Bruno Latour was once asked : "Do you believe in reality?" This text is an attempt to answer this question.

The aim of the present thesis is twofold. First we propose a constructive solution to Frege's puzzle using an approach based on homotopy type theory, a newly proposed foundation of mathematics that possesses a higher-dimensional treatment of equality. We claim that, from the viewpoint of constructivism, Frege's solution is unable to explain the so-called ‘cognitive significance' of equality statements, since, as we shall argue, not only statements of the form 'a = b', but also 'a = a' may contribute to (...) an extension of knowledge. Second, we study this higher-dimensional account of equality from a constructive (computational) standpoint and, based on these considerations, we offer a new perspective to the project proposed by Peter Aczel of developing conventions and notations for an informal style of doing mathematics in type theory. To that end, we adopt the cubical type theory of Angiuli, Favonia and Harper, a framework that can be seen as constructive refinement of the ideas of homotopy type theory. (shrink)

Dès 1983, à l’occasion du colloque Une histoire des femmes est-elle possible? qui allait marquer le véritable départ de l’histoire des femmes en France, Alain Corbin soulignait la nécessité de se pencher aussi sur les « mentalités masculines », afin que puisse émerger une « histoire sexuée qui couple ses analyses ». L’auteur des Filles de noce resta longtemps peu entendu. Cette dernière décennie a pourtant vu une nette évolution s’amorcer, les masculinités françaises devenant peu à peu un ch...

Il triplice minimo e la misura.--La monade, il numero e la figura.--L'immenso e gli innumerevoli.

The economic crisis happening across the world over the last few years describes a range of interdependencies and interactions,and has highlighted the fundamentalf laws of neoclassical economic theory: its unedifying focus on prediction and, above all, its inability to explain how the economy really works. As such, it is increasingly recognised that economic phenomena cannot be exclusively investigated as being derived from deterministic, predictable and mechanistic dynamics. Instead, a new approach is required by which history-dependence, organic and ever-evolving processes are (...) also accounted for. As this view implies new challenges and opportunities for policy, we will focus our attention on innovative components of Complexity Theory for the study of economics and the evaluation of public policies. (shrink)

What conditions the possibility of existentially valuable experience? Against nihilism, the threat that philosophical cognition undermines the very idea of purposiveness, German idealism posits that we are unconditionally conditioned by life, construed as the infinite purposive activity of reason. I reconstruct Schelling’s critique of this project as defending the idea that death conditions or puts into question our rational activity. Scholars tend to read the idealists as rejecting Kant’s idea of an unknowable thing in itself by grounding philosophy on a (...) knowable first principle and tend to situate Schelling as a phase between or a late attack on Fichte and Hegel. Part I gives a systematic account missing on the former, arguing that idealism is an instance of immortalism, which holds that life is the unconditioned condition of rational activity, while death is unconditionally conditioned. Part II gives a historical account missing on the latter, arguing that Schelling is an early and continual critic of idealism on behalf of mortalism, which holds that death unconditionally conditions rational activity. My first argument modifies typical readings of German idealism, revealing a deep connection between its rejection Kant’s idea and its refusal to let death put us into question. My second complicates typical readings of Schelling, casting his mortalism as rehabilitating the idea that something radically outstrips rational activity while representing a regulative ideal. Although Schelling’s mortalism anticipates Heidegger’s, they differ: Schelling aligns death with the goal of systematic knowing, Heidegger with taking over one’s history as care. But Schelling overcomes immortalism, enabling Heidegger’s idea of death. Part III shows this idea is structurally analogous to Kant’s idea of the thing in itself. Immortalism’s failure leaves unsolved two antinomies I argue are formally identical and only solvable by thinking these ideas as boundary concepts the thought of which is necessary for the unity, respectively, of finite being and finite understanding. By reconstructing the role of death in Schelling’s internal critique of German idealism, then, my thesis also brings into closer contact Kant’s transcendental and Heidegger’s existential projects. (shrink)

The notion of a proposition is central to philosophy. But it is subject to paradoxes. A natural response is a hierarchical account and, ever since Russell proposed his theory of types in 1908, this has been the strategy of choice. But in this paper I raise a problem for such accounts. While this does not seem to have been recognized before, it would seem to render existing such accounts inadequate. The main purpose of the paper, however, is to provide a (...) new hierarchical account that solves the problem. (shrink)

The French, it is well known, love revolutions, political, scientific or philosophical. There is nothing they like more than a radical upheaval of the past, an upheaval so complete that a new tabula rasa is levelled, on which a new history can be built. None of our Prime Ministers starts his mandate without promising to write on a new blank page or to furnish a complete change in values and even, for some, in life. Each researcher would think of him (...) or herself as a failure, if he or she did not make such a complete change in the discipline that nothing will hereafter be the same. As to the philosophers they feed, from Descartes up to Foucault's days, on radical cuts, on ‘coupure épistémologique’, on complete subversion of everything which has been thought in the past by everybody. No French thinker, indeed no student of philosophy, would seriously contemplate doing anything short of a complete revolution in theories. To hesitate, to respect the past, would be to compromise, to be a funk, or worse, to be eclectic like a vulgar Anglo-Saxon! (shrink)

The use of forward models is well established in cognitive and computational neuroscience. We compare and contrast two recent, but interestingly divergent, accounts of the place of forward models in the human cognitive architecture. On the Auxiliary Forward Model account, forward models are special-purpose prediction mechanisms implemented by additional circuitry distinct from core mechanisms of perception and action. On the Integral Forward Model account, forward models lie at the heart of all forms of perception and action. We compare these neighbouring (...) but importantly different visions and consider their implications for the cognitive sciences. We end by asking what kinds of empirical research might offer evidence favouring one or the other of these approaches. (shrink)

If we accept the Socratic edict that the examined life is the only worth living, we find no examination can exclude that mortal fate of human life. If we define a philosophical problem as, in Hans Jonas’ words, “the collision between a comprehensive view (be it hypothesis or belief) and a particular fact which will not fit into it”, we see there can be no greater problem for materialism or organicism than the corpse. That living things die is a problem (...) for a view on which only a figment of the imagination differentiates organic from inorganic matter, as for a view on which life is rational and eternal. For any systematic view, the body is a constant reminder of an acceptable answer to the question 'what is being'. This is because the body that can die is the ultimate explanatory task for any principled answer to this question. (shrink)

Visual stimuli as well as transcranial magnetic stimulation can be used: to suppress the visibility of a target and to recover the visibility of a target that has been suppressed by another mask. Both types of stimulation thus provide useful methods for studying the microgenesis of object perception. We first review evidence of similarities between the processes by which a TMS mask and a visual mask can either suppress the visibility of targets or recover such suppressed visibility. However, we then (...) also point out a significant difference that has important implications for the study of the time course of unconscious and conscious visual information processing and for theoretical accounts of the processes involved. We present evidence and arguments showing: that visual masking techniques, by revealing more detailed aspects of target masking and target recovery, support a theoretical approach to visual masking and visual perception that must take into account activities in two separate neural channels or processing streams and, as a corollary, that at the current stage of methodological sophistication visual masks, by acting in more highly specifiable ways on these pathways, provide information about the microgenesis of form perception not available with TMS masks. (shrink)

Machine stability and energy efficiency have become major issues in the manufacturing industry, primarily during the COVID-19 pandemic where fluctuations in supply and demand were common. As a result, Predictive Maintenance (PdM) has become more desirable, since predicting failures ahead of time allows to avoid downtime and improves stability and energy efficiency in machines. One type of machine failure stands out due to its impact, machine overstrain, which can occur when machines are used beyond their tolerable limit. From the current (...) literature, there are little to no relevant works that focus on machine overstrain failure detection or prediction. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to implement and compare four Machine Learning (ML) algorithms for PdM applied to machine overstrain failures: Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Gradient Boosting, Random Forest and Support Vector Machine (SVM). Moreover, it proposes a training methodology for imbalanced data and the automatic optimization of hyperparameters, which aims to improve performance in the ML models. To evaluate the performance of the ML models, a synthetic dataset that simulates industrial machine data is used. The obtained results show the robustness of the proposed methodology, with the ANN and SVM models achieving a perfect recall score, with 98.95% and 98.85% in accuracy, respectively. (shrink)

The paper aims to sketch Kant’s response to the mind-body problem in his first work, Thoughts on the true estimation of living forces (1747). This is accomplished by first examining the origins of the problem in Descartes, then exploring the traditional responses to the problem, occasionalism, pre-established harmony, and physical influx. Finally, the paper positions Kant as a proponent of physical influx and highlights the unique features and challenges of his perspective.

Series: Collana scolastica di testi filosofici.

Environmental issues are very relevant today, so this Paper analyses the very beginning of the formation of environmental awareness, questioning its basic determinants – both in time and space and in the causes and consequences of human action on the environment as one of the fundamental elements for any historical research. The paper also offers a brief comparative review of the situation in the Republic of Croatia and finally opens ground for future discussions primarily in the evaluation of progress and (...) development of environmental events in relation to those that this study detected as initial. (shrink)

The contribution of Jesuits to the different fields of knowledge, including philosophy, is historically well known. In fact, since the foundation of the Society of Jesus, in the 16th century, Jesuits from different generations and cultures have taken part in the philosophical debates of their time and their different contexts. Since the foundation of the Society of Jesus, in 1540, the Jesuits, individually and as a body, have engaged in a fruitful dialogue between the Christian tradition and different dimensions of (...) human culture. During almost five centuries, numerous Jesuits taught philosophy in academic institutions all over the world. Some of them have their names recorded in the history of philosophy. Of course, the majority of them is not anymore remembered, despite their valuable contribution to the development of the Jesuit intellectual tradition up to our times. In fact, as an heir of the Roman College, the first academic institution founded by the Society of Jesus, in 1551, the Pontifical Gregorian University, in Rome, is a witness to this tradition, which has been kept alive thanks to the discrete work of both Jesuits and lay intellectuals. Known as the University of the Nations, this institution corroborates not only the capacity of the Jesuit tradition to put faith in dialogue with reason, but also the option to take the concrete reality of each human culture and its historical context as its point of departure. The Jesuits’ willingness to engage in dialogue with different intellectual perspectives is underpinned by one of the most defining traits of the Jesuit charism, namely, the conviction that God can be found and served in all things. Accordingly, Jesuits have adopted, from the beginning, an amenable stance towards the world with its different cultures and intellectual trends. As such, Jesuits have, since the beginning, inhabited the frontiers of human thought. According to the contemporary philosopher Paul Gilbert, SJ, within the institutions under the leadership of the Society of Jesus, it was always possible to maintain an equilibrium between two principles: “intellectual unity” and “openness to the world.” Without detriment to the Jesuit identity, the companions of Ignatius have been willing to dwell in the various dimensions of human reality, in their multiplicity and plurality. Either in the renewal of Aristotle’s and Aquinas’ metaphysics, or in the dialogue with modern philosophers such as Descartes, Kant, or Hegel, and even in the inculturation in non-European contexts, the Jesuits have been able to preserve the Christian tradition through an original development of human culture in all its richness and diversity. With respect to the last century, it has to be acknowledged that a significant number of Jesuits made significant contributions, with recognized competence, to philosophy. Certainly, the 20th century was particularly complex in many respects. It would be enough to recall that this period, which brought with it unprecedented social, scientific, and technological developments, was also the stage for the two World Wars. With the emergence or consolidation of philosophical currents such as Marxism, Phenomenology, Existentialism, Structuralism, and Post-Modernism, the past century was, without any doubt, fascinating from the intellectual point of view. Jesuits such as Karl Rahner, Frederick Copleston, Bernard Lonergan, William Norris Clarke, John F. Kavanaugh, Teilhard de Chardin, Gaston Fessard, Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, Michel de Certeau, Xavier Tilliette, Paul Valadier, Paweł Siwek, Ignacio Ellacuría, Francisco Taborda, Henrique de Lima Vaz and, in the Portuguese context, Diamantino Martins or Júlio Fragata, among many others, were able to engage different philosophical currents, problems and controversies of their times. Faithful to their long tradition of being present in the frontiers of thought, those Jesuits have engaged in a fruitful dialogue with these intellectual trends, offering relevant contributions to different ongoing debates. Within this context, the present volume recalls and discusses the philosophical contribution of some of the most prominent Jesuit protagonists of the intellectual interchange that took place in the 20th century. This volume also intends to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, which happens just before the inauguration of the Ignatian Year. Decreed by Father Arturo Sosa, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, this celebratory Year will start on May 20, 2021, precisely 500 years after Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, was wounded at the battle of Pamplona. We are happy that this volume could bring together outstanding specialists in the thought of some of the most prominent Jesuits philosophers of the last century, namely Paul Valadier, Paul Gilbert, Józef Bremer, Jacek Poznański, Alexander Maar, Patrick H. Byrne, M. Ross Romero, Carlos Alvarez, Hélio Pereira Lima, José Gama, Domingos Terra, Gabriel Flynn, Marie-Gabrielle Lemaire, José Sols Lucia, Lorena Zuchel Lovera, Pedro Pablo Achondo Moya, Enzo Solari, Massimo Borghesi, Mendo Castro Henriques, João Barbosa, and Dominique Lambert. In addition, in the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Júlio Fragata’s birth, Maria Teresa Fragata presents a memory of his life and thought. We hope that this volume may be useful to all those interested in the Jesuit philosophical tradition. Hopefully, it will stimulate scholars to pursue a fruitful and creative dialogue with contemporary philosophy, in the footsteps of the Jesuit philosophers featured here. We would like to thank all the authors and all those who, in different ways, made this volume possible. (shrink)

This translated work is an example of the type of writing that characterized the radical school of Hegelianism in the late 1830s and 1840s in that it mirrors the arguments and irritable temper of both the liberal Hegelians and their conservative opponents during the period between the French Revolution of 1830 and the general revolutions of 1848. As such, it is a useful period piece that can enhance an appreciation of the Hegelian involvement in the theological and philosophical argumentation that (...) characterized the German Vorm rz.". (shrink)

Nesse artigo temos como objetivo analisar a representação do conceito de liberdade na primeira temporada da série “Merli”, veiculada no canal de streaming Netflix. Nela, pretendemos verificar como o professor de Filosofia Merli Bergeron trabalha conceitos libertários e suscita reflexões críticas em seus alunos sobre os padrões de convívio socialmente impostos pelas instituições primárias e secundárias. Ao mesmo tempo, pretendemos abordar a personalidade do professor, discutindo sobre o convívio que ele mantém com os colegas de trabalho e seus alunos, assim (...) como em sua vida particular, para visualizarmos se, de fato, ele pratica aquilo que discursa aos estudantes durante suas aulas. Haverá um foco maior na relação dele com o aluno Ivan Basco, que sofre com agorafobia e recebe aulas particulares de Merli para superar sua situação de isolamento. Em um primeiro momento, com caráter introdutório, iremos discutir sobre a importância da discussão de liberdade na contemporaneidade. A seguir, exporemos conceitos formulados por diversos pensadores acerca do que é a liberdade e sua importância para a emancipação humana. A partir disso, serão abordadas informações básicas sobre a produção da série, como os diretores, veiculadores e atores envolvidos para, por fim, executarmos a análise dos capítulos do seriado e apresentarmos nossas considerações finais. Diversos teóricos pertinentes a esse trabalho serão utilizados na revisão bibliográfica. Como metodologias de análise fílmica usaremos, para verificação estrutural do filme, a metodologia de análise fílmica de Manuela Penafria e, para visualização das formas simbólicas, a Hermenêutica de Profundidade, proposta por John Thompson em “Ideologia e Cultura Moderna”. (shrink)

As últimas décadas têm testemunhado uma profusão de teorias filosóficas que buscam reconhecer a moralidade de uma categoria tradicionalmente compreendida como neutra: os animais. Destituída de qualquer valor, a existência não-humana senciente foi deixada de lado por grandes nomes da ética ocidental (de Aristóteles a Kant), cujas teorias colocava-os, muitas vezes, sob o mesmo status de mera matéria destituída de vida. Contudo, desde o século XVIII, sobretudo na Inglaterra, os animais passaram a fazer parte do escopo compreendido por um sem-número (...) de teorias éticas comprometidas com o desafio de lidar com a problemática relação imposta entre humanos e animais. Partindo de um postulado comum – um agente é moralmente relevante se dispõe do maquinário biológico necessário para a produção de sensações agradáveis ou desagradáveis – tais percepções falham em reconhecer a existência de outros seres carentes de proteção moral: as árvores, plantas e uma infinidade de organismos com sistema nervoso central particularmente rudimentar para entrar dentro do cálculo utilitarista, cuja existência encontra-se igualmente ameaçada pelo poder de ação humana. Tendo esse desafio como norte, o presente artigo busca, a partir da teoria ética de Hans Jonas voltada aos animais, uma alternativa de proteção da vida extra-humana e da biosfera. Trata-se de uma pesquisa bibliográfica de caráter analítico, cuja fonte principal circula, sobretudo, em torno de duas grandes obras do filósofo: O Princípio Vida e O Princípio Responsabilidade. Assim sendo, pergunta-se: em que medida a teoria da responsabilidade jonasiana oferece fundamentos para pensar uma teoria ética para os animais não-humanos, ao mesmo tempo que não exclui da esfera moral outros seres vivos? Tal problemática certamente precisa operar sob a perspectiva de uma filosofia da natureza, para então estabelecer um alicerce teórico sobre o qual se possa construir uma ética animal. Para tanto, o texto divide-se em três seções: a) primeiro analisa-se a pertença humana no reino natural, possibilitada, segundo Jonas, graças ao sucesso do darwinismo enquanto narrativa descritiva da realidade biológica; b) passa-se então para uma análise da ontologia da natureza de Jonas compreendendo desde a mais primitiva existência unicelular ao mais desenvolvido degrau da vida animal; c) para então desembocar em uma teoria ética da responsabilidade que compreenda tanto a existência humana, quanto a não-humana. Em seu degrau ascendente de valor, a vida reivindica uma responsabilidade em determinados níveis, tendo a existência animal, com o dramático aparecimento das sensações, mobilidade, medo e desejo, uma reivindicação mais ampla em relação aos modos mais primitivos de manifestação da vida. (shrink)

The imperative to practice hospitality constitutes a mark of Western civilization. Already in Homer’s Odyssey, the hero Ulysses punishes Polyphemus for not having respected the obligation of hospitality towards him and his companions. In fact, hospitality has been a constitutive element of the West, marked by linguistic, cultural, and religious differences, in a world whose borders are supposed to be well defined. In his discussion of hospitality, Derrida shows how Socrates, in Plato’s dialogue The Apology of Socrates, places himself in (...) the position of a foreigner. In fact, Socrates presents himself as foreigner, that is, someone who is alien to the language and procedures of the court that is judging him. According to Derrida, he shows, in this way, the extent to which the foreigner is forced to ask for hospitality in a language he does not know. The court reduces Socrates to the other, the different. Moreover, the court forces him to deny his difference, his own identity, asking him to adapt himself to a system that he does not control. The paradox arises when Socrates, who regrets being regarded as a foreigner, asks the court to treat him at least as a foreigner. He feels so outraged that he asks to be granted at least the rights of a non-national. In doing so, Socrates shows how recognizing the rights of the foreigner generates hospitality but, at the same time, also limits it. Whenever a human being is recognized as human being, he or she will necessarily be seen as another, as someone different. This person will have to adapt him or herself to a system, culture or world that will define him or her as a foreigner. In short, in the phenomena that we tend to see as hospitality there is always a certain hostility. In a world of ongoing migratory crises, and in the context of a return to nationalisms of exclusion combined with populisms of prejudice and aversion to those who are different, it becomes imperative to rethink the ethics and politics of hospitality. In this context, Derrida’s distinction between conditioned and unconditioned hospitality can be useful. (shrink)