Reasons motivate our intentions and thus our actions, justify our beliefs, ground our hopes and connect our feelings of shame and pride to our thoughts. Given that intentions, beliefs and emotions are intentional states, intentionality is strongly connected with normativity. Yet what is more precisely their relationship? Some philosophers, notably Brandom and McDowell, contend at places that intentionality is intrinsically normative. In this paper, we discuss Brandom and McDowell’s thesis and the arguments they provide for its defence. In contrast to (...) what they hold, we argue that neither reference intentionality nor content intentionality are intrinsically normative, although at least content intentionality has normative implications. More precisely, we argue that neither species of intentionality are normative from a semantical viewpoint, because being in an intentional state is not being in a state that is semantically correct or incorrect. Nevertheless, being in a state endowed with content may be a reason for believing or acting. Thus, we argue that content intentionality has normative implications. More precisely, we argue that any content is such that, if it is the content of a state that is sensitive to reasons - as judging paradigmatically is – then it entitles the subject of that state to have further states or to act in certain ways. (shrink)

Although current debates in epistemology and philosophy of mind show a renewed interest in perceptual illusions, there is no systematic work in the philosophy of perception and in the psychology of perception with respect to the concept of illusion and the relation between illusion and error. This book aims to fill that gap.

Tip-of-the-tongue experiences have an intriguing and insidious character. Some philosophers have tried to reduce them to more common states, with some considering these experiences to be beliefs about one’s state of knowledge, and still others considering them feelings about one’s state of knowledge. These two latter views are not mutually exclusive; indeed, one might hold a mixed theory, according to which the TOT is a feeling that depends constitutively on a belief. In the paper I first argue against the idea (...) that beliefs are a constitutive feature of TOTs and hence against both the pure and the mixed belief theories; next I address the feeling theory; finally, I defend a pluralist theory. (shrink)

Dans le cadre d'une analyse de la vie mentale selon laquelle, à certains égards, la "vie pratique" constitue le fondement de la "vie théorétique" et dans laquelle les émotions jouent un rôle central.

From November 5 to November 22, 2019, the University of Milan hosts an exhibition in which philosophy and its problems are staged in playful and interactive forms. Like any catalog, this volume also intends to document the objects and themes proposed to the visitor. But it also has a more ambitious goal: to imagine and design the spaces of that Museum of Philosophy which, we are sure, will be created here in Milan, starting from the experience of this exhibition--Translated, via (...) Google, from page 2 of cover. (shrink)

In the last twenty years, beginning with a seminal paper by Dagfinn Follesdal published in 1969,1 analytic philosophy has shown a renewed and increasing interest in Husserl's phenomenology. 2 In Husserl and Inten- tionality, David Woodruff Smith and Ronald Mclntyre give an important contribution to this line of research. The book is written in the analytic tradition, and represents in part an attempt at making phenomenology palatable to those who look suspiciously at 'continental philosophy'. Thus it provides a double service: (...) it introduces phenomenology to an analytic public, and it shows to those raised in the opposite tradition what kind of reception their tradition has overseas. (shrink)

A review of Calabi's work on the emotions. The author chooses to remain neutral with respect to the theoretical options currently adopted in the philosophy of mind: reductionism and functionalism. This choice makes it easier to stress the intentional dimension of emotions and to shed light on the bodily dimension of the emotional life.

Although experimental philosophy is now over a decade old, it has only recently been introduced to the domain of philosophical aesthetics. So why is there already a need to defend it? Because, as I argue in this paper, we can anticipate the three main types of objection generally addressed to experimental philosophy and show that none of them concern experimental philosophers in aesthetics. I begin with some general considerations about experimental philosophy and its, sometimes conflicting, characteristics. This framework is designed (...) to help me situate the experimental practice in aesthetics within the general movement. I then present the objections and respond to them in turn. Their failure should convince aestheticians to embrace the practice early on and opponents of experimental philosophy to revise their usual objections before addressing them to experimental philosophers in aesthetics. (shrink)

The topic tackled in this book is Philo's account of the complex, double-sided nature of God's acting - the two-sided coin of God as transcendent yet immanent, ...

‟Small or Large Coffee?”: A Few Aspects Related to the Analysis of a Language Act Captured in a Broader Temporality in the Context of an Exolingual Professional Training. We are interested in the form of the interaction that takes place between a chef and an allophone apprentice in a French restaurant, through the comparative analysis of one language act, a coffee proposal, captured by a camera on four occasions, from the first day of training to the fourth month of the (...) apprentice's employment. This data set allows us to observe the evolving character of the “interactional bricolage” and its inscription in two temporalities which are combined, that of production-reception and that of language acquisition, at the same time as it underlines the implications of the exolinguistic character of the situation for the role of the apprentice master. (shrink)

The article deals with Lacan’s notion of “subject” by distinguishing it from any reference to identity. It takes up the question “Who speaks?” posed by Michel Foucault in 1969 and finds an answer with Lacan. In psychoanalysis, it is not a matter of negation of the subject but rather of the subject’s dependence on the signifier. Lacan questioned the “privileges of the self”, but saved the dimension of the subject by conceiving a subject of the unconscious. Identity in psychoanalysis is (...) not determined by social norms. It is an identity at the level of the speaking and suffering subject. Finally, the article shows that the Lacanian subject is both a subject marked by the signifier and one articulated to the drive. The experience of psychoanalysis leads us to question identifications, thereby making it possible to comprehend the traumatic mark at the level of the Real. (shrink)

It is an important issue for economic and finance applications to determine whether individuals exhibit a behavioral bias toward pessimism in their beliefs, in a lottery or more generally in an investment opportunities framework. In this paper, we analyze the answers of a sample of 1,540 individuals to the following question: Imagine that a coin will be flipped 10 times. Each time, if heads, you win 10 Euros. How many times do you think that you will win? The average answer (...) is surprisingly about 3.9 which is below the average 5, and we interpret this as a pessimistic bias. We find that women are more 'pessimistic' than men, as are old people relative to young. We also analyze how our notion of pessimism is related to more general notions of pessimism previously introduced in psychology. (shrink)

Comment comprendre la thèse selon laquelle la liberté d’expression constitue l’un des fondements d’une société démocratique, comme cela a pu être invoqué dans de nombreuses décisions constitutionnelles, en particulier en Allemagne? L’article se propose d’éclairer la nature du lien entre liberté d’expression et démocratie en s’inscrivant dans une réflexion sur les concepts de liberté que nous mobilisons lorsque nous cherchons à penser la liberté d’expression. En s’appuyant sur les contributions de Habermas et de Honneth à ce débat, il s’attache à (...) en décliner les différentes facettes : liberté privée, communicationnelle, droit de participation politique ou liberté sociale. Sur la base d’une compréhension de la liberté d’expression comme un droit et une pratique sociale constitutifs d’un espace public démocratique, il s’agit de poser la question de sa régulation à nouveaux frais. (shrink)

Medium specificity is a theory, or rather a cluster of arguments, in aesthetics that rests on the idea that media are the physical material that makes up artworks, and that this material contains specific and unique features capable of 1) differentiating media from one another, and 2) determining the aesthetic potential and goals of each medium. As such, medium specificity is essential for aestheticians interested in matters of aesthetic ontology and value. However, as Noël Carroll has vehemently and convincingly argued, (...) the theory of medium specificity is inherently flawed and its many applications in art history ill-motivated. Famously, he concluded that we should ‘forget the medium’ entirely. In this thesis, I reject his conclusion and argue that reconstructing a theory of medium specificity, while taking Carroll’s objections into account, is possible. To do so, I offer a reconceptualization of the main theoretical components of medium specificity and ground this new theory in empirical research. I first redefine the medium not as the physical material that makes up artworks but as sets of practices – not the material itself but how one uses the material. I then show that what makes media specific and unique is not certain physical features, but the human responses, which can be empirically investigated, to the combination of practices that constitute media. This relation is one of response-dependence, albeit of a novel kind, which I develop by appealing to social metaphysics. The resulting theory is more complex but also much more flexible and fine-grained than the original and provides insight into a variety of current aesthetic theories. (shrink)

Experimental Philosophy (X-Phi) is now a fully-fledged methodological project with applications in almost all areas of analytic philosophy, including, as of recently, aesthetics. Another methodological project which has been attracting attention in the last few years is conceptual engineering (CE). Its areas of implementation are now diverse, but as was the case initially with experimental philosophy, aesthetics has unfortunately been left out (or perhaps aestheticians have failed to pay attention to CE) until now. In this paper, I argue that if (...) conceptual engineers are interested in expanding their project to the field of aesthetics, which would greatly benefit the field, then they should rely on the existing experimental work of aestheticians. Experimental philosophers have only recently started to join forces with conceptual engineers in various fields, as well as to explore the methodological implications of such an alliance. This paper goes a step further by not only arguing that CE has potential in aesthetics, but that the way to realize this potential is to piggyback, so to speak, on the work of experimental aestheticians. In other words, instead of building a CE project in aesthetics from the ground up, this paper describes the support that CE can and should derive from current experimental aesthetics, thereby making the former’s development more efficiently realizable. Furthermore, I argue that doing so would also be beneficial to experimental aesthetics. Currently, the integration of X-Phi to the wider field of aesthetics is losing ground because certain objections—notably, the objection that X-Phi cannot be of relevance to normative questions—have not been properly refuted. By pairing up with a normative programme like CE, though, experimental aestheticians should finally be able to put these objections to rest. (shrink)

The first translations of Philo into the Italian vernacular date back to the second half of the 16th century and took place in Venice. The cosmopolitan and flourishing Venetian environment plays a fundamental role in the Mediterranean and European economy and is at the center of a network of international relationships. The city is a center of attraction for intellectuals and artists and the book business is experiencing great development there. The Venetian translations of Philo constitute an interesting mirror of (...) different positions, more or less linked to reformed theses or to the Church of Rome. They are conducted over a period of twenty-six years (1548–1574), a period in which we witness profound changes in the relations between Rome and Venice. Philo seems to be able to constitute a mirror and perhaps an instrument of such changes. In the lively climate of the ‘Serenissima’, crossed by reformist and counter-reformist impulses, where cultural openness is expressed in publications, literary meetings, cenacles, academies, confraternities and where the vernacular version of ancient works has a certain diffusion, Philo is used with in different ways by representatives of different trends. The very fact that his work is translated takes on a meaning that is not only erudite and, probably, the date of the individual translations is significant: Ballino is closer to Erasmian positions, Ferentilli is more linked to the Church of Rome, Zini is more nuanced and probably changes his positions with the passing of years and events. (shrink)

This article deals with the relationship between simple, monadic, divine words and the words of men linked to corporeity, devoid of clarity and univocity. For the divine word to be grasped by men a kind of transformation is necessary. One can hypothesize the existence of an archetypal, primordial language, in imitation of the essence of things. It is the language of Adam: given the perfection of a still pure soul, not affected by infirmity, illness or passion, the progenitor seized immediate (...) impressions, grasped the meaning of things whose natures could be enunciated and thought at the same time. It is the original perfect language and is perhaps common to humans and animals if in the Garden of Eden the words of the serpent were understood by Eve. A distinction is drawn between the language of Adam, mimetic of the language of God and the mosaic language in which we have the translation of the divine word in human language. This, despite that, for Moses too it is said that the names correspond to the description of things. A further passage takes place with the passing from one language into another. God addresses different kinds of communication to different people according to their capacities. It is a “translation” of a noetic language that can speak monadically – and it is the case of communication to Moses – or assume the form of names and verbs proper to human language –and it is what happens with the Septuagint, translators like Aron. (shrink)

Galeno critica la dottrina di Mosè che, pur ammettendo un ordine nella natura e la presenza di un piano provvidenziale, sostiene la possibilità che Dio intervenga a modificare tale ordine in maniera arbitraria, sottratta a ogni regolarità e legge. L’ipotesi dell’autrice è che Galeno, parlando di Mosè, non distingua nettamente tra Ebrei e Cristiani: egli sa bene che queste sono "scuole" - come lui le chiama - differenti, ma, forse, non ne distingue sempre chiaramente le tesi. È allora possibile che (...) il referente del De usu partium sia composito: il Genesi , Filone, autori cristiani, il tutto visto in maniera unitaria come tesi di Mosè. (shrink)

Il y a chez Philon des expressions pour parler du bien qui sont apparemment contradictoires ou qui, au moins, font difficulte. Dans quelques passages l’Alexandrin parle de Dieu en termes de bien ; ailleurs il en parle comme de cause ou source du bien ; dans autres textes, enfin, Dieu est meilleur que le bien.Le theme de la possibilite de connaitre Dieu aussi pose des problemes : d’un cote nous avons le Dieu inconnaissable dont meme pas le nom ne peut (...) etre dit, d’un autre, le Dieu demiurgique et providentiel dont quelques personnages parviennent a avoir une connaissance, au moins indirecte et partielle. Telle vision est proportionnelle au niveau du voyant. Cet article s’interroge a propos d’une solution similaire concernant la perception du bien, saisi par les hommes de facon differente selon leur niveau. Non pas, alors, Dieu comme bien, comme bon, comme meilleur que le bien, per se, mais en relation aux hommes qui n’arrivent pas a atteindre to agathon et cherchent vainement a lui attribuer un nom – quoique impropre –, de determiner ce qui est au dela de toute nomination, qualification, definition. (shrink)