En 1767, la filósofa inglesa Catharine Macaulay Graham envió al líder corso Pasquale Paoli una carta donde enunciaba su propuesta de gobierno democrático para Córcega, siguiendo muy de cerca el republicanismo de James Harrington y Jean Jacques Rousseau. Confiada en el avance de la razón y la Ilustración, considera que la independencia de la isla puede suponer el primer paso para crear un marco político capaz de reducir las desigualdades y promover la libertad de la ciudadanía a través (...) de su participación activa en las instituciones. (shrink)

Terms of service of on-line platforms too often contain clauses that are potentially unfair to the consumer. We present an experimental study where machine learning is employed to automatically detect such potentially unfair clauses. Results show that the proposed system could provide a valuable tool for lawyers and consumers alike.

In combating the ongoing global health threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, decision-makers have to take actions based on a multitude of relevant health data with severe potential consequences for the affected patients. Because of their presumed advantages in handling and analyzing vast amounts of data, computer systems of algorithmic decision-making are implemented and substitute humans in decision-making processes. In this study, we focus on a specific application of ADM in contrast to human decision-making, namely the allocation of COVID-19 vaccines to (...) the public. In particular, we elaborate on the role of trust and social group preference on the legitimacy of vaccine allocation. We conducted a survey with a 2 × 2 randomized factorial design among n = 1602 German respondents, in which we utilized distinct decision-making agents and prioritization of a specific social group as design factors. Our findings show that general trust in ADM systems and preference for vaccination of a specific social group influence the legitimacy of vaccine allocation. However, contrary to our expectations, trust in the agent making the decision did not moderate the link between social group preference and legitimacy. Moreover, the effect was also not moderated by the type of decision-maker. We conclude that trustworthy ADM systems must not necessarily lead to the legitimacy of ADM systems. (shrink)

. This paper investigates the mechanisms of knowledge production of twenty-first century robotics-inspired morphology. How robotics influences investigations into the structure, development, and change of organic forms? Which definition of form is presupposed by this new approach to the study of form? I answer these questions by investigating how robots are used to understand and generate new questions about the locomotion of extinct animals in the first case study and in high-performance fishes in the second case study. After having illustrated (...) the landscape of twentieth-century morphology, I will reflect on the definition of form adopted in twenty-first century robotics-inspired morphology as well as on the differences between this approach to the study of form and the so-called nature-inspired disciplines, such as bionics or biomimetics. In the conclusion, I suggest that we are now in a material turn in morphology, characterized by the coexistence of the robotic, the virtual, and the real, which enables an understanding of how the structures and dynamics of shapes change over time. (shrink)

Anthony Kenny e Orlando Todisco, in due diversi contesti, hanno proposto un originale accostamento tra Wittgenstein e alcuni filosofi francescani. Alla luce di questi studi è possibile chiedersi quale valore possa avere la nozione di francescanesimo wittgensteiniano e quale utilità essa ricopra nell’identificare i caratteri di una filosofia francescana. Nella prima parte considererò l’atteggiamento di Kenny nei confronti di Duns Scoto, le cui tesi, dapprima frettolosamente associate a quelle del neopositivismo, vengono poi adeguatamente contestualizzate all’interno della contrapposizione tra la tradizione (...) neoplatonica-agostiniana e l’aristotelismo radicale nell’Università di Parigi. Nella seconda parte, analizzerò il parallelo suggerito da Todisco tra Wittgenstein e Occam, con particolare attenzione alla filosofia del linguaggio, alla critica alla metafisica e alla nozione di ineffabilità. Dopo aver evidenziato i limiti storiografici di entrambe queste proposte, concluderò sostenendo che il francescanesimo wittgensteiniano non può essere considerato un progetto di ricerca autonomo capace di stabilire delle tesi comuni. Esso comunque non è una mera provocazione, in quanto offre interessanti considerazioni circa una affine modalità di porsi gli interrogativi filosofici da parte di Wittgenstein e dei filosofi francescani. Questo esito permette di identificare alcune condizioni necessarie perché si possa parlare di una filosofia francescana all’interno della storia della filosofia. In two very different contexts, Anthony Kenny and Orlando Todisco have proposed an original combination between Wittgenstein and some Franciscan thinkers. Thanks to their studies it is possible to question the value and the usability of the expression Wittgensteinian Franciscanism in order to identify the features of a Franciscan philosophy. In the first paragraph, I will take the approach of Kenny about Duns Scotus into consideration. At the beginning of his career, Kenny hastily associates Scotus’ theses to the Neo-Positivistic ones, but in his mature works, Kenny adequately contextualizes them within the contrast between, on the one hand, the Neoplatonic-Augustinian tradition and, on the other, the radical Aristotelism held at the Paris University. In the second paragraph, I will study in depth the parallelism suggested by Todisco between Wittgenstein and Occam, paying particular attention to the philosophy of language, to the criticism toward some types of metaphysics, and to the notion of ineffability. After having underlined the historiographic limits of both of these proposals, I will conclude arguing that Wittgensteinian Franciscanism cannot be appreciated as an autonomous research project able to establish common theses. All the same, it is not a mere provocation, in fact it presents interesting considerations about analogous modalities to submit philosophical questions shared between Wittgenstein and Franciscan thinkers. This outcome allows to distinguish some necessary conditions in order to identify a Franciscan philosophy in the history of Western thought. (shrink)

In his 1916 review paper on general relativity, Einstein made the often-quoted oracular remark that all physical measurements amount to a determination of coincidences, like the coincidence of a pointer with a mark on a scale. This argument, which was meant to express the requirement of general covariance, immediately gained great resonance. Philosophers such as Schlick found that it expressed the novelty of general relativity, but the mathematician Kretschmann deemed it as trivial and valid in all spacetime theories. With the (...) relevant exception of the physicists of Leiden (Ehrenfest, Lorentz, de Sitter, and Nordström), who were in epistolary contact with Einstein, the motivations behind the point-coincidence remark were not fully understood. Only at the turn of the 1960s did Bergmann (Einstein’s former assistant in Princeton) start to use the term ‘coincidence’ in a way that was much closer to Einstein’s intentions. In the 1980s, Stachel, projecting Bergmann’s analysis onto his historical work on Einstein’s correspondence, was able to show that what he started to call ‘the point-coincidence argument’ was nothing but Einstein’s answer to the infamous ‘hole argument’. The latter has enjoyed enormous popularity in the following decades, reshaping the philosophical debate on spacetime theories. The point-coincidence argument did not receive comparable attention. By reconstructing the history of the argument and its reception, this paper argues that this disparity of treatment is not justified. This paper will also show that the notion that only coincidences are observable in physics marks every critical step of Einstein’s struggle with the meaning of coordinates in physics. (shrink)

The growing cultural complexity in the face of new immigration waves influences the public understanding of religious diversity. The two central questions of this article are as follows: first, ‘how much religious difference and of what kind is compatible within Europe?’ and second, ‘to what extent can Muslim diversity be integrated into Europe?’. This article undertakes an investigation of these questions and explores the extent to which discourses on religious diversity imply boundary making and aim at limiting the religious freedom (...) of Muslims. Empirically, I scrutinize press coverage between 2009 and 2010, the years in which the minarets ban entered the sociopolitical arena of European public debate. The methodology adopts a social network analysis to uncover semantic macro-structures and elicit common discourses in the press of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Subsequently, discourse analysis of relevant samples is applied to examine textual strategies used to legitimate inclusion or exclusion of religious difference. (shrink)

Research on organizational epistemic vice alleges that some organizations are epistemically malevolent, i.e. they habitually harm others by deceiving them. Yet, there is a lack of empirical research on epistemic malevolence. We connect the discussion of epistemic malevolence to the empirical literature on organizational deception. The existing empirical literature does not pay sufficient attention to the impact of an organization’s ability to control compromising information on its deception strategy. We address this gap by studying eighty high-penalty corporate misconduct cases between (...) 2000 and 2020 in the United States. We find that organizations use two different strategies to deceive: Organizations ‘sow doubt’ when they contest information about them or their impacts that others have access to. By contrast, organizations ‘exploit trust’ when they deceive others by obfuscating, concealing, or falsifying information that they themselves control. While previous research has focused on cases of ‘sowing doubt’, we find that organizations ‘exploit trust’ in the majority of cases that we studied. This has important policy implications because the strategy of ‘exploiting trust’ calls for a different response from regulators and organizations than the strategy of ‘sowing doubt’. (shrink)

In considering what it means to lead organizations effectively and ethically, the literature comprising spirituality at work and spiritual leadership theory has become highly influential, especially in the USA. It has also attracted significant criticism. While in this paper, we endorse this critique, we argue that the strand of literature which purportedly takes a Christian standpoint within the wider SAW school of thought, largely misconstrues and misapplies the teaching of its founder, Jesus. As a result, in dismissing the claims and (...) application of SAW and SLT, there is a real risk that we lose the vital contribution of Christian thought, not least some of the timeless counter-cultural wisdom of Jesus which, we contend, offers a vital foundation to the practice of ethical leadership and business ethics in organizations. In proposing a way forward, two thorny issues which face all leaders are addressed: dealing with ego and closing the gap between what we say and what we do. The more we understand about the dynamics of human nature, the more we learn about the profundity of Jesus’ teachings. We then propose a number of ways in which Jesus-centred ethical leadership can be practised. Each is radical and each implies risk: both the personal risk of inner renewal arising from repentance as a doorway to personal integrity, as well as the risk of opposing unethical practices and promoting the excellence of core practices in the workplace. (shrink)

Between 1909 and 1913, Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde (Berlin Museum of Natural History) unearthed more than 225 tons of fossils in former German East Africa and transported them to Berlin. Among them were the bones of Brachiosaurus brancai, which would eventually become the biggest mounted dinosaur in the world. By analyzing the social and communicative strategies that made this expedition possible, this paper aims to reveal several aspects of natural history knowledge production at the end of the long nineteenth century. (...) Using rhetoric, the director of the Geological–Paleontological Museum in Berlin, Wilhelm von Branca, conducted a highly successful campaign to market the dinosaurs in Prussia and to convince public opinion and the Prussian central state of the value of paleontology. He fired the Prussian imagination and took advantage of the competitive urge to emulate American paleontology and industry. This work examines how his public relations strategies shaped the German biological “landscape” of the first decades of the twentieth century. It asks: when and under what conditions did paleontology successfully appeal to the public? How does communication dictate, shape, and constrain the development of a specific epistemic agenda? And what kind of power do the public and money have? (shrink)

This book fills a major gap in the ever-increasing secondary literature on Hannah Arendt's political thought by providing a dedicated and coherent treatment of the many, various and interesting things which Arendt had to say about law. Often obscured by more pressing or more controversial aspects of her work, Arendt nonetheless had interesting insights into Greek and Roman concepts of law, human rights, constitutional design, legislation, sovereignty, international tribunals, judicial review and much more. This book retrieves these aspects of her (...) legal philosophy for the attention of both Arendt scholars and lawyers alike. The book brings together lawyers as well as Arendt scholars drawn from a range of disciplines (philosophy, political science, international relations), who have engaged in an internal debate the dynamism of which is captured in print. Following the editors' introduction, the book is split into four Parts: Part I explores the concept of law in Arendt's thought; Part II explores legal aspects of Arendt's constitutional thought: first locating Arendt in the wider tradition of republican constitutionalism, before turning attention to the role of courts and the role of parliament in her constitutional design. In Part III Arendt's thought on international law is explored from a variety of perspectives, covering international institutions and international criminal law, as well as the theoretical foundations of international law. Part IV debates the foundations, content and meaning of Arendt's famous and influential claim that the 'right to have rights' is the one true human right. (shrink)

Dave Ripley has recently argued against the plausibility of multiset consequence relations and of contraction-free approaches to paradox. For Ripley, who endorses a nontransitive theory, the best arguments that buttress transitivity also push for contraction—whence it is wiser for the substructural logician to go nontransitive from the start. One of Ripley’s allegations is especially insidious, since it assumes the form of a trivialisation result: it is shown that if a multiset consequence relation can be associated to a closure operator in (...) the expected way, then it necessarily contracts. We counter Ripley’s objection by presenting an approach to multiset consequence that escapes this trap. This approach is multiple-conclusioned in a heterodox way, for multiple succedents are given a conjunctive, rather than a disjunctive reading. Finally, we address a further objection by French and Ripley to the effect that the informational interpretation of sequents in linear logic does not motivate cut. (shrink)

L’analyse des catalogues des éditeurs du commerce est en train d’émerger dans l’histoire économique et gestionnaire. Une liste publiée sous le Consulat dormait dans un annuaire destiné aux négociants d’exportation. Établie par un libraire reconnu, elle a trouvé sa place en tête de l’ouvrage signé par un spécialiste du commerce européen. Nous étudions cette bibliographie comme le témoignage d’un moment charnière du marché du livre de commerce : celui où il renaît après la tourmente révolutionnaire.

Starting from a debate which took place at the beginning of the twenty-first century between Jean Clair and Arthur C. Danto, we will focus on the link between art and disgust, because we wish to show what art is now ‘doing’ with disgust. Our hypothesis is that art is part of the general process of self-reshaping that is underway in today’s capitalist societies. Therefore, by commenting Aurel Kolnai’s phenomenological analysis of disgust, we will gain the tools to try to show (...) how disgust could be a crucial factor in the above process. Finally, we will recall the work of artists such as Pasolini, Nebreda, and McCarthy, in order to suggest how art could use disgust and have an actual political effect by orienting that process. All this is possible, because disgust has to do with the good life. (shrink)

Belief Revision addresses the problem of rationally incorporating pieces of new information into an agent’s belief state. In the AGM paradigm, the most used framework in Belief Revision, primacy is given to the new information, which is fully incorporated into the agent’s belief state. However, in real situations, one may want to reject the new information or only accept a part of it. A constructive model called Selective Revision was proposed to meet this need but, as in the AGM framework, (...) focused on belief sets. In this paper we adapt the selective revision operators, that were proposed for belief sets, to the belief base context, obtaining a model in which an agent’s epistemic state is represented by a belief base and that allows the acceptance of only part of the new information. We present several representation theorems for selective base revision operators based on different base revision operators. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show how the logical empiricists’ interpretation of the relation between geometry and reality emerges from a “collision” of mathematical traditions. Considering Riemann’s work as the initiator of a 19th century geometrical tradition, whose main protagonists were Helmholtz and Poincaré, the logical empiricists neglected the fact that Riemann’s revolutionary insight flourished instead in a non-geometrical tradition dominated by the works of Christoffel and Ricci-Curbastro roughly in the same years. I will argue that, in the attempt to interpret (...) general relativity as the last link of the chain Riemann–Helmholtz–Poincaré–Einstein, logical empiricists were led to argue that Einstein’s theory of gravitation mainly raised a problem of mathematical under-determination, i.e. the discovery that there are physical differences that cannot be expressed in the relevant mathematical structure of the theory. However, a historical reconstruction of the alternative Riemann–Christoffel–Ricci–Einstein line of evolution shows on the contrary that the main philosophical issue raised by Einstein’s theory was instead that of mathematical over-determination, i.e. the recognition of the presence of redundant mathematical differences that do not have any correspondence in physical reality. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Schopenhauer’s idealism and investigates how its elaboration was related not only to Kant but also to Berkeley – a theme generally overlooked by scholars. Schopenhauer viewed B...

Over the past decades, the notions of organic form and morphology—a scientific field historically associated with the eighteenth century polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe —have stealthy re-assumed a central role in various scientific disciplines. Although the study of organic form was apparently excluded from the main stage of evolutionary theory and biological sciences during the second half of the twentieth century, since morphology was considered as a descriptive and ancillary science unable to contribute to the neo-Darwinian synthesis of evolution1, morphological (...) concepts and approaches have now been re-brought onto the central stage of mainstream science.2In fact, several interdisciplinary... (shrink)

My first book concerning the mind body problem published in a series of books edited by Paolo Rossi Monti.

This is my book about functionalism and materialism in contemporary philosophy of mind. It has been published with the finantial support of italian National Research Council (CNR).

This paper compares metaphysical nihilism, as it occurs in analytic metaphysics, with the solution to the puzzle of nothing by the Italian philosopher Emanuele Severino.

This perspective paper aims at discussing theoretical principles that could explain how emotion regulation and physical diseases mutually influence each other in the context of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Furthermore, this paper discusses the clinical implications of the functional relationships between emotion regulation, BPD and medical conditions considering dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) as a well-validated therapeutic intervention, which encompasses these issues. The inflexible use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (e.g., suppression, experiential avoidance, and rumination) might directly increase the probability of (...) developing physical diseases through a physiological pathway, or indirectly through a behavioral pathway. Some metabolic and chronic medical conditions could significantly impact emotional functioning through biological alterations involved in emotion regulation. Several empirical studies have shown high co-occurrence rates between BPD and several chronic physical diseases, especially ones linked to emotion-based maladaptive behaviors. DBT addresses physical diseases reported by individuals with BPD reducing problematic behaviors functionally associated to emotion dysregulation and identifying physical health as a goal forBuilding a Life Worth Living. (shrink)

SummaryTheoderic’s diplomacy with distant peoples has often been considered as a kind of ‘Realpolitik’ chiefly aimed at military or strategical purposes, but the symbolic importance of two embassies from the Warni and Hesti should be taken into consideration more carefully. The king aimed to convince his subjects and neighbours that he was the rightful heir of the Roman emperors by following a subtle policy of imitatio Imperii. He also used diplomacy to achieve this goal and took advantage of two embassies (...) from remote peoples of Northern Europe in order to imitate both Augustus and contemporary emperors, who prided themselves upon receiving envoys from far-away lands. (shrink)

- "La piů grande figura religiosa del cristianesimo moderno" č quella di Sebastian Franck, che, perseguitato dai teologi di tutte le Chiese, visse povero ed errabondo, «mantenendo la visione piů viva e luminosa delle grandi veritÀ del cristianesimo ed immedesimandole con la sua personalitÀ e la sua vita». La sua opera maggiore, i Paradoxa, scritta nella scia della mistica medievale germanica, mostra che il cristianesimo consiste essenzialmente di una vita nello spirito, basata su conversione e distacco, indipendentemente da teologie e (...) credenze, da libri sacri, culti, cerimonie e Chiese. (shrink)