This discussion of pride, shame, and guilt centers on the beliefs involved in the experience of any of these emotions. Through a detailed study, the author demonstrates how these beliefs are alike--in that they are all directed towards the self--and how they differ. The experience of these three emotions are illustrated by examples taken from English literature. These concrete cases supply a context for study and indicate the complexity of the situations in which these emotions usually occur.

This book presents a systematic interpretation of Charles S. Peirce’s work based on a Kantian understanding of his teleological account of thought and inquiry. Departing from readings that contrast Peirce’s treatment of purpose, end, and teleology with his early studies of Kant, Gabriele Gava instead argues that focusing on Peirce’s purposefulness as a necessary regulative condition for inquiry and semiotic processes allows for a transcendental interpretation of Peirce’s philosophical project. The author advances this interpretation through presenting original views on (...) aspects of Peirce’s thought, including: a detailed analysis of Peirce’s ‘methodeutic’ and ‘speculative rhetoric,’ as well as his ‘critical common-sensism’; a comparison between Peirce’s and James’ pragmatisms in view of the account of purposefulness Gava puts forth; and an examination of the logical relationships that order Peirce’s architectonic classification of the sciences. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish scientific models in three kinds on the basis of their ontological status—material models, mathematical models and fictional models, and develop and defend an account of fictional models as fictional objects—i.e. abstract objects that stand for possible concrete objects.

In this paper, I distinguish three general approaches to public trust in science, which I call the individual approach, the semi-social approach, and the social approach, and critically examine their proposed solutions to what I call the problem of harmful distrust. I argue that, despite their differences, the individual and the semi-social approaches see the solution to the problem of harmful distrust as consisting primarily in trying to persuade individual citizens to trust science and that both approaches face two general (...) problems, which I call the problem of overidealizing science and the problem of overburdening citizens. I then argue that in order to avoid these problems we need to embrace a (thoroughly) social approach to public trust in science, which emphasizes the social dimensions of the reception, transmission, and uptake of scientific knowledge in society and the ways in which social forces influence both positively and negatively the trustworthiness of science. (shrink)

This paper explores the debate between those philosophers who take (fundamental, perfectly natural) properties to be pure powers and those who take them to be powerful qualities. I first consider two challenges for the view that properties are powerful qualities, which I call, respectively, ‘the clarification challenge’ and ‘the explanatory challenge’. I then examine a number of arguments that aim to show that properties cannot be pure powers and find them all wanting. Finally, I sketch what I take to be (...) the most promising argument against pure powers and for powerful qualities. (shrink)

The Simple Counterfactual Analysis (SCA) was once considered the most promising analysis of disposition ascriptions. According to SCA, disposition ascriptions are to be analyzed in terms of counterfactual conditionals. In the last few decades, however, SCA has become the target of a battery of counterexamples. In all counterexamples, something seems to be interfering with a certain object’s having or not having a certain disposition thus making the truth-values of the disposition ascription and of its associated counterfactual come apart. Intuitively, however, (...) it would seem that, if all interferences were absent, the disposition ascription and its associated conditional would have the same truth-value. Although this idea may seem obvious, it is far from obvious how to implement it. In fact, it has become widely assumed that the content of qualifying ceteris paribus clauses (such as ‘if all interferences were absent’) cannot be specified in a clear and non-circular manner. In this paper, I will argue that this assumption is wrong. I will develop an analysis of disposition ascriptions, the Interference-Free Counterfactual Analysis, which relies on a clear and non-circular definition of the notion of interference and avoids the standard counterexamples to SCA while vindicating the intuition that disposition ascriptions and counterfactual conditionals are intimately related. (Please note that an erratum has been issued for the published version of this paper. It is recommended to read the self-archived version of the paper.). (shrink)

Five hundred years after his death, Niccolò Machiavelli still draws an astonishing range of contradictory characterizations. Was he a friend of tyrants? An ardent republican loyal to Florence’s free institutions? The father of political realism? A revolutionary populist? A calculating rationalist? A Renaissance humanist? A prophet of Italian unification? A theorist of mixed government? A forerunner to authoritarianism? The master of the dark arts of intrigue? This book provides a vivid and engaging introduction to Machiavelli’s life and works that sheds (...) new light on his originality and relevance. Gabriele Pedullà—a leading Italian expert and acclaimed writer—offers fresh readings of the Florentine thinker’s most famous writings, The Prince and the Discourses on Livy, as well as lesser-known texts. A new and often surprising Machiavelli emerges: one closer to his time but also better suited to inform our own. Pedullà’s portrait of Machiavelli highlights his close attention to social and emotional bonds, staunch opposition to oligarchy, keen awareness of the economic side of power dynamics, and strong preference for history over philosophy as a guide for leaders. This book recovers the excitement Machiavelli roused in his first readers for a twenty-first-century audience, capturing his capacity to provoke, both then and now, with unconventional ideas and startling insights. (shrink)

My two daughters would love to go tobogganing down the hill by themselves, but they are just toddlers and I am an apprehensive parent, so, before letting them do so, I want to ensure that the toboggan won’t go too fast. But how fast will it go? One way to try to answer this question would be to tackle the problem head on. Since my daughters and their toboggan are initially at rest, according to classical mechanics, their final velocity will (...) be determined by the forces they will be subjected to between the moment the toboggan will be released at the top of the hill and the moment it will reach its highest speed. The problem is that, throughout their downhill journey, my daughters and the toboggan will be subjected to an incredibly large number of forces—from the gravitational pull of any massive object in the universe to the weight of the snowflake that is sitting on the tip of one of my youngest daughter’s hairs—so that any attempt to apply the theory directly to the real-world system in all its complexity seems to be doomed to failure. (shrink)

In this article, we propose a new account concerning the interlock between intentions and motor representations (henceforth: MRs), showing that the interface problem is not as deep as previously proposed. Before discussing our view, in the first section we report the ideas developed in the literature by those who have tried to solve this puzzle before us. The article proceeds as follows. In Sections 2 and 3, we address the views by Butterfill and Sinigaglia, and Mylopoulos and Pacherie, respectively, and (...) argue that both solutions entail a translation between representational formats, which both accounts aim to avoid. In Section 4, we present our brand‐new claim, according to which intentions and MRs partially share the same motor format, inasmuch as executable action concepts are naturally represented in the agent's motor system together with the action's outcomes. Indeed, since intentions are constituted by executable action concepts and since there is evidence that action concepts are represented (and, thus, built) in the same motor format as action outcomes, the interlock between intentions and MRs no longer constitutes a problem. Then, in Section 5, we report empirical evidence in support of our claim, and before concluding, in Section 6 we briefly clarify our relations with two very recent accounts that criticized the proposals by Mylopoulos and Pacherie and Butterfill and Sinigaglia: Shepherd's and Burnston's. Finally, in Section 7, we offer some remarks about the philosophical idea defended here. The basic insight is that interface without translation is possible because action concepts are such stuff as MRs are made on. (shrink)

Performance appraisals are widely used as an HR instrument. This study among 332 police officers examines the effects of performance appraisals from a behavioral ethics perspective. A mediation model relating justice perceptions of police officers’ last performance appraisal to their work affect, perceived supervisor and organizational support and, in turn, their ethical (pro-organizational proactive) and unethical (counterproductive) work behavior was tested empirically. The relationship between justice perceptions and both, ethical and unethical behavior was mediated by perceived support and work affect. (...) Hence, a singular yearly performance appraisal was linked to both ethical and unethical behaviors at work. The finding that ethical and unethical aspects of employee behavior share several of the same organizational antecedents, namely organizational justice perceptions, has strong practical implications which are discussed as well. (shrink)

In Schwichtenberg, Schwichtenberg fine-tuned Tait’s technique so as to provide a simplified version of Gentzen’s original cut-elimination procedure for first-order classical logic. In this note we show that, limited to the case of classical propositional logic, the Tait–Schwichtenberg algorithm allows for a further simplification. The procedure offered here is implemented on Kleene’s sequent system G4. The specific formulation of the logical rules for G4 allows us to provide bounds on the height of cut-free proofs just in terms of the logical (...) complexity of their end-sequent. (shrink)

In two often neglected passages of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant submits that the Critique is a 'treatise' or a 'doctrine of method'. These passages are puzzling because the Critique is only cursorily concerned with identifying adequate procedures of argument for philosophy. In this book, Gabriele Gava argues that these passages point out that the Critique is the doctrine of method of metaphysics. Doctrines of method have the task of showing that a given science is indeed a science (...) because it possesses 'architectonic unity' – which happens when it realizes the 'idea' of a science. According to Gava's novel approach, the Critique establishes that metaphysics is capable of this unity, and his reading of the Critique from this perspective not only illuminates the central role of the Transcendental Doctrine of Method within it, but also clarifies the relationship between the different parts of the work. (shrink)

The most important question concerning picture perception is: what perceptual state are we in when we see an object in a picture? In order to answer this question, philosophers have used the results of the two visual systems model, according to which our visual system can be divided into two streams, a ventral stream for object recognition, allowing one to perceive from an allocentric frame of reference, and a dorsal stream for visually guided motor interaction, thus allowing one to perceive (...) from an egocentric frame of reference. Following this model, philosophers denied that we can be in a dorsal perceptual state when perceiving a depicted object. This is because a depicted object is not physically graspable or manipulable and, in turn, it cannot be egocentrically localized, as a normal object, by the dorsal stream. Thus, the impossibility of manipulating depicted objects and of localizing them from an egocentric frame of reference has led some people to be sceptical about the possibility of a representation of action properties in the perception of objects in pictures, which pertains to the dorsal visual system. The aim of the present paper is to show that it is possible for the depicted object to be represented by dorsal perception. That means that we can ascribe action properties to depicted objects as well, even if depicted objects cannot be egocentrically localized—at least, not as much as normal objects can. (shrink)

Molyneux’s question famously asks about whether a newly sighted subject might immediately recognize, by sight alone, shapes that were already familiar to her from a tactile point of view. This paper addresses three crucial points concerning this puzzle. First, the presence of two different questions: the classic one concerning visual recognition and another one concerning vision-for-action. Second, the explicit distinction, reported in the literature, between ocular and cortical blindness. Third, the importance of making reference to our best neuroscientific account on (...) vision, ‘the two visual systems model’, in order to better address Molyneux’s problem. Then, by offering a new, deeper analysis of the relation between, and, this paper suggests that the subjects of Molyneux’s two different questions show the same visual impairment as brain-damaged subjects with different lesions of the visual cortex. In particular, the subject of the first question shows the same impairment in visual recognition as a visual agnosic subject, while the subject of the second question shows the same visual impairment in visuomotor processing as an optic ataxic subject. These impairments still hold even if ocular processing is restored. Therefore, I suggest the following. For the first classic question, the required experimental setting cannot be properly reached. By contrast, concerning the second question, based on the interpretation we select, either the answer is negative, or, as with the first question, the experimental setting cannot be properly reached. This proposal constitutes, with the other approaches offered in the literature, a further attempt to tackle the enormous complexity of Molyneux’s puzzle. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider how different versions of the similarity account of scientific representation might apply to a simple case of scientific representation, in which a model is used to predict the behaviour of a system. I will argue that the similarity account is potentially susceptible to the problem of accidental similarities between the model and the system and that, if it is to avoid this problem, one has to specify which similarities have to hold between a model and (...) a system for the model to be a faithful representation of that system. The sort of similarity that needs to hold between the model and the system, I argue, is a “second-order” similarity rather than simply a “first-order” similarity. This will not only avoid the problem but hopefully will contribute to dispelling the impression that an account of representation based on similarity is hopelessly vague. (shrink)

This paper explores the socio-epistemic practice of shopping for experts. I argue that expert shopping is particularly likely to occur on what Thi Nguyen calls cognitive islands. To support my argument, I focus on macroeconomics. First, I make a prima-facie case for thinking that macroeconomics is a cognitive island. Then, I argue that ordinary people are particularly likely to engage in expert shopping when it comes to macroeconomic matters. In particular, I distinguish between two kinds of expert shopping, which I (...) call cynical and wishful, and introduce the notion of assisted expert shopping, which occurs when people or organizations shop for experts on behalf of other people. I argue that assisted expert shopping can sometime result in what I call a propagandistic use of expertise. Finally, I critically examine some possible reasons for optimism and find them wanting. I conclude by suggesting that that much of what I said about shopping for macroeconomic experts might also apply mutatis mutandis to other policy-relevant domains of expertise. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish between two varieties of actualism—hardcore actualism and softcore actualism—and I critically discuss Ross Cameron’s recent arguments for preferring a softcore actualist account of the truthmakers for modal truths over hardcore actualist ones. In the process, I offer some arguments for preferring the hardcore actualist account of modal truthmakers over the softcore actualist one.

Everyday visual experience constantly confronts us with things we can interact with in the real world. We literally feel the outside presence of physical objects in our environment via visual perceptual experience. The visual feeling of presence is a crucial feature of vision that is largely unexplored in the philosophy of perception, and poorly debated in vision neuroscience. The aim of this article is to investigate the feeling of presence. I suggest that visual feeling of presence depends on the visual (...) representation of a very particular spatial relation with the object we interact with: the visual representation of absolute egocentric depth, which is due to stereoscopic vision. (shrink)

Kant’s account of practical justification for belief has attracted much attention in the literature, especially in recent years. In this context, scholars have generally emphasized the originality of Kant’s thought about belief (Glaube), and Kant indeed offers a definition of belief that is very different from views that were prevalent in eighteenth-century Germany. In this article, however, I argue that it is very likely that Christian August Crusius exerted influence on Kant’s definition of belief and his account of practical justification. (...) In turn, acknowledging this influence has relevant consequences for how we understand the phenomenology of Kantian belief. (shrink)

Are there any universal entities? Or is the world populated only by particular things? The problem of universals is one of the most fascinating and enduring topics in the history of metaphysics, with roots in ancient and medieval philosophy. This collection of new essays provides an innovative overview of the contemporary debate on universals. Rather than focusing exclusively on the traditional opposition between realism and nominalism, the contributors explore the complexity of the debate and illustrate a broad range of positions (...) within both the realist and the nominalist camps. Realism is viewed through the lens of the distinction between constituent and relational ontologies, while nominalism is reconstructed in light of the controversy over the notion of trope. The result is a fresh picture of contemporary metaphysics, in which traditional strategies of dealing with the problem of universals are both reaffirmed and called into question. (shrink)

Both in his pre-critical writings and in his critical works, Kant criticizes the Wolffian tradition for its use of the mathematical method in philosophy. The chapter argues that the apparent unambiguousness of this opposition between Kant and Wolff notwithstanding, the problem of ascertaining the relationship between Kant’s and Wolff’s methods in philosophy cannot be dismissed so quickly. Only a close consideration of Kant’s different remarks on Wolff’s approach and a comparison of the methods that Wolff and Kant actually used in (...) philosophy can allow us to determine when Kant’s criticisms are justified and where the differences in their methodological proposals for philosophy actually lie. We see that Kant’s account of philosophical method in fact has some elements in common with the Wolffian paradigm, even though there are also relevant differences. (shrink)

According to the received view in the philosophical literature on pictorial perception, when perceiving an object in a picture, we perceive both the picture’s surface and the depicted object, but the surface is only unconsciously represented. Furthermore, it is suggested, such unconscious representation does not need attention. This poses a crucial problem, as empirical research on visual attention shows that there can hardly be any visual representation, conscious or unconscious, without attention. Secondly, according to such a received view, when looking (...) at a picture aesthetically, one both consciously represents and visually attends to both the depicted object and the picture’s surface simultaneously. Thus, contra the empirical research on attention, only conscious visual representations are coupled, by such current view, with attention. And this clearly poses a second problem, as this philosophical account is not in tune with what vision science tells us about the functioning of our visual system. Furthermore, this raises another crucial problem, namely, that of explaining why aesthetic experience of pictures does not feel odd or conflicting, since, as previously noted in the philosophical literature, and contra the received view, if we are simultaneously consciously perceiving both the picture’s surface and the depicted object, there seems to be two things, at the same time, in the foreground of one’s visual consciousness. But, if so, as suggested, this would lead to a conflicting spatial visual experience. This paper offers a new description of the role of visual attention in picture perception, which explains the difference between the usual and the aesthetic way of perceiving a depicted object, without facing the problems reported above. A crucial role in our new account is played by the notion of unconscious attention, the distinction between focal and distributed, as well as top-down and bottom-up visual attention and the relationship between visual attention and visual consciousness. The paper, thus, offers the first theory concerning the exercise of visual attention in pictorial perception that is both philosophically rigorous and empirically reliable. (shrink)

A complementary system for a given logic is a proof system whose theorems are exactly the formulas that are not valid according to the logic in question. This article is a contribution to the complementary proof theory of classical propositional logic. In particular, we present a complementary proof-net system, $$\textsf{CPN}$$ CPN, that is sound and complete with respect to the set of all classically invalid (one-side) sequents. We also show that cut elimination in $$\textsf{CPN}$$ CPN enjoys strong normalization along with (...) strong confluence (and, hence, uniqueness of normal forms). (shrink)

Interpretations of Kant’s account of the forms of “taking-to-be-true” (Fürwahrhalten) have generally focused on three such forms: opinion (Meinung), belief (Glaube), and knowledge (Wissen). A second distinction that has received comparatively less attention is that between conviction (Überzeugung) and persuasion (Überredung). Kant appears to use the distinction between the subjective and the objective sufficiency of a taking-to-be-true to characterize all of these forms. However, it is impossible to account for the differences between them by relying on this latter distinction alone. (...) In turn, this makes it difficult to fit all of these forms into a single classification of taking-to-be-true. In this chapter, I propose a new approach to conviction and persuasion that dissolves these problems. Conviction and persuasion are not single forms of taking-to-be-true with distinctive characteristics, yet it is not useful to treat them as “classes” of taking-to-be-true either. Rather, they are “operators” that determine whether a taking-to-be-true is apt or inapt, depending on whether it rests on a correct evaluation of the grounds we have. (shrink)

If it seems unquestionable that C. I. Lewis is a Kantian in important respects, it is more difficult to determine what, if anything, is original about his Kantianism. For it might be argued that Lewis’ Kantianism simply reflects an approach to the a priori which was very common in the first half of the twentieth century, namely, the effort to make the a priori relative. In this paper, I will argue that Lewis’ Kantianism does present original features. The latter can (...) be detected by focusing on Lewis’ account of the method of philosophy in the first chapter of Mind and the World Order. In that context, Lewis argues that the method of philosophy should be reflective and critical. It will be my contention that this understanding of philosophy involves a therapeutic perspective, which bears important resemblances to Kant’s account of transcendental reflection in the Amphiboly of the Critique of Pure Reason. I will illustrate how this therapeutic application of reflection works in Lewis’ metaphysics. In this context, reflection can correct errors of reasoning that occur when we are operating within a particular conceptual scheme and use the criteria of reality that are appropriate in another. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Are face-to-face perception and picture perception different perceptual phenomena? The question is controversial. On the one hand, philosophers have offered several solid arguments showing that, despite some resemblances, they are quite different perceptual phenomena and that pictures are special objects of perception. On the other hand, neuroscientists routinely use pictures in experimental settings as substitutes for normal objects, and this practice is successful in explaining how the human visual system works. But this seems to imply that face-to-face perception and picture (...) perception are very similar, if not actually the same. How can we decide between these two opposite intuitions? Here I offer a regimentation of the notion of picture perception that can reconcile these two apparently conflicting ideas about pictures. It follows that philosophers and neuroscientists can maintain their respective stances without any theoretical conflict. (shrink)

La Ley de la Mujer discutida en el libro V de la República, conocida como la primera ola, es un ejemplo notorio de la intención reformista de Sócrates de lograr justicia en la pólis. La legislación de la mujer, en general, históricamente ha sido relegada por los intérpretes de la República. El objeto del artículo es analizar este pasaje, del 449a al 457c, a través de los argumentos propuestos por Sócrates al considerarlos cruciales para concebir la igualdad entre los sexos (...) y favorecer el cambio institucional según su naturaleza, katà phýsin, dejando espacio para que las mujeres gobiernen la pólis. Antes de partir hacia el enfrentamiento externo, Sócrates considera urgente que sus interlocutores, Adimanto, Glaucón y Polemarco, estén de acuerdo entre ellos. Así, los insta a iniciar la discusión cuestionando la naturaleza humana de la mujer y su capacidad para las mismas funciones que desempeñan los hombres en la ciudad. El examen de lo inteligible permitió que el lógos sobre la capacidad intelectual de las mujeres respaldara una legislación adecuada. Este nómos puesto en práctica demuestra ser lo mejor para la ciudad y sus guardianes. En esa medida, Sócrates puede concluir dicha investigación con un consenso sobre qué hacer y la voluntad de confrontar urgentemente las opiniones opuestas en la ciudad. (shrink)

In his paper “Explaining Deductive Inference” Prawitz states what he calls «a fundamental problem of logic and the philosophy of logic»: the problem of explaining «Why do certain inferences have the epistemic power to confer evidence on the conclusion when applied to premisses for which there is evidence already?». In this paper I suggest a way of articulating, and partly modifying, the intuitionistic answer to this problem in such a way as to both answer Prawitz’s problem and satisfy a requirement (...) I argue to be crucial for any epistemic theory of the meaning of the logical constants: the requirement that evidence is epistemically transparent. (shrink)

People often use expressions such as ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and ‘Pegasus’ that appear to refer to imaginary objects. In this paper, I consider the main attempts to account for apparent reference to imaginary objects available in the literature and argue that all fall short of being fully satisfactory. In particular, I consider the problems of two main options to maintain that imaginary objects are real and reference to them is genuine reference: possibilist and abstractist account. According to the former, imaginary objects (...) are possible concrete objects. According to the latter, imaginary objects are actual abstract objects. I will then propose an account, the dualist account, which, I argue, combines the respective advantages of both accounts without sharing any of their respective disadvantages. According to this account, imaginary objects are not fully reducible to either abstract objects or possible objects: they are abstract artefacts that, in some contexts, stand for possible objects. (shrink)

Philosophers working within the pragmatist tradition have pictured their relation to Kant and Kantianism in very diverse terms: some have presented their work as an appropriation and development of Kantian ideas, some have argued that pragmatism is an approach in complete opposition to Kant. This collection investigates the relationship between pragmatism, Kant, and current Kantian approaches to transcendental arguments in a detailed and original way. Chapters highlight pragmatist aspects of Kant’s thought and trace the influence of Kant on the work (...) of pragmatists and neo-pragmatists, engaging with the work of Peirce, James, Lewis, Sellars, Rorty, and Brandom, among others. They also consider to what extent contemporary approaches to transcendental arguments are compatible with a pragmatist standpoint. The book includes contributions from renowned authors working on Kant, pragmatism and contemporary Kantian approaches to philosophy, and provides an authoritative and original perspective on the relationship between pragmatism and Kantianism. (shrink)