How psychopaths and their capacity for moral action are viewed is not only philosophically interesting but is also important and relevant for policy. The philosophical discussion of psychopathy has focussed upon the psychological faculties that are prerequisites for moral responsibility and empirical findings regarding psychopathy that are relevant to philosophical accounts of moral understanding and motivation. However, there are legitimate worries about whether psychopathy is a robust scientific construct, and there are risks attached to reifying psychopathy or other psychiatric constructs. (...) We defend the concept of psychopathy by pointing out the relevance of empirical studies about it for our ordinary practices of ascribing moral responsibility and folk psychological accounts of moral understanding and motivation. (shrink)

The paper introduces what is deemed as the general epistemological problem of measurement: what characterizes measurement with respect to generic evaluation? It also analyzes the fundamental positions that have been maintained about this issue, thus presenting some sketches for a conceptual history of measurement. This characterization, in which three distinct standpoints are recognized, corresponding to a metaphysical, an anti-metaphysical, and relativistic period, allows us to introduce and briefly discuss some general issues on the current epistemological status of measurement science.

ABSTRACTLinguistic evidence supports the claim that certain, weak rejections are less specific than assertions. On the basis of this evidence, it has been argued that rejected sentences cannot be premisses and conclusions in inferences. We give examples of inferences with weakly rejected sentences as premisses and conclusions. We then propose a logic of weak rejection which accounts for the relevant phenomena and is motivated by principles of coherence in dialogue. We give a semantics for which this logic is sound and (...) complete, show that it axiomatizes the modal logic KD45 and prove that it still derives classical logic on its asserted fragment. Finally, we defend previous logics of strong rejection as being about the linguistically preferred interpretations of weak rejections. (shrink)

This paper focuses on whether static images can depict motion. It is natural to say that pictures depicting objects caught in the middle of a dynamic action—such as Henri Cartier-Bresson’s (1932) Behind the Gare St. Lazare—are pictures of movement, but, given that pictures themselves do not move, can we make sense of such an idea? Drawing on results from experimental psychology and cognitive sciences, I show that we can. Psychological studies on implicit motion and representational momentum indicate that motion is (...) really perceived in some static images: our visual system is built in order to detect motion, even where it is only implied, and to anticipate the probable outcomes of others’ actions—even when the ‘others’ are only the subject matters of pictures’. I argue that, consequently, a range of popular depiction theories—perceptualist theories of depiction—can accommodate depicted motion. (shrink)

We present an inferentialist account of the epistemic modal operator might. Our starting point is the bilateralist programme. A bilateralist explains the operator not in terms of the speech act of rejection ; we explain the operator might in terms of weak assertion, a speech act whose existence we argue for on the basis of linguistic evidence. We show that our account of might provides a solution to certain well-known puzzles about the semantics of modal vocabulary whilst retaining classical logic. (...) This demonstrates that an inferentialist approach to meaning can be successfully extended beyond the core logical constants. (shrink)

Constitutivism argues that the source of the categorical force of the norms of rationality and morality lies in the constitutive features of agency. A systematic failure to be guided by these norms would amount to a loss or lack of agency. Since we cannot but be agents, we cannot but be unconditionally guided by these norms. The constitutivist strategy has been challenged by David Enoch. He argues that our participation in agency is optional and thus cannot be a source of (...) categorical demands. In this paper, I defend the viability of constitutivism by showing that agency is indeed a special ‘inescapable’ enterprise. Agency has the largest jurisdiction, and it is closed under rational assessment. This inescapability does not exempt constitutivism from raising the question whether agents have reason to be agents, but this question has to be taken up within agency. If this question is answered affirmatively, then—I argue—the criteria of practical correctness are self-ratifying in a non-circular way. This is sufficient to show the viability of the constitutivist strategy. Whether agents have conclusive reasons to be agents, however, is a matter to be addressed in the terms of particular versions of constitutivism. (shrink)

The paper introduces and formally defines a functional concept of a measuring system, on this basis characterizing the measurement as an evaluation performed by means of a calibrated measuring system. The distinction between exact and uncertain measurement is formalized in terms of the properties of the traceability chain joining the measuring system to the primary standard. The consequence is drawn that uncertain measurements lose the property of relation-preservation, on which the very concept of measurement is founded according to the representational (...) viewpoint. Finally, from the analysis of the inter-relations between calibration and measurement the fundamental reasons of the claimed objectivity and intersubjectivity of measurement are highlighted, a valuable epistemological result to characterize measurement as a particular kind of evaluation. (shrink)

The subject of Labelled Non-Classical Logics is the development and investigation of a framework for the modular and uniform presentation and implementation of non-classical logics, in particular modal and relevance logics. Logics are presented as labelled deduction systems, which are proved to be sound and complete with respect to the corresponding Kripke-style semantics. We investigate the proof theory of our systems, and show them to possess structural properties such as normalization and the subformula property, which we exploit not only to (...) establish advantages and limitations of our approach with respect to related ones, but also to give, by means of a substructural analysis, a new proof-theoretic method for investigating decidability and complexity of (some of) the logics we consider. All of our deduction systems have been implemented in the generic theorem prover Isabelle, thus providing a simple and natural environment for interactive proof development. Labelled Non-Classical Logics is essential reading for researchers and practitioners interested in the theory and applications of non-classical logics. (shrink)

We discuss a well-known puzzle about the lexicalization of logical operators in natural language, in particular connectives and quantifiers. Of the many logically possible operators, only few appear in the lexicon of natural languages: the connectives in English, for example, are conjunction _and_, disjunction _or_, and negated disjunction _nor_; the lexical quantifiers are _all, some_ and _no_. The logically possible nand (negated conjunction) and Nall (negated universal) are not expressed by lexical entries in English, nor in any natural language. Moreover, (...) the lexicalized operators are all upward or downward monotone, an observation known as the Monotonicity Universal. We propose a logical explanation of lexical gaps and of the Monotonicity Universal, based on the dynamic behaviour of connectives and quantifiers. We define update potentials for logical operators as procedures to modify the context, under the assumption that an update by \( \phi \) depends on the logical form of \( \phi \) and on the speech act performed: assertion or rejection. We conjecture that the adequacy of update potentials determines the limits of lexicalizability for logical operators in natural language. Finally, we show that on this framework the Monotonicity Universal follows from the logical properties of the updates that correspond to each operator. (shrink)

A growing movement in contemporary philosophy of mind is looking back on Indian thought to gain new insights into the problem of consciousness. This paper weighs the prospects of thinking about mentality through the lenses of Śaṅkaran Advaita Vedānta. To start, I outline micropsychist and cosmopsychist accounts of consciousness, introduce Śaṅkaran monism, and describe a potential reason of attraction of the framework over micropsychist and cosmopsychist alternatives. I then show that the eliminativist commitments of the view threaten to yield a (...) self-defeating account of ordinary experience, and that Advaitins took the accommodation of the issue to be beyond the reach of rational inquiry. Finally, I discuss how the analytical debate over Śaṅkaran monism might proceed based on these premises. (shrink)

This book explains the ethical and conceptual tensions in the use of psychopathy in different countries, including America, Canada, the UK, Croatia, Australia, and New Zealand. It offers an extensive critical analysis of how psychopathy functions within institutional and social contexts. Inside, readers will find innovative interdisciplinary analysis, written by leading international experts. The chapters explore how different countries have used this diagnosis. A central concern is whether psychopathy is a mental disorder, and this has a bearing upon whether it (...) should be used. The book’s case studies will help readers understand the problems associated with psychopathy. Academics and students working in the philosophy of psychiatry, bioethics, and moral psychology will find it a valuable resource. In addition, it will also appeal to mental health professionals working in forensic settings, psychologists with an interest in the ethical implications of the use of psychopathy as a construct and particularly those with a research interest in it. (shrink)

A 'self-refutation argument' is any argument which aims at showing that a certain thesis is self-refuting. This study was the first book-length treatment of ancient self-refutation and provides a unified account of what is distinctive in the ancient approach to the self-refutation argument, on the basis of close philological, logical and historical analysis of a variety of sources. It examines the logic, force and prospects of this original style of argumentation within the context of ancient philosophical debates, dispelling various misconceptions (...) concerning its nature and purpose and elucidating some important differences which exist both within the ancient approach to self-refutation and between that approach, as a whole, and some modern counterparts of it. In providing a comprehensive account of ancient self-refutation, the book advances our understanding of influential and debated texts and arguments from philosophers like Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, the Academic sceptics, the Pyrrhonists and Augustine. (shrink)

In Aristophanes' Male and Female Revolutions author Kenneth M. De Luca offers a detailed study of two of Aristophanes' plays and reveals how each illuminates the other and the question of the rule of law through the lens of democracy. De Luca uses classical thought to clarify contemporary and foundational issues in political theory.

The Hamiltonian structure of General Relativity (GR), for both metric and tetrad gravity in a definite continuous family of space-times, is fully exploited in order to show that: i) the "Hole Argument" can be bypassed by means of a specific "physical individuation" of point-events of the space-time manifold M^4 in terms of the "autonomous degrees of freedom" of the vacuum gravitational field (Dirac observables), while the "Leibniz equivalence" is reduced to differences in the "non-inertial appearances" (connected to gauge variables) of (...) the same phenomena. ii) the chrono-geometric structure of a solution of Einstein equations for given, gauge-fixed, initial data (a "3-geometry" satisfying the relevant constraints on the Cauchy surface), can be interpreted as an "unfolding" in mathematical global time of a sequence of "achronal 3-spaces" characterized by "dynamically determined conventions" about distant simultaneity. This result stands out as an important conceptual difference with respect to the standard chrono-geometrical view of Special Relativity (SR) and allows, in a specific sense, for an "endurantist" interpretations of ordinary physical objects in GR. (shrink)

Human mental workload is arguably the most invoked multidimensional construct in Human Factors and Ergonomics, getting momentum also in Neuroscience and Neuroergonomics. Uncertainties exist in its characterization, motivating the design and development of computational models, thus recently and actively receiving support from the discipline of Computer Science. However, its role in human performance prediction is assured. This work is aimed at providing a synthesis of the current state of the art in human mental workload assessment through considerations, definitions, measurement techniques (...) as well as applications, Findings suggest that, despite an increasing number of associated research works, a single, reliable and generally applicable framework for mental workload research does not yet appear fully established. One reason for this gap is the existence of a wide swath of operational definitions, built upon different theoretical assumptions which are rarely examined collectively. A second reason is that the three main classes of measures, which are self-report, task performance, and physiological indices, have been used in isolation or in pairs, but more rarely in conjunction all together. Multiple definitions complement each another and we propose a novel inclusive definition of mental workload to support the next generation of empirical-based research. Similarly, by comprehensively employing physiological, task-performance, and self-report measures, more robust assessments of mental workload can be achieved. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that an account of proof-theoretic harmony based on reductions and expansions delivers an inferentialist picture of meaning which should be regarded as intensional, as opposed to other approaches to harmony that will be dubbed extensional. We show how the intensional account applies to any connective whose rules obey the inversion principle first proposed by Prawitz and Schroeder-Heister. In particular, by improving previous formulations of expansions, we solve a problem with quantum-disjunction first posed by Dummett. As (...) recently observed by Schroeder-Heister, however, the specification of an inversion principle cannot yield an exhaustive account of harmony. The reason is that there are more collections of elimination rules than just the one obtained by inversion which we are willing to acknowledge as being in harmony with a given collection of introduction rules. Several authors more or less implicitly suggest that what is common to all alternative harmonious collection of rules is their being interderivable with each other. On the basis of considerations about identity of proofs and formula isomorphism, we show that this is too weak a condition for a given collection of elimination rules to be in harmony with a collection of introduction rules, at least if the intensional picture of meaning we advocate is not to collapse on an extensional one. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the structure of our temporally extended agency. We do not have the power to act directly at a distance, so any of our temporally extended projects must be sustained over its temporal unfolding by momentary actions. We need both the capacity to organize these momentary steps in light of a synoptic overview of the extended activity as a whole and to sustain our motivation to continue to pursue the extended activity. Hence, the distinctive mode in which we (...) act over time is that of ’planning agency,’ which requires a form of temporal identification that goes beyond mere psychological continuity. I then discuss the differences in internal structure between merely continuous and integrated activities, and between telic and atelic ones. I provide a taxonomy of the different kinds of temporal goods and values and how these structures might bear on the risk of crisis of meaning in our temporal existence. I then touch briefly on the issue of how our mortality might make a difference to the structure of what we find valuable and how it relates to the temporal features of our agency. In the closing section, I discuss the effects of the moving temporal location of the agent (with her local executive powers) relative to her extended pursuits, including the asymmetries generated by the distinction between past and future stages of the activity and the moving horizon of what the agent can anticipate and (indirectly) control. (shrink)

”The last remnant of physical objectivity of space-time” is disclosed in the case of a continuous family of spatially non-compact models of general relativity. The physical individuation of point-events is furnished by the autonomous degrees of freedom of the gravitational field, which represent -as it were -the ontic part of the metric field. The physical role of the epistemic part is likewise clarified as embodying the unavoidable non-inertial aspects of GR. At the end the philosophical import of the Hole Argument (...) is substantially weakened and in fact the Argument itself dis-solved, while a specific four-dimensional holistic and structuralist view of space-time emerges, including elements common to the tradition of both substantivalism and relationism. The observables of our models undergo real temporal change: this gives new evidence to the fact that statements like the frozen-time character of evolution, as other ontological claims about GR, are model dependent. (shrink)

One type of argument to sceptical paradox proceeds by making a case that a certain kind of metaphysically “heavyweight or “cornerstone” proposition is beyond all possible evidence and hence may not be known or justifiably believed. Crispin Wright has argued that we can concede that our acceptance of these propositions is evidentially risky and still remain rationally entitled to those of our ordinary knowledge claims that are seemingly threatened by that concession. A problem for Wright’s proposal is the so-called Leaching (...) worry: if we are merely rationally entitled to accept the cornerstones without evidence, how can we achieve evidence-based knowledge of the multitude of quotidian propositions that we think we know, which require the cornerstones to be true? This paper presents a rigorous, novel explication of this worry within a Bayesian framework, and offers the Entitlement theorist two distinct responses. (shrink)

This appreciation outlines the life and work of Giulio Preti, a philosopher of the critical rationalist movement. His was a tormented and conflictual philosophical itinerary from his intellectual roots in 1930s Italy, via the philosophical journal Studi filosofici in the 1940s, to his major works Praxis and Empiricism and Rhetoric and Logic in the 1950s and 1960s. His anxiety about the ambiguity of contemporary reality, it is suggested, is also ours.

This article is based on Gibson’s “experimental phenomenology” and ecological perspective. It aims to develop Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “incarnate” by relating it to the more general concept of “illusion” in order to apply it to digital environments and immersive virtual realities. First of all, we should clarify, from a phenomenological point of view, the notion of “world.” Although the concept of “world” is closely linked to that of “reality,” it cannot be superimposed on it. We will analyze this distinction by (...) focusing on specific cases of optical-geometric illusions and their ontological and epistemological implications. We will then extend them from the natural to the digital world. (shrink)

Both sustainability and identity are said to be paradoxical issues in organizations. In this study we look at the paradoxes of corporate sustainability at the individual level by studying the identity work of those managers who hold sustainability-dedicated roles in organizations. Analysing 26 interviews with sustainability managers, we identify three main tensions affecting their identity construction process: the business versus values oriented, the organizational insider versus outsider and the short-term versus long-term focused identity work tensions. When dealing with these tensions, (...) some interviewees express a paradoxical perspective in attempting to accept and maintain the two poles of each of them simultaneously. It emerges in particular that metaphorical reasoning can be used by sustainability managers in varied ways to cope with the tensions of identity work. We read these findings in light of the existing literature on the relation between paradoxes and identity work, highlighting and discussing their implications for both research and practice. (shrink)

"The last remnant of physical objectivity of space-time" is disclosed, beyond the Leibniz equivalence, in the case of a continuous family of spatially non-compact models of general relativity. The physical individuation of point-events is furnished by the intrinsic degrees of freedom of the gravitational field, (viz, the "Dirac observables") that represent - as it were - the "ontic" part of the metric field. The physical role of the "epistemic" part (viz. the "gauge" variables) is likewise clarified. At the end, a (...) peculiar four-dimensional "holistic and structuralist" view of space-time emerges which includes elements common to the tradition of both substantivalism and relationism. The observables of our models undergo real "temporal change" and thereby provide a counter-example to the thesis of the "frozen-time" picture of evolution. (shrink)

Lexical innovations (e.g., zero-derivations coined on the fly by a speaker) seem to bear semantic content. Yet, such expressions cannot bear semantic content as a function of the conventions of meaning in force in the language, since they are not part of its lexicon. This is in tension with the commonplace view that the semantic content of lexical expressions is constituted by linguistic conventions. The conventionalist has two immediate ways out of the tension. The first is to preserve the conventionalist (...) assumption and deny that lexical innovations bear semantic content. The second is to dynamicize the conventionalist assumption, that is, argue that presentations of unattested expressions trigger an augmentation of the standing semantic resources of the language and instantiate content as a result of this underlying update. Building on a comparison with the production of novel onomatopoeic words, iconic pseudowords and pro-speech gestures, the paper argues that the issue is best addressed by suspending the conventionalist assumption, and describes the metasemantic implications of the claim. (shrink)

We investigate the complexity of embeddings between bi-embeddable structures. In analogy with categoricity spectra, we define the bi-embeddable categoricity spectrum of a structure A as the family of Turing degrees that compute embeddings between any computable bi-embeddable copies of A; the degree of bi-embeddable categoricity of A is the least degree in this spectrum (if it exists). We extend many known results about categoricity spectra to the case of bi-embeddability. In particular, we exhibit structures without degree of bi-embeddable categoricity, and (...) we show that every degree d.c.e above 0(α) for α a computable successor ordinal and 0(λ) for λ a computable limit ordinal is a degree of bi-embeddable categoricity. We also give examples of families of degrees that are not bi-embeddable categoricity spectra. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage collectif se présente sous la forme de douze articles divisés en cinq parties thématiques. La première contient des contributions s’intéressant aux liens entre le religieux et la loi dans le cadre de la polis-religion. La deuxième est composée de deux articles se penchant sur la notion de rhétorique dans les textes rituels touchant à la magie. Viennent ensuite trois contributions étudiant la performance oratoire en rapport avec la sphère du religieux. La partie suivante envisage q...

Acerbo Stefano, « The εὐνοµώτατος ἔρανος in Pindar O. 1.25–27 and the Myth of Pelops: A Reassessment », Mnemosyne 75–2 (2022), p. 211–238 [revient sur les interprétations de l’épisode du chaudron de Pélops, avant de proposer une version différente, dans laquelle le chaudron évoquerait des représentations mythiques sur le rajeunissement et l’immortalité]. Alepidou Apostolia, « Thetis in Identity Crisis: Inversions of the Iliad in Statius’ Achilleid », Mnemosyne 74–5 (2021), p. 799–824 [compare...

In this chapter we argue that Robert Hare's psychopathy checklist revised (PCL-R) offers a construct of psychopathy that is valid enough for philosophical investigations of the moral and legal responsibility of psychopathic offenders.

Certain combinations of sounds or signs on paper are meaningful. What makes it the case that, unlike most combinations of sounds or signs, they have meaning? What is this meaning that they have? And what is it to understand this meaning? The traditional answers to these questions are based on the idea that words stand for something, but it is difficult to say what words such as good, if, or probable stand for. This book advances novel answers based on the (...) idea that words get their meaning from the way they are used to express states of mind and what follows from them. It articulates a precise version of this idea, at a time when the shortcomings of the traditional answers are hotly discussed. (shrink)

Recently some have argued that psychopaths might suffer generalised cognitive impairments that affect their capacity for mental time travel. In relation to the past, mental time travel is the capacity to have memories of past episodes in which the agent was personally involved. In relation to the future, mental time travel involves prospection, the capacity to imagine future situations where the agent might be involved. The authors argue that certain studies on the instrumental learning of psychopaths show that, in relation (...) to certain specific situations, these subjects might be impaired in certain capacities for mental time travel. Following Harry Frankfurt, they maintain that moral responsibility requires a capacity to identify with certain desires. This process of identification involves accepting desires in virtue of an evaluation that is sensitive to commitments that stem from previously formed mental states. Therefore, identification relies on some basic capacities of mental time travel. The authors argue that a process of “detachment” from current operative desires is of central importance in the process of identification. They claim that certain experiments concerning the instrumental learning in psychopaths show that, in certain cases, they are incapable to register changes in their situation that determine a lack of detachment from certain current operative motivational states. However, other experiments show that psychopaths, in other circumstances, are capable of “detaching” from certain of their motivational states. These empirical findings allow the authors to argue that the process of identification in psychopathic offenders in certain specific circumstances might be impaired. (shrink)

According to constitutivism, we can justify the authority of aims and norms on the ground that they are inescapable. Constitutivist views divide between ambitious and modest ones. According to ambitious constitutivism, the inescapability of aims grounds their unconditional authority, whereas according to modest constitutivism, the inescapability of aims only grounds their conditional authority. Either way, both forms of constitutivism share the assumption that inescapability grounds authority, which in turn presupposes that at the foundation of normativity we find aims and norms (...) that can be evaluated as having or lacking authority. In this paper I shall defend a form of constitutivism that rejects this assumption. According to this view, which I shall call Hinge Constitutivism, at the foundation of epistemic normativity we find an aim, the truth-aim, that is altogether beyond the evaluation in terms of the ordinary notion of authority. Moreover, I shall argue that to aim at truth is a condition of possibility for justifying the authority of any other aims or norms. In this sense, to aim at truth is a hinge of deliberation. (shrink)

In this paper, three theories of progress and the aim of science are discussed: the theory of progress as increasing explanatory power, advocated by Popper in The logic of scientific discovery ; the theory of progress as approximation to the truth, introduced by Popper in Conjectures and refutations ; the theory of progress as a steady increase of competing alternatives, which Feyerabend put forward in the essay “Reply to criticism. Comments on Smart, Sellars and Putnam” and defended as late as (...) the last edition of Against method. It is argued that, contrary to what Feyerabend scholars have predominantly assumed, Feyerabend's changing attitude towards falsificationism—which he often advocated at the beginning of his career, and vociferously attacked in the 1970s and 1980s—must be explained by taking into account not only Feyerabend's very peculiar view of the aim of science, but also Popper's changing account of progress. (shrink)

In recent years, so-called organizational accounts (OA) have emerged in theoretical biology as a powerful, viable strategy for naturalizing teleology and normativity. In the wake of the theoretical tradition of autopoiesis and biological autonomy, OA notably propose a new meaning for the notion of “organization,” which they claim to be capable, among other things, of grounding objective and observer-independent normative teleological ascriptions. In this paper, I focus on this last claim, asking “How are ‘organization’ and ‘normativity’ conceptually connected?” The basic (...) insight mobilized by the OA framework to answer this question is most often expressed as a counterfactual argument regarding the “conditions of existence” of organized entities. In this paper, I show that careful scrutiny of this core OA argument reveals a substantial shortcoming. To make this point, I first analyze how the OA framework positions the idea of “conditions of existence” via the notions of “dependence”, “constraint,” and “closure.” Second, I consider various possible interpretations of the OA counterfactual argument grounding norms. I conclude that the implications of this argument do not enable OA to deliver what they promise, i.e., a straightforward link between organization and norms. I argue that a different strategy is needed to capture the basic organizational intuition about biological normativitiy and suggest that a stipulative route might be better suitable to that end. (shrink)

In this short paper, we analyse whether assuming that mathematical objects are “thin” in Linnebo's sense simplifies the epistemology of mathematics. Towards this end, we introduce the notion of transparency and show that not all thin objects are transparent. We end by arguing that, far from being a weakness of thin objects, the lack of transparency of some thin objects is a fruitful characteristic mark of abstract mathematics.