Several authors have made claims about the compatibility between the Free Energy Principle and theories of autopoiesis and enaction. Many see these theories as natural partners or as making similar statements about the nature of biological and cognitive systems. We critically examine these claims and identify a series of misreadings and misinterpretations of key enactive concepts. In particular, we notice a tendency to disregard the operational definition of autopoiesis and the distinction between a system’s structure and its organization. Other misreadings (...) concern the conflation of processes of self-distinction in operationally closed systems and Markov blankets. Deeper theoretical tensions underlie some of these misinterpretations. FEP assumes systems that reach a non-equilibrium steady state and are enveloped by a Markov blanket. We argue that these assumptions contradict the historicity of sense-making that is explicit in the enactive approach. Enactive concepts such as adaptivity and agency are defined in terms of the modulation of parameters and constraints of the agent-environment coupling, which entail the possibility of changes in variable and parameter sets, constraints, and in the dynamical laws affecting the system. This allows enaction to address the path-dependent diversity of human bodies and minds. We argue that these ideas are incompatible with the time invariance of non-equilibrium steady states assumed by the FEP. In addition, the enactive perspective foregrounds the enabling and constitutive roles played by the world in sense-making, agency, development. We argue that this view of transactional and constitutive relations between organisms and environments is a challenge to the FEP. Once we move beyond superficial similarities, identify misreadings, and examine the theoretical commitments of the two approaches, we reach the conclusion that far from being easily integrated, the FEP, as it stands formulated today, is in tension with the theories of autopoiesis and enaction. (shrink)

The philosophical analysis of mathematical explanations concerns itself with two different, although connected, areas of investigation. The first area addresses the problem of whether mathematics can play an explanatory role in the natural and social sciences. The second deals with the problem of whether mathematical explanations occur within mathematics itself. Accordingly, this entry surveys the contributions to both areas, it shows their relevance to the history of philosophy and science, it articulates their connection, and points to the philosophical pay-offs to (...) be expected by deepening our understanding of the topic. (shrink)

Recent developments in generalized probability theory have renewed a debate about whether regularity (i.e., the constraint that only logical contradictions get assigned probability 0) should be a necessary feature of both chances and credences. Crucial to this debate, however, are some mathematical facts regarding the interplay between the existence of regular generalized probability measures and various cardinality assumptions. We improve on several known results in the literature regarding the existence of regular generalized probability measures. In particular, we give necessary and (...) sufficient conditions for the existence of regular generalized probability measures defined on the whole powerset of any sample space. (shrink)

According to the orthodox account developed by Kaplan, indexicals like I, you, and now invariably refer to elements of the context of speech. This essay argues that the orthodoxy is wrong. I, you, and the like are shifted by certain modal operators and hence can fail to refer to elements of the context, for example, I can fail to refer to the speaker. More precisely, indexicals are syntactically akin to logical variables. They can be free, in which case they work, (...) roughly, on the Kaplan model. But they can also be bound: this happens, in a systematic fashion, when they are in the scope of epistemic modals or attitude verbs. The new view has two interesting philosophical consequences. First, it vindicates a broadly Fregean perspective on referential expressions, essentially refuting the idea that indexicals are rigid designators. Second, it suggests a new picture of the interaction between context and linguistic meaning: compositional semantics does not need to look at the context and hence has no need for a context parameter. (shrink)

Anti-realist epistemic conceptions of truth imply what is called the knowability principle: All truths are possibly known. The principle can be formalized in a bimodal propositional logic, with an alethic modality ${\diamondsuit}$ and an epistemic modality ${\mathcal{K}}$, by the axiom scheme ${A \supset \diamondsuit \mathcal{K} A}$. The use of classical logic and minimal assumptions about the two modalities lead to the paradoxical conclusion that all truths are known, ${A \supset \mathcal{K} A}$. A Gentzen-style reconstruction of the Church–Fitch paradox is presented (...) following a labelled approach to sequent calculi. First, a cut-free system for classical bimodal logic is introduced as the logical basis for the Church–Fitch paradox and the relationships between ${\mathcal {K}}$ and ${\diamondsuit}$ are taken into account. Afterwards, by exploiting the structural properties of the system, in particular cut elimination, the semantic frame conditions that correspond to KP are determined and added in the form of a block of nonlogical inference rules. Within this new system for classical and intuitionistic “knowability logic”, it is possible to give a satisfactory cut-free reconstruction of the Church–Fitch derivation and to confirm that OP is only classically derivable, but neither intuitionistically derivable nor intuitionistically admissible. Finally, it is shown that in classical knowability logic, the Church–Fitch derivation is nothing else but a fallacy and does not represent a real threat for anti-realism. (shrink)

Este ensayo, dedicado a las doctrinas psicológicas de Alejandro, se divide en tres partes: la primera ilustra, a través de ejemplos tratados por el De anima, la concepción que tenía Alejandro de su actividad filosófica. Dado que Aristóteles ha transmitido las doctrinas más verdaderas, cree Alejandro, lo que hay que hacer es simplemente exponerlas de nuevo del modo más claro y completo, valiéndose de todo lo que dice Aristóteles respecto de las funciones psíquicas, incluso en obras diferentes del tratado principal. (...) La segunda parte del ensayo se centra en la sección inicial (1-26 Bruns) del tratado alejandrino, donde principalmente se prueba que el alma, como cualquier otra forma, es sólo la conjunción de las capacidades del cuerpo, cuya forma es el alma. Más aún, argumenta Accattino, tales capacidades anímicas nunca pueden expresarse independientemente del cuerpo, y menos aún con la desaparición del cuerpo. Por lo tanto, como forma del cuerpo, el alma es completamente mortal. La otra tesis célebre de Alejandro (la identificación del intelecto activo con el dios aristotélico de Metafísica Lambda) es tratada por Accattino en la tercera parte de su ensayo. Allí examina la noética del De intellectu de Alejandro y la sección dedicada a la noética en su De anima (80, 16-91, 6). En esta parte de su artículo el autor aclara, primero, los términos usados en la noética alejandrina (intelecto en potencia o intelecto “material”, intelecto entendido como “hábito”, intelecto “que viene de afuera”, el intelecto “agente”); luego ilustra el modo en que Alejandro da cuenta de la actividad intelectiva del intelecto humano y, finalmente, se concentra en el papel diferente que atribuye al intelecto agente (o el intelecto “que viene de afuera”, identificado por Alejandro con el intelecto divino) en el De intellectu y en la sección del De anima, respectivamente, de modo de mostrar que la posición más madura de Alejandro es la indicada en el De anima. (shrink)

This volume collects new, previously unpublished articles on Kaplan, analyzing a broad spectrum of topics ranging from cutting edge linguistics and the ...

This article recounts how Neo-Scholastic international lawyers navigated the complex political landscape of the 1920s and 30s, combining universalism, nationalism and religious belief. Participating in the contemporary re-engagement of Catholics with modern politics, they re-imagined the international legal order in Catholic terms. They argued that a universal morality, overruling the extremes of state sovereignty, was the only solid basis for just and stable global legal relations. While the contribution of Catholics to the establishment of the post-war world order and the (...) rise of human rights is widely acknowledged, the interwar genealogy of these developments is not. Reading these thinkers’ universalist legal tenets in conjunction with their political trajectories provides a relevant frame to understand the moral charge characterizing international law in the early years of the Cold War. (shrink)

This paper extends the axiomatic treatment of intuitionistic mereology introduced in Maffezioli and Varzi (_Synthese, 198_(S18), 4277–4302 2021 ) by examining the behavior of constructive notions of overlap and disjointness. We consider both (i) various ways of defining such notions in terms of other intuitionistic mereological primitives, and (ii) the possibility of treating them as mereological primitives of their own.

This article provides an overview of philosophical interpretations of Dostoevsky, focusing on readings that pay particular attention to his representation of the battle between good and evil, and postulating that said representation constitutes the essence of his works. The analysis maps this history of interpretations as developing within a specific framework: the dispute between interpreters who argue that good triumphs in Dostoevsky’s works and those who maintain that nihilism prevails in the end. In this context, the article submits its own (...) thesis: that a fundamental contradiction haunts the offer, in Dostoevsky’s works, of Christian salvation, and condemns Dostoevsky to defeat at the hands of his nihilists. (shrink)

Recent crises in Europe and beyond have renewed a longstanding debate on the status and treatment of refugees. Hannah Arendt famously questioned the limits of universalistic human rights discourse based on the widespread phenomena of statelessness and displacement that emerged during and after World War II. In this paper, we analyze recent patterns of inclusion and exclusion of refugees in Italy through the lens of Arendtian narrative and theorizing. We consider three cases of interaction between families, schools, and other public (...) institutions in light of the shifting normative framework before and during the war in Ukraine. Two major insights emerge from this analysis. From a pedagogical point of view, the most promising educational practices with refugees are those centered on enabling their agency and corresponding experiences of "natality". From an ethical-political perspective, these practices highlight a latent tension between the universalistic scope of human rights enshrined in the human rights declarations and their structural dependence on the particular norms and procedures enacted by nation states. The understanding and teaching of human rights within our political communities is inseparable from the practices that engage with refugees. In this sense, our practices of inclusion and exclusion affect the understanding of national borders as a barrier or threshold with other political communities, but also the interpretation of our own ethical-political principles. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is 1) to focus on the last section of the In Parmenidem, analyzing Proclus’ reflection on the relationship between the First God and what he calls the “axioms of contradiction”, accompanied by an attempt to harmonize in a subordinate sense the Aristotelian perspective with the Platonic one; 2) to analyze the reception of this idea in Nicholas of Cusa, the first Latin author to be systematically influenced by the In Parmenidem. It will be possible to (...) show how Cusanus develops a perspective that, on the one hand, finds its explicit antecedent in Proclus and, on the other, how he radicalizes Proclus’ perspective, developing theoretical tensions that we can find unsystematically in Proclus’ own thought. Proclus is aware that the Principle of all reality—and of science itself—must be conceived as in itself unknowable. At the same time, he seeks to save the ability of human knowledge to describe reality. Starting from an idea of the relationship between God and the laws of contradiction close to that of Proclus, Cusanus develops an epistemology that, on the one hand, recognizes the principle of contradiction as the ultimate principle of reason and, on the other hand, comes to the conclusion of a separation between thought and reality outside thought. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger and Emanuele Severino reflected on the meaning of technology more than anyone else in the twentieth century. Their philosophies are irreconcilable. They converge on this simple recognition and its implications: techno‐science dominates our time. But they disagree even on the interpretation of this domination. Exploring this disagreement will help us understand the leading dynamics of our civilization. Therefore, the intention in this paper is to unveil, for English speakers, the value of Severino’s philosophy in relation to Heidegger and (...) the meaning technology. We will see that, ultimately, their disagreement concerns the originary truth of Being and has repercussions on how they conceptualize technology and the possibility of redemption from it. Heidegger indicated the letting‐be of beings in their freedom as the possible path beyond technology. Severino saw Heidegger’s indication as destined to remain trapped in technology itself. If we understand why this was so – from Severino’s point of view – this may open a new path for us: the path of day, the path that may truly lead beyond technology. The aim of this paper is, finally, to indicate one reason why delving into Severino’s works is truly worthwhile: if it is possible for the truth to unveil itself beyond willing – where Heidegger couldn’t see – then Severino’s works may the place where this possibility appears in coherent conceptual form. (shrink)

It is usually maintained that a subject with manifestly contradictory beliefs is irrational. How can we account, then, for the intuitive rationality of dialetheists, who believe that some manifest contradictions are true? My paper aims to answer this question. Its ultimate goal is to determine a characterization of (or rather a constraint for) rational belief approvable by both the theorists of Dialetheism and its opponents. In order to achieve this goal, a two-step strategy will be adopted. First, a characterization of (...) rational belief applicable to non-dialetheist believers will be determined; this characterization will involve the semantic apparatus of Nathan Salmon’s Millian Russellianism but will get rid of the problematic and obscure notion of mode of presentation (guise in his own terminology), replacing it with a couple of novel devices, belief subsystems and cognitive coordination. Second, using ideas from Graham Priest, the leading proponent of Dialetheism, such a characterization will be modified, so as to devise a new one able to account for the intuitive rationality of both dialetheist and non-dialetheist believers. (shrink)

This thought-provoking study explores the philosophical resources provided by Hegel and Heidegger to grasp the nature of the "I" and combines those resources in a theoretical analysis of "I-hood" in its connection with nature and history, experience and myth. The "I" has a fleeting, almost elusive character in the philosophies of Hegel and Heidegger. Yet, both philosophers strive to make sense of what it means to be an "I". Their respective theories, though seemingly divergent, offer remarkable insights into the nature (...) of the "I" and its relationship to the world. Through meticulous examination, this book explores the parallel journeys of Hegel and Heidegger, tracing their respective paths towards a comprehensive conception of identity beyond the subject/object dichotomy. Moreover, this study goes beyond being an exploration of Hegel's and Heidegger's conceptions of the self, by actively employing their insights to chart a path toward a novel understanding of "I-hood". Hegel, Heidegger and the Quest for the "I" will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Hegel, Heidegger, history of European philosophy, and contemporary theories of subjectivity and personal identity. Offering a fresh perspective on the work of these two seminal thinkers, the book contributes to the ongoing dialogue on the nature of the self and its place in the world. (shrink)

This essay investigates the influence of the films of David Lynch on David Foster Wallace’s major novel Infinite Jest. It is organized in two sections. Section one illustrates Wallace’s views on what real art should be, as they are expressed in his two famous “manifestos,” and proceeds to read the essay “David Lynch Keeps His Head” in relation to the manifestos in order to demonstrate that Lynch’s influence on Wallace’s thought has not yet been fully grasped. Section two delves into (...) Infinite Jest to examine textual proof of the Wallace-Lynch connection, both in content and form. Content-wise, convergences are proven to permeate both authors’ interest in theories of consciousness, typified in themes such as: psychoanalysis, especially the Oedipus Complex; self-deception; the Sartrean “look;” the corporeal subject and the phenomenological distinction between objective body and lived body. Form-wise, the following narrative items are mapped: Lynch’s surrealism, recognizable in paradigmatic scenes from Infinite Jest; the character-idea, as both authors embody abstract ideas in characters; and a formal commitment to “an anti-teleological spirit.” Finally, the analysis takes into consideration Lynch’s films produced prior or during the writing of Infinite Jest, and exclusively those Wallace expressed direct admiration for, namely: Eraserhead (1977), The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), and Lost Highway (1997). (shrink)

This book argues that David Foster Wallace failed to provide a response to the existential predicament of our time. Wallace wanted to confront despair through art, but he remained trapped, and his entrapment originates in the ‘existentialist contradiction’: the impossibility of affirming the meaningfulness of life and an ethics of compassion while believing in free will. To substantiate this thesis, the analysis reads Wallace in conversation with the existentialist philosophers and writers who influenced him: Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Martin Heidegger, (...) Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It compares his non-fiction with the sociologies of Christopher Lasch, Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, and Anthony Giddens. And it finds inspiration in Giacomo Leopardi, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Emanuele Severino to conclude that the philosophy which pervades Wallace’s works entails despair and represents the essence of our civilization’s interpretation of the world. (shrink)

In contemporary literary theory, Plato is often cited as the original repudiator of literary truth, and Aristotle as he who set down that literature is “imitation,” thus himself involuntarily banning literature from truth. This essay argues that these interpretations adulterate the original arguments of Plato and Aristotle, who both believed in literary truth. We—literary theorists and philosophers of literature—should recognize this and rethink our interpretation of these ancient texts. This will, in turn, lead us to ask better questions about the (...) nature of literary truth and value. (shrink)

In his earlier work, Individual Autonomy and Responsibility in Late Imperial China, Paulo Santangelo embarked on an incisive analysis of Li Zhi's philosophical contributions, noting the necessity to compile evidence underscoring the significance of individual freedom and responsibility. This led him to explore the reevaluation of the individual from the latter part of the Ming dynasty to the early Qing dynasty. His aim was to trace the evolution of the valorization of individual will and desire, culminating in the construction of (...) a more autonomous selfhood. Drawing on an extensive array of sources from both Eastern and Western traditions and spanning various disciplines, Santangelo's study meticulously addresses questions of philosophical and ethical comparability. This book stands as a vital resource not only for those engaged in Chinese intellectual history and moral philosophy but also for scholars interested in understanding these issues on a global scale. (shrink)

Following Heidegger, Severino called ‘technology’ the lógos that interprets the world according to our fundamental belief in téchne. He considered Giacomo Leopardi to be the only thinker who brought this ideology to its logical conclusion: if we can transform the world, then everything is meaningless. We try to escape this conclusion, but if Severino is right, we cannot. His philosophy thus reminds us that we still aren’t aware of the fundamental meaning of our beliefs. Confronting its arguments may help us (...) become more self-aware and, perhaps, even move us to question the unquestionable. (shrink)

Paolo Crivelli; VII*—The Argument from Knowing and Not Knowing in Plato's Theaetetus (187E5–188C8), Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1.

L'objectif du present travail est avant tout de retracer le celebre clivage cartesien entre pensee et corps, a partir d'une analyse epistemologique de la disqualification - operee par Descartes - du role cognitif de l'imagination. L'auteur approfondit, d'un point de vue phenomenologique, trois solutions symptomatiques de l'epoque moderne, pour repenser le statut anthropologique et politique du sujet de facon unitaire: la tentation de reduire le corps a une idee, comme on le voit dans l'interpretation hegelienne de Malebranche; la reaction anti-cartesienne (...) du medecin-philosophe Cabanis, avec son ambition d'expliquer la pensee en termes d'emergence de la matiere corporelle; et enfin la tentative, que l'auteur met a l'epreuve a partir de Rosmini, de parler du corps sans renoncer a son alterite inquietante, mais en evitant aussi l'impasse dualiste.". (shrink)

What is the usual way of interpreting the relationships and exchanges between cultures? Despite the widespread “backlash”, multiculturalism is the model that still prevails in one of its two main versions: (1) the “assimilationist” version, which tends to eliminate all cultural differences, reducing them to the colonial domain of the Occidental culture, and (2) the so called “differencialist” version, a current trend (taking into account the identity crises of the West), according to which cultures are like “museum pieces”, fixed and (...) immutable “cognitive islands”, to be left on their own. What are the defects of this multicultural perspective, especially in the differencialist version? Exactly the ideological pretension of believing that cultures are like monads of Leibniz, without doors or windows. This is precisely the opposite of what Gandhi held, for example, when he said that a culture cannot survive if it believes it can eliminate the others. (shrink)

In Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, the year of 2020 marked a dramatic escalation of military activities of the Islamist insurgent group locally known as Al-Shabab or mashababe. This intensification was accompanied by a more immaterial phenomenon: the rise in prominence of social media, both as battleground and as public forum. While the insurgents sacked and occupied major towns and district headquarters, the Web 2.0 networks - Facebook and WhatsApp especially - became the central arena in which the war was apprehended and (...) discussed. This essay is an exploration of the entwining of social media with the 'new war' in Cabo Delgado, focussing on the events that surround the conquest of the Makonde plateau, mythical cradle of the Mozambican liberation struggle. Building on a budding literature on digital militarism, the essay dwells especially on orality and the use of the voice note as a medium to convey information deemed to be more trustworthy and stable than images. Tracking these media and their interrelations, the essay establishes a narrative, however fragmentary, of the downfall of the Makonde plateau; highlights recurring features of violence in the Cabo Delgado conflict; and provides fresh insight into the formation of the Local Force (Força Local), a State-sponsored militia largely constituted by war veterans. (shrink)

In his article La fin de la matière (1906) Henri Poincaré reported that according to many physicists “matter does not exist”, but he immediately added: “this discovery is not conclusive”. This caution was not shared by many philosophers, who swiftly saluted both special and general relativity as the sources of a new conception of physical objects. In my talk I will focus on Marburg neo-Kantianism (Cohen, Natorp and Cassirer) with its characteristic thesis of a progressive “dissolution” of matter modern physics, (...) culminating in relativity. I will point out that this view predated Einstein’s discoveries and was rooted in a long epistemological tradition starting with Leibniz and Kant. Indeed, the neo-Kantian philosophers argued that this view was an originally Platonic insight that modern physics (and Einstein’s relativity in particular) eventually confirmed. I will show that this historical-philosophical perspective influenced the reception of relativity and left open a number of epistemological and scientific problems. (shrink)