evolution and which involves, in its exercise, an intimate relationship between the organism and its environment – (...) within the context of today’s environmental crisis. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the notion of transcendentalEmpfindung, which plays a central role in Hölderlin's fragmentary essay Wenn der Dichter einmal des Geistes mächtig ist.Thenotion of transcendental Empfindung is introduced in this essay as a replacement for the concept of intellectual intuition, the well-known philosophical notion which represents one of the key-terms for German philosophers between XVIII and XIX century. In this paper I argue that Hölderlin, having made use of this notion for a long time in his works (...) and philosophical writings, now rejects the intellectual intuition and find a substitute for it in the transcendental sensation under the influence of a renewed reading of Kant's writings, especially Kant's Critique of pure reason and Critique of judgement. (shrink)

This issue of Itinera collects a selection of the papers presented by the participants of the International Conference "Aesthetics of Emotions. Arts and Cognitive Science" held in October 2016 at the University of Milan. The focus of the conference, on the link between arts, emotions and cognitive sciences, is richly reflected in the themes addressed by the essays, which attempt to put into interdisciplinary dialogue "classical" perspectives of the history of aesthetics with more contemporary perspectives inspired by experimental sciences, in (...) particular psychology, cognitive sciences and the theory of emotions. (shrink)

In recent years the number of scholarly publications devoted to Kant's theory of biology has rapidly growing, with particular attention being given to Kant's thoughts about the concepts of teleology, function, organism, and their respective roles in scientific practice. Moving from these recent studies, and distancing itself from their mostly evolutionary background, the main aim of the present paper is to suggest an original "cognitive turn" in the interpretation of Kant's theory of biology. More specifically, the Authors will trace a (...) connection between some Kantian theses about the “peculiar” or special nature of the human mind, advanced in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, and some specific epistemological issues pertaining to the research practice of contemporary molecular biology. (shrink)

Why do we make the aesthetic judgements and have the aesthetic preferences that we do? How and to what extent does repeated exposure to a certain aesthetic object influence our appreciation and taste for it? The present paper aims at reflecting on the role played by repetition in enhancing people's appreciation and attitudes towards an aesthetic stimulus. Almost forty years ago the Polish-born psychologist Robert Zajonc famously championed the so-called "mere-exposure effect" hypothesis, according to which repeated exposure of an individual (...) to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his/her attitude toward it. When applied to the aesthetic case, however, Zajonc's theory produces inconsistent evidence. Is repetition useful or, more precisely, is it true that "the more we repeat, the more we like"? Repetita iuvant? (shrink)

In this paper I discuss Terrence Deacon's hypothesis about the origin of human aesthetic faculty, which he interprets as a by-product of human acquisition of language. In discussing Deacon's hypothesis I introduce the question about the adoption of exaptive evolutionary hypotheses in studies on human evolution and especially on human evolution of aesthetic faculty.

For almost two years now the COVID-19 pandemic impacted in most different forms habits, models of organization, socio-political dynamics and economic assets. Arrangements and orders taking decades to reach stabilization have demonstrated an unsuspected precarity, demanding a profound reorganization of dynamics we had been long accustomed to. As the distant, sanitized character of interaction, transmission, fruition and creation processes has turned from a contingent measure into the unamenable norm of these days’ routine, every aspect of social interaction is changing accordingly. (...) “Contact”, “contagion”, “proximity” and “distance” are not features of a transient period anymore: they are keywords of today’s experience. Indeed, while these concepts were already at stake in masscommunication and social media, it was not before nowadays that their precipitate on art forms could be taken into account more pristinely, for especially performative arts never had to amend their “familiar ground” in order to pursue their goals. Hence, how did artforms adjust themselves to wholly new forms of participation? What are we supposed to expect next? The main aim of this paper is to sketch out, relying on some classical loci of the history of Western aesthetics such as Plato, Aloïs Riegl, Walter Benjamin, this new, re-configured notion of aesthetic and artistic experience in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Recent years have been blessed with an abundance of logical systems, arising from a multitude of applications. A logic can be characterised in many different ways. Traditionally, a logic is presented via the following three components: 1. an intuitive non-formal motivation, perhaps tie it in to some application area 2. a semantical interpretation 3. a proof theoretical formulation. There are several types of proof theoretical methodologies, Hilbert style, Gentzen style, goal directed style, labelled deductive system style, and so on. The (...) tableau methodology, invented in the 1950s by Beth and Hintikka and later per fected by Smullyan and Fitting, is today one of the most popular, since it appears to bring together the proof-theoretical and the semantical approaches to the pre of a logical system and is also very intuitive. In many universities it is sentation the style first taught to students. Recently interest in tableaux has become more widespread and a community crystallised around the subject. An annual tableaux conference is being held and proceedings are published. The present volume is a Handbook a/Tableaux pre senting to the community a wide coverage of tableaux systems for a variety of logics. It is written by active members of the community and brings the reader up to frontline research. It will be of interest to any formal logician from any area. (shrink)

Books Christy Mag Uidhir, Art andObjects [Elisa Caldarola, p. 182] • Julie Jaffee Nagel, Melodies of the Mind. Connections Between Psychoanalisis and Music [Michele Gardini, p. 185] • Dominic McIver Lopes, Beyond Art [Filippo Focosi, p. 187] • Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Herta Nagl-Docekal, Erzsébet Ròsza, Elisabeth Weisser-Lohmann, Hegels Ästhetik als Theorie der Moderne [Lorenzo Leonardo Pizzichemi, p. 190] Comments Toward an Integrated Science of Aesthetics. Getting Rid of the Main Misunderstandings in Evolutionary Aesthetics [Mariagrazia Portera, p. 194].

Evolutionary Aesthetics is a bourgeoning and thriving sub-field of Aesthetics, the main aim of which is “the importation of aesthetics into natural sciences, and especially its integration into the heuristic of Darwin’s evolutionary theory.” Scholars working in the field attempt to determine through the adoption of an interdisciplinary research methodology whether and to what extent Darwinian evolution can shed light on our capacity to have aesthetic experiences, make aesthetic judgments (both of art and natural beauty), and produce literary, visual, musical (...) artworks. Notwithstanding Evolutionary Aesthetics’ growing popularity in the past two decades, a look into the state of current research suggests a significant degree of haziness in the field from both epistemological-methodological and theoretical points of view. The main aim of the present paper is to make a first step towards a revision and extension of the discipline by assessing the role and potential of epigenetics in evolutionarily inspired aesthetic research. Epigenetics is among the youngest and most fascinating research fields in contemporary biology. But one of the most significant occurrences of the word “epigenesis” (the closest “ancestor” of contemporary “epigenetics”) is in Immanuel Kant’s third Critique, his aesthetic masterpiece. What might be the relationship between epigenetics and aesthetics? What is the role of epigenetic mechanisms in the development and functioning of aesthetic behavior in humans? (shrink)

This paper is a preliminary attempt to bring to the fore some questions and issues regarding the role of habits in aesthetics. Indeed, much attention has recently been given to habits across a wide range of fields of inquiry: philosophers turn to the concept to investigate its significance to the historical development of Western thought; neuroscientists look into the role that habits play in the functioning of the human mind and identify the neural and psychological underpinnings of habitual behavior; anthropologists, (...) political scientists and sociologists tap into habits as a key notion to explain social dynamics and collective behavior. For all of these waves that the notion has made in other parts of the humanities and social sciences, there have been so far, however, only a few sustained discussions of habits in conjunction with aesthetics. What is the role of habits in aesthetic experience? How do habits influence and regulate artistic creative processes? (shrink)

This article examines the ideas of ‘aesthetic pleasure’ and ‘aesthetic appreciation of nature’ in the Anthropocene. In the framework of the current ecological crisis, the anthropogenic roots of which are today beyond dispute, are the aesthetic categories of ‘beautiful’, ‘sublime’, ‘majestic’ etc. still appropriate to describe our experience of nature? Can a landscape – or an animal or a plant – which have undergone changes and modifications due to climate change (a human-induced phenomenon) still be considered beautiful? More generally, is (...) the idea of nature as an object of aesthetic contemplation still legitimate in the Anthropocene? (shrink)

In the wake of the recent impressive resurgence of interest in the notion of habits among philosophers, social scientists, psychologists and neuroscientists, this article examines the relevance of human habits to the current environmental crisis. The recently established, multidisciplinary matrix known as ‘Environmental Humanities’ has put major emphasis on habits and their role in, on the one hand, compounding the current ecological disaster (it is the case of those ‘environmentally damaging habits’ such as using too many plastic bags or using (...) plastic straws) but also, on the other hand, in potentially providing a way out of the crisis. Indeed, new ways of behaving that are less harmful to the environment, can only be formed in a way that is robust enough to endure if they are produced through embodied processes of consolidation, i.e. if they become seated in the form of habits. (shrink)

Renaud Barbaras, La vie lacunaire [Thomas Vercruysse, p. 324] • Wolfram Hogrebe, Der implizite Mensch [Federica Ceranovi, p. 334] • Emmanuel Alloa, Das durchscheinende Bild [Maria Teresa Costa, p. 344] • Alexander R. Galloway, The Interface Effect [Angela Maiello, p. 346] • Francisco José Ramos, La significación del lenguaje poético [Michele Gardini, p. 348] • Alessandro Arbo, Entendre comme. Wittgenstein et l’esthétique musicale [Leonardo V. Distaso, p. 351.

Alguno leyendo el título de esta breve investigación pensará tal vez que se trata de una estrategia publicitaria destinada más a llamar la atención que a proponer un argumento. En realidad no; el título está estrechamente unido a la realidad. Agustín había prometido escribir un libro sobre las nociones de herejía y nunca lo hizo. Pretendo en este artículo explicar brevemente: En qué ocasión lo prometió; Por qué no lo escribió: Qué habría dicho si lo hubiese escrito.

Volumi e saggi Jay Schulkin, Reflections on the Musical Mind. An Evolutionary Perspective , [Michele Gardini, p. 202] • Hans Belting, Faces. Eine Geschichte des Gesichts [Pietro Conte, p. 205] • Aby Warburg, Il primo Rinascimento italiano. Sette conferenze inedite [Alice Barale, p. 207] • Laura Anna Macor , Reading Schiller: Ethics, Aesthetics and Religion [Lorenzo Leonardo Pizzichemi, p. 209] • Bernard Lafargue, Stéphanie Cardoso , Figures de l’art n° 25, Philosophie du design [Claire Azéma, Anne Beyaert Geslin, Stéphanie Cardoso, (...) Cécile Croce, p. 212] • Helmut Leder et al., What Makes an Art Expert? Emotion and Evaluation in Art Appreciation , “Cognition and Emotion”, 2013, 28, pp. 1-11; Enric Munar et al., Aesthetic Appreciation: Event-Related Field and Time-Frequency Analyses , “Frontiers in Human Neurosciences”, 2012, 5, pp. 1-11; Gerald C. Cupchik et al., Viewing Artworks: Contributions of Cognitive Control and Perceptual Facilitation to Aesthetic Experience , “Brain and Cognition”, 2009, 70, pp. 84-91 [Gianluca Consoli, p. 217]. (shrink)

Ian C. Jarvie developed the idea of situational logic in a subtle and effective way. He was also interested in, as well as a contributor to, the institution of academic publication. This chapter provides a situational analysis of an important recurrent pattern in academic publishing, namely, the concentration of work around particular topics, despite the fact that most such work will be unrewarded in the economy of esteem that is meant to be in play.

This book was published in 2003.This volume presents a detailed examination of incommensurability in the value-theoretical sense. Exploring how choosers deal with problems and constraints of choice, the author draws on work in cognitive psychology, in sociology, in jurisprudence, in economics, and in the theory of value to show how choosers learn to make trade-offs when there is potential incommensurability among the options they are considering. The analysis is also informed by recent work in the tradition of Michel Foucault. With (...) so many modern devices and ideals of government dependent on the comparability of options, this book is timely and can inform public debate about de-regulation, user-pays, accountability, and the substitution of market mechanisms for government regulation and supply. (shrink)

We show that Smullyan's analytic tableaux cannot p-simulate the truth-tables. We identify the cause of this computational breakdown and relate it to an underlying semantic difficulty which is common to the whole tradition originating in Gentzen's sequent calculus, namely the dissonance between cut-free proofs and the Principle of Bivalence. Finally we discuss some ways in which this principle can be built into a tableau-like method without affecting its analytic nature.

While putting forward the proposal of a “philosophy of technology in the nominative case,” grounded on the concept of Neoenvironmentality, this paper intends to argue that the best definition of our current age is not “Anthropocene.” Rather, it is “Technocene,” since technology represents here and now the real “subject of history” and of (a de-natured) nature, i.e. the (neo)environment where man has to live.This proposal culminates in a new definition of man’s humanity and of technology. Switching from natura hominis to (...) conditio humana, the peculiarity of man can be defined on the basis of an anthropic perimeter, the core of which consists of man’s worldhood: man is that being that has a world (Welt), while animal has a mere environment (Umwelt). Both man’s worldhood and animal’s environmentality are derived from a pathic premise, namely the fundamental moods (Grundstimmungen) that refer them to their respective findingness (Befindlichkeit).From this anthropological premise, technology emerges as the oikos of contemporary humanity. Technology becomes the current form of the world – and so gives birth to a Technocene – insofar as it introduces in any human context its ratio operandi and so assimilates man to an animal condition, i.e. an environmental one. Technocene corresponds on the one side to the emergence of technology as (Neo)environment and on the other to the feralization of man. The spirit of Technocene turns out to be the complete redefinition of the anthropic perimeter.While providing a non-ideological characterization of the current age, this paper proposes the strategy of an ‘anthropological conservatism,’ that is to say a pathic desertion understood as a possible (pre)condition for the beginning of an authentic Anthropocene, i.e. the age of an-at-last-entirely-human-man. (shrink)

In our information societies, tasks and decisions are increasingly outsourced to automated systems, machines, and artificial agents that mediate human relationships, by taking decisions and acting on the basis of algorithms. This raises a critical issue: how are algorithmic procedures and applications to be appraised and governed? This question needs to be investigated, if one wishes to avoid the traps of ICTs ending up in isolating humans behind their screens and digital delegates, or harnessing them in a passive role, by (...) curtailing their freedom and autonomy. (shrink)