This book calls scholars to avoid the temptation to reduce philosophy into a normative discipline. The author argues that philosophy's main responsibility does not reside in changing the world, but in safeguarding sense and intelligibility against unfounded forms of skepticism.

Robots are being extensively used for the purpose of discovering and testing empirical hypotheses about biological sensorimotor mechanisms. We examine here methodological problems that have to be addressed in order to design and perform “good” experiments with these machine models. These problems notably concern the mapping of biological mechanism descriptions into robotic mechanism descriptions; the distinction between theoretically unconstrained “implementation details” and robotic features that carry a modeling weight; the role of preliminary calibration experiments; the monitoring of experimental environments for (...) disturbing factors that affect both modeling features and theoretically unconstrained implementation details of robots. Various assumptions that are gradually introduced in the process of setting up and performing these robotic experiments become integral parts of the background hypotheses that are needed to bring experimental observations to bear on biological mechanism descriptions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 29.2 (2005) 379-393 [Access article in PDF] Love, Self-Deception, and the Moral "Must" Randy Ramal Claremont Graduate University I One significant impact that conceptual relativism has had on current discussions in moral philosophy is the denial of intelligibility to discourses that affirm moral absolutism. The denial is typically based on two allied arguments. The first argument entails that the justification of absolute moral laws and values (...) presupposes the existence of an Archimedean standpoint, but since such viewpoint is unintelligible, a "view from nowhere" as it has been called, then affirming moral absolutism could only be the result of a confused temptation for metaphysical universality and objectivity. The second argument states that since all moral values and concepts are the products of particular cultural-linguistic contexts, it would not make sense to speak of absolute values that have application in other cultural-linguistic contexts.I sympathize with the critical spirit in which this dual argument is made. The unintelligibility of a neutral standpoint and the obvious contextuality of all moral discourses render meaningless any attempt to affirm metaphysically-based moral absolutes. But what this argument fails to acknowledge is that the ordinary language of moral absoluteness is not only infinitely distant from the metaphysical claims to Olympian grounds but also internally related to the absolute moral judgments and principles it invokes. Furthermore, it is doubtful that one could speak at all of moral discourse as needing metaphysical justification. It would not make sense to speak of moral discourse as either needing or not needing metaphysical backing because both notions ignore the ordinary contexts of moral discourse, where the issue of philosophical justification does not arise. The point here is not simply to reject the [End Page 379] metaphysical need for justifying moral discourse but to question the intelligibility of the attempt itself.1In what follows I argue that the ordinary claims to moral absoluteness, be it to give moral advice, to justify personal beliefs and actions, or to judge and criticize the conduct of other people, are perfectly intelligible practices that embody ordinary moral judgments and values. I elucidate the intelligibility of these moral claims by discussing Leo Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych," Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, and Ann Beattie's "Learning to Fall." These works, I argue, portray an ethical notion of "need" that expresses natural, and intelligible, affirmations of moral necessity. The context of this affirmation concerns the ethical call to end all self-deception about one's love life.Traditionally, the relationship between love and self-deception has been interpreted to suggest that people often deceive themselves about love in order to fulfill a deep need in them to give meaning to their lives. This interpretation is often invoked to explain, on the one hand, why people who are in love might claim otherwise and, on the other hand, why those who are not in love at all convince themselves of the opposite. Although this interpretation is not philosophical in nature and does not necessarily entail the denial of all discourses of moral necessity, the idea that self-deception fulfils a deep need in people is often invoked as a philosophical explanation of the notion of "need." One example of such philosophical explanation is Martha Nussbaum's Love's Knowledge, where she endorses the traditional interpretation of the relation between love and self-deception through a discussion, among other works, of the above mentioned works by Proust and Beattie.There is no doubt that self-deception, whether in regards to one's love life or other aspects of it, could sometimes arise as a result of a need in people to give their existence some meaningful stability. But this interpretation cannot apply to all cases of love and self deception because the radical plurality of our notions of love prevents such explanatory reductionism. The insistence on this type of reductionism, it seems to me, rests on a common tendency among moral philosophers, Nussbaum included, to read into literature personal ethical views that are not intended by it. The task of the moral philosopher... (shrink)

The "myside bias'' in evaluating arguments is an empirically well-confirmed phenomenon that consists of overweighting arguments that endorse one's beliefs or attack alternative beliefs while underweighting arguments that attack one's beliefs or defend alternative beliefs. This paper makes two contributions: First, it proposes a probabilistic model that adequately captures three salient features of myside bias in argument evaluation. Second, it provides a Bayesian justification of this model, thus showing that myside bias has a rational Bayesian explanation under certain conditions.

In their theoretical and experimental reflections on the capacities and behaviours of living systems, neuroscientists often formulate generalizations about the behaviour of neural circuits. These generalizations are highly idealized, as they omit reference to the myriads of conditions that could perturb the behaviour of the modelled system in real-world settings. This article analyses an experimental investigation of the behaviour of place cells in the rat hippocampus, in which highly idealized generalizations were tested by comparing predictions flowing from them with real-world (...) experimental results. The aim of the article is to identify under what conditions even single prediction failures regarding the behaviour of single cells sufficed to reject highly idealized generalizations, and under what conditions prima facie counter-examples were deemed to be irrelevant to the testing of highly idealized generalizations. The results of this analysis may contribute to understanding how idealized models are tested experimentally in neuroscience and used to make reliable predictions concerning living systems in real-world settings. (shrink)

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to explore the construct validity and diagnostic properties of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test in non-demented patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.MaterialsA total of 61 consecutive patients and 50 healthy controls were administered the 36-item RMET. Additionally, patients underwent a comprehensive assessment of social cognition via the Story-Based Empathy Task, which encompasses three subtests targeting Causal Inference, Emotion Attribution, and Intention Attribution, as well as global cognitive [the Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioral ALS (...) Screen ] and behavioral screening [the Frontal Behavioral Inventory ; the Dimensional Apathy Scale ; the Beck Depression Inventory ; and the State and Trait Anxiety Inventory-Y]. The construct validity of the RMET was tested by regressing it within a stepwise model that encompassed as predictors the abovementioned cognitive and behavioral measures, covarying for demographic and motor confounders. Receiver-operating characteristics analyses allowed exploring intrinsic and post-test properties of the RMET both in discriminating patients from HCs and in identifying patients with a defective SET-EA performance.ResultsThe RMET was solely predicted by the SET-EA and SET-IA. RMET scores showed high accuracy both in discriminating patients from HCs and in identifying patients with a defective SET-EA score, with adequate-to-optimal both intrinsic and post-test properties.DiscussionThe RMET is a convergently and divergently valid measure of affective social cognition in non-demented ALS patients, also featuring optimal intrinsic and post-test diagnostic properties in both case-control and case-finding scenarios. (shrink)

The model of self-referential truth presented in this paper, named Revision-theoretic supervaluation, aims to incorporate the philosophical insights of Gupta and Belnap’s Revision Theory of Truth into the formal framework of Kripkean fixed-point semantics. In Kripke-style theories the final set of grounded true sentences can be reached from below along a strictly increasing sequence of sets of grounded true sentences: in this sense, each stage of the construction can be viewed as an improvement on the previous ones. I want to (...) do something similar replacing the Kripkean sets of grounded true sentences with revision-theoretic sets of stable true sentences. This can be done by defining a monotone operator through a variant of van Fraassen’s supervaluation scheme which is simply based on ω-length iterations of the Tarskian operator. Clearly, all virtues of Kripke-style theories are preserved, and we can also prove that the resulting set of “grounded” true sentences shares some nice features with the sets of stable true sentences which are provided by the usual ways of formalising revision. What is expected is that a clearer philosophical content could be associated to this way of doing revision; hopefully, a content directly linked with the insights underlying finite revision processes. (shrink)

Sometimes we speak of behaviours and actions as reactions, just as we speak of physical conditions and mental states as reactions. But what do we mean when we say that emotions are reactions? I answer this question by developing an account of emotions as psychological reactions to presentations or representations of states of affairs. I show that this account may provide a novel conceptual framework for explaining aspects of the intentionality, phenomenology and behavioural manifestation of emotions. I conclude by showing (...) that this account is compatible with the view that emotions can be assessed on grounds of justification and correctness. (shrink)

Eduardo Fugali möchte in seinem Beitrag „Die Aktualität der empirischen Psychologie Brentanos in der heutigen Philosophie des Geistes“ Brentanos Denkansätze und wissenschaftliches Selbstverständnis für die aktuelle Philosophie des Geistes bzw. die Kognitionswissenschaften wieder fruchtbar machen, wozu es jedoch zunächst nötig ist, mit bestehenden Missverständnissen und Reduktion hinsichtlich des Denkens Brentanos aufzuräumen. Darüber hinaus gilt es, die Probleme innerhalb des Feldes der Philosophie des Geistes selbst zu beheben, die nach Fugali zur Nivellierung geistiger Tätigkeit in eben diesen Wissenschaften führt. Um dieser (...) Tendenz zu begegnen, stellt Fugali der vermeintlich angenommenen Losgelöstheit von Intentionalität und Bewußtsein deren ursprüngliche Verbundenheit entgegen, um das Missverständnis zu beseitigen. So räumt Fugali mit dem Missverständnis auf, dass Intentionalität analog dem sprachlichen Ausdruck ist. Diesem folgt der Erweis, dass alle Bewußtseinszustände intentional strukturiert sind, was er anhand von Vorstellen und Urteilen exemplifiziert. Weiterhin hebt Fugali die Einheit des Bewußtseins trotz der Mannigfaltigkeit der physischen Erscheinungen hervor, um abschließend die Belastbarkeit Brentanos Theorie von der selbstrepräsentationalen Auffassung des Bewußtseins anhand anderer Ansätze zu prüfen. (shrink)

In this paper, I introduce the idea of ‘radical relativity’ to elucidate an undervalued justificatory context for Wittgenstein’s affirmation of radical pluralism. I accept D.Z. Phillips’s definition of radical pluralism as the view that certain radical differences between people’s ordinary practices prevent the latter from being reduced to a necessary set of common interests, meanings, or truths. I argue that radical relativity provides this form of pluralism with the logical justification it requires in that it accounts for how pluralism became (...) radical. More specifically, I argue that the contingent, non-causal, and yet non-arbitrary relation between ordinary concepts and the pluralistic world through which they emerge explains the reality of radical pluralism. Radical relativity is suggested in Wittgenstein’s three notions of ‘concept formation’, ‘agreement in reaction’, and ‘world pictures’, I argue, without endorsing traditional forms of relativism. Finally, I show that although D.Z. Phillips and Hilary Putnam promote notions of pluralism indebted to Wittgenstein, neither philosopher utilizes the radical relativity suggested in his work to justify his respective version of pluralism or Wittgenstein’s version of radical pluralism. (shrink)

In this essay I discuss several questions related to the manner in which concepts generally, and religious concepts in particular, are formed. Are some concepts necessary in the sense that, considering the physical makeup of the natural world and our own bio-chemical, perceptual, and cognitive nature, these concepts had to emerge by necessity? If we put considerations of divine revelations aside, I ask regarding religious concepts, what would be the proper way of looking at how they came to be formed? (...) What role does causality play in the formation of empirical and religious concepts, if at all? One of my aims in discussing these and other related questions is to revisit Hilary Putnam’s justificatory basis for rejecting the intelligibility of speaking of absolute conceptions of the world. Although I support his position on this issue, I show some of the hermeneutical problems in his reliance on Wittgenstein’s views concerning language games and worldviews. I also revisit Wittgenstein’s own views about concept formation to discuss the similarities and differences between how religious concepts and empirical concepts are formed. My aim here is to show that the idea of an absolute conception of the world rests on confusing the regulative role that concepts play in our lives for a causative role. (shrink)

Whereas Ludwig Wittgenstein is known among many metaphysicians for his fervent rejection of metaphysics as a legitimate philosophical enterprise, A.N. Whitehead is often described as the chief exemplification of the systematic and explanatory metaphysician. This fact might explain why little has been written on how these two philosophers approach philosophical problems in which they shared common interest. In this paper I venture to discuss one such problem, which is the fundamental problem of the nature of reality. I investigate the sense (...) in which Wittgenstein and Whitehead reject modern empiricism as a necessary foundation for a viable realism while still affirming the latter. I also consider the implications of their affirmations of realism for the questions of skepticism and the nature of ‘the ordinary’. Considering the particular philosophical orientations of Wittgenstein and Whitehead, it is significant to see how these questions fare in their works and how their affirmations of realism shed light on the still important question of the nature of philosophy. (shrink)

This thesis addresses two questions. One concerns the metaphysics of emotions and asks what kinds of mental states emotions are. The other asks how the metaphysics of emotions bears on first and third-personal knowledge of emotions. There are two prevailing views on the nature of emotions. They are the perception and cognitive views. The perception view argues that emotions are bodily feelings. The cognitive view, by contrast, contends that emotions are some sorts of evaluative judgments. I show that both views (...) provide inadequate accounts of the nature of emotions. The perception view fails to do justice to the fact that emotions may not involve any bodily feeling. The cognitive view, by contrast, cannot account for the fact that emotions are states that adult humans have in common with infants and animals. On the basis of these criticisms, I put forward an alternative account of emotions. This involves five main arguments. The first is that emotions are enduring non-episodic dispositions that may or may not manifest themselves in experiential episodes such as emotional feelings and behaviour episodes such as expressions. The second argument is that emotional feelings are perceptions of specific bodily changes brought about by emotions. These feelings serve as clues as to what kinds of emotions the subject has. The third argument is that expressions are observable manifestations of emotions in virtue of which emotions can be perceived and subsequently known, directly and non-inferentially, by other people. The fourth argument is that when someone has an emotion without feeling it, she can still come to know it by believing true ascriptions that other people make about the emotion they perceive in her expression. The fifth argument is that full knowledge of emotions requires knowledge of the emotion objects. (shrink)

We examine the relationship between scientific knowledge and the legal system with a focus on the exclusion of expert testimony from trial as ruled by the Daubert standard in the US.We introduce a simple framework to understand and assess the role of judges as “gatekeepers”, monitoring the admission of science in the courtroom. We show how judges face a crucial choice, namely, whether to limit Daubert assessment to the abstract reliability of the methods used by the expert witness or also (...) to check whether the application of those methods was correct. Undesirable outcomes result from both choices, thereby giving rise to the “gatekeeper’s dilemma.” We illustrate the dilemma by analyzing in some detail two well-known cases of Daubert challenges to economic experts. Finally, we present reasons for the absence of straightforward solutions to the dilemma and for its likely endurance. (shrink)

Bionic technologies connecting biological nervous systems to computer or robotic devices for therapeutic purposes have been recently claimed to provide novel experimental tools for the investigation of biological mechanisms. This claim is examined here by means of a methodological analysis of bionics-supported experimental inquiries on adaptive sensory-motor behaviours. Two broad classes of bionic systems (regarded here as hybrid simulations of the target biological system) are identified, which differ from each other according to whether a component of the biological target system (...) is replaced by an artificial component, or else a component of an artificial system is replaced by a biological component. The role of these hybrid systems in the modelling of adaptive sensory-motor biological behaviours is discussed with reference to bionics-supported experiments on the mechanisms of body stabilization in lampreys. Methodological problems emerging from these case studies often arise in computer-based and biorobotic simulations of biological behaviours too. Accordingly, the present analysis contributes to identifying a more general regulative methodological framework for the machine-based modelling of biological systems. (shrink)

The classical theory of definitions bans so-called circular definitions, namely, definitions of a unary predicate P, based on stipulations of the form $$Px =_{\mathsf {Df}} \phi,$$where ϕ is a formula of a fixed first-order language and the definiendumP occurs into the definiensϕ. In their seminal book The Revision Theory of Truth, Gupta and Belnap claim that “General theories of definitions are possible within which circular definitions [...] make logical and semantic sense” [p. IX]. In order to sustain their claim, they (...) develop in this book one general theory of definitions based on revision sequences, namely, ordinal-length iterations of the operator which is induced by the definition of the predicate. Gupta-Belnap’s approach to circular definitions has been criticised, among others, by D. Martin and V. McGee. Their criticisms point to the logical complexity of revision sequences, to their relations with ordinary mathematical practice, and to their merits relative to alternative approaches. I will present an alternative general theory of definitions, based on a combination of supervaluation and ω-length revision, which aims to address some criticisms raised against revision sequences, while preserving the philosophical and mathematical core of revision. (shrink)

The most complete edition yet published of Wittgenstein’s1929 lecture includes a never-before published first draft andmakes fresh claims for its significance in Wittgenstein’soeuvre. The first available print publication of all known drafts ofWittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics Includes a previously unrecognized first draft of the lectureand new transcriptions of all drafts Transcriptions preserve the philosopher’s emendationsthus showing the development of the ideas in the lecture Proposes a different draft as the version read by Wittgensteinin his 1929 lecture Includes introductory essays on (...) the origins of the material andon its meaning, content, and importance. (shrink)

What can interactive robots offer to the study of social behaviour? Philosophical reflections about the use of robotic models in animal research have focused so far on methods involving robots which do not interact with the target system. Yet, leading researchers have claimed that interactive robots may constitute powerful experimental tools to study collective behaviour. Can they live up to these epistemic expectations? This question is addressed here by focusing on a particular experimental methodology involving interactive robots which has been (...) often adopted in animal research. This methodology is shown to differ from other robot-supported methods for the study of animal behaviour analysed in the philosophical literature, chiefly including the synthetic method. It is also discussed whether biomimicry and acceptability are necessary for an interactive robot to be sensibly used in animal research according to this method. (shrink)

Revision sequences were introduced in 1982 by Herzberger and Gupta as a mathematical tool in formalising their respective theories of truth. Since then, revision has developed in a method of analysis of theoretical concepts with several applications in other areas of logic and philosophy. Revision sequences are usually formalised as ordinal-length sequences of objects of some sort. A common idea of revision process is shared by all revision theories but specific proposals can differ in the so-called limit rule, namely the (...) way they handle the limit stages of the process. The limit rules proposed by Herzberger and by Belnap show different mathematical properties, called periodicity and reflexivity, respectively. In this paper we isolate a notion of cofinally dependent limit rule, encompassing both Herzberger’s and Belnap’s ones, to study periodicity and reflexivity in a common framework and to contrast them both from a philosophical and from a mathematical point of view. We establish the equivalence of weak versions of these properties with the revision-theoretic notion of recurring hypothesis and draw from this fact some observations about the problem of choosing the “right” limit rule when performing a revision-theoretic analysis. (shrink)

Ninety-one right brain-damaged patients with left neglect and 43 right brain-damaged patients without neglect were asked to extend horizontal segments, either left- or rightward, starting from their right or left endpoints, respectively. Earlier experiments based on similar tasks had shown, in left neglect patients, a tendency to overextend segments toward the left side. This seemingly paradoxical phenomenon was held to undermine current explanations of unilateral neglect. The results of the present extensive research demonstrate that contralesional overextension is also evident in (...) most right brain-damaged patients without contralesional neglect. Furthermore, they show that in a minority of left neglect patients, the opposite behavior, i.e., right overextension can be found. The paper also reports the results of correlational analyses comprising the parameters of line-extension, line-bisection, and cancellation tasks, as well as the parameters relative to the Milner Landmark Task, by which a distinction is drawn between perceptual and response biases in unilateral neglect. A working hypothesis is then advanced about the brain dysfunction underlying neglect and an attempt is made at finding an explanation of neglect and the links between the mechanisms of space representation and consciousness through the study of the changes induced by unilateral brain lesions in the characteristics of space-coding neurons. Abbreviations: C, control group;GN+91,full group of neglect patients;GN+27,group of neglect patients with relative left overextension;GN+14,group of neglect patients with relative right overextension;GN-43,full group of non-neglect patients;GN-9,group of non-neglect patients with relative left overextension; H canc, H cancellation task; LE, left extension; LE/RE, ratio of left-right extension; N+, neglect patients; N-, non-neglect patients; PB Land-M, perceptual bias on Landmark motor task; PB Land-V, perceptual bias on Landmark verbal task; RB Land-M, response bias on Landmark motor task; RB Land-V, response bias on Landmark verbal task; RE, right extension. (shrink)

Human attention is limited in its capacity and duration. In language, this is manifested in many ways, but more conspicuously in the strategies by which information is distributed in utterances, that is, their information structures. We contend that the pragmatic categories of Topic and Presupposition precisely meet the necessity to modulate attentional resources on sentence contents, and they do this by “directing” certain contents to automatic and others to controlled processing mechanisms. We discuss experimental findings suggesting that presupposed or topicalized (...) information correlates with automatic processing, and we suggest that this association grounded for the emergence of topic and presupposition units in human communication. We also put forth the processing automaticity induced by these units as the rationale behind their persuasiveness in some specific contexts of language use. (shrink)

Simulation studies have been carried out in robotics for a variety of epistemic and practical purposes. Here it is argued that two broad classes of simulation studies can be identified in robotics research. The first one is exemplified by the use of robotic systems to acquire knowledge on living systems in so-called biorobotics, while the second class of studies is more distinctively connected to cases in which artificial systems are used to acquire knowledge about the behaviour of autonomous mobile robots. (...) The two classes pertain to sub-areas of robotics which are apparently quite distant from one another in terms of goals, methodologies, technologies, and theoretical backgrounds. Still both are concerned with building, running, and experimenting on simulations of other systems. This paper aims to reveal and discuss some methodological commonalities between the two classes of studies. Philosophical literature on simulation methodologies has been traditionally focused on studies carried out in research fields other than robotics: this article may therefore contribute to shedding light on how the concept of simulation is used in robotics, and on the role simulation methodologies play in this research field. (shrink)

La democrazia vive dello scambio tra opinioni in un contesto di libertà e pluralismo. Quando però nel dibattito pubblico comincia a farsi strada l’idea che le opinioni possano prescindere dai più elementari dati di realtà e possano essere supportate da “verità alternative” prive di ogni riscontro fattuale, viene meno ogni denominatore comune a tutti i discorsi sociali. Come ha sottolineato Hannah Arendt, la libertà di opinione scade a mera illusione se non viene garantita l’informazione obiettiva e i fatti non sono (...) più alla base delle opinioni. Le verità fattuali rendono possibile la discussione politica proprio perché ricordano agli esseri umani che esiste un limite invalicabile alla discussione, quello costituito da evidenze che non è possibile sconfessare né respingere. Anche se le procedure della persuasione politica non si prestano ad alcuna forma di validazione cognitiva, ciò non impedisce ad Arendt di riconoscere la necessità di un orientamento “veritativo” anche rispetto a quanto accade nella vita politica. Parole chiave: Opinione, post-verità, democrazia, mondo comune, populismo. (shrink)

Questo contributo tratta della perifrasi ‘εἶναι + participio’ in greco omerico all’interfaccia fra morfosintassi e semantica. I dati sono analizzati con riferimento al quadro teorico elaborato da Nardi e Romagno (2022), che considerano la perifrasi con εἶναι in greco antico come una categoria prototipica: secondo questa prospettiva, la categoria sovraordinata ‘εἶναι + participio’ include due manifestazioni formalmente diverse ma funzionalmente equivalenti, un costrutto con una copula espressa, cioè una perifrasi vera e propria, e un costrutto senza copula espressa, cioè un (...) participio predicativo (fondamentalmente, un participio che funziona come una forma finita). Questa indagine mira a valutare se si possano individuare fattori che determinano o soggiacciono all’uso di queste costruzioni participiali in greco omerico. L’analisi dei dati raccolti nei poemi omerici mostra che le costruzioni participiali codificano la funzione specifica di significare lo stato, inerente o acquisito, del soggetto del predicato, costituendo pertanto un’alternativa (più o meno libera) al perfetto originario (cfr. Romagno 2005). (shrink)

In Hannes Leitgeb’s article What truth depends on the author provides a formally correct and materially adequate truth definition for the set of all grounded sentences, defined as the least fixed point of a monotone operator of semantic dependence. In this paper we will focus on the mathematical aspects of Leitgeb’s notions of dependence, grounding and truth, recasting Leitgeb’s construction in a functional setting in which we establish some new facts about these notions.

Revision sequences are a kind of transfinite sequences which were introduced by Herzberger and Gupta in 1982 as the main mathematical tool for developing their respective revision theories of truth. We generalise revision sequences to the notion of cofinally invariant sequences, showing that several known facts about Herzberger’s and Gupta’s theories also hold for this more abstract kind of sequences and providing new and more informative proofs of the old results.

The application of legal hermeneutics could be a constructive tool for interpreting the U.S. Constitution. Yet hermeneutics is virtually never used or mentioned by Supreme Court Justices. The two worlds, hermeneutics and constitutional law, seem to inhabit different silos. Still, the Justices and other judges could profit from the application of the discipline. This article examines the views of two leading theoreticians of hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, which undermine the textualist and originalist approach to the Constitution, and highlights (...) hermeneutic tools for constitutional interpreters. (shrink)

In recent years, a number of research projects have been proposed whose goal is to build large-scale simulations of brain mechanisms at unprecedented levels of biological accuracy. Here it is argued that the roles these simulations are expected to play in neuroscientific research go beyond the “synthetic method” extensively adopted in Artificial Intelligence and biorobotics. In addition we show that, over and above the common goal of simulating brain mechanisms, these projects pursue various modelling ambitions that can be sharply distinguished (...) from one another, and that correspond to conceptually different interpretations of the notion of “biological accuracy”. They include the ambition to reach extremely deep levels in the mechanistic decomposition hierarchy, to simulate networks composed of extremely large numbers of neural units, to build systems able to generate rich behavioural repertoires, to simulate “complex” neuron models, to implement the “best” theories available on brain structure and function. Some questions will be raised concerning the significance of each of these modelling ambitions with respect to the various roles played by simulations in the study of the brain. (shrink)

Summary My paper aims to clarify the subsequent steps of Rome’s encroachment on Etruria in the aftermath of the Pyrrhic War. As is well known, the Latin colony of Cosa was founded in 273 BC on the Tyrrhenian coast to the north of Vulci; moreover, in the years 264–245 BC, four citizen colonies were founded on the Caeretan coast, namely Castrum Novum, Pyrgi, Alsium and Fregenae. Unfortunately, it is not easy to reconstruct precisely what the Roman movements in Etruria were, (...) or how the Etruscans reacted to them. Above all, it is difficult to determine whether a colonial foundation like Cosa – which was contemporary with the establishment of Paestum in Lucania – was part of a broader and coherent strategy that the Romans had been following in their expansion into the Italian peninsula. By evaluating all the available evidence, I will try to demonstrate that the foundation of Cosa depended more upon particular contingencies than upon any preconceived plan for the conquest of Italy. (shrink)

_Riassunto_: Questo contributo offre un confronto tra la scienza cognitiva enattivista e la fenomenologia classica, rivolgendo in particolare la sua attenzione su figure chiave come Husserl, Heidegger e Merleau-Ponty. Due questioni saranno al centro dell’indagine la relazione tra soggetto/corpo/mondo e il ruolo mediatore dell’azione all’interno di una concezione dinamica della cognizione. Quanto al primo punto, la prospettiva trascendentale che emerge dalla soggettività incarnata enfatizza la continuità tra azione, percezione e funzioni cognitive superiori, ponendo in questione la dicotomia mente-corpo a favore (...) di un’esperienza fenomenologica unificata e continua. Il secondo punto concerne la messa in revoca del naturalismo fisicalista e la necessità di superare le assunzioni meccanicistiche, proponendo un naturalismo debole che rimanga compatibile con una prospettiva trascendentale, tale da fondare la soggettività in un organismo biologico incarnato. Da ultimo, viene esplorata un’ontologia della natura ispirata da Merleau-Ponty, che enfatizza gli aspetti qualitativi della “carne” e supera le limitazioni proprie dell’approccio husserliano. _Parole chiave_: Cognizione incarnata; Fenomenologia; Enattivismo; Percezione; Soggettività _Transcendental phenomenology and embodied cognition. The relation between subject, body, and world in the framework of a reformed natural ontology_ _Abstract_: This contribution offers a comparison between enactivist cognitive science and classical phenomenology, with a particular focus on key figures such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. Two central issues are explored: the relationship between subject, body, and world, and the mediating role of action within a dynamic conception of cognition. The transcendental perspective emerging from incarnate subjectivity emphasizes the continuity between action, perception, and higher cognitive functions, challenging the mind-body duality in favor of a unified and continuous phenomenological experience. The second issue addresses physicalist naturalism and the need to move beyond mechanistic assumptions, proposing a weak naturalism that remains compatible with a transcendental perspective, one that grounds subjectivity in an embodied biological organism. An ontology of nature, inspired by Merleau-Ponty, is explored, emphasizing the qualitative aspects of the “flesh” and overcoming the limitations inherent in Husserl’s approach. _Keywords_: Embodied Cognition; Phenomenology; Enactivism; Perception; Subjectivity. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the intrinsically technical nature of visual perception and pictorial performance through their common anchorage in the corporeity that brings them into existence. As with any other artistic technique, painting reveals itself to be the natural extension of a technological attitude already rooted in the sensorimotor devices of the body in action; painting is led to inhabit a world that is of the same nature as corporeal agents, because the objects that populate it (...) share with it the ontological element of the “flesh”. Through Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of Cezanne’s pictorial works, I demonstrate that the main purpose of painting is, analogically with the descriptive analyses made possible by the phenomenological reduction, to render intersubjectively evident the hidden work of vision before its sedimentation in an accomplished perceptual scene. As the experiments of contemporary neuroscience also demonstrate, perception is by and large a reconstructive process of “image-making” rather than an allegedly accurate reproduction of the spectacle of the world. Painting, on the other hand, both in terms of creation and for the observer, employs the same sensorimotor resources as instruments. (shrink)

Uno dei principali meriti del libro di Pietro Perconti è l’aver fatto chiarezza su una dimensione così elusiva e complicata come il senso comune, precisandone in modo perspicuo i tratti oppositivi e di continuità che ne contraddistinguono le relazioni con gli acquisti teorici della scienza cognitiva e le loro ricadute pratiche. Quest’obiettivo è raggiunto grazie anche alle risorse di una scrittura incisiva e scorrevole, che ottempera alle esigenze dell’alta divulgazione senza che ne sia intac...