This paper is concerned with Stanley Cavell’s reading of the notion of privacy as it appears in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s private language argument (PLA). Defined as a fantasy or fear either of inexpressiveness or excessive expressiveness (cf. Cavell 1979: 254), I argue that such an account is partial, in that it does not represent those individuals that are exposed to epistemic injustice. Drawing on Miranda Fricker’s seminal work Epistemic Injustice (2007) and on Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952), I trace (...) some similarities between the conditions of marginalized subjectivities and the private language speaker. This comparison suggests a correction of Cavell’s words and discloses an understanding of the clarificatory import that Wittgenstein’s PLA conveys, rendering it a way to resist marginalization and alienation due to the logical impossibility of a private language. In the second part of the paper (section 3), I consider two other Cavellian notions, namely the “claim to community” and ‘the turn to the ordinary’. Following the line of criticism developed in section 2, which revolves around the need of considering the situatedness of marginalized subjectivities and the oppressive character of the dimension of the ordinary, I try to implement Cavell’s concepts. I do so by taking into account (i) the Wittgenstein-inspired wider conception of rationality Alice Crary (2015) purports and (ii) the practices of some feminist consciousness-raising groups that were active in Milan (Italy) during the Seventies and some ideas developed by feminist and art critic Carla Lonzi. These contributions show that it is possible to maintain the general asset purported by Cavell, but they also call for criteria for better defining on which principles a community can form and which role the collectivity plays in revising the structure of the ordinary. (shrink)

Autism provides a model for exploring the nature of self‐consciousness: self‐consciousness requires the ability to reflect on mental states, and autism is a disorder with a specific impairment in the neurocognitive mechanism underlying this ability. Experimental studies of normal and abnormal development suggest that the abilities to attribute mental states to self and to others are closely related. Thus inability to pass standard ‘theory of mind’ tests, which refer to others’ false beliefs, may imply lack of self‐consciousness. Individuals who persistently (...) fail these tests may, in the extreme, be unable to reflect on their intentions or to anticipate their own actions. In contrast, individuals with high‐functioning autism or Asperger syndrome often possess a late‐acquired, explicit theory of mind, which appears to be the result of effortful learning. An experimental study with three people with Asperger syndrome suggested that level of performance on standard theory of mind tasks was strongly related to the ability to engage in introspection. Qualitative differences in the introspections of high‐functioning people with autism are also reflected in autobiographical accounts which may give a glimpse of what it is like to be autistic. (shrink)

This paper argues for a representational semantic conception of scientific theories, which respects the bare claim of any semantic view, namely that theories can be characterised as sets of models. RSC must be sharply distinguished from structural versions that assume a further identity of ‘models’ and ‘structures’, which we reject. The practice-turn in the recent philosophical literature suggests instead that modelling must be understood in a deflationary spirit, in terms of the diverse representational practices in the sciences. These insights are (...) applied to some mathematical models, thus showing that the mathematical sciences are not in principle counterexamples to RSC. (shrink)

Abstractionist programs in the philosophy of mathematics have focused on abstraction principles, taken as implicit definitions of the objects in the range of their operators. In second-order logic (SOL) with predicative comprehension, such principles are consistent but also (individually) mathematically weak. This paper, inspired by the work of Boolos (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 87, 137–151, 1986) and Zalta (Abstract Objects, vol. 160 of Synthese Library, 1983), examines explicit definitions of abstract objects. These axioms state that there is a unique (...) abstract encoding all concepts satisfying a given formula $$\phi (F)$$, with F a concept variable. Such a system is inconsistent in full SOL. It can be made consistent with several intricate tweaks, as Zalta has shown. Our approach in this article is simpler: we use a novel method to establish consistency in a restrictive version of predicative SOL. The resulting system, RPEAO, interprets first-order PA in extensional contexts, and has a natural extension delivering a peculiar interpretation of PA $$^2$$. (shrink)

The paper investigates the epistemological and communicative competences the experts need to use and communicate evidence in the reasoning process leading to diagnosis. The diagnosis and diagnosis communication are presented as intertwined processes that should be jointly addressed in medical consultations, to empower patients’ compliance in illness management. The paper presents defeasible reasoning as specific to the diagnostic praxis, showing how this type of reasoning threatens effective diagnosis communication and entails that we should understand diagnostic evidence as defeasible as well. (...) It argues that metaphors might be effective communicative devices to let the patients understand the relevant defeasors in the diagnostic reasoning process, helping to improve effective diagnosis communication, and also encouraging a change in patients’ beliefs and attitudes on their own experience of illness and illness’ management. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the thesis that the role of argumentation in practical reasoning in general and legal reasoning in particular is to justify the use of defeasible rules to derive a conclusion in preference to the use of other defeasible rules to derive a conflicting conclusion. The defeasibility of rules is expressed by means of non-provability claims as additional conditions of the rules.We outline an abstract approach to defeasible reasoning and argumentation which includes many existing formalisms, including default (...) logic, extended logic programming, non-monotonic modal logic and auto-epistemic logic, as special cases. We show, in particular, that the admissibility semantics for all these formalisms has a natural argumentation-theoretic interpretation and proof procedure, which seem to correspond well with informal argumentation. (shrink)

The notion of grounding is usually conceived as an objective and explanatory relation. It connects two relata if one—the ground—determines or explains the other—the consequence. In the contemporary literature on grounding, much effort has been devoted to logically characterize the formal aspects of grounding, but a major hard problem remains: defining suitable grounding principles for universal and existential formulae. Indeed, several grounding principles for quantified formulae have been proposed, but all of them are exposed to paradoxes in some very natural (...) contexts of application. We introduce in this paper a first-order formal system that captures the notion of grounding and avoids the paradoxes in a novel and non-trivial way. The system we present formally develops Bolzano’s ideas on grounding by employing Hilbert’s ε-terms and an adapted version of Fine’s theory of arbitrary objects. (shrink)

This paper deals with phenomenological distinctions concerning empathy with real persons and empathy with fictional characters. We will introduce both contemporary accounts of our perception of others and Edith Stein’s account of empathy. These theories will turn out to be fruitful in defending our main thesis, i.e. that the differences between empathy with real people and empathy with fictional characters are not structural but just qualitative. We will argue that in both cases empathy is a direct act of perceiving others (...) and their lived experience. However, stemming from Stein’s work, we will underline that empathy with real persons is in principio more vivid and intense than empathy with fictional characters. In order to identify similarities and differences between empathy de vivo and empathy in fiction, we will focus on the following issues: the quality of perception; the motivational context and the “life-world context”; the ontological status of persons vs. characters. (shrink)

In this article we evaluate claims that language structure adapts to sociolinguistic environment. We present the results of two typological case studies examining the effects of the number of native (=L1) speakers and the proportion of adult second language (=L2) learners on language structure. Data from more than 300 languages suggest that testing the effect of population size and proportion of adult L2 learners on features of verbal and nominal complexity produces conflicting results on different grammatical features. The results show (...) that verbal inflectional synthesis adapts to the sociolinguistic environment but the number of genders does not. The results also suggest that modeling population size together with proportion of L2 improves model fit compared to modeling them independently of one another. We thus argue that surveying population size alone may be insufficient to detect possible adaptation of linguistic structure to the sociolinguistic environment. Rather, other features, such as proportion of L2 speakers, prestige and social network density, should be studied, and if demographic numeric data are used, they should not be used in isolation but rather in competition with other sociolinguistic features. We also suggest that not all types of language structures within a given grammatical domain are equally sensitive to the effect of sociolinguistic variables, and that more exploratory studies are needed before we can arrive at a reliable set of grammatical features that may be potentially most (and least) adaptive to social structures. (shrink)

Accelerating environmental uncertainty and the need to cope with increasingly complex market and social demands, combine to create high value for the intuitive approach to decision-making at the strategic level. Research on intuition suffers from marked fragmentation, due to the existence of disciplinary silos based on diverse, apparently irreconcilable, ontological and epistemological assumptions. Not surprisingly, there is no integrated interdisciplinary framework suitable for a rich account of intuition, contemplating how affect and cognition intertwine in the intuitive process, and how intuition (...) scales up from the individual to collective decision-making. This study contributes to the construction of a broad conceptual framework, suitable for a multi-level account of intuition and for a fruitful dialogue with distant research areas. It critically discusses two mainstream conceptualizations of intuition which claim to be grounded in a cross-disciplinary consensus. Drawing on the complexity paradigm, it then proposes a conceptualization of intuition as emergence. Finally, it explores the theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

The dramatic increase of meat production in the last decades has proven to be one of the most impacting causes of negative environmental outcomes (e.g., increase of greenhouse emissions, pollution of land and water, and biodiversity loss). In two studies, we aimed to verify the role of key socio-psychological dimensions on meat intake. Study 1 (N= 198) tested the predictive power of an extended version of the Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) model on individual food choices in an online supermarket simulation. In an (...) online survey, participants were directed to a virtual shop and asked to buy food within a set amount of money. Subsequently, they completed measures of behavioral intention, the VBN constructs (values, general pro-environmental beliefs, awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, and personal norm), and social norms (injunctive and descriptive). The outcome variable was operationalized in terms of percentage of expenses dedicated to meat and processed meat items, which provided a more robust behavioral measure than the common self-reported ones. Results confirmed the VBN sequential path, showing direct effects of biospheric values and descriptive norm on personal norm. Furthermore, a proof of validity for the new behavioral measure was provided (medium-sized correlation with behavioral intention). Study 2 (N= 218) aimed at verifying whether the meat consumption could be also motivated by a health concern, reflecting individual (cost/benefit) considerations, besides pro-environmental drivers. Results showed the direct impact of health concern and confirmed the indirect role of biospheric values and descriptive norm (viapersonal norm) on meat intake. This evidence would suggest the use of multiple-frame messages, highlighting both pro-environmental and health consequences, for meat consumption reduction. Nevertheless, the different implications of moral (e.g., environmental concern) vs. non-moral motivators (e.g., health concern) for reducing meat intake need to be stressed: indeed, the first drivers are more central for self-identity and for engaging in environmental citizenship behaviors. (shrink)

In his target article, Ismaili M’hamdi advocates for perfectionist public health policymaking, which entails fostering relevant and objectively valuable public health-related capabilities wh...

The first formal definition of randomness, seen as a property of sequences of events or experimental outcomes, dates back to Richard von Mises' work in the foundations of probability and statistics. The randomness notion introduced by von Mises is nowadays widely regarded as being too weak. This is, to a large extent, due to the work of Jean Ville, which is often described as having dealt the death blow to von Mises' approach, and which was integral to the development of (...) algorithmic randomness—the now-standard theory of randomness for elements of a probability space. The main goal of this article is to trace the history and provide an in-depth appraisal of two lesser-known, yet historically and methodologically notable proposals for how to modify von Mises' definition so as to avoid Ville's objection. The first proposal is due to Abraham Wald, while the second one is due to Claus-Peter Schnorr. We show that, once made precise in a natural way using computability theory, Wald's proposal constitutes a much more radical departure from von Mises' framework than intended. Schnorr's proposal, on the other hand, does provide a partial vindication of von Mises' approach: it demonstrates that it is possible to obtain a satisfactory randomness notion—indeed, a canonical algorithmic randomness notion—by characterizing randomness in terms of the invariance of limiting relative frequencies. More generally, we argue that Schnorr's proposal, together with a number of little-known related results, reveals that there is more continuity than typically acknowledged between von Mises' approach and algorithmic randomness. Even though von Mises' exclusive focus on limiting relative frequencies did not survive the passage to the theory of algorithmic randomness, another crucial aspect of his conception of randomness did endure; namely, the idea that randomness amounts to a certain type of stability or invariance under an appropriate class of transformations. (shrink)

Objective. Tako-Tsubo syndrome (TTS) is historically related to the occurrence of psychological (emotional) factors (“broken heart” syndrome). Our aim was conducting a systematic review analyzing the role of psychological factors in TTS. Methods: All studies on TTS and psychological factors from 1991 to April 2019 were scrutinized according to the Cochrane Collaboration and the PRISMA statement. Selected studies were additionally evaluated for the Risk of Bias according to the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS). Results. Fifteen case-control studies (Mayo Clinic criteria) were finally (...) selected. Most studies analysed the role of stressful life-events or trauma, although with conflicting findings, while a likely role for long-lasting psychological distress seems to be a homogenous result. Among life-time psychopathology, only anxiety seems to have a significant role. Some studies outlined a likely role for personality, but findings are conflicting. Conclusion. A role for psychological factors in TTS requires more studies with stronger research methodology than the existing ones. (shrink)

In the last 2 decades, the literature has documented the upsurge of community-driven processes of consumer-producer cooperation, which are alternative to the dominant food system. These organizational arrangements have been conceptualized differently, witnessing the growing importance of local communities in generating place-based solutions to the demand for organic, local, and sustainable food. Relying on a practice theory approach, this article delves into two key inquiries: first, what motivates individuals to become part of Civic Food Networks (CFNs) and how does this (...) influence the variety of food entering their households? And second, how does participation in a CFN impact people’s daily food practices, with a particular focus on diet diversification? We employ the term “civic food networks (CFN)” to underscore the significance of grassroots initiatives in the broader context of local food policies. This term also highlights the connections to other movements known for their potential for transformation, such as the solidarity economy, transition towns, and de-growth movements. Our analysis draws on a comprehensive qualitative approach, which includes participant observation, in-depth interviews, and a focus group involving members of the CSA _Naturalmente in Trentino_, situated in the North-Eastern part of Italy. The findings reveal that altering dietary habits poses various challenges both at the individual and institutional levels. This process involves the stabilization of ingrained habits, adjustments to daily routines, and the reinforcement of shared norms. Furthermore, it underscores the critical role of food policies in promoting sustainable eating practices. (shrink)

The current debate over extending inheritance and its evolutionary impact has focused on adding new categories of non-genetic factors to the classical transmission of DNA, and on trying to redefine inheritance. Transmitted factors have been mainly characterized by their directions of transmission and the way they store variations. In this paper, we leave aside the issue of defining inheritance. We rather try to build an evolutionary conceptual framework that allows for tracing most, if not all forms of transmission and makes (...) sense of their different tempos and modes. We discuss three key distinctions that should in particular be the targets of theoretical and empirical investigation, and try to assess the interplay among them and evolutionary dynamics. We distinguish two channels of transmission, two measurements of the temporal dynamics of transmission, respectively across and within generations, and two types of transmitted factors according to their evolutionary relevance. By implementing these three distinctions we can then map different forms of transmission over a continuous space describing the combination of their varying dynamical features. While our aim is not to provide yet another model of inheritance, putting together these distinctions and crossing them, we manage to offer an inclusive conceptual framework of transmission, grounded in empirical observation, and coherent with evolutionary theory. This interestingly opens possibilities for qualitative and quantitative analyses, and is a necessary step, we argue, in order to question the interplay between the dynamics of evolution and the dynamics of multiple forms of transmission. (shrink)

Bayesian agents, argues Belot (2013), are orgulous: they believe in inductive success even when guaranteed to fail on a topologically typical collection of data streams. Here we shed light on how pervasive this phenomenon is. We identify several classes of inductive problems for which Bayesian convergence to the truth is topologically typical. However, we also show that, for all sufficiently complex classes, there are inductive problems for which convergence is topologically atypical. Lastly, we identify specific topologically typical collections of data (...) streams, observing which guarantees convergence to the truth across all problems from certain natural classes of effective inductive problems. (shrink)

This volume highlights important aspects of the complex relationship between common language and legal practice. It hosts an interdisciplinary discussion between cognitive science, philosophy of language and philosophy of law, in which an international group of authors aims to promote, enrich and refine this new debate. Philosophers of law have always shown a keen interest in cognitive science and philosophy of language in order to find tools to solve their problems: recently this interest was reciprocated and scholars from cognitive science (...) and philosophy of language now look to the law as a testing ground for their theses. Using the most sophisticated tools available to pragmatics, sociolinguistics, cognitive sciences and legal theory, an interdisciplinary, international group of authors address questions like: Does legal interpretation differ from ordinary understanding? Is the common pragmatic apparatus appropriate to legal practice? What can pragmatics teach about the concept of law and pervasive legal phenomena such as testimony or legal disagreements? (shrink)

Most of the existing natural language processing systems for legal texts are developed for the English language. Nevertheless, there are several application domains where multiple versions of the same documents are provided in different languages, especially inside the European Union. One notable example is given by Terms of Service (ToS). In this paper, we compare different approaches to the task of detecting potential unfair clauses in ToS across multiple languages. In particular, after developing an annotated corpus and a machine learning (...) classifier for English, we consider and compare several strategies to extend the system to other languages: building a novel corpus and training a novel machine learning system for each language, from scratch; projecting annotations across documents in different languages, to avoid the creation of novel corpora; translating training documents while keeping the original annotations; translating queries at prediction time and relying on the English system only. An extended experimental evaluation conducted on a large, original dataset indicates that the time-consuming task of re-building a novel annotated corpus for each language can often be avoided with no significant degradation in terms of performance. (shrink)

This paper presents an overview of the methods of nested sequents or tree-hypersequents that were originally introduced to provide a comprehensive proof theory for modal logic. The paper retraces the history of how these methods have developed. Its aim is also to present, in an unified and harmonious way, the most recent results that have been obtained in this framework. These results encompass several technical achievements, such as the interpolation theorem and the construction of countermodels. Special emphasis is also given (...) to the application to logics other than the standard modal ones as well as to relations to other proof theoretic formalisms. (shrink)

Die Philosophie Helmuth Plessners hat in den letzten Jahren eine Renaissance erfahren: Plessner wurde als relevanter Vertreter einer Biophilosophie (wieder) entdeckt, die nicht nur die uberkommene Trennung von Natur und Kultur, sondern auch die Gegenuberstellung disjunkter Wissenschaftskulturen in Frage stellt und ihr Verhaltnis neu bestimmt. DAs Buch nimmt die verschiedenen disziplinaren Faden auf, die die Konzeption von Plessners Biophilosophie insbesondere in den Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch (1928) verstandlich machen. ES stellt Plessners uberlegungen im Kontext von naturwissenschaftlichen (von Uexkull, (...) Buytendijk, Driesch, von Weizsacker, Portmann, Kohler) sowie philosophischen (Bergson, Misch, Hartmann, Scheler, Heidegger, Jonas) Theorien seiner Zeit vor. (shrink)

In an article published recently in this journal, one of us reconstructed how in 1899 J. J. Thomson, after having measured the mass-to-charge ratio of the corpuscle , achieved a measurement of its charge and consequently an estimate of its mass, obtaining in this manner ‘direct proof of the existence of particles smaller than the hydrogen atom’. In this paper, starting with an analysis of Zeeman's first measurements on the widening of spectral lines in a magnetic field, we show that (...) the existence of masses smaller than the atom was already a matter of discussion in early 1897, and that a qualitative estimate of the mass of the electron was made even before Thomson's measurements in 1899. In this process an important role was played by a research programme on the structure of matter carried out by Stoney in the latter part of the nineteenth century. This had in many aspects anticipated Zeeman's experimental observations, and its conclusions were in part formalized in the so-called Larmor theorem. (shrink)

Ratio Juris, Volume 35, Issue 2, Page 191-222, June 2022.

Throughout history, schools of economic thought have defined political economy—or economics—and its object of study in multiple ways. This paper reflects on the definitions of economics by schools of economic thought and also proposes the concepts of value and scarcity as key concepts to explain the differences between them. The most important findings of the paper are: (a) the ontological and epistemological characteristics of the concept of value and scarcity have shaped the definitions of economics; (b) the boundaries of the (...) study object of economics have been expanded since today’s mainstream economics deals with multiple topics as diverse as crime, education, development, health, etc. However, the methodological tools used in mainstream economics have been narrowed since approaches such as the philosophical, ethical, historical, and institutional approaches have been left behind; (c) the part of reality that mainstream economics can grasp have left behind important issues of the contemporary world, such as gender, social, and environmental issues. A clear understanding of the scope and boundaries of economics could help to define more realistic research questions for economic science, and it would help to define new economic paradigms that address the contemporary issues. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that Spinoza’s notion of libertas philosophandi in Theological Political Treatise2 is best interpreted as freedom of expression, in the metaphysical sense of expression found in Ethics I. This reading helps understand the role of the Spinozan state in protecting such freedom. Ethics argues that human nature is embodied thought, and its freedom is found both in rational and irreducibly imaginary cognition: imagination is knowledge, and, as such, it is a fundamental aspect of human expression. (...) The last two books of Ethics show that human freedom depends on certain material and intellectual conditions: this clarifies the role of the state as an active participant, rather than a mere watchman, of individual expression. (shrink)

L'uomo è un animale razionale, oltreché politico, socievole, come dice Aristotele. Ma quello del pensiero occidentale è un cammino, non sempre lineare, lungo momenti di apertura e ripiegamento della ragione. Quando la ragione è strumento del conoscere è in una fase di apertura, in cui fioriscono le scoperte scientifiche, l'arte, il pensiero politico ed economico; quando invece la stessa ragione perde il suo carattere strumentale divenendo pensiero assoluto, ripiegato su di sé, cede il passo alla follia, fino agli orrori del (...) Nazismo. La follia è il capitolo oscuro di un logos assolutizzato, che non lascia spazio alla molteplicità dei punti di vista, è la deriva di una ragione non 'addomesticata', privata del contraddittorio con il reale. Con un linguaggio preciso ma accessibile, Campana Comparini, al dualismo ragione 'aperta' e feconda/ragione 'chiusa' e assolutizzata, oppone una diversa categoria filosofica di lettura del reale: la follia della croce; ovvero una prospettiva in cui la fede nel Cristo-uomo diventa la base da cui partire per rifondare la principale caratteristica dell'uomo, cioè il pensiero. La 'follia della croce' non è tanto un'alternativa, quanto il terreno su cui reimpiantare la logica della razionalità umana, poiché viene prima di essa. Una lettura per guardare da un'altra prospettiva le origini del pensiero occidentale."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In Memory, History, Forgetting, Ricœur does not provide us with a clear definition of collective memory. In this article, we will try to show how it could nevertheless be described, based on the same text, as the capacity for recognition, by way of reciprocal attribution, memories that are engraved in temporal spaces and are shared with our neighbors and, through them, with strangers. To verify this hypothesis, we will analyse Ricœur’s reflection on architecture as public memory’s engraving into space, presented (...) for the first time in the text “Architecture et narrativité.” Lastly, we will consider imagination and bodily memory, i.e. habit emanating from the act of inhabiting, as the conditions of possibility for the crystallization of memories in shared places. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Herrera’s discussion of the emanative process in his Gate of Heaven is a plausible source for Spinoza’s concept of the attributes as developed in Ethics. While Herrera’s influence on the development of Spinoza’s thought has been discussed, I argue that previous interpretations have not captured the nature of this influence. I will first offer an overview of Herrera’s discussion of the relationship between the One and the sefirot. I will then criticize a recent discussion (...) of Herrera’s influence on Spinoza by Giuseppa Saccaro Del Buffa, and offer a summary of my interpretation of the concept of attribute in Spinoza. Finally, I will show that Herrera’s discussion of the sefirot, the first emanations, as divine activities, rather than created things, inspired Spinoza’s concept of thedivine attributes. (shrink)

Traduzione di Ausgleichung eines auf Mißverstand beruhenden matematischen Streit. Il testo fu pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1796 in "Berlinische Monatsschrift", 2, pp. 368-370.