It is difficult to develop a coherent conception of time on the basis of our experience of time. The philosophical analysis of our experience of time is a central topic in phenomenology. So one might expect phenomenology to deliver a contribution to the solution of the most challenging puzzles of the philosophy of time. This paper deals with some methodological issues related to such an expectation. It opposes two main conceptions of the role of phenomenology in the philosophy of time. (...) On the first conception phenomenology draws conclusions about the nature of time from the description of the qualitative features of our experience of time. On the second conception, phenomenology determines what we are rationally entitled to believe about the nature of time on the basis of the way we experience time. It is argued that if one aims at integrating different approaches in one’s philosophical conception of time, then it is the second conception one ought to choose. (shrink)

Nossa proposta é apresentar argumentos que enfatizem a possibilidade do escrito kantiano “Sonhos de um visionário explicados por sonhos da metafísica” (1766) ser considerado como um possível escrito de virada crítica ou uma obra que contém elementos que supostamente conduziram Kant ao criticismo presente na Dissertação de 1770 e na Crítica da razão pura. A década de 1760 do período pré-crítico da filosofia kantiana é considerada como antidogmática ou mesmo um período de crítica ao racionalismo dogmático, em que Kant promove (...) uma crítica à Escola Leibniz-wolffiana e busca fundamentar a metafísica como a ciência dos limites da razão. Podemos citar alguns dos elementos que permitem caracterizar a obra como contendo conteúdo de cunho crítico: espaço e tempo como formas para abarcar objetos sensíveis; a ilusão e confusão do entendimento em abarcar seres que estão fora do campo sensível; e este como garantia da validade objetiva dos conceitos racionais. (shrink)

"L'uomo è un essere che non sta nella propria pelle, una natura che non sta dentro se stessa. Ogni singola esistenza si situa al punto di incontro di condizioni già date: fisiche, biologiche, ambientali, sociali, economiche, storiche, culturali, spirituali. Ma ogni vita umana non è mai la semplice somma o il mero prodotto di esse. L'uomo le eccede e vi si rapporta in maniera plastica, con una spiccata attitudine trasformatrice e generatrice. L'eccedenza è il contrassegno della condizione umana. "Senso", "erranza", (...) "parola", "silenzio", "narrazione", "sequela", "resistenza", "amore", "desiderio", "suono": sono questi i fenomeni e gli atti umani in cui si è cercato di intercettare rifrazioni dell'eccedenza. Il volume raccoglie i contributi presentati tra l'ottobre del 2019 e il maggio del 2020 a un corso di aggiornamento per docenti promosso dal Liceo Scientifico Seguenza di Messina. L'insieme di questi contributi è soltanto la raccolta di qualche frammento di una fenomenologia dell'eccedenza, forse utile a contrastare visioni monodimensionali dell'essere umano". (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Heft: Ahead of print.

In this highly readable and compact introduction to Durkheim's thought, Gianfranco Poggi examines all of Durkheim's central works and assesses their significance today, a century after his death. Poggi's analyses includes a study of what Durkheim meant by 'society' and an evaluation of Durkheim's contributions to both political sociology and the sociology of law. Poggi's clear and concise reappraisal of one of the most important modern thinkers will be essential reading for students of sociology and an invaluable guide for (...) anyone studying the ways modern societies function. (shrink)

A major representative of the German sociological tradition, Georg Simmel (1858-1918) has influenced social thinkers ranging from the Chicago School to Walter Benjamin. His magnum opus, The Philosophy of Money, published in 1900, is nevertheless a difficult book that has daunted many would-be readers. Gianfranco Poggi makes this important work accessible to a broader range of scholars and students, offering a compact and systematically organized presentation of its main arguments. Simmel's insights about money are as valid today as they (...) were a hundred years ago. Poggi provides a sort of reader's manual to Simmel's work, deepening the reader's understanding of money while at the same time offering a new appreciation of the originality of Simmel's social theory. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s four Untimely Meditations are a set of works generally rather neglected of this author. They are, however, the outcome of a project placed in a critical situation, along the development of Nietzsche as philosopher. By beginning, particularly, with an analysis of the first Meditation, David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer, and of the third one, Schopenhauer as educator, we will try to show two philosophical perspectives which, launched in the Meditations, will carry Nietzsche’s path until its end: the (...) path of an “ontology of the modernity”, according with the expression of Foucault, and that of a philosophy as “way of life”, according with the expression of Hadot. (shrink)

Gianfranco Ravasi ha voluto "ripensare" ciò che era già stato indagato e meditato durante la lunga avventura del pensiero umano, a partire dalle culture primitive e dalle antiche civiltà. E ha analizzato le due sorgenti che alimentano il concetto occidentale di anima: le Sacre Scritture e la cultura greca, con i miti di Psiche e di Orfeo e pensatori come Platone, Aristotele e Plotino. Giunti alla fine di questa riflessione ci si rende conto che la storia dell'anima coincide con (...) la storia dell'uomo, creatura di Dio. E un dubbio affiora: che l'agitarsi febbrile dell'umanità contemporanea non sia un avanzare ma un insensibile retrocedere, o uno strano volteggiare sempre sullo stesso spazio, e che proprio “l'anima, con la sua fame di eterno e di infinito” sia ciò che invece ci costringerà a muoverci “sempre oltre, verso un Oltre illimitato”. (shrink)

In this paper we analyse the conditions for attributing to AI autonomous systems the ontological status of “artificial moral agents”, in the context of the “distributed responsibility” between humans and machines in Machine Ethics (ME). In order to address the fundamental issue in ME of the unavoidable “opacity” of their decisions with ethical/legal relevance, we start from the neuroethical evidence in cognitive science. In humans, the “transparency” and then the “ethical accountability” of their actions as responsible moral agents is not (...) in contradiction with the unavoidable “opacity” (unawareness) of the brain process by which they perform their moral judgements on the right action to execute. In fact, the moral accountability of our actions depends on what is immediately before and after our “moral judgements” on the right action to execute (formally, deontic first order logic (FOL) decisions). I.e., our moral accountability depends on the “ethical constraints” we imposed to our judgement before performing it in an opaque way. Anyway, our moral accountability depends overall on the “ethical assessment” or explicit “moral reasoning” after and over the moral judgement before executing our actions (deontic higher order logic (HOL) assessment). In this way, in the light of the AI “imitation game”, the consistent attribution of the status of ethically accountable artificial moral agents to autonomous AI systems depends on two similar conditions. Firstly, it depends on the presence of “ethical constraints” to be satisfied in their Machine Learning (ML) supervised optimization algorithm during its training phase, to give the system ethical skills (“competences”) in its decisions. Secondly – and definitely—, it depends on the presence in an AI autonomous system of a deontic HOL “ethical reasoner” to perform an automatic, and fully transparent assessment (metalogical deontic valuation) about the decisions taken by the ethically skilled ML algorithm about the right action to execute, before executing it. Finally, we show that the proper deontic FOL and HOL for this class of artificial moral agents is Kripke’s modal relational logic, in its algebraic topological formalization. This is naturally implemented in the dissipative QFT unsupervised deep learning of our brains, based on the “doubling of the degrees of freedom” (DDF), and then in the so-called “deep-belief” artificial neural networks for the statistical data pre-processing. This unsupervised learning procedure is also compliant with the usage of the “maximin fairness principle”, used as a balancing aggregation principle of the statistical variables in Sen’s formal theory of fairness. (shrink)