Italian political thinker Paolo Virno argues that the category of "multitude" is a far better tool to analyze contemporary issues than the Hobbesian concept of "people." Globalization is forcing us to rethink some of the categories—such as "the people"—that traditionally have been associated with the now eroding state. Italian political thinker Paolo Virno argues that the category of "multitude," elaborated by Spinoza and for the most part left fallow since the seventeenth century, is a far better tool to (...) analyze contemporary issues than the Hobbesian concept of "people," favored by classical political philosophy. Hobbes, who detested the notion of multitude, defined it as shunning political unity, resisting authority, and never entering into lasting agreements. "When they rebel against the state," Hobbes wrote, "the citizens are the multitude against the people." But the multitude isn't just a negative notion, it is a rich concept that allows us to examine anew plural experiences and forms of nonrepresentative democracy. Drawing from philosophy of language, political economics, and ethics, Virno shows that being foreign, "not-feeling-at-home-anywhere," is a condition that forces the multitude to place its trust in the intellect. In conclusion, Virno suggests that the metamorphosis of the social systems in the West during the last twenty years is leading to a paradoxical "Communism of the Capital.". (shrink)

Past research on recruitment has shown that employer image predicts job seekers’ perceptions of organizational attractiveness. We contribute to this body of work by examining job seekers’ reactions to a market-dominant employer that has suffered from a case of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI). We show that job seekers’ reaction is buffered in the case of dominant employers’ wrongdoing. This effect is stronger for job seekers who are very interested in working in the dominant employers’ industry. Market dominance, however, reduces the (...) negative impact of CSI only under certain circumstances. We find that market dominance provides a buffer against the negative effect of CSI only when (1) CSI is directly relevant to the domain of performance of the organization and (2) job seekers feel very certain about their attitudes toward the organization. In two experiments with participants actively looking for employment at the time of study, we tested a model of moderated mediation examining how market dominance and CSI influence perceived employer ethicality and perceived employer competence. These two variables, in turn, explain how job seekers form perceptions of organizational attractiveness. This is the first study to explore how job seekers react to potential employers that are dominant in a market but have suffered from a CSI incident. The study identifies the boundary conditions that explain why sometimes market-dominant employers can emerge relatively unscathed in the eyes of job seekers following CSI. The research opens important managerial implications concerning the recruitment efforts of organizations that have suffered from CSI. (shrink)

The notion of «the common good», which is crucial for understanding humankind and society, is not immediately obvious. It is, moreover, widely understood and used according to meanings that are irreconcilable and internally contradictory. The essay, after distinguishing between a notional exposition and the possibility of analysing the common good as the constitutive profile of human reality, deepens the structure and sense of order of life in association. This order, inasmuch as it takes shape and consistency through the free and (...) generous cooperation among individuals, may be described as the integrating moment of the common good, the nucleus of society inasmuch as expression of the original social reality of humanity. The common good is constituted through the participation of individuals and - together, circularly and progressively - opens itself up as the place of their possible realization. In this way the common good is the inescapable key to understanding the mystery of our social and historical condition. (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)

A proof-theoretic test for paradoxicality was famously proposed by Tennant: a paradox must yield a closed derivation of absurdity with no normal form. Drawing on the remark that all derivations of a given proposition can be transformed into derivations in normal form of a logically equivalent proposition, we investigate the possibility of paradoxes in normal form. We compare paradoxes à la Tennant and paradoxes in normal form from the viewpoint of the computational interpretation of proofs and from the viewpoint of (...) proof-theoretic semantics. (shrink)

The development of the curriculum for engineering education should be based on a comprehensive understanding of engineers’ responsibilities. The responsibilities that are constitutive of being an engineer include striving to fulfill the standards of excellence set by technical codes; to improve the idealized models that engineers use to predict, for example, the behavior of alternative designs; and to achieve the internal goods such as safety and sustainability as they are reflected in the design codes. Globalization has implications for these responsibilities (...) and, in turn, for engineering education, by, for example, modifying the collection of possible solutions recognized for existing problems. In addition, international internships can play an important role in fostering the requisite moral imagination of engineering students. (shrink)

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)

In this article, I argue that the interpretation of Kant's a priori in Marburg neo-Kantianism involved a historiographical problem concerning the Platonic interpretation of the history of exact sci...

In the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics (1766), Kant remarks that Stahl, with his admission of immaterial forces for the explanation of organisms, was “closer to the truth than Hoffmann and Boerhaave, to name but a few,” although the latter adopted a “more philosophical method.” This puzzling statement is very significant for the understanding of Kant’s reception of animism, as it documents Kant’s reaction to the issues raised by the Leibniz-Stahl controversy and his striking preference for (...) Stahl’s nonmechanistic account of organisms. Kant agrees with Stahl that organisms suggest the existence of immaterial thinking beings, but at the same time, the example of this speculative hypothesis leads him to question the explanatory power of metaphysical hypotheses in natural philosophy in general, as well as the possibility of empirically distinguishing among different hypotheses, such as monadology, materialism, and hylozoism. After the analysis of Kant’s skeptical conclusions in the Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, I discuss how this earlier connection of medicine, life sciences, and metaphysics leaves traces in Kant’s later work, by analyzing Kant’s discussion of Samuel Sömmering’s claim that matter “can be animated” in On the Organ of the Soul (1796) and the preliminary drafts for this essay. (shrink)

: The present work analyses Content Moderation, focusing on ethical concerns and cognitive effects. Starting from a general description and history of the moderation process, it stresses some ethical problems: quality of moderation, transparency, and the working conditions of human moderators. Using some of Facebook leaked slides offering examples of moderation, we define some controversial rules and principles for Commercial Content Moderation. These examples highlight a general lack of coherency and transparency, which has the potential to affect users’ cognitive attitudes, (...) their perception of reality, and their freedom of speech. Such effects are studied in comparison to other well-known online cognitive phenomena and in relation to the most recent dedicated legislation in EU countries. The current Content Moderation scheme leaves users at risk of specific cognitive distortions, highlighting the urgent need for greater transparency throughout the moderation process and better working conditions for moderators. Keywords: Content Moderation; Freedom of Speech; Epistemic Bubble; Technology Ethics Commercial Content Moderation: un oscuro labirinto per la libertà d’espressione e le opinioni degli utenti Riassunto: Il presente lavoro offre un’analisi approfondita della moderazione di contenuti, concentrandosi sulle problematiche etiche e sugli effetti cognitivi. A partire da una introduzione ai concetti chiave e alla storia della moderazione di contenuti online, si concentra su alcuni problemi etici primari: la qualità della moderazione, la sua trasparenza e le condizioni di lavoro dei lavoratori. Utilizzando dei documenti formativi interni di Facebook, pubblicati da un quotidiano e dagli esempi in essi contenuti, definiremo le controverse regole e i principi della Commercial Content Moderation. Ne emerge una generale mancanza di coerenza organizzativa e di trasparenza nel processo, che mostra potenziali effetti dannosi sulle attitudini degli utenti, sulla loro percezione della realtà e la loro libertà di parola. Tali effetti saranno studiati in confronto con i più conosciuti effetti cognitivi del mondo dei social ed in relazione alle più recenti disposizioni di leggi europee in merito. Gli schemi attualmente in uso producono degli specifici effetti di distorsione cognitiva e conseguentemente mostrano l’importanza di una maggiore attenzione alla trasparenza del processo e alle condizioni di lavoro dei moderatori. Parole chiave: Moderazione di contenuti; Libertà di parola; Bolla epistemica; Etica della tecnologia. (shrink)

Abstract:Taking my title from "Lingering in the Woods," one of Umberto Eco's Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, I present a study of Stanley Cavell's style of writing. While a dominant Anglo-American style of philosophical writing seems to be motivated principally by a desire for argumentation, a Cavellian, lingering style aims at thorough expression and description of the human experience. Traces of this style can be found also in Ludwig Wittgenstein's writing. After reopening the debate that arose from some responses (...) to The Claim of Reason, I conclude with a close reading of Cavell's "Excursus on Wittgenstein's Vision of Language.". (shrink)

I. Hardly any other mythical creature has enjoyed the ubiquity of the clown: “There are few other myths such as this one about which it can be affirmed without any doubt that they involve the most ancient modes of human expression,” wrote Paul Radin in his famous essay on the figure of the clown among primitive American Indians. “There are few myths which have retained their original characters with so few changes.” The character of the Fool, the Jester, the Joker (...) appears in a clearly identifiable fashion in the most primitive as well as the most highly cultivated groups: among the Greeks as well as the Chinese; in Japanese civilization as well as the Semite world. The medieval juggler is the embodiment of this figure of many aspects who perdures in the theater, especially puppet theater, and in the guise of the circus clown. (shrink)

The moment we live in is a moment of multiple crisis – environmental, political, economic, and viral – a moment, that is, where the reality of damage, fallibility and faultiness, and the ensuing fear, anxiety, rage, trauma, protest, and mobilisation have reached a critical point. Past and present narratives of crisis and trauma can help navigate this process. In this article we have chosen to focus on Italo Svevo’s Zeno’s Conscience (1923) and Hideo Kojima’s videogame Death Stranding (2019) for several (...) reasons. The most important of all are Svevo’s and Kojima’s choices to deal with the trauma of crisis by emphasising and investigating the process leading to crisis, and of focusing on the zone in-between the ‘normal’ and the unknown. In so doing both narratives underscore the significance of ruins, desolation and the broken as a backdrop for rediscovering everyday life and forging meaningful connections in a fragmented world. (shrink)

Sulla scia di un percorso già segnato da appuntamenti importanti e coinvolgenti istituzioni e studiosi italiani e stranieri, centri di studi specializzati, il Volume che qui si presenta raccoglie i contributi del Convegno Internazionale di Studi dedicato a: Lévinas e la cultura del XX secolo, tenutosi a Napoli tra il 10 ed il 12 aprile 2000: G. Lissa, S. Trigano, I. Kajon, E. Méir, S. Petrosino, E. D’Antuono, M. Signore, M. Zarader, D. Cohen-Lévinas, J. Colette, E. Baccarini, D. Banon, P. (...) Amodio, E. Arseneva, è. Levine, F. Ciaramelli, M. Caporale, G. Giannini. (shrink)