Causal reductionism is the widespread assumption that there is no room for additional causes once we have accounted for all elementary mechanisms within a system. Due to its intuitive appeal, causal reductionism is prevalent in neuroscience: once all neurons have been caused to fire or not to fire, it seems that causally there is nothing left to be accounted for. Here, we argue that these reductionist intuitions are based on an implicit, unexamined notion of causation that conflates causation with prediction. (...) By means of a simple model organism, we demonstrate that causal reductionism cannot provide a complete and coherent account of ‘what caused what’. To that end, we outline an explicit, operational approach to analyzing causal structures. (shrink)

The metaphysics of powers (Shoemaker, 1980; Mumford, 2004; Marmodoro, 2009; Heil, 2012 among many others) is a promising conceptual framework that has been successfully put to use in many philosophical and scientific domains, but surprisingly its potential applications in the contemporary philosophy of mind are still under-investigated. This thematic issue aims to show that power ontology has implications concerning major questions in the contemporary philosophy of mind, such as: what is the metaphysical relationship between consciousness and the physical? Are phenomenal (...) properties reducible to physical properties, fundamental, or emergent? How are we to explain notions such as belief, agency, and free will? (shrink)

Two-thirds of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions over the past two centuries can be traced to the activities of a handful of companies (‘carbon majors'). Based on their direct contribution to climate change in terms of carbon emissions and on a number of morally relevant facts, this article proposes a normative framework to establish the responsibilities that carbon majors have in relation to climate change. Then, the analysis articulates these responsibilities in the form of two duties: a duty of decarbonisation (...) and a duty of reparation. The duty of decarbonisation entails a large-scale transformation that carbon majors ought to undergo in order to reduce and eventually eliminate carbon emissions from their entire business model. The duty of reparation implies rectification through disgorgement of funds for the wrongful actions of carbon majors, which resulted in negative climate impacts, starting from the most socially vulnerable groups affected by climate change. Finally, the article indicates possible practical implications of these duties. (shrink)

There is a driving need computationally to interrogate large bodies of text for a range of non-denotative meaning (e.g., to plot chains of reasoning, detect sentiment, diagnose genre, and so forth). But such meaning has always proven computationally allusive. It is often implicit, ‘hidden’ meaning, evoked by linguistic cues, stylistic arrangement, or conceptual structure – features that have hitherto been difficult for Natural Language Processing systems to recognize and use. Non-denotative textual effects are the historical concern of rhetorical studies, and (...) we have turned to rhetoric in order to find new ways to advance NLP, especially for sophisticated tasks like Argument Mining. This paper highlights certain rhetorical devices that encode levels of meaning that have been overlooked in Computational Linguistics generally and Argument Mining particularly, and yet lend themselves to automated detection. These devices are the linguistic configurations known as Rhetorical Figures. We argue for the importance of these devices for Argument Mining, especially in collocations, and we present an XML annotation scheme for Rhetorical Figures to make figuration more tractable for computational approaches, particularly with an eye on the improvements they offer Argument Mining. We also discuss the intellectual and technical challenges involved in figure annotation and the implications for Machine Learning. (shrink)

Integrated information theory attempts to account for both the quantitative and the phenomenal aspects of consciousness, and in taking consciousness as fundamental and widespread it bears similarities to panpsychist Russellian monism. In this paper I compare IIT's and RM's response to the conceivability argument, and their metaphysical account of conscious experience. I start by claiming that RM neutralizes the conceivability argument, but that by virtue of its commitment to categoricalism it doesn't exclude fickle qualia scenarios. I argue that IIT's core (...) notion of intrinsic cause-effect power makes it incompatible with categoricalist versions of RM and, to the contrary, is best understood as entailing pandispositionalism, the view for which all properties are powers. I show that, thus construed, IIT can cope with both the conceivability and with the fickle qualia arguments, offers a promising way to account for the content of experience, and hence is preferable to categoricalist RM. (shrink)

The notions of argument and argumentation have become increasingly ubiquitous in Artificial Intelligence research, with various application and interpretations. Less attention has been, however, specifically devoted to rhetorical argument The work presented in this paper aims at bridging this gap, by proposing a framework for characterising rhetorical argumentation, based on Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's New Rhetoric. The paper provides an overview of the state of the art of computational work based on, or dealing with, rhetorical aspects of argumentation, before presenting the (...) characterisation proposed, corroborated by walked-through examples. (shrink)

We present a high-level declarative programming language for representing argumentation schemes, where schemes represented in this language can be easily validated by domain experts, including developers of argumentation schemes in informal logic and philosophy, and serve as executable specifications for automatically constructing arguments, when applied to a set of assumptions. Since argumentation schemes are defeasible inference rules, both premises and conclusions of schemes can be second-order schema variables, i.e. without a fixed predicate symbol. Thus, while particular schemes can be and (...) have been implemented in computer programs, in general argumentation schemes cannot be represented as executable specifications using logic programming languages based on first-order logic, such as Prolog. Moreover, even if the conclusion (head) of Prolog rules could be second-order variables, a depth-first, backward-chaining search strategy, as typically used in logic programming, would usually cause such programs to not terminate, since every goal would match the head of such a scheme, including all goals created by instantiating the body of the same scheme. The language for representing argumentation schemes presented here, for the purpose of automatically constructing arguments, uses Constraint Handling Rules (CHR), a declarative, Turing complete, forwards-chaining, rule-based programming language introduced by Thom Frühwirth in 1991. CHR is attractive for representing and implementing argumentation for several reasons, including: 1) Inference rules, rewrite rules, sequents, proof rules, and logical axioms can be directly written in CHR. 2) The execution of CHR rules can be interrupted and restarted at any time, with intermediate results approximating the final solution, and 3) Constraints can be input incrementally as they become known, during rule execution, without requiring recomputation. These three properties of CHR appear attractive for representing and implementing argumentation schemes. Since argumentation schemes are (defeasible) inference rules, the ability of CHR to represent inference rules directly would appear to be quite useful. The ability to stop the computation and produce approximate results is compatible with one objective of argumentation, to provide a principled method for supporting approximate reasoning with limited resources. Because argumentation typically takes place in dialogs, with evidence and arguments brought forward and asserted by the participants incrementally, during the course of the dialog, CHR’s ability to handle new information, incrementally introduced during the computation, may be useful. This new rule language for representing argumentation schemes is validated by using it to represent twenty representative argumentation schemes. (shrink)

This paper aims to identify several interpretive problems posed by the final part ofDAII.11 (423b27–424 a10), where Aristotle intertwines the thesis that a sense is like a ‘mean’ and an explanation for the existence of a ‘blind spot’ related to the sense of touch, adding the further contention that we are capable of discriminating because the mean ‘becomes the other opposite’ in relation to the perceptible property being perceived. To solve those problems, the paper explores a novel interpretation of Aristotle’s (...) claims, arguing that they describe a homeostatic physiological reaction by which the sensory apparatus responds to perceptible stimuli. According to the proposed interpretation, such homeostatic reaction constitutes a necessary condition for perceiving what Aristotle refers to as ‘proper’ perceptible features, which include properties like ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ as well as colors and sounds. (shrink)

Tailoring assistive systems for guiding and monitoring an individual in daily living activities is a complex task. This paper presents ALI, an assistive system combining a formal possibilistic argumentation system and an informal model of human activity: the Cultural-Historic Activity Theory, facilitating the delivery of tailored advices to a human actor. We follow an activity-centric approach, taking into consideration the human’s motives, goals and prioritized actions. ALI tracks a person in order to I) determine what activities were performed over a (...) period of time (activity recognition tracking), and II) send personalized notifications suggesting the most suitable activities to perform (decision-making monitoring). The ALI system was evaluated in a formative pilot study related to promote social activities and physical exercise. (shrink)

Numerosity perception is a key ability for human and non-human species, probably mediated by dedicated brain mechanisms. Electrophysiological studies revealed the existence of both early and mid-latency components of the Electrophysiological (EEG) signal sensitive to numerosity changes. However, it is still unknown whether these components respond to physical or perceived variation in numerical attributes. We here tackled this point by recording electrophysiological signal while participants performed a numerosity adaptation task, a robust psychophysical method yielding changes in perceived numerosity judgments despite (...) physical numerosity invariance. Behavioral measures confirmed that the test stimulus was consistently underestimated when presented after a high numerous adaptor while perceived as veridical when presented after a neutral adaptor. Congruently, EEG results revealed a potential at around 200 ms (P2p) which was reduced when the test stimulus was presented after the high numerous adaptor. This result was much prominent over the left posterior cluster of electrodes and correlated significantly with the amount of adaptation. No earlier modulations were retrievable when changes in numerosity were illusory while both early and mid-latency modulations occurred for physical changes. Taken together, our results reveal that mid-latency P2p mainly reflects perceived changes in numerical attributes, while earlier components are likely to be bounded to the physical characteristics of the stimuli. These results suggest that short-term plastic mechanisms induced by numerosity adaptation may involve a relatively late processing stage of the visual hierarchy likely engaging cortical areas beyond the primary visual cortex. Furthermore, these results also indicate mid-latency electrophysiological correlates as a signature of the internal representation of numerical information. (shrink)

Explanation and argumentation can be used together in such a way that evidence, in the form of arguments, is used to support explanations. In a hybrid system, the interlocking of argument and explanation compounds the problem of how to differentiate between them. The distinction is imperative if we want to avoid the mistake of treating something as fallacious while it is not. Furthermore, the two forms of reasoning may influence dialogue protocol and strategy. In this paper a basis for solving (...) the problem is proposed using a dialogue model where the context of the dialogue is used to distinguish argument from explanation. (shrink)

The single day conference “Ontology, Mind and Free Will. A Workshop in Memory of E.J. Lowe (1950-2014)” took place at the Department of Humanities of the University of Macerata on March, 3 rd 2014. It included as speakers Sophie Gibb (Durham University), Mario De Caro (Roma Tre University) and Michele Paolini Paoletti (University of Macerata). This event was thought by the organizers in order to honor the British philosopher Ethan Jonathan Lowe, who suddenly passed away last January with infinite regret (...) of the scientific community. The discussion of some of his major research topics, such as mental causation, free will and essence, was therefore meant as the right homage to one of the most influential philosophers who animated and deepened the debate of the last thirty years. Regarding the singular reviews of this report, Matteo Grasso took care of Sophie Gibb’s and Mario De Caro’s talks, while Mattia Sorgon reviewed Michele Paolini Paoletti’s. (shrink)

The problem of animal consciousness has profound implications on our concept of nature and of our place in the natural world. In philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience the problem of animal consciousness raises two main questions (Velmans, 2007): the distribution question (“are there conscious animals beside humans?”) and the phenomenological question (“what is it like to be a non-human animal?”). In order to answer these questions, many approaches take into account similarities and dissimilarities in animal and human behavior, e.g. (...) the use of language or tools and mirror self-recognition (Allen and Bekoff, 2007), however behavioral arguments don’t seem to be conclusive (Baars, 2005). Cognitive neuroscience is providing comparative data on structural and functional similarities, respectively called “homologies” and “analogies”. Many experimental results suggest that the thalamocortical system is essential for consciousness (Edelman and Tononi, 2000; Tononi, 2008). The argument from homology states that the general structure of thalamocortical system remained the same in the last 100-200 million years, for it is neuroanatomically similar in all the present and past mammals and it didn’t change much during phylogeny (Allen and Bekoff, 2007). The argument from analogy states that the key functional processes correlated with consciousness in humans are still present in all other mammals and many other animals (Baars, 2005). These processes are information integration through effective cortical connectivity (Massimini et al., 2005; Rosanova et al., 2012) and elaboration of information at a global level (Dehaene and Changeux, 2011). On this basis, the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness states that all mammals, birds, and many other animals (such as octopuses) possess the neurological substrates of consciousness (Low et al., 2012). Conscious experience is private (Chalmers, 1995; Nagel, 1974) therefore the answer to the phenomenological question may be impossible. Nevertheless, cognitive neuroscience may provide an answer to the distribution question, showing that conscious experience is not limited to humans since it is a major biological adaptation going back millions of years. (shrink)

: In recent years, research on the family role and entrepreneurship has increased extremely, consolidating itself as a valid and current subject of study. However, a part of the scientific literature seems to lack systematization and the boundaries appear unclear, maybe due to its multidisciplinary nature. This paper presents a systematic analysis of academic research, applying bibliometric indicators and cluster analysis, which define the state of research on the international scene. For this purpose, using three well accepted databases among the (...) research community: Scopus, Web of Science, Business Source, a total of 92 articles were selected and analyzed, published between 1989 and 2019 (until March). The results show that this is a relatively recent field of study, with a multidisciplinary character and in which the most influential authors do not coincide with the most productive scientific journals. A cluster analysis finds out five main areas of literature development: the cluster with the largest percentage of co-occurrences (25%) is the one that relates to the dimensions of entrepreneurship, self-employment and personality; in contrast, the area with a lower percentage of co-occurrences of keywords (12,1%) is refers to family business, succession, economic development and Arabia Saudita. Based on the outcome obtained and the shortcomings above, in the final part of the article, possible points of reflection for future research are exposed, which could be useful to further of this field of study. (shrink)

The problem of free will is deeply linked with the causal relevance of mental events. The causal exclusion argument claims that, in order to be causally relevant, mental events must be identical to physical events. However, Gibb has recently criticized it, suggesting that mental events are causally relevant as double preventers. For Gibb, mental events enable physical effects to take place by preventing other mental events from preventing a behaviour to take place. The role of mental double preventers is hence (...) similar to what Libet names free won’t, namely the ability to veto an action initiated unconsciously by the brain. In this paper I will propose an argument against Gibb’s account, the causal irrelevance argument, showing that Gibb’s proposal does not overcome the objection of systematic overdetermination of causal relevance, because mental double preventers systematically overdetermine physical double preventers, and therefore mental events are causally irrelevant. (shrink)

The problem of animal consciousness has profound implications on our concept of nature and of our place in the natural world. In philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience the problem of animal consciousness raises two main questions (Velmans, 2007): the distribution question (“are there conscious animals beside humans?”) and the phenomenological question (“what is it like to be a non-human animal?”). In order to answer these questions, many approaches take into account similarities and dissimilarities in animal and human behavior, e.g. (...) the use of language or tools and mirror self-recognition (Allen and Bekoff, 2007), however behavioral arguments don’t seem to be conclusive (Baars, 2005). Cognitive neuroscience is providing comparative data on structural and functional similarities, respectively called “homologies” and “analogies”. Many experimental results suggest that the thalamocortical system is essential for consciousness (Edelman and Tononi, 2000; Tononi, 2008). The argument from homology states that the general structure of thalamocortical system remained the same in the last 100-200 million years, for it is neuroanatomically similar in all the present and past mammals and it didn’t change much during phylogeny (Allen and Bekoff, 2007). The argument from analogy states that the key functional processes correlated with consciousness in humans are still present in all other mammals and many other animals (Baars, 2005). These processes are information integration through effective cortical connectivity (Massimini et al., 2005; Rosanova et al., 2012) and elaboration of information at a global level (Dehaene and Changeux, 2011). On this basis, the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness states that all mammals, birds, and many other animals (such as octopuses) possess the neurological substrates of consciousness (Low et al., 2012). Conscious experience is private (Chalmers, 1995; Nagel, 1974) therefore the answer to the phenomenological question may be impossible. Nevertheless, cognitive neuroscience may provide an answer to the distribution question, showing that conscious experience is not limited to humans since it is a major biological adaptation going back millions of years. (shrink)

This paper engages the ongoing debate around the possibility of virtue friendships in the Aristotelian sense through online mediation. However, I argue that since the current literature has remained overly focused on the mere possibility of virtual friendship, it has obscured the more common phenomena of using digital communication to sustain previous in-person friendships which are now at a distance. While I agree with those who argue that entirely virtual friendship is possible, I argue that the current rebuttals to the (...) objections regarding embodiment are lacking. We can see this more clearly when we shift our consideration to more ordinary cases of virtual friendship. I discuss this problem of disembodiment by engaging with an interpretive issue of Aristotle’s “living together” which has played a key role in the current literature. I then turn to expand the current debate by examining how physical absence, disembodiment, and the technology we use to overcome such disembodiment, shapes and impacts friendships at a distance. In short, I explore the tendencies of technology of which virtual friends ought to be aware. I argue that even though virtual virtue friendships are possible via technology, the medium makes it harder and limits the possible experiences within friendships. Even if we overcome these tendencies, technologically mediated virtue friendships require more discipline for a diminished experience. While these limitations and extra disciplines in no way make virtual friendship unimportant, I argue that the fullest possible virtual friendship will be lesser than the fullest possible traditional friendship. (shrink)

A background assumption of this paper is that the repertoire of inference schemes available to humanity is not fixed, but subject to change as new schemes are invented or refined and as old ones are obsolesced or abandoned. This is particularly visible in areas like health and environmental sciences, where enormous societal investment has been made in finding ways to reach more dependable conclusions. Computational modeling of argumentation, at least for the discourse in expert fields, will require the possibility of (...) modeling change in a stock of schemes that may be applied to generate conclusions from data. We examine Randomized Clinical Trial, an inference scheme established within medical science in the mid-20th Century, and show that its successful defense by means of practical reasoning allowed for its black-boxing as an inference scheme that generates (and warrants belief in) conclusions about the effects of medical treatments. Modeling the use of a scheme is well-understood; here we focus on modeling how the scheme comes to be established so that it is available for use. (shrink)

We live in a society we may often perceive as unfair and oppressive. When political and social oppression becomes suffocating, rebellion against such oppression emerges as the sole viable course of action. An oppressed social climate harbors feelings that could lead to revolutionary fervor. This work intends to deal with the topic of revolution, in line with predominantly theoretical-moral connotations, tending towards social ethics. Drawing on a phenomenological analysis of revolution, this work endeavors to delineate the form of justice that (...) should prevail amidst the fragile times we are living in. In effect, it proposes a path which crosses different ethical-moral matrices, which are linked to the epistemic context surrounding the concept of revolution, to finally arrive at proposing a new moral typology of justice. This theoretical scenario gives us the possibility of categorizing the revolutionary phenomenon within different dynamics, functions, and perspectives, opening up glimmers of criticism and reflection on our times. Furthermore, the research aims to demonstrate how the topic of revolution is not a theme of a “univocal” nature. It can be understood in various ways. From a first point of view, the revolution could be interpreted positively or negatively, depending on the meaning we attribute to the concepts of revolution and justice. Revolutionary justice, if oppressive and unequal, can indeed become a new form of injustice. Moreover, depending on how we interpret pre-revolutionary feelings, the concept of limit could vary in its ontological dimension. Within the branch of social and moral philosophy, this analysis will be conducted according to an analytical method. The method used concerns first of all the critical analysis, as the in-depth study of various concepts, such as e.g. the concepts of limit, shame, indignation, resilience, disobedience, vulnerability, temperance, consciousness, equality, difference, freedom, love, hope, honesty, trust, compassion, empathy, and care. The methodology also concerns the use of original expository plots, capable of crossing epistemic boundaries. (shrink)

Illocutionary structure in real language use is intricate and complex, and nowhere more so than in argument and debate. Identifying this structure without any theoretical scaffolding is extremely challenging even for humans. New work in Inference Anchoring Theory has provided significant advances in such scaffolding which are helping to allow the analytical challenges of argumentation structure to be tackled. This paper demonstrates how these advances can also pave the way to automated and semi-automated research in understanding the structure of natural (...) debate. (shrink)

In many domains of public discourse such as arguments about public policy, there is an abundance of knowledge to store, query, and reason with. To use this knowledge, we must address two key general problems: first, the problem of the knowledge acquisition bottleneck between forms in which the knowledge is usually expressed, e.g., natural language, and forms which can be automatically processed; second, reasoning with the uncertainties and inconsistencies of the knowledge. Given such complexities, it is labour and knowledge intensive (...) to conduct policy consultations, where participants contribute statements to the policy discourse. Yet, from such a consultation, we want to derive policy positions, where each position is a set of consistent statements, but where positions may be mutually inconsistent. To address these problems and support policy-making consultations, we consider recent automated techniques in natural language processing, instantiating arguments, and reasoning with the arguments in argumentation frameworks. We discuss application and “bridge” issues between these techniques, outlining a pipeline of technologies whereby: expressions in a controlled natural language are parsed and translated into a logic (a literals and rules knowledge base), from which we generate instantiated arguments and their relationships using a logic-based formalism (an argument knowledge base), which is then input to an implemented argumentation framework that calculates extensions of arguments (an argument extensions knowledge base), and finally, we extract consistent sets of expressions (policy positions). The paper reports progress towards reasoning with web-based, distributed, collaborative, incomplete, and inconsistent knowledge bases expressed in natural language. (shrink)

A theory of transgenerational justice ought to be grounded on intuitions shared in the human community. One is parental responsibility, postulating duties between the generating and the generated in a realm of proximity. To achieve greater political abstraction, it is necessary to deny self-sufficiency to such primary transgenerational level, arguing for its structural need to rely on external sources distant in space and time. A critical cross-examining of concepts relevant to justify the leap from proximity to distance follows (community and (...) society, equity and equality, singularity and repetition). The outcome is a notion of ius as object of transgenerational quest, including future generations only at the price of avoiding contractualist understandings of bonds between living and non-living entities. (shrink)

Premier volume d’une nouvelle collection (« Cambridge Studies in the Dia­logues of Plato », dirigée par Mary Margaret McCabe), Plato’s ‘Cratylus’ présente, d’un dialogue de Platon particulièrement complexe, une lecture radicalement nouvelle. L’ouvrage ouvre bien une voie originale par rapport aux travaux con­sacrés, depuis une douzaine d’années, à l’élucidation du sens et de la portée phi­losophiques du Cratyle (mentionnons notamment : T. M. S. Baxter, The Cratylus. Plato’s Critique of Naming...

In the fifth book of Plato'sLaws(745e7–746a8), the Athenian stranger concedes that some requirements posed in the description of the ideal city might be unrealistically demanding. The passage quotes the due limits fixed with regard to wealth and the regulations about the number of children and the size of the family, as well as the rules to be observed in the allocation of houses in the city and in the countryside. The latter requirement is recalled at 746a6–7 (ἔτι δὲ χώρας τε (...) καὶ ἄστεος, ὡς εἴρηκεν, μεσότητάς τε καὶ ἐν κύκλῳ οἰκήσεις πάντῃ), where the word μεσότης is unanimously understood as indicating a geographic notion of ‘middle’, with regard to either the position of the houses in the ideal city, or that of the city in the territory. (shrink)

Climate change governance is extremely challenging because of both the intrinsic difficulty of the issues at stake and the plurality of values and world-views. For these reasons, the ethical concerns that characterise climate change should also be meaningfully addressed through a specific version of procedural justice. Accordingly, in this article we adopt an impure notion of procedural justice. On this theoretical basis, we define relevant fairness criteria and contextualise them for climate governance systems. Then, we empirically justify fairness criteria against (...) a critical and divisive element for the future governance of the Green Climate Fund, i.e., the no-objection procedure. The article concludes with some considerations prompted by the analysis. (shrink)

Platons Philosophie des Bildes est un ouvrage imposant et dense, qui propose une lecture générale du sens et de la fonction de l’image dans la philosophie de Platon. En dressant de ceux-ci un tableau synoptique à partir de la période « de maturité », il vise à faire apparaître une « unité remarquable » de la notion platonicienne d’image (« der platonische Bildbegriff »). Si Christoph Poetsch analyse les diverses formes de celle-ci, ainsi que les Gleichnisbilder (analogies et métaphores) les (...) p... (shrink)

In recent years, the study of women entrepreneurship has experienced great growth, gaining a broad consensus among academics and contributing above all to understanding all those factors that explain the difficulty of women in undertaking an entrepreneurial career. This document tries to contribute to the field of study, thanks to a systematic analysis through the publications present in the topic. For this purpose, 2,848 peer-reviewed articles were analyzed, published between 1950 and 2019, using the Scopus database (SCImago Research Group). Through (...) the use of a series of bibliometric indicators it was possible to define the current state of research on the international scene. The analysis revealed that it is a multidisciplinary field of study and that has started to expand further since 2006, culminating in 2019, which makes it become a current and valid object of study. The analysis of the clusters allowed to isolate 6 different lines of research in which emerged, on the one hand, the importance of entrepreneurial education, social entrepreneurship and the socio-cultural context of reference (e.g. culture, family and institutional support) as tools to overcome the gender gap, on the other, the importance that women entrepreneurship assumes in the economic growth of the country (especially in developing economies), promoting social inclusion and combating poverty and discrimination. The study presents an important contribution to reflect on current policies and to outline future lines of investigation. (shrink)

This paper is to critically examines Pollock’s critical-link semantics with variable degrees of justification. Some possibly counterintuitive consequences of Pollock’s definition of degrees of justification are identified and a modified definition is proposed which avoids these consequences. Then the new solution is applied to the case of so-called presumptive defeat. A second contribution of the paper is to show how the modified semantics can be applied to the ASPIC+ framework: first the ASPIC+ framework is modified to allow for variable degrees (...) of justification and then the modified way to compute these degrees is applied in a new notion of an argument graph. (shrink)

In this work I reconstruct the physical and mental descriptions of perception in Aristotle. I propose to consider the thesis that αἴσθησις is a μεσότης (DA II 11) as a description of the physiological aspect of perception, meaning that perceiving is a physical act by which the sensory apparatus homeostatically counterbalances, and thence measures, the incoming affection produced by external perceptible objects. The proposal is based on a revision of the semantics of the word mesotês in Plato, Aristotle and later (...) Greek mathematicians (mostly Nicomachus of Gerasa). I show how this interpretation fits the text, and how it solves problems that afflict the rival interpretations. I further develop a ‘non-dephysiologizing’ spiritualist reading of the additional description of perception as reception of forms without the matter (DA II 12). I show that Aristotle uses the expression ‘forms without matter’ to describe actually abstracted items in one’s mind rather than the way in which the form are received. In opposition to forms-in-matter, such items are causally powerless and metaphysically sterile: an F-without-matter somewhat determines the subject it is in (one’s mind content F) without qualifying or identifying it as an F-subject. Thus, we have a second ‘mental’ description of perception. Further parts of the thesis are devoted to settle interpretive questions raised by controversial statements about perception found in De Anima II 5 and III 2, and to discuss the question of how the mental and physiological descriptions of perception Aristotle offers are related. My conclusion is that Aristotle’s views combines a form of quasi-dualist vitalism about powers (the faculty of perception, and more generally the soul, are not just irreducible to matter, but also primitive and non-supervenient) which is nonetheless compatible with hylomorphism, and a form of epiphenomenalism (and thence the ‘bottom-up’ determination typical of modern supervenience) with regard to perceptual events (i.e., the activity of perceiving). (shrink)

This essay compares the reflections of Tocqueville and the Second Vatican Council on the perils of modern civilization as they relate to the question of limited government. While their analyses diverge in some respects, both Tocqueville and the Council are concerned about the proclivity of the modern state to absorb all of human life and see this political danger as the expression of a deeper crisis prompted by the secularization of Western culture. Convinced that this threat cannot be addressed at (...) the political level alone, both conclude that the principle of limited government cannot be successfully institutionalized absent a far-reaching religious renewal. In Tocqueville’s famous formulation, “despotism can do without faith, but not liberty.”. (shrink)

A blatant contradiction seems to characterize the first part of DA II 12: 424a24-25 entails that possession of the power to ‘receive forms without the matter’ is sufficient for being a sense organ, while the ‘wax simile’ supposedly preceding it (424a19-23) attributes the same power to both senses and wax blocks. To solve the contradiction, I contend that Aristotle does not in fact endorse the described ‘wax simile’. He offers, instead, a ‘signature simile’ between the forms received by senses and (...) the analogously matterless signatures transmitted by signet rings. This reading is supported by the use of the clause ‘forms without matter’ in Aristotle’s Corpus, which consistently refers to causally powerless and metaphysically sterile abstractions. I accordingly contend that the reception of perceptible forms without matter only describes the mental dimension of perception, and that the idea has no implications whatsoever with regard to physiology. The resulting attempt at capturing the mental aspect of perception is original and philosophically interesting: no unanalysable opposition of the mental to the physical is postulated, and currently crucial notions like ‘consciousness’ or ‘intentionality’ are playing no role at all. (shrink)

David Sedley entreprend dans cet ouvrage dense – et aussi original que son récent commentaire du Cratyle (voir supra) – d’apporter une lumière véritable­ment nouvelle sur un dialogue platonicien aussi complexe qu’amplement com­menté. Il ne prétend pas écarter le contenu de détail des analyses du Théétète produites dans les dernières décennies mais se fixe néanmoins un objectif ambitieux : dégager un aspect radicalement inaperçu de ce dialogue et, en parti­culier, les raisons véritables pour l...

This essay seeks to dispel two common misunderstandings of the argument of We Hold These Truths. Contrary to what is sometimes asserted, it argues, Murray does not turn the American founding into an expression of Thomistic political theory. Although he emphasizes the Christian and medieval roots of the American democratic experiment, Murray also recognizes—even if he does not explore the point systematically—the imprint left on the American founding bydistinctively modern intellectual currents. Likewise, it maintains that although the rejection of the (...) natural law tradition under the impact of Enlightenment rationalism figures prominently in Murray’s account of the crisis of the modern West, Murray’s account of the role of natural law in this crisis must be seen against the backdrop of a broader analysis whose focus is theological and spiritual in nature, and which sees the ultimate source of this crisis in modern culture’s rejection of Christian revelation. (shrink)

In the face of the new and radically different type of public order that seems to be emerging on the contemporary scene, Catholics have sought to secure the legal and social space necessary for themselves and their institutions to live in accordance with their beliefs by appealing to America’s historic commitment to religious freedom. The difficulty we confront is that the vision of man and society animating this order, a vision that emerges from Enlightenment Liberalism issues in an impoverished understanding (...) of religious freedom that fails to secure this legal and social space. (shrink)

Islam and Its Past: Jahiliyya, Late Antiquity, and the Qurʾan. Edited by Carol Bakhos and Michael Cook. Oxford Studies in the Abrahamic Religions. Oxford: oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 267. $85, £65.

The article is aimed at pointing out the correctness of the basic assumptions of Maurizio Ferraris’ documental theory of social reality, illustrating the results of a case study research. The theoretical analysis leads to an argument that shows that only the reference to the role of writing (and to a broad and diversified conception of Documentality) makes it possible to clarify the phenomenon of social and historical iteration of intellectual heritage. This latter represents an intangible heritage which is neither part (...) of the external perceivable world, nor of a conjectural platonic reality, since – though possessing abstract essence – it stems from a specific point in time. (shrink)