This book investigates the unresolved issue of democratic legitimacy in contexts of pervasive disagreement and contributes to this debate by defending a relational version of political liberalism that rests on the ideal of co-authorship. According to this proposal, democratic legitimacy depends upon establishing appropriate interactions among citizens who ought to ascribe to one another the status of putative practical and epistemic authorities. To support this relational reading of political liberalism, the book proposes a revised account of the civic virtue of (...) reasonableness along with an investigation of the epistemic-specific dimension of political equality. By engaging with political epistemology and social theory, this book explores ways to address inherent tensions within the liberal paradigm, using the following strategies of addressing these tensions: first, it defends a twofold model of legitimacy that distinguishes the goals, methodologies, and justificatory tasks of both ideal and nonideal phases of the two-level justificatory framework; second, it contends that democratic legitimacy requires an engaged and contextual critical appraisal of the injustices that characterize our daily social lives, illustrating how structural forms of injustice represent a profound betrayal of the liberal ideal of democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

This article examines the political and theoretical life of Jane Addams and the women of Hull House, who gave rise to a constellation of new subjects and practices in nineteenth-century Chicago. In particular, the article highlights the importance of women’s relations in the settlement in Halsted Street, which were a fundamental part of the group’s political practice and reflection on democracy, society, and justice: on the one hand, they reconfigured the traditional dichotomy between private and public space, revealing its inherent (...) porosity; on the other, relations of proximity, friendship, and love proved to be transformative forces and an embodied practice of justice that escaped the dynamics of the dual subject/object relationship, becoming an element of social change. Love, considered in the triple sense of romantic and intimate love, affectionate and cooperative love, and love of Humanity, turned out to be a political element that could redefine the norms and spaces of social action for Victorian women. Moreover, it extended the sphere of democracy beyond governmental procedures and institutions and transformed it into a life practice based on acting in concert and being together. (shrink)

Causal assessment is the problem of establishing whether a relation between (variable) X and (variable) Y is causal. This problem, to be sure, is widespread across the sciences. According to accredited positions in the philosophy of causality and in social science methodology, invariance under intervention provides the most reliable test to decide whether X causes Y. This account of invariance (under intervention) has been criticised, among other reasons, because it makes manipulations on the putative causal factor fundamental for the causal (...) methodology; consequently, the argument goes, the account is ill-suited to those contexts where manipulations are not performed, for instance, the social sciences. The article aims to extend the account of invariance (under intervention), in a way that manipulations on the putative causal factors are not methodologically fundamental, and yet invariance remains key for causal assessment both in experimental and non-experimental contexts. (shrink)

Technologies have always been bearers of profound changes in science, society, and any other aspect of life. The latest technological revolution—the digital revolution—is no exception in this respect. This paper presents the revolution brought about by digital technologies through the lenses of a specific approach: the philosophy of information. It is argued that the adoption of an informational approach helps avoiding utopian or dystopian approaches to technology, both expressions of technological determinism. Such an approach provides a conceptual framework able to (...) address the ethical challenges that digital technologies pose, without getting stuck in the dichotomous thinking of technological determinism, and to bring together ethics, ontology, and epistemology into a coherent account. (shrink)

The anti-causal prophecies of last century have been disproved. Causality is neither a ‘relic of a bygone’ nor ‘another fetish of modern science’; it still occupies a large part of the current debate in philosophy and the sciences. This investigation into causal modelling presents the rationale of causality, i.e. the notion that guides causal reasoning in causal modelling. It is argued that causal models are regimented by a rationale of variation, nor of regularity neither invariance, thus breaking down the dominant (...) Human paradigm. The notion of variation is shown to be embedded in the scheme of reasoning behind various causal models: e.g. Rubin’s model, contingency tables, and multilevel analysis. It is also shown to be latent – yet fundamental – in many philosophical accounts. Moreover, it has significant consequences for methodological issues: the warranty of the causal interpretation of causal models, the levels of causation, the characterisation of mechanisms, and the interpretation of probability. This book offers a novel philosophical and methodological approach to causal reasoning in causal modelling and provides the reader with the tools to be up to date about various issues causality rises in social science. (shrink)

Mobile applications are increasingly regarded as important tools for an integrated strategy of infection containment in post-lockdown societies around the globe. This paper discusses a number of questions that should be addressed when assessing the ethical challenges of mobile applications for digital contact-tracing of COVID-19: Which safeguards should be designed in the technology? Who should access data? What is a legitimate role for “Big Tech” companies in the development and implementation of these systems? How should cultural and behavioural issues be (...) accounted for in the design of these apps? Should use of these apps be compulsory? What does transparency and ethical oversight mean in this context? We demonstrate that responses to these questions are complex and contingent and argue that if digital contract-tracing is used, then it should be clear that this is on a trial basis and its use should be subject to independent monitoring and evaluation. (shrink)

To deal with the question about the ethic monitoring of the Brain Interfaces Machine this article analyses the potential impact of BMI on the conditions which guarantee a status of personal identity, by re-discussing some crucial points of the philosophical debate about the human being related to the ways of improving these BMI systems. It is under discussion the matter of the autonomy of human beings related to mutual control between humans and machines in BMI systems.

Testimony spreads information. It is also commonly agreed that it can transfer knowledge. Whether it can work as an epistemic source of understanding is a matter of dispute. However, testimony certainly plays a pivotal role in the proliferation of understanding in the epistemic community. But how exactly do we learn, and how do we make advancements in understanding on the basis of one another’s words? And what can we do to maximize the probability that the process of acquiring understanding from (...) one another succeeds? These are very important questions in our current epistemological landscape, especially in light of the attention that has been paid to understanding as an epistemic achievement of purely epistemic value. Somewhat surprisingly, the recent literature in social epistemology does not offer much on the topic. The overarching aim of this paper is to provide a tentative model of understanding that goes in-depth enough to safely address the question of how understanding and testimony are related to one another. The hope is to contribute, in some measure, to the effort to understand understanding, and to explain two facts about our epistemic practices: the fact that knowledge and understanding relate differently to testimony, and the fact that some pieces of testimonial information are better than others for the sake of providing one with understanding and of yielding advancements in one’s epistemic standing. (shrink)

Can we gain understanding from testifiers who themselves fail to understand? At first glance, this looks counterintuitive. How could a hearer who has no understanding or very poor understanding of a certain subject matter non-accidentally extract items of information relevant to understanding from a speaker’s testimony if the speaker does not understand what she is talking about? This paper shows that, when there are theories or representational devices working as mediators, speakers can intentionally generate understanding in their hearers by engaging (...) in relevant speech acts without understanding the topic of these speech acts themselves. More specifically, I argue that testifiers can intentionally elicit understanding of empirical phenomena in their hearers even if they themselves lack such understanding – granted that they properly understood the epistemic mediators involved. (shrink)

Mobile health is rapidly being implemented and changing our ways of doing, understanding and organising healthcare. mHealth includes wearable devices as well as apps that track fitness, offer wellness programmes or provide tools to manage chronic conditions. According to industry and policy makers, these systems offer efficient and cost-effective solutions for disease prevention and self-management. While this development raises many ethically relevant questions, so far mHealth has received only little attention in medical ethics. This paper provides an overview of bioethical (...) issues raised by mHealth and aims to draw scholarly attention to the ethical significance of its promises and challenges. We show that the overly positive promises of mHealth need to be nuanced and their desirability critically assessed. Finally, we offer suggestions to bioethicists to engage with this emerging trend in healthcare to develop mHealth to its best potential in a morally sound way. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to investigate the epistemic dimension of reasonableness. In the last decades, the concept of reasonableness has been deeply analysed, and yet, I maintain that a strictly epistemic analysis of reasonableness is still lacking. The goal of this article is to clarify which epistemic features characterize reasonableness as one of the fundamental virtues in the political domain. In order to justify political liberalism through a public justification that averts the risk of falling into a dilemma, (...) it is important to establish in advance which are the epistemic constraints that should be respected. My proposal is that a moderate approach in moral epistemology expresses the best scheme available to us – as moral agents constrained by the limit of our rationality – for establishing a normatively binding, and yet realistic, procedure of justification for political institutions and practices. (shrink)

Despite the invaluable role that women play in the peacebuilding process, statistics still show this as a male-dominated field. Since media narratives have the power to frame reality providing the public with preferred lenses to understand it, this study asks, How do media narratives frame the role of Afghan women in conflict resolution? To address this question, we combine Frame Theory (Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58) and Critical Discourse Analysis (...) (van Dijk, T. A. (2015). Critical discourse analysis. In D. Tannen, H. E. Hamilton, & D. Schiffrin (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 466–485). Wiley Blackwell) to explore media narratives before and after the Taliban came into power in August 2021. The samples include 32 articles published between 2018 and 2022 on different sources ranging from traditional news outlets to magazines, newsrooms, intergovernmental organizations, and think tanks. Findings show that media narratives perpetuate unfair gendered expectations, failing to effectively render the irreplaceable role of women in peacebuilding. Frames confirm the double bind of hegemonic femininity (Schneiker, A. (2021). The UN and women's marginalization in peace negotiations. International Affairs, 97(4), 1165–1182) as women are subject to different expectations – the exception presents them as courageous, yet the norm frames them as being too vulnerable and without a voice. (shrink)

We argue that the health sciences make causal claims on the basis of evidence both of physical mechanisms, and of probabilistic dependencies. Consequently, an analysis of causality solely in terms of physical mechanisms or solely in terms of probabilistic relationships, does not do justice to the causal claims of these sciences. Yet there seems to be a single relation of cause in these sciences - pluralism about causality will not do either. Instead, we maintain, the health sciences require a theory (...) of causality that unifies its mechanistic and probabilistic aspects. We argue that the epistemic theory of causality provides the required unification. (shrink)

Traditions of thought remain vital and vivid if their borders are porous; they remain able to convey useful insights to understand our present, its roots in the past and its hints at new future perspectives if contaminations with other traditions are taken as a fruitful challenge and as a possibility of enrichment, not of jeopardy. Traditions of thought might be able to attract new followers if their models, criteria and methods are capable of transformation and amelioration. This view of traditions (...) is certainly inspired by John Dewey’s own understanding of philosophical and scientific processes of knowledge.1 His own thought can be indeed described as “open, unfixed, unreified”, entailing... (shrink)

In this paper, we comment and discuss the fifteen replies that interpret, solicit, problematize, and further develop our Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto (Krisis 42(1)), that have been published in Krisis 43(1). In the paper, we address four overarching topics that we see emerging from the replies: Histories and traditions of criticial naturalism; the relation between theory and praxis; the question of what is critical about critical naturalism; and finally the question of utopia. Additionally, we discuss three general types of attitudes (...) that our critics take to the Manifesto. (shrink)

Causal claims in biomedical contexts are ubiquitous albeit they are not always made explicit. This paper addresses the question of what causal claims mean in the context of disease. It is argued that in medical contexts causality ought to be interpreted according to the epistemic theory. The epistemic theory offers an alternative to traditional accounts that cash out causation either in terms of “difference-making” relations or in terms of mechanisms. According to the epistemic approach, causal claims tell us about which (...) inferences (e.g., diagnoses and prognoses) are appropriate, rather than about the presence of some physical causal relation analogous to distance or gravitational attraction. It is shown that the epistemic theory has important consequences for medical practice, in particular with regard to evidence-based causal assessment. (shrink)

The need for fair and just AI is often related to the possibility of understanding AI itself, in other words, of turning an opaque box into a glass box, as inspectable as possible. Transparency and explainability, however, pertain to the technical domain and to philosophy of science, thus leaving the ethics and epistemology of AI largely disconnected. To remedy this, we propose an integrated approach premised on the idea that a glass-box epistemology should explicitly consider how to incorporate values and (...) other normative considerations, such as intersectoral vulnerabilities, at critical stages of the whole process from design and implementation to use and assessment. To connect ethics and epistemology of AI, we perform a double shift of focus. First, we move from trusting the output of an AI system to trusting the process that leads to the outcome. Second, we move from expert assessment to more inclusive assessment strategies, aiming to facilitate expert and non-expert assessment. Together, these two moves yield a framework usable for experts and non-experts when they inquire into relevant epistemological and ethical aspects of AI systems. We dub our framework ‘epistemology-cum-ethics’ to signal the equal importance of both aspects. We develop it from the vantage point of the designers: how to create the conditions to internalize values into the whole process of design, implementation, use, and assessment of an AI system, in which values (epistemic and non-epistemic) are explicitly considered at each stage and inspectable by every salient actor involved at any moment. (shrink)

Words sound slightly different each time they are said, both by the same talker and across talkers. Rather than hurting learning, lab studies suggest that talker variability helps infants learn similar sounding words. However, very little is known about how much variability infants hear within a single talker or across talkers in naturalistic input. Here, we quantified these types of talker variability for highly frequent words spoken to 44 infants, from naturalistic recordings sampled longitudinally over a year of life (from (...) 6 to 17 months). We used non‐contrastive acoustic measurements (e.g., mean pitch, duration, harmonics‐to‐noise ratio) and holistic measures of sound similarity (normalized acoustic distance) to quantify acoustic variability. We find three key results. First, pitch‐based variability was generally lower for infants' top talkers than across their other talkers, but overall acoustic distance is higher for tokens from the top talker versus the others. Second, the amount of acoustic variability infants heard could not be predicted from, and thus was not redundant with, other properties of the input such as the number of talkers or tokens, or proportion of speech from particular sources (e.g., women, children, electronics). Finally, we find that patterns of pitch‐based acoustic variability heard in naturalistic input were similar to those found with in‐lab stimuli that facilitated word learning. This large‐scale quantification of talker variability in infants' everyday input sets the stage for linking naturally occurring variability “in the wild” to early word learning. (shrink)

Critical Data Studies explore the unique cultural, ethical, and critical challenges posed by Big Data. Rather than treat Big Data as only scientifically empirical and therefore largely neutral phenomena, CDS advocates the view that Big Data should be seen as always-already constituted within wider data assemblages. Assemblages is a concept that helps capture the multitude of ways that already-composed data structures inflect and interact with society, its organization and functioning, and the resulting impact on individuals’ daily lives. CDS questions the (...) many assumptions about Big Data that permeate contemporary literature on information and society by locating instances where Big Data may be naively taken to denote objective and transparent informational entities. In this introduction to the Big Data & Society CDS special theme, we briefly describe CDS work, its orientations, and principles. (shrink)

Can we transmit understanding via testimony in more or less the same way in which we transmit knowledge? The standard view in social epistemology has a straightforward answer: no, we cannot. Three arguments supporting the standard view have been formulated so far. The first appeals to the claim that gaining understanding requires a greater cognitive effort than acquiring testimonial knowledge does. The second appeals to a certain type of epistemic trust that is supposedly characteristic of knowledge transmission (and maybe of (...) the transmission of epistemic goods in general) and that is allegedly incompatible with understanding. The third aims to show that there is a certain aspect of understanding (what epistemologists these days like to call “grasping”) that cannot be passed on to another person via testimony alone. In this article, I show that all of these arguments can be resisted. Thus, there seem to be no compelling reasons to embrace the standard view. (shrink)

The Critical Naturalism Manifesto is a common platform put forward as a basis for broad discussions around the problems faced by critical theory today. We are living in a time, e.g. a pandemic time, when present-day challenges exert immense pressure on social critique. This means that models of social critique should not be discussed from the point of view of their normative justification or political effects alone, but also with reference to their ability to tackle contemporary problematic issues (like the (...) dismantlement of the welfare state, the environmental catastrophe, and the sanitary crisis). With this manifesto, we invite varying practices of philosophical, artistic and scientific social critique to take seriously the enormous challenges our societies face with regard to inner and outer nature. We first identity eleven theses of critical naturalism which contemporary critical theory should take into consideration. We then identify the historical crises and catastrophes that critical naturalism seeks to respond to, dispelling the prejudices against naturalism in contemporary critical thought, and considering alternative answers to these questions such as social constructivism, accelerationism, xenofeminism, flat ontologism, and monist world ecology. By sketching the notions of nature and naturalism, we anchor critical naturalism in the history of materialism and critical theory, understood initially as that of the Frankfurt School, but expanded and enriched by other approaches to social critique. Finally, we sketch models and projects of critical naturalism, which are exemplary fragments of varying ways to practice naturalist social critique. (shrink)

Causal inference is perhaps the most important form of reasoning in the sciences. A panoply of disciplines, ranging from epidemiology to biology, from econometrics to physics, make use of probability and statistics to infer causal relationships. The social and health sciences analyse population-level data using statistical methods to infer average causal relations. In diagnosis of disease, probabilistic statements are based on population-level causal knowledge combined with knowledge of a particular person’s symptoms. For the physical sciences, the Salmon-Dowe account develops an (...) analysis of causation based on the notion of process and interaction. In artificial intelligence, the development of graphical methods has leant impetus to a probabilistic analysis of causality. The biological sciences use probabilistic methods to look for evolutionary causes of the state of a current species and to look for genetic causal factors. This variegated situation raises at least two fundamental philosophical issues: about the relation between causality and probability, and about the interpretation of probability in causal analysis. In this book we bring philosophers and scientists together to discuss the relation between causality and probability, and the applications of these concepts within the sciences. (shrink)

John Austin (1911-1960) è stato uno dei filosofi britannici più influenti del suo tempo, per il rigore del pensiero, la personalità straordinaria e il metodo filosofico innovativo. A parere di John Searle Austin era molto amato e molto odiato dai contemporanei – disorientati da un pensiero che sembrava distruggere più che costruire, sfidare l'ortodossia della filosofia tradizionale ma anche dell'allora imperante empirismo logico, senza sostituirvi nessuna confortante nuova ortodossia. L'opera di Austin è tuttavia oggi poco conosciuta e gli elementi di (...) novità della sua riflessione non sufficientemente apprezzati. Costituiscono un'eccezione due risultati, universalmente riconosciuti e celebrati: da un lato la tecnica di analisi filosofica – quella versione della "filosofia linguistica" praticata da Austin con la pazienza, il rigore e il talento di un entomologo; dall'altro la teoria degli atti linguistici. Austin viene ricordato soprattutto per aver evidenziato la dimensione performativa che permea ogni nostro proferimento: con uno slogan diventato famoso, ogni dire è anche un fare. Una tesi con ripercussioni in aree di ricerca molto diverse, dalla filosofia del linguaggio all'etica, dalla filosofia politica al diritto, dalla linguistica alla filosofia femminista. Ci concentreremo qui sui contributi di Austin alla filosofia del linguaggio, ma faremo cenni anche estesi ai suoi contributi in epistemologia e teoria dell'azione, nonché al vivace dibattito che a partire dalla teoria degli atti linguistici si è sviluppato negli anni '60 e '70. Un dibattito che è tornato ad accendersi in tempi recentissimi nelle discussioni su libertà di espressione e censura. (shrink)

Die traditionelle Erkenntnistheorie beschäftigte sich vor allem mit drei großen Fragen. (i) Was ist Wissen? (ii) Ist Wissen möglich und in welchen Bereichen und in welchem Umfang können wir es, wenn überhaupt, erwerben? (iii) Was sind die Quellen des Wissens, und spielen womöglich einige von ihnen (etwa Wahrnehmung oder Introspektion) eine besondere Rolle für die Fundierung epistemischer Systeme? Neben der Einbeziehung sozialer Wissensquellen in die Behandlung von Frage (iii) ist in den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten auch ein weiteres Thema in den (...) Fokus erkenntnistheoretischer Debatten gerückt. Wir streben nach Wissen und versuchen, es zu erhalten und zu vermehren. Wenn wir einer Person Wissen zuschreiben, so schwingen außerdem oft Anerkennung, gar Lob oder Bewunderung mit, Einstellungen, die wir Überzeugungen, die kein Wissen sind, vielfach versagen. Nicht zuletzt die anhaltende Beschäftigung der Philosophie selbst seit Platon mit den Fragen (i) bis (iii) scheint zu zeigen, dass wir Wissen als ein wertvolles Gut betrachten. Eine weitere wichtige epistemologische Frage lautet daher (iv): Worin liegt der besondere Wert des Wissens? (shrink)

Girls Laughters Solar Eclipse Output Solar Eclipse The programmatic ontology of our contemporary technical-information age is marked by a complicity with algorithmic architectures : new models of information processing evolving with the entropically-hiden complexities and open-ended contingencies of material evolution. Algorithms are abstractly-coordinated entities of “soft thought” sui generis. In fusing generative concreteness with abstract modelling – i. e. matter with information – - Galerie sonore – Nouvel article.

Este artigo concerne três questões: a concepção kantiana da política, a sua relação com a doutrina do direito e o papel da Urteilskraft na esfera da política. No § 1 sublinha-se que a perspectiva kantiana é caracterizada por uma flexibilidade contextual que permite de realizar o modelo normativo da Rechtslehre em diversas circunstâncias culturais: à política diz respeito, de fato, o como ‘traduzir’ as prescrições do direito em princípios contextuais que se adaptem corretamente a uma determinada comunidade humana. No § (...) 2 analisa- se o papel da capacidade de juízo enquanto instrumento capaz de compreender as especificidades do contexto no qual se realizam as reformas políticas solicitadas pela razão pratica; a propósito será evidenciado que através da reflektierende Urteilskraft é possível construir regras que refletem as peculiaridades do contexto ao qual são aplicadas as normas a priori do direito. (shrink)

This paper challenges “biodiversity skepticism:” an inferential move that acknowledges the proliferation, heterogeneity, and lack of covariance of biodiversity measurements, and concludes that we should doubt the scientific validity of the biodiversity concept. As a way out of skepticism, philosophers have advocated for eliminating “biodiversity” from scientific inquiry, revising it, or deflating its meaning into a single measurable dimension. I present a counterargument to the inferential move of the skeptic by revealing how it stands on two unstated premises, namely a (...) reflective view of measurements and the unidirectional dynamics between definitional and measurement practices, and corollary assumptions. These premises and assumptions are misaligned with a richer theoretical understanding of measurement and are sometimes inconsistent with how science operates. A more nuanced view of measurement could better explain measurement proliferation while being consistent with new ways in which the general biodiversity concept could be useful. To conclude, I urge philosophers of measurement and conceptual engineers to collaborate in tackling the interplay between conceptual change and measurement practices. (shrink)

This paper examines one aspect of the legacy of the Value-Free Ideal in conservation science: the view that measurements and metrics are value-free epistemic tools detached from ideological, ethical, social, and, generally, non-epistemic considerations. Contrary to this view, I will argue that traditional measurement practices entrenched in conservation are in fact permeated with non-epistemic values. I challenge the received view by revealing three non-epistemic assumptions underlying traditional metrics: (1) a human-environment demarcation, (2) the desirability of a people-free landscape, and (3) (...) the exclusion of cultural diversity from biodiversity. I also draw a connection between arguments for retaining traditional metrics to “scientific colonialism,” exemplified by a fortress conservation model. I conclude by advocating for abandoning the myth of the intrinsic value-freedom of measurement practices and embracing metrics aligned with societal and scientific goals. (shrink)

Discussions around progress, that have always been at the core of critical social and political philosophy, have lately become particularly thorny, exposing a sort of double bind: arguments in favour of progress are unable to avoid positions that undermine progress itself, but rejection of progress risks giving in to reactionary, cynic or melancholic positions.In this paper, I formulate the hypothesis that the double bind depends on a sort of unhealthy “obsession” with normative criteria of progress. As a corrective, I propose (...) to think of moral, social and political changes in the terms of what I call troubled normativity – a normative reflection, namely, that embraces conflicts, ambivalences, uncertainty. I discuss in this regard two recent perspectives on progress, Rahel Jaeggi’s pragmatist and Amy Allen’s genealogical-psychoanalytical ones. I further articulate their insights by taking into consideration the affective dimension of social transformations. I concentrate in particular on two emotional constellations, anger and hope, by drawing upon María Lugones’ and Jonathan Lear’s work. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 52, Issue 1, Page 72-91, Spring 2021.

Beatrice Erskine Lane Suzuki (1878–1939) is mainly known for being the wife of D.T. Suzuki鈴木大拙 (1870–1966), the Japanese religious studies scholar and intellectual who promoted the popularization of Buddhism in the Western world. However, she was also an active researcher and prolific writer in the same field, boasting deep theoretical and practical knowledge of the subject and an original, brilliant interpretative style. Her research led her to appreciate and assimilate cultural values quite different from those of her Scottish and American (...) background influenced by Catholicism. The fact that she left her homeland to research an entirely different culture was what she had in common with Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), her contemporary and eclectic intellectual and philosopher who left Alsace to engage in religious and anthropological studies in Africa. Although she dedicated numerous enthusiastic reflections to Schweitzer in her writings, those refuting Schweitzer's theories assume great relevance. In his comparison between Western and Eastern spirituality, Schweitzer fiercely attacked the latter, expressing the absolute superiority of the Christian doctrine, which he fervently supported. Lane, on the contrary, was strongly fascinated by Buddhism, and found in it a source of faith and a creed to live by. This article aims to retrace the analysis made by both authors to outline their different perspectives, despite their shared cultural background. (shrink)

_Riassunto_: Il presente lavoro proporre una rassegna che consideri il fenomeno delle allucinazioni uditive da due diverse prospettive: quella neurobiologica e quella fenomenologica. La neurobiologia indaga i meccanismi cerebrali correlati alle _allucinazioni uditive_, focalizzandosi sulla presenza di attivazioni neurali anomale; la fenomenologia, diversamente, si concentra sui processi psichici, mostrando come i pazienti hanno difficoltà a distinguere le sensazioni causate dalle proprie azioni da quelle che derivano da influenze esterne. Queste prospettive non sono mutualmente esclusive. Gli studi che verranno discussi sono (...) organizzati in base all’eziologia delle allucinazioni uditive e la loro ultima finalità è quella di guadagnare una prospettiva ampia che possa fornire una spiegazione e una comprensione completa di sintomi per promuovere in futuro trattamenti più efficaci per la presa in carico del paziente affetto da allucinazioni uditive. _Parole chiave_: Allucinazioni uditive; Fenomenologia; Psichiatria fenomenologica; Neurologia ___ Auditory hallucinations between neurology and phenomenology _ _Abstract_: This paper aims to serve as a review article investigating the phenomenon of auditory hallucinations from two different perspectives: neurobiological and phenomenological. Neurobiology investigates brain mechanisms related to auditory hallucinations by focusing on the presence of abnormal neural activations. Phenomenology pays attention to psychic processes, demonstrating that patients have difficulty distinguishing sensations caused by their own actions from those derived from external influences. These two perspectives are not mutually exclusive. This paper aims at gaining a broad perspective that can provide an explanation and understanding of symptoms that will promote more effective future treatments for patients with auditory hallucinations. _Keywords_: Auditory Hallucinations; Phenomenology; Phenomenological Psychiatry; Neurology. (shrink)

This book engages directly in close readings of technical texts and computer code in order to show how software works. It offers an analysis of the cultural, political, and philosophical implications of software technologies that demonstrates the significance of software for the relationship between technology, philosophy, culture, and society.

ABSTRACT In this article, I address a highly controversial question of feminist philosophy, namely, the so-called sex/gender distinction, from a Deweyan perspective. I argue that Dewey's naturalism provides useful insights for dealing with and solving the problems concerning this particular type of dualism. My argumentation unfolds in three steps. First, after having briefly introduced the meanings of the two terms, I outline two different, both unsuccessful strategies for overcoming the sex/gender distinction, namely, what I call the radical social constructionist and (...) the nondialectical naturalist strategies. Second, I draw on Dewey's version of naturalism with the aim of conceiving of human beings as simultaneously naturally and socially constructed. Third, I sketch out the hypothesis that Dewey's way of overcoming the pernicious dichotomy between nature and society may be useful for outlining a critical metaphysics of gender. (shrink)

This article defends a specific account of reasonableness as a virtue of liberal citizenship. I specify an account of reasonableness that I argue is more consistent with the phenomenology of intersubjective exchanges among citizens over political matters in contexts of deep disagreement. My reading requires reasonable citizens to undertake an attitude of epistemic modesty while deliberating public matters with agents who hold views different from theirs. In contrast with my view, I debate Martha Nussbaum’s and Steven Wall’s accounts of reasonableness (...) and specify why I believe that these proposals, although interesting, both require revisions. Distinguishing my account from theirs, I specify the normative relation between reasonableness and a general framework of political legitimacy that identifies citizens as ‘co-authors of democratic decisions’. Here, I argue that the liberal ideal of ascribing to each member of the constituency the status of putative epistemic authority can be properly fulfilled if coupled with a correct specification of the political ideal of mutual respect. I conclude claiming that opacity respect, a notion of respect according to which the recognition respect that is owed to individuals is expressed by the idea that we have to treat them as ‘opaque’, is the most adequate concept of political respect when dealing with interpersonal deliberations at political level in contexts of deep disagreement. (shrink)

Estimating whether the Earth’s biota is in the middle of a crisis relies heavily on comparisons between present and past data about biodiversity or biodiversity surrogates. Although the past is a crucial source of information to assess the severity of the current biodiversity crisis, substantive conceptual and methodological questions remain about how paleodiversity and biodiversity are to be properly compared. I argue that to justify claims of a current biodiversity crisis is harder than it appears. More precisely, I claim that (...) paleodiversity measurements are incommensurable with contemporary measurements, given the different ways that biodiversity is conceptualized and operationalized. I conclude by proposing three possible ways of overcoming this incommensurability problem. (shrink)

Manipulationism holds that information about the results of interventions is of utmost importance for scientific practices such as causal assessment or explanation. Specifically, manipulation provides information about the stability, or invariance, of the relationship between X and Y: were we to wiggle the cause X, the effect Y would accordingly wiggle and, additionally, the relation between the two will not be disrupted. This sort of relationship between variables are called 'invariant empirical generalisations'. The paper focuses on questions about causal assessment (...) and analyses the status of manipulation. It is argued that manipulationism is trapped in a dilemma. If manipulationism is read as providing a conceptual analysis of causation, then it fails to provide a story about the methods for causal assessment. If, instead, manipulationism is read as providing a method for causal assessment, then it is at an impasse concerning causal assessment in areas where manipulations are not performed. Empirical generalisations are then reassessed, in such a way that manipulation is not taken as methodologically fundamental. The paper concludes that manipulation is the appropriate tool for some scientific contexts, but not for all. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article critically discusses Rahel Jaeggi’s recent philosophical contribution to a critical theory of capitalism. The first part reconstructs Jaeggi’s account of Lebensform, life-form, that builds up the main ontological framework for addressing and problematizing capitalism intended not as an economic system but as a social whole. The second part focuses on the three different theoretical strategies that Jaeggi puts forward to detect and deal with capitalism’s immanent flaws. The third and last part problematizes the metaphysical assumptions and implications (...) of Jaeggi’s understanding of life-form and outlines a more dialectical, or “transactional” notion of form of life, which is inspired by Dewey’s non-reductionist naturalist method of inquiry. The overall aim is to strengthen the philosophical critique of the capitalist form of life. (shrink)