Quando si usa il termine laico, occorre sempre rispondere ad alcune domande implicite: laico rispetto a chi? Quando? Un percorso tra le varie classificazioni che si possono trovare nei testi medievali. Nella convinzione che la struttura stessa della classificazione sia importante, l'articolo procede sulla base di un criterio quantitativo, facendo riferimento al numero di classi o generi identificati, a partire dalla divisione più semplice. Una passaggio dal semplice al complesso alla luce della centralità del binomio concettuale di unità-differenza.When we (...) use the term laico, we must ever answer to some implicit questions: laico compared to whom? When? A path among the various classifications that we can find in medieval texts. Persuaded that the very structure of the classification is important, the paper goes on, according to a quantitative criterion, by reference to the number of identified classes or genres, starting from the simplest partition. A transition from the simple to the complex in the light of the centrality of two-faced concept of unit-difference. (shrink)

La storia del termine laicus, nel corso del Medioevo, mostra un'interessante evoluzione. Inizialmente laico ha un valore positivo e si riferisce semplicemente al popolo di Dio; si passa successivamente a una valutazione chiaramente negativa dall'XI al XIII secolo. In questo periodo si definisce il laico secondo una doppia negazione: come il non chierico e il non monaco, e come idiota e illitteratus, cioè il cristiano privo di istruzione. Si torna a importanti posizioni di apprezzamento positivo nel XIV-XV secolo, (...) anche in connessione con l'espandersi dell'uso del volgare, in cui laico e illetterato non coincidono più e si afferma una figura nuova di cristiano autentico: il laico che vive nel mondo in modo utile a sé e agli altri, dedito all'esercizio delle virtù e alla frequentazione della cultura.The history of the term laicus, in the course of the Middle Ages, shows an interesting development. Initially laicus has a positive value and refers simply to the people of God; later a clear negative meaning becomes prevalent: from the 11th to the 13rd century. In this period laicus is defined according to a double negative sense: as the non-clerical and the not-monk, and as idiota et illitteratus, i.e. the Christian without learning. A new important positive meaning appears during 14th and 15th century, also connected with the diffusion of vernacular languages, in which laicus and illitteratus don't overlap and the term means a new figure of authentic Christian: the layman who lives in the world in a useful way to himself and others, devoting himself to the exercise of virtue and to study of learning. (shrink)

La conclusione di Rosenzweig sul diverso modo dell’ebreo e del cristiano di lavorare alla «stessa opera» è una delle pagine più citate della Stella. Dio non può fare a meno di nessuno dei due. Ha dato al primo la vita eterna, accendendo nel suo cuore il fuoco della verità. Ha posto il secondo sulla via eterna, cosicché egli seguirà «fino alla fine» i raggi della sua luce. L’ebreo vede la stella, ma non i raggi. Il cristiano è destinato (...) a vedere sempre ciò che è illuminato, ma non la luce. Diverso sarà dunque il rischio, a partire dalla preghiera per quella «verità intera» che non appartiene in quanto tale né all’uno né all’altro e per questo ha bisogno di entrambi. Il cristiano che cammina «seguendo la corrente del tempo» è esposto alla triplice tentazione della spiritualizzazione del concetto di Dio, della apoteosi del concetto di uomo e della panteizzazione del concetto di mondo . L’ebreo contempla appunto nel suo cuore – ma nel suo cuore soltanto – la fedele immagine della verità. Egli si distoglie così «dalla vita nel tempo», come «la vita del tempo» si distoglie da lui. È significativo che per sottolineare il senso profondo di questo radicamento Rosenzweig ricorra ad un termine così hegeliano come la Erinnerung, che nella conclusione della Fenomenologia è la notte dell’autocoscienza nella quale lo spirito scende, ma per potersi distendere nel tempo facendone il suo tempo e dunque «la verità e la certezza del suo trono». (shrink)

This article proposes a cost-benefit analysis of argumentation, with the aim of highlighting the strategic considerations that govern the agent's decision to argue or not. In spite of its paramount importance, the topic of argumentative decision-making has not received substantial attention in argumentation theories so far. We offer an explanation for this lack of consideration and propose a tripartite taxonomy and detailed description of the strategic reasons considered by arguers in their decision-making: benefits, costs, and dangers. We insist that the (...) implications of acknowledging the strategic dimension of arguing are far-reaching, including promising insights on how to develop better argumentation technologies. (shrink)

Thesis: Macro-level social phenomena are implemented through the (social) actions and minds of the individuals. Without an explicit theory of the agents' minds that founds, agents' behavior we cannot understand macro-level social phenomena, and in particular how they work. AntiThesis: Mind is not enough: the theory of individual (social) mind and action is not enough to explain several macro-level social phenomena. First, there are pre-cognitive, objective social structures that constrain the actions of the agents; second, there are emergent, unaware or (...) non-contractual forms of cooperation, organisation, and intelligence. Synthesis: The real challenge is how to reconcile, cognition with emergence, intention and deliberation with unknown or unplanned social functions and social order . Both objective structures and unplanned self-organising complex forms of social order and social function emerge from the interactions of agents and from their individual mental states; both these structures and self-organising systems feedback on agents' behaviors through the agents' individual minds. (shrink)

The decolonial theory understands that Western Modernity keeps imposing itself through a triple mutually reinforcing and shaping imprisonment: coloniality of power, coloniality of knowledge, and coloniality of being. Technical design has an essential role in either maintaining or overcoming coloniality. In this article, two main approaches to decolonizing the technical design are presented. First is Yuk Hui’s and Ahmed Ansari’s proposals that, revisiting or recovering the different histories and philosophies of technology produced by humankind, intend to decolonize the minds of (...) philosophers and engineers/architects/designers as a pre-condition for such decolonial designs to take place. I call them top-down approaches. Second is some technical design initiatives that, being developed alongside marginalized/subalternate people, intend to co-construct decolonial sociotechnical solutions through a committed, decolonizing, and careful dialog of knowledge. I call them bottom-up approaches. Once that is done, the article’s second half derives ontological, epistemological, and political consequences from the conjugation of top-down and bottom-up approaches. Such consequences challenge some established or not yet entirely overcome understandings in the philosophy of technology and, in so doing, are meant to represent some steps in PT’s decolonization. Even though both top-down and bottom-up approaches are considered, the article’s main contributions are associated with decolonial technical design practices, whose methodologies and outcomes are important study cases for PT and whose practitioners can be taken as inspiring examples for philosophers who want to decolonize/enlarge PT or make it decolonial. (shrink)

This work presents the case of the Yanomami indigenous people from Brazil that were the object of US ethnography initiated in the 1960s. The research brought harmful repercussions to the life of the Indigenous people of Brazil for several decades, and it took more than 40 years until the beginning of a process of reparation involving the Brazilian government and American universities. Objective: to discuss the meaning of the return of Yanomami blood samples, as well as contributions from the epistemologies (...) of traditional Indigenous knowledge to the debate about research ethics and the structuring of means for the social control of researchers and the protection of participants in scientific studies, having as an example the Yanomami indigenous people from Brazil, subjected to noxious ethnography in the 1960s and the 1970s. This work used data reports recorded in secondary sources. In this article we argue that Bioethics needs to further diversify its epistemological foundations and to consider epistemologies and cosmologies beyond the frontiers of Western science, as the case of the abusive research involving the Yanomami indigenous people in Brazil reveals. We argue that traditional knowledge, such as those of indigenous and quilombolas, with their epistemologies and cosmologies, are fundamental for the election of less colonized and more efficient principles of research ethics, regarding the protection of the participants' rights in scientific studies. Traditional indigenous populations can teach us a great deal about doing research. (shrink)

Resumo: O presente ensaio visa a interpretar o "Poema de Sete Faces", de Carlos Drummond de Andrade. O exercício de redução fenomenológica, a ambiguidade, a percepção e o corpo próprio, entre outros conceitos da Fenomenologia da percepção, de Merleau-Ponty, orientam o trabalho de leitura, estruturado a partir dos seguintes temas: o lado gauche, a correlação eu-mundo e a primazia do olhar. Tal procedimento de leitura reúne o poema hepta-partido em três faces ou tensões fundamentais, levando em conta os efeitos das (...) imagens.: The purpose of this essay is to interpret Carlos Drummond de Andrade's Poema de Sete Faces. Phenomenological reduction, ambiguity, and corporeality, among other concepts in the Phenomenology of Perception by Merleau-Ponty, lead and structure a reading based on the following themes: the left side, the correlation between self and world, and the primacy of perception. Such a reading brings together the seven part poem and dwivides it into three aspects or fundamental tensions, taking into consideration the effects of metaphor. (shrink)

Andrew Feenberg is an essential author in the field of philosophy of technology. His ideas are particularly relevant in revealing the political dimension of technology, be it shaping society or being shaped by society. However, current Feenberg’s reflection fails to consider the internal domain of technical disciplines more rigorously. Indeed, he usually stops his analysis in the border between lifeworld (where the democratizing mobilizations occur and new/different requirements or values arise) and the technical disciplines. To identify and overcome this failure, (...) I articulate some elements from Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Yuk Hui. I also present the example of three decolonial (or empowering) technical interventions, which illustrate: how what Santos and Hui theorize is already being developed by some technical interventions in the Global South, and the impacts of such interventions on the technical teams (and, through that, also on the technical disciplines). (shrink)

Norms are tools for manipulating human conduct through the manipulation of our goals and choices. It is impossible to understand the efficacy and working of norms without a modeling of how Ns work in our mind and how do they cut or give us goals. They are built for that. Thus, a sophisticated ontology of goals is necessary. Ns also have goals and have “functions”: a different kind of goal. We do not understand and intend all the functions of Ns. (...) The subject is not supposed or requested to understand even all the goals of Ns and to obey on condition that she agrees and cooperates. Ns also imply a meta-goal about our mind, about the reasons, motives that should induce us to obey; motives that ideally are not sanctions avoidance or convenience. (shrink)

In this article we strive to provide a detailed and principled analysis of the role of beliefs in goal processing—that is, the cognitive transition that leads from a mere desire to a proper intention. The resulting model of belief-based goal processing has also relevant consequences for the analysis of intentions, and constitutes the necessary core of a constructive theory of intentions, i.e. a framework that not only analyzes what an intention is, but also explains how it becomes what it is. (...) We discuss similarities and differences between our approach and other standard accounts of intention, in particular Bratman’s planning theory. The aim here is to question and refine the conceptual foundations of many theories of intentional action: as a consequence, although our analysis is not formal in itself, it is ultimately meant to have deep consequences for formal models of intentional agency. (shrink)

Nosso trabalho almeja analisar a gênese da responsabilidade, segundo a fenomenologia levinasiana, tomando como enfoque a sensibilidade e em particular a afetividade descrita sob os traços do “sofrimento”. Em Lévinas, a dor indica um registro subjetivo em que impera a passividade e cuja ambigüidade se situa na tensão entre o sentido inter-humano e o absurdo do anonimato. O “sofrimento por” ganharia sentido na proximidade inter humana enquanto implica uma responsabilidade individual e inalienável.

In _Jesuit Philosophy on the Eve of Modernity_ Cristiano Casalini collects eighteen contributions by renowned specialists to track the existence and distinctiveness of Jesuit philosophy during the first century since the inception of the order.

A tradução anotada do Minos, acompanhada de uma valiosa introdução e de notas explicativas, de autoria do Professor Bruno Amaro Lacerda, lançada pela Editora Max Limonad no ano de 2021, é uma importante contribuição para os Estudos Clássicos e também para os interessados em Filosofia do Direito.

Este texto trata da reflexão heideggeriana sobre o conceito de mônada em Leibniz e suas determinações. Os apontamentos de Heidegger sobre o ser a partir do pensamento leibniziano promovem uma abertura fundamental da mônada, trazendo entre outras conseqüências, o perspectivismo e a idéia do ente enquanto pulsão. A limitação ontológica da mônada e sua capacidade de movimentar-se a partir de si mesma resultam em uma noção de representação e delineiam os contornos do ente. Esta discussão intenta demonstrar as possibilidades de (...) compreensão do conceito de mônada partindo das reflexões de Heidegger sobre A determinação do Ser do Ente segundo Leibniz. (shrink)

Our focus is the dialectic relationship between personal, social, collective, and institutional powers; that is the Proteus-like nature of power; “how power produces power”, how one form of power founds another form of it. Even the magic, “count as”, performative power of institutional acts is given from the institution to the lay-agent, but hidden is given to the institution by the acceptance and conformity of the mass of people. We provide an ‘ontology’ of personal powers, deriving from them (plus the (...) interdependencies relations) the most important forms of power at the interpersonal level (‘comparative power’, ‘power-over’, rewarding power’, ‘power of influencing’, ‘negotiation power’, ‘collective power’, ‘deontic power’). In the second part, we discuss a more institutional notion of power, the process of ‘empowerment’ and its relation with ‘permission’. (shrink)

In this paper we analyse the concepts of Promise and Threat and their inter-relations. Our objective is to study the uses of P and T in persuasion and to shed some light on related concepts such as requesting, ordering, giving prizes, punishing, etc. First, we show that some Ps and Ts are used for persuasion and some are conditional in nature. Using general definitions of P and T and a broad notion of persuasion, four different typologies of P and T (...) are introduced. They are distinguished on their conditional/non-conditional dimension and on their influencing/non-influencing aim. We then focus on Conditional Influencing Ps and Ts used in persuasion. CIPs and CITs are incentive-based influencing actions rooted on dependence and power relations. Moreover, in the CIP and CIT classes the concepts of threat and promise are closely connected: the CIP is always accompanied by a CIT, and vice versa. Next, we discuss the issue of why CIPs and CITs are credible. We also identify — beyond their surface, rhetorical form — a deeper difference: a ‘substantial’ threat consisting in a choice between two losses compared with a ‘substantial’ promise where the choice is between a gain and a missed-gain. In the article we present a pre-formal model as a basis for a computational treatment of these concepts. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the results of two experiments, one off-line (acceptability judgment) and the other on-line (eye-tracking), targeting Object Cleft (OC) constructions. In both experiments, we used the same materials presenting a manipulation on person features: second person plural pronouns and plural definite determiners alternate in introducing a full NP (“it was [ DP1 the/you [ NP bankers]] i that [ DP2 the/you [ NP lawyers]] have avoided _ i at the party”) in a language, Italian, with overt (...) person (and number) subject-verb agreement. As results, we first observed that the advantage of the bare pronominal forms reported in previous experiments (Gordon et al., 2001 ; Warren and Gibson, 2005, a.o.) is lost when the full NP (the “lexical restriction” in Belletti and Rizzi, 2013 ) is present. Second, an advantage for the mismatch condition, Art 1 -Pro 2, in which the focalized subject is introduced by the determiner and the OC subject by the pronoun, as opposed to the matching Pro 1 -Pro 2 condition, is observed, both off-line (higher acceptability and accuracy in answering comprehension questions after eyetracking) and on-line (e.g., smaller number of regressions from the subject region); third, we found a relevant difference between acceptability and accuracy in comprehension questions: despite similar numerical patterns in both off-line measures, the difference across conditions in accuracy is mostly not significant, while it is significant in acceptability. Moreover, while the matching condition Pro 1 -Pro 2 is perceived as nearly ungrammatical (far below the mean acceptability across-conditions), the accuracy in comprehension is still high (close to 80%). To account for these facts, we compare different formal competence and processing models that predict difficulties in OC constructions: similarity-based (Gordon et al., 2001, a.o.), memory load (Gibson, 1998 ), and intervention-based (Friedmann et al., 2009 ) accounts are compared to processing oriented ACT-R-based predictions (Lewis and Vasishth, 2005 ) and to top-down Minimalist derivations (Chesi, 2015 ). We conclude that most of these approaches fail in making predictions able to reconcile the competence and the performance perspective in a coherent way to the exception of the top-down model that is able to predict correctly both the on-line and the off-line main effects obtained. (shrink)

Butler’s idea of evolution was developed over the publication of four books, several articles and essays between 1863 and 1890. These publications, although never achieving the success expected by Butler, proposed a psychological elaboration of evolution, called ‘unconscious memory’. This was strongly in contrast with the materialistic approach suggested by Darwin’s natural selection. Starting with a historical introduction, this paper aspires to ascertain the logic, meaning and significance of Butler’s idea of ‘unconscious memory’ in the post-Darwinian physiological and psychological Pan-European (...) discussion. Particular attention is devoted to demonstrating that Butler was not only a populariser of science but also an active protagonist in the late Victorian psychological debate. (shrink)

I will first discuss how social interactions organize, coordinate, and specialize as “artifacts,” tools; how these tools are not only for coordination but for achieving something, for some outcome (goal/function), for a collective work. In particular, I will argue that these artifacts specify (predict and prescribe) the mental contents of the participants, both in terms of beliefs and acceptances and in terms of motives and plans. We have to revise the behavioristic view of “scripts” and “roles”; when we play a (...) role we wear a “mind.” No collective action would be possible without shared and/or ascribed mental contents. This is also very crucial for a central form of automatic mind-reading (mind ascription). Second, I will argue that often what really matters is the ascribed/prescribed, worn, mind not the real, private one. We have to play (like in the symbolic play) “as if” we had those mental contents. This social convention and mutual assumption makes the interaction work. The ascribed beliefs and goals are not necessarily explicitly there; they might be just implicit as inactive (we act just by routine and automatically) or implicit as potential. The coordination and social action works thanks to these “as if” (ascribed and pretended) minds, thanks to those conventional constructs. Our social minds for social interactions are coordination artifacts and social institutions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Since the 1980s, technical-scientific knowledge, instrumental and cognitive values as well as ethical-political values are acknowledged as constitutive parts of technology and its development. However, a fourth category of elements that shapes design continues to be largely neglected or unknown: image collections, aesthetical values, and structured procedures. Disregarding such elements impose limits on the technical development. In this manuscript, I present this fourth category elements, its impact on the designing practice, and a way of pluralizing its contents. I also (...) sketch two of the most successful approaches for democratizing the technical development. Then, I discuss: some limits and potentialities of democratizing technology; an actualization of part of Simondon’s understanding of technical development; the theoretical and practical necessity of decolonizing (or continuing the decolonization of) the philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Cognitive Grammar postulates two modes of cognitive processing for the structuring of complex scenes, summary scanning and sequential scanning. Generally speaking, the theory is committed to basing grammatical concepts upon more general cognitive principles. In the case of summary and sequential scanning, independent evidence is lacking, but Langacker argues that the distinction should nonetheless be accepted as it buys us considerable theory-internal explanatory power. For example, dynamic prepositions, to-infinitives and participles (e.g., into, to enter, entered ) are distinguished from finite (...) and bare verbs in terms of summary vs. sequential scanning. In this paper, we try to show that various theory-internal and theory-external arguments do not seem to support the two scanning modes. In particular, we offer a detailed examination of causatives (e.g., get, make ) and argue that their complementation patterns are difficult to reconcile with differences in scanning. We conclude that the status of, and need for, summary and sequential scanning in (Cognitive) grammar is doubtful, especially if grammar is approached from the viewpoint of the language learner/user. It follows also that the parcelling of some form-function mappings may prove less clear-cut than previously assumed. (shrink)

L'obiettivo del presente articolo è l'osservazione storica delle politiche della memoria nel Brasile contemporaneo, con particolare attenzione al periodo tra il 2019 e il 2022 (governo Bolsonaro). Dall'analisi delle azioni giudiziarie proposte da diversi attori sociali e politici, l'articolo propone una riflessione sulle temporalità coinvolte nelle politiche della memoria nel contesto post-dittatoriale, soprattutto dalla prospettiva delle vittime del regime.

We present an analysis of emotional experience in terms of beliefs and desires viewed as its minimal cognitive constituents. We argue that families of emotions can be identified because their members share some of these constituents. To document this claim, we analyze one family of emotions—which includes the feeling of inferiority, admiration, envy, and jealousy—trying to show that the distinctiveness of each emotion is due to the specific compound of beliefs and desires it implies, whereas the kinship among related emotions (...) is due to their sharing of cognitive or motivational components. Finally, we address the gestalt problem, that is, the question of how it is possible that emotions, although consisting of several “atomic” elements, are felt as unitary experiences. (shrink)

Decolonial approaches to technical design are part of a broader category of design methodologies, which actualize unfulfilled sociotechnical potentialities. In this paper, I present some decolonial theory concepts and discuss three decolonial approaches to illuminate philosophical debates that: 1) Can find in them clear traces of a third set of elements that shape every design/technology, along with the well-analyzed technical-scientific and ethical-political ones. In dialogue with Walter Vincenti and some others, I call these elements structured procedures, imagery lexicon, and aesthetical (...) values, which constitute the central aspects of Eugene Ferguson’s art of engineering; 2) Identify, starting from some Gilbert Simondon’s and Andrew Feenberg’s ideas, any invention as triply situated ; 3) Can be taught by these decolonial approaches about some of the mainstream philosophy of technology’s colonial limitations, becoming thus able to widen it. (shrink)

O tema “predicado no sujeito” (praedicatum inest subjecto) constitui-se em um importante fundamento na filosofia de Leibniz, na medida em que esta noção organiza do ponto de vista lógico, várias questões da filosofia leibniziana, como a lógica, a linguagem, a epistemologia e a metafísica. Nesse texto, trataremos dessa noção a partir de uma leitura metafísica da substância em Leibniz, que busca dar o máximo de realidade possível aos seres criados por Deus. O ser, na dimensão do sujeito e de suas (...) qualidades, não apenas são o resultado do decreto divino, mas se apresentam ao mundo em uma configuração racional, que ao mesmo tempo, garante e, sua ontologia, a sua identidade e sua diferença. Nossa investigação envereda pela leitura do praedicatum inest subjecto nesse caminho. (shrink)

Lévinas trabalha com uma noção de subjetividade ligada constitutivamente a uma condição afetiva irredutível ao saber e que se torna a base da individuação e da significação. Contudo, ao desdobrar conjuntamente uma fenomenologia do sensível e uma fenomenologia da alteridade, o discurso levinasiano parece tratar de duas afetividades, uma não-intencional e outra intencional. É nesta chave que funcionará sua fenomenologia do Rosto enquanto Símbolo (fenomenológico) e enquanto Vestígio (alterológico), ligando o âmbito não-intencional (diacrônico) e o intencional (sincrônico) no evento proximal. (...) Parece-nos que a intriga de alteridade possui estes dois momentos alternados – simbólicos (sincronia) e elípticos (diacronia) – desde sua base afetiva. Eis o tema de nosso trabalho. Descrever e analisar introdutoriamente tais aspectos – nosso objetivo. (shrink)

Este ensaio considera a obra poética de Francis Ponge a partir do debate entre dois movimentos teóricos: a fenomenologia e o formalismo. A partir de certa chave de interpretação proveniente da linguística estrutural, a fenomenologia não constitui um referencial teórico válido para a obra de Francis Ponge. Considerando o teor das críticas à fenomenologia provenientes do estruturalismo, este ensaio explora algumas iniciativas de respostas motivadas pela fenomenologia de Merleau-Ponty. A partir do nó górdio ou elo intrínseco entre as palavras e (...) as coisas, nota-se que ambos os movimentos teóricos participam da composição poética do autor de O Partido das Coisas. Ao rebater as críticas do formalismo, a fenomenologia ganha um papel constitutivo na composição poética. Trata-se de explorar uma alternativa válida e conciliadora entre a fenomenologia e o formalismo. (shrink)

Tomando por fio condutor o ensaio de Jean-Paul Sartre sobre Francis Ponge, “O homem e as coisas”, publicado em Situações I, este artigo visa problematizar o lugar da poesia como “voz das coisas”, isto é, a tentativa de neutralização do para si em benefício do ser em si. Fundado na metáfora da “petrificação” poética, o efeito das imagens visa a renovação da linguagem a partir do contato originário entre as palavras e as coisas. Entre as iniciativas poéticas que merecem maior (...) relevo, destaca-se a valorização da antilírica e a substantivação poética centrada no poder nominativo da linguagem. O exercício poético, porém, apesar de visar “as coisas mesmas” e o que Sartre chamou de “fenomenologia materialista”, tem seus limites na própria condição humana. Pela ação de projetar-se sobre as coisas o homem visa libertar a linguagem de uso pragmático e, ao mesmo tempo, pensar o objeto sem parti pris idealista. (shrink)