This commentary focuses on Machery's eliminativist claim, that ought to be eliminated from the theoretical vocabulary of psychology because it fails to denote a natural kind. I argue for the more traditional view that concepts are a functional kind, which provides the simplest account of the empirical evidence discussed by Machery.

Baccarini and Malatesti (2017) defend the idea that we must use coercively biomedical means to enhance the morality of a specific group of individuals: psychopaths, diagnosed through the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) standards (Hare, 2003). Their argument is theoretical, thus it goes independently from the actual effectiveness of existent treatments, and it is based on a logical reasoning. Moral bioenhancement (MB) means include psychotropic drugs, brain stimulations, neurosurgeries, genetic editing, etc. -/- In short, the authors apply Gerald Gaus' account of open (...) justification (Gaus, 1996, 2011), according to which “a prescription addressed to an agent is a reasoning that includes premises that consider the system of reasons (such as beliefs, preferences, etc.) of that agent” (Baccarini and Malatesti, 2017, p. 1). In their view, coercive MB of psychopaths is morally sound and deducible by reasons within the psychopath's cognitive-affective system—even if the psychopath needs not to be able to consciously or sincerely endorse them. We believe that this argument is flawed. In sum, we argue that the psychopath's cognitive-affective system would consistently justify reasons against mandatory MB to herself, even if she wishes differently for others, and that the prescription cannot be extended. (shrink)

The concept of moralisation of health behaviours was introduced in social psychology to describe the attribution of moral properties to habits and conditions like smoking or being a vegetarian. Moral properties are powerful motivators for people and institutions, as they may trigger blame, stigma, and appraisal, as well as the polarisation of interest and scientific hype. Here I extend the concept and illustrate how medicines and treatments can be seen as if they had moral properties, too, when they come to (...) be regarded as good or bad in the moral sense, and not just in the instrumental sense of benefiting or harming health. I propose the hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) controversy of 2020 as an example of moralisation of a medicine. HCQ and chloroquine are anti-malarial drugs, whose off-label use for Covid-19 was hotly discussed in the early months of the pandemic, both in the media and within the scientific community, and eventually dismissed when robust evidence came out. The point of the paper is to show that moralisation of health products and treatments may influence individual and institutional decisions in significant ways, and also affect research. For these reasons, it should be carefully monitored and critically assessed. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage explore l'itinéraire intellectuel d'André-François Boureau-Deslandes (1689-1757), commissaire général de la Marine, philosophe, savant, moraliste, historien des techniques. Cette étude comporte une analyse détaillée de tous les travaux de l'auteur, en privilégiant ses textes inédits, erronément attribués, ignorés ou à peine recensés. Le but de cette étude est d'attirer l'attention sur une figure complexe d'écrivain et de penseur, dont l'œuvre devrait finalement trouver sa place dans la discipline de l'Histoire de la philosophie et mériterait d'être considérée dans son intégralité, (...) non seulement pour sa valeur intrinsèque, mais aussi parce qu'elle permet, par sa singularité, de mettre en évidence le clair-obscur d'un contexte philosophique, aussi bien culturel que moral : celui de la rencontre et de l'enchevêtrement de l'esprit libertin et l'esprit des Lumières dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle. (shrink)

In this paper, the role played in learning to argue by an essential and yet under-researched epistemic and argumentative norm is discussed, namely, the consistency requirement. An argumentative intervention is presented, that is designed to enhance the understanding of this norm among high school students, to enable them to recognize contradictions in the process of argumentation and to familiarize them with the argumentative strategies related to the reductio ad absurdum. There follows a description of how the designed intervention was implemented (...) in two Italian high schools, which served as an exploratory case study, and the results obtained are discussed. (shrink)

We maintain that no extant argument in favor of phenomenal external- ism is really convincing. PE is the thesis that the phenomenal properties of our experiences must be individuated widely insofar as they are constituted by worldly properties. We consider what we take to be the five best arguments for PE. We try to show that none of them really proves what it aims at proving. Unless better arguments in favor of phenomenal externalism show up in the debate, we see (...) no reason to relinquish an idea that seems intuitive and appeals to many cognitive sci- entists: that phenomenology is narrow, i.e., that phenomenal properties are intrinsic properties of our experiences. This idea grounds the opposite philosophical position, phenomenal internalism. (shrink)

Les articles réunis dans ce dossier proviennent pour l’essentiel de la journée d’étude organisée par Elisabetta Basso et Laurent Dartigues le 6 juin 2017 à l’ENS de Lyon, avec le soutien de l’Institut d’études avancées (Collegium) de Lyon, de l’UMR Triangle et de l’ENS de Lyon. Seul fait exception le texte d’Ugo Balzaretti, que nous avons eu plaisir à accueillir dans ce dossier. Cette journée d’étude s’inscrivait dans le contexte du projet de recherche intitulé « Rethinking anthropology in li...

Numerous studies suggest that both emotion knowledge and language abilities are powerfully related to young children’s theory of mind. Nonetheless, the magnitude and direction of the associations between language, emotion knowledge, and theory-of-mind performance in the first years of life are still debated. Hence, the aim of this study was to assess the direct effects of emotion knowledge and language on theory-of-mind scores in 2- and 3-year-old children. A sample of 139 children, aged between 24 and 47 months ( M (...) = 35.5 months; SD = 6.73), were directly administered measures of emotion knowledge, theory of mind, and language. We conducted structural equation modeling (SEM) to evaluate the effects of these variables within a single comprehensive framework, while also controlling for any effects of age and gender. The proposed structural equation model provided an excellent fit for the data, indicating that both children’s emotion knowledge, and their language ability had direct positive effects on theory of mind scores. In addition, age was found to wield statistically significant effects on all the variables under study, whereas gender was not significantly associated with any of them. These findings suggest the importance of fostering young children’s emotion knowledge and language ability with a view to enhancing their comprehension of mental states. (shrink)

This paper stresses the circumstance that Ferraris’ Documentalità shows that what is often improperly called “communication society” actually consists in a “recording society”. Recording is either a condition of the persistence of thought, and of the existence and the recognition of the social world, which expresses and settles itself in a configuration of documents. This perspective gets the notion of “spirit” out from its abstraction: without a letter, the spirit wouldn’t have any ontological consistence. What we call “spiritual” is the (...) result of registrations: as such, it has a foundational value and implies the responsibility for the acts that result from it. (shrink)

This essay sets out to investigate the Shelleys’ perception of Italy and the Italians, oscillating between heartfelt enthusiasm and disillusionment. As will be shown, P.B. Shelley adopted a more critical stance towards the population, while he unre-servedly appreciated both the natural landscape and the relics of a glorious past. Conversely, Mary Shelley was more sympathetic and convincingly embraced the Italian cause. The intertwined concepts of Italophilia and Italophobia will also be explored.

Aristotle's discussion of legal change in Politics II.8 is the subject of this article. The aim is to show that Aristotle viewed legal change positively, when changes to the law are required, and that his discussion was mainly concerned with the two rather distinct roles of the demos and of the legislator. The analysis involves a re-examination of 1268b 25ss in book II of Aristotle’s Politics and its connection with book III. The analysis is also extended to Aristotle’s Rhetoric and (...) Nicomachean Ethics, and to Plato’s Politicus and Laws. (shrink)

In the 1950s, long before his ascent to international renown, Michel Foucault published a scant few works. His early writings on psychology, psychopathology, and anthropology have been dismissed as immature. However, recently discovered manuscripts from the mid-1950s, when Foucault was a lecturer at the University of Lille, testify to the significance of the work that the philosopher produced in the years leading up to the “archaeological” project he launched with History of Madness. Elisabetta Basso offers a groundbreaking and in-depth (...) analysis of Foucault’s Lille manuscripts that sheds new light on the origins of his philosophical project. She considers the epistemological style and methodology of these writings as well as their philosophical context and the scholarly networks in which Foucault was active, foregrounding his relationship to existential psychiatry. Young Foucault blurs the boundaries between biography and theory, exploring the transformations—and, at times, contradictions—that characterize the intellectual trajectory of a philosopher who, as Foucault himself put it, “turned to psychology, and from psychology to history.” Retracing the first steps of the philosopher’s intellectual journey, Basso shows how Foucault’s early writings provide key insights into his archaeological work of the 1960s. Assembling a vast array of archival sources—including manuscripts, reading notes, notes for lectures and conferences, and correspondence—this book develops a new and deeper understanding of Foucault’s body of work. (shrink)

This paper examines an argument by Schaffer (2017) that aims to prove how, contrary to what many philosophers hold, there is no special explanatory gap occurring in the connection between the physical and the phenomenal. This is because a gap of the same kind can be found in every connection between a more fundamental and a less fundamental level of reality. These gaps lurk everywhere in nature. For Schaffer, they can be bridged by means of substantive metaphysical principles such as (...) grounding principles. He thus puts forward a version of grounding-based physicalism, which is supposed to provide this kind of substantive bridge principle. My main contention is as follows: even if Schaffer’s argument indeed proves the existence of a gap in every connection between fundamental and derivative entities, and such gaps can be bridged by means of grounding principles, a different gap remains open in the psycho-physical connection. (shrink)

This book provides an introduction to the study of words, and how we use words to create meaning. It offers an accessible description of the main properties of words and the organizational principles of the lexicon, based on theoretical accounts and extensive empirical data.

In this paper I focus on the emergence of the concept of the “historical a priori” at the origin of Foucault’s archeology. I emphasize the methodological function of this concept within Foucault’s archaeology, and I maintain that despite the different thesis it entails as compared to its philosophical sources, it pertains to one of the main issues of phenomenology, that is, the problematization of the relation between reality as it appears in its historicity, and transcendentality. I start from the interest (...) of the young Foucault in existential psychiatry, and I focus on the French philosophical context in which Foucault’s Introduction to Ludwig Binswanger’s “Dream and Existence” (1954) was conceived. My aim is to show that the first “phenomenological” phase of Foucault’s work is coherent, from a methodological point of view, with the development of archaeology intended as “historical epistemology.” I conclude by arguing that Foucault’s archaeology is methodologically linked to Canguilhem’s epistemology, in that the latter presents itself as an important attempt at linking together historicity and transcendentality. (shrink)

This paper is based on the archives of Michel Foucault collected (since 2013) at the manuscripts department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Our investigation focuses in particular on the documents of the 1950s, in order to study the role of the reflection on anthropology and phenomenology at the beginning of Foucault’s philosophical path. This archival material allows us to discover the tremendous work that is at the basis of the relatively few works that Foucault published in the 1950s. (...) The access to the 1950s documents enables us at last to investigate the reasons for the seemingly sharp break that divides these works from the works published by Foucault in the 1960s and the 1970s, in which emerges the archaeological refusal of phenomenology and anthropology, as well as the strong criticism against any form of psychopathological discourse. (shrink)

Advanced medical imaging, such as CT, fMRI and PET, has undergone enormous progress in recent years, both in accuracy and utilization. Such techniques often bring with them an illusion of immediacy, the idea that the body and its diseases can be directly inspected. In this paper we target this illusion and address the issue of the reliability of advanced imaging tests as knowledge procedures, taking positron emission tomography in oncology as paradigmatic case study. After individuating a suitable notion of reliability, (...) we argue that PET is a highly theory-laden and non-immediate knowledge procedure, in spite of the photographic-like quality of the images it delivers; the diagnostic conclusions based on the interpretation of PET images are population-dependent; PET images require interpretation, which is inherently observer-dependent and therefore variable. We conclude with a three-step methodological proposal for enhancing the reliability of advanced medical imaging. (shrink)

According to Frege a proposition—or, in his terms, a thought—is an abstract structured entity constituted by senses which satisfies, at least, the three following properties: it can be semantically assessed as true or as false, it is the object of so called propositional attitudes and it can be grasped. What Frege meant by 'grasping' is the peculiar way in which we can have epistemic access to propositions. The possibility for propositions to be grasped is put by Frege as a warrant (...) for their existence: to challenge their graspability would amount to jeopardise their ontological reality. But is it true, as Frege uncritically maintained, that the "graspability requirement" is satisfied as far as propositions (as he conceived them) are concerned? This is the topic of the present work. A negative answer to the above mentioned question has been given in recent time by the representatives of what has come to be labelled the "cognitive turn" in analytical philosophy. People such as Fodor and Johnson-Laird patently denied the possibility for propositions, conceived à la Frege, to be accessed by the grasping relation. What grounds their position is, to put it roughly, the following train of thought: in order for something to be the target of the grasping relation it must enter the mind. Nothing which is different from a mental entity can enter the mind. Therefore, what can be grasped must be mental. The upshot of this move implies, among other things, the rejection of that radical anti-psychologism which was characteristic of the forefathers of the analytical tradition. In our work we shall try to resist their conclusion by showing that it is not necessary to zero the distinction between propositions and mental entities in order to provide an adequate account of the grasping relation. What one has to give up, instead, is only Frege's late Platonism of the "third realm" which, in our view, is a wholly unnecessary and dispensable accretion of his picture. For, as we shall show, if Platonism is in place it is difficult to provide an account of the grasping relation which makes no use of the "representationalist hypothesis" — i.e. of the hypothesis that ideas mediate our access to whatever can be given to us. But representationalism, once in place, makes the theoretical role of the notion of sense dispensable or purely additional. (shrink)

Critics of clinical artificial intelligence (AI) suggest that the technology is ethically harmful because it may lead to the dehumanization of the doctor–patient relationship (DPR) by eliminating moral empathy, which is viewed as a distinctively human trait. The benefits of clinical empathy—that is, moral empathy applied in the clinical context—are widely praised, but this praise is often unquestioning and lacks context. In this article, I will argue that criticisms of clinical AI based on appeals to empathy are misplaced. As psychological (...) and philosophical research has shown, empathy leads to certain types of biased reasoning and choices. These biases of empathy consistently impact the DPR. Empathy may lead to partial judgments and asymmetric DPRs, as well as disparities in the treatment of patients, undermining respect for patient autonomy and equality. Engineers should consider the flaws of empathy when designing affective artificial systems in the future. The nature of sympathy and compassion (i.e., displaying emotional concern while maintaining some balanced distance) has been defended by some ethicists as more beneficial than perspective-taking in the clinical context. However, these claims do not seem to have impacted the AI debate. Thus, this article will also argue that if machines are programmed for affective behavior, they should also be given some ethical scaffolding. (shrink)