The essay addresses contemporary discussions on women?s transnationalism and women?s agency by looking at the first conference of the UN Decade for Women held in Mexico City in 1975, and at its specific embedding in Cold War geopolitics. Through an engagement with different feminist and activists voices, and particularly with the less visible anti-imperialist, Non-Aligned and socialist genealogies of women?s activism expressed during the meeting, the essay argues that the paradigm of Western feminist knowledge production needs to be revisited, in (...) order to encompass multiple forms of women?s political agency that are not expressed through the liberal framework of women?s individual autonomy from the state. By juxtaposing Betty Friedan?s and Vida Tomsic?s stances during the Mexico City event, the paper shows that women?s political agency during the Cold War era took different forms, which included both the refusal and the acceptance of women?s activism within existing national and international institutions. nema. (shrink)

This book investigates the problematisation in Adam Smith's moral philosophy of a classical question: what makes us human beings from a moral standpoint? To do this, Riccardo Bonfiglioli explores the relationship between the concepts of ‘human nature’, ‘mind’ and ‘the self’ in order to reconstruct Smith’s theory of subjectivity. After providing a systematic reconstruction of Adam Smith’s conceptions of ‘human nature’, ‘mind’ and ‘the self’ – exploring some aspects of Smith’s philosophy (nature, philosophy of history, sympathy and imagination) and (...) their empirical expressions (education, conduct and character) – Bonfiglioli argues that, in Adam Smith’s work, the meaning of ‘moral human beings’ would depend on the human being’s effort to live in harmony with oneself and the others. According to Bonfiglioli, in Smith’s moral theory, this ‘harmony with oneself and the others’ would be achieved in relation to a certain kind of awareness that can be possible when human beings try to judge the conduct and try to act according to the impartial spectator. Specifically, this impartial spectator is reinterpreted by the author in the light of the concept of immediacy. (shrink)

In recent years, the family of algorithms collected under the term ``deep learning'' has revolutionized artificial intelligence, enabling machines to reach human-like performances in many complex cognitive tasks. Although deep learning models are grounded in the connectionist paradigm, their recent advances were basically developed with engineering goals in mind. Despite of their applied focus, deep learning models eventually seem fruitful for cognitive purposes. This can be thought as a kind of biological exaptation, where a physiological structure becomes applicable for a (...) function different from that for which it was selected. In this paper, it will be argued that it is time for cognitive science to seriously come to terms with deep learning, and we try to spell out the reasons why this is the case. First, the path of the evolution of deep learning from the connectionist project is traced, demonstrating the remarkable continuity, and the differences as well. Then, it will be considered how deep learning models can be useful for many cognitive topics, especially those where it has achieved performance comparable to humans, from perception to language. It will be maintained that deep learning poses questions that cognitive sciences should try to answer. One of such questions is the reasons why deep convolutional models that are disembodied, inactive, unaware of context, and static, are by far the closest to the patterns of activation in the brain visual system. (shrink)

In this article I rethink Rawls' conception of international economic justice, with a particular focus on international trade. I ground my normative argument on a different interpretation of the concepts of basic structure and of basic institution. I use the contemporary international trading system to illustrate my normative interpretation. I use the Law of Peoples to discuss the Rawlsian concept of basic structure. I contest Samuel Freeman's interpretation of this concept as one that pertains exclusively to the domestic realm. As (...) a reply, I work out an interpretation of basic institutions valid for both the national and international context. I base my understanding on the impact and the form of membership that characterize basic institutions. Both properties are compatible with an extension of the concept of a basic institution to the international domain. I then show how the World Trade Organization (WTO) system can be compared to a domestic basic institution. I analyse the decisional setting that surrounds the choice of joining the WTO. I conclude that no real alternative exists. Hence, WTO membership is not to be considered a completely free policy choice. I also state that the new system is witnessing a strong expansion of the areas subject to trade governance. Such expansion is responsible for the growing impact that international trade has on domestic institutions and hence on people. Finally, I use my analysis of contemporary international trading relations to test Rawls' position in the Law of Peoples. I conclude that although Rawls' principles for fair trade and international cooperation can regulate GATT-style international trade, they are not proficient in assessing the new characteristics of international trade. (shrink)

. This paper aims to highlight some peculiarities of the semiotic square, whose creation is due in particular to Greimas’ works. The starting point is the semiotic notion of complex term, which I regard as one of the main differences between Greimas’ square and Blanché’s hexagon. The remarks on the complex terms make room for a historical survey in Aristotle’s texts, where one can find the philosophical roots of the idea of middle term between two contraries and its relation to (...) notions such as difference, position and motion. In the Stagirite’s non-logical works, the theory of the intermediate, or middle term, represents an important link between opposition issues and ethics: this becomes a privileged perspective from which to reconsider the semiotic use of the square, i.e., its inclusion in the semio-narrative structures articulating the sense of texts. (shrink)

Drawing from field theory, Gestalt therapy conceives psychological suffering and psychotherapy as two intentional field phenomena, where unprocessed and chaotic experiences seek the opportunity to emerge and be assimilated through the contact between the patient and the therapist (i.e., the intentionality of contacting). This therapeutic approach is based on the therapist’s aesthetic experience of his/her embodied presence in the flow of the healing process because (1) the perception of beauty can provide the therapist with feedback on the assimilation of unprocessed (...) experiences; (2) the therapist’s attentional focus on intrinsic aesthetic diagnostic criteria can facilitate the modification of rigid psychopathological fields by supporting the openness to novel experiences. The aim of the present manuscript is to review recent evidence from psychophysiology, neuroaesthetic research, and neurocomputational models of cognition, such as the free energy principle (FEP), which support the notion of the therapeutic potential of aesthetic sensibility in Gestalt psychotherapy. Drawing from neuroimaging data, psychophysiology and recent neurocognitive accounts of aesthetic perception, we propose a novel interpretation of the sense of beauty as a self-generated reward motivating us to assimilate an ever-greater spectrum of sensory and affective states in our predictive representation of ourselves and the world and supporting the intentionality of contact. Expecting beauty, in the psychotherapeutic encounter, can help therapists tolerate uncertainty avoiding impulsive behaviours and to stay tuned to the process of change. (shrink)

How is freedom valuable? And how should we go about defining freedom? In this essay, I discuss a distinction between two general ways of valuing freedom: one appeals to the good (e.g., to freedom's contribution to well-being); the other appeals to how persons have reason to treat one another in virtue of their status as purposive beings (to the right). The analysis of these two values has many relevant implications and it is preliminary to a better understanding of the relationships (...) between freedom and justice. First, it contributes to shed light on the relationship between trust and the value of freedom, and on two attitudes towards freedom – promoting and respecting freedom. Second, it disambiguates between two versions of the claim that freedom has non-specific/content-independent value: one appeals to the good, the other to the right. And third, I show that certain implications concerning the definition of freedom follow from assuming an account of the value of freedom that exclusively appeals to the right, illustrating how the value of freedom can shape what freedom is. (shrink)

Riassunto: L’impianto cocleare è una neuroprotesi che consente un recupero parziale dell’udito nella persona sorda. Nonostante la sua generale efficacia nel contrastare alcuni dei problemi legati alla sordità, il suo utilizzo è stato fortemente osteggiato da quella parte della comunità sorda che vede nella sordità una forma di identità culturale e non una patologia. Questo articolo inquadra in una prospettiva neuroetica le preoccupazioni della comunità sorda – difficilmente comprensibili agli udenti – esaminando le analogie fra il rifiuto dell’IC e il (...) disagio che si osserva nella popolazione generale relativamente al Potenziamento Cognitivo. Nel PCog, individui sani insoddisfatti delle proprie prestazioni, o comunque desiderosi di migliorarle, ricorrono ad interventi artificiali per potenziare le proprie funzioni cognitive. L’analisi evidenzia come, nel rifiutare l’IC, la comunità sorda possa voler tutelare un insieme di valori non così diverso da quello che la comunità generale richiama spesso nelle sue preoccupazioni rispetto alla diffusione dei PCog. Parole chiave : Impianto cocleare; Potenziamento cognitivo; Sordità; Cultura sorda The cochlear implant as cognitive enhancement? A neuroethical perspective on some issues raised by the deaf community: The cochlear implant is a neuroprosthesis that allows for partial recovery of auditory function in individuals who are deaf. Despite its general efficacy, its use has been strongly opposed by a part of the deaf community that perceives deafness as a form of cultural identity, rather than a pathology. This article considers the concerns of the deaf community – which are often difficult for hearing people to understand – from a neuroethics perspective, proposing that such opposition to CI is analogous to the general population’s unease with regard to Cognitive Enhancement. CE allows healthy individuals who are unsatisfied with – or would like to improve – their performance to use artificial interventions that enhance cognitive functions. The analysis reveals that, when opposing CIs, the deaf community may be protecting a set of values similar to those that the general community often evokes when voicing concerns about CE diffusion. Keywords: Cochlear Implant; Cognitive Enhancement; Deafness; Deaf Culture. (shrink)

This essay focuses on recent autobiographies written by Italian women born in the 1920s who engaged in revolutionary politics during and after the Second World War: Luciana Castellina (La scoperta del mondo, 2011), Bianca Guidetti Serra (Bianca la rossa, 2009), Marisa Ombra (La bella politico, 2010), Marisa Rodano (Del mutare dei tempi, 2008) and Rossana Rossanda (La ragazza del secolo scorso, 2005). In these autobiographies, personal narratives of passionate engagement are entangled with the urgency of antifascist resistance, and with the (...) social and political conflicts that traversed Cold War Italy. Women's multiple forms of political engagement within the Italian Communist Party are analysed, as well as the contradictory, ambivalent connection between Western European communist activists and Eastern European socialist regimes. The intersections between antifascist, communist and women's rights politics are also explored, since some of the authors were leaders of the nation-wide left-wing Union of Italian Women. The autobiographies tell the story of an antifascist, left-wing ‘middle wave’ that fought pioneering battles for women's political and social rights, and narrate its complex, conflictual encounter with second-wave feminism in the 1970s. These writings, therefore, allow us to reflect on changes in gendered subjectivities and revolutionary politics across time and generations. (shrink)

The notion of 'symbol' in Eriugena's writing is far from clear. It has an ambiguous semantic connection with other terms such as 'signification', 'figure', 'allegory', 'veil', 'agalma', 'form', 'shadow', 'mystery' and so on. This paper aims to explore into the origins of such a semantic ambiguity, already present in the texts of the pseudo-Dionysian corpus which Eriugena translated and commented upon. In the probable Neoplatonic sources of this corpus, the Greek term symbolon shares some aspects of its meaning with other (...) words inherited from the ancient tradition, such as synthēma , eikōn , homoiotēs. Some of them, such as eikōn and homoiotēs, belong to the field of images and are associated with linguistic semantics in the Neoplatonic commentaries not only to Plato but also to Aristotle's logical works. Among the late ancient Neoplatonists, particular attention is paid to Proclus and to his use of the term agalma. In fact, the textual history of this word seems to be a privileged perspective from which to reconstruct the Neoplatonic semantic blending of symbol and image, as well as the main role played by linguistic issues in this conflation. (shrink)

In the 20th century the occurrence of revolutions, violent collective behaviours and dictatorships have shown the power of masses, raising many theoretical issues in sociology, philosophy and psychology. In this paper we will focus on four accounts in order to clarify the relation between a mass of human individuals and the role of a leader. These explanations are developed respectively by Weber, Le Bon, Freud and Girard. Even if our work is theoretical, we will briefly mention the French Revolution as (...) solid example for a better understanding of mass-leader relation. (shrink)

The absence of an English translation of Gonzaga's writings, both as a whole and separately, , inspired me to undertake it with the aim of making it more accessible to the public. If I were to talk briefly about the outline, the first original French version of the text appears as an anonymous author's work. In that first version signed by Sir Thomas Witth whom nothing is known about, Gonzaga doesn’t appear. His name hadn’t been appearing in the first booklet (...) for seven years until it appeared as translator in the 1807 version. Researchers concur that this was actually a trick which Gonzaga has been hiding behind because he probably never had the courage to introduce himself as the author. It is claimed that it has been conducted a lot of research in order to recover the text of Sir Thomas Witth or other possible authors with a similar name but any satisfactory solution to the riddle has not yet been given. Regarding historical data carried out during my research, I would like to offer my opinion that there is the Scottish philosophy of Common Sense hidden behind this pseudonym which deserves attention. (shrink)

The paper investigates the epistemological and communicative competences the experts need to use and communicate evidence in the reasoning process leading to diagnosis. The diagnosis and diagnosis communication are presented as intertwined processes that should be jointly addressed in medical consultations, to empower patients’ compliance in illness management. The paper presents defeasible reasoning as specific to the diagnostic praxis, showing how this type of reasoning threatens effective diagnosis communication and entails that we should understand diagnostic evidence as defeasible as well. (...) It argues that metaphors might be effective communicative devices to let the patients understand the relevant defeasors in the diagnostic reasoning process, helping to improve effective diagnosis communication, and also encouraging a change in patients’ beliefs and attitudes on their own experience of illness and illness’ management. (shrink)

Léon Brunschvicg's contribution to philosophical thought in fin-de-siècle France receives full explication in the first English-language study on his work. Arguing that Brunschvicg is crucial to understanding the philosophical schools which took root in 20th-century France, Pietro Terzi locates Brunschvicg alongside his contemporary Henri Bergson, as well as the range of thinkers he taught and influenced, including Lévinas, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, and Sartre. Brunschvicg's deep engagement with debates concerning spiritualism and rationalism, neo-Kantian philosophy, and the role of mathematics in (...) philosophy made him the perfect supervisor for a whole host of nascent philosophical ideas which were forming in the work of his students. Terzi outlines Brunchvicg's defence of neo-Kantian judgement, historical analysis and the inextricability of the natural and humanist sciences to any rigorous system of philosophy, with wide-ranging implications for contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

During his late period, Nietzsche is particularly concerned with the value that mankind attributes to truth. In dealing with that topic, Nietzsche is not primarly interested in the metaphysical disputes on truth, but rather in the effects that the "will to truth" has on the human being. In fact, he argues that the "faith in a value as such of truth" influenced Western culture and started the anthropological degeneration of the human type that characterizes European morality. To call into question (...) the value of truth is therefore necessary, if one wants to help mankind to find her way in the labyrinth of nihilism. -/- In this new addition to Nietzsche scholarship, Gori explores the origin and aim of the philosopher's late perspectival thought by merging the theoretical with the historical approach, with a special focus on the epistemological debate that influenced Nietzsche. As a result, the book provides a contextual reading of the issue that supports the idea that Nietzsche’s attitude in addressing the problem of truth is, in a broad sense, pragmatic. (shrink)

The conversation between Giorgio Barberio Corsetti and Pietro Montani, led by Dario Cecchi, focuses on some of the principal aspects of the career and work of Paolo Rosa and Studio Azzurro, by making reference also to the occasion when the director and the philosopher met the artist and his team. Of such an artistic path, they have been particularly emphasized the interest for the dialogue among different artistic languages (theatre, video art); the attention to the way images are able (...) to refresh the meaning of action and word within theatre and performing arts generally speaking; the relationship between art and technics in the perspective of a “poetic” (or better “poietic”) use of technologies and media; the importance given to the public (ethical and political) dimension of images and art installations, able to working through the sense of belonging to a community. (shrink)

This paper aims at comparing and relating belief revision and argumentation as approaches to model reasoning processes. Referring to some prominent literature references in both fields, we will discuss their (implicit or explicit) assumptions on the modeled processes and hence commonalities and differences in the forms of reasoning they are suitable to deal with. The intended contribution is on one hand assessing the (not fully explored yet) relationships between two lively research fields in the broad area of defeasible reasoning and (...) on the other hand pointing out open issues and potential directions for future research. (shrink)

This critical essay evaluates the potential integration of distinct kinds of expertise in policymaking, especially during situations of critical emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This article relies on two case studies: herd immunity and restricted access to ventilators for disabled people. These case studies are discussed as examples of experts’ recommendations that have not been widely accepted, though they were made within the boundaries of expert epistemic authority. While the fundamental contribution of biomedical experts in devising public health policies (...) during the COVID-19 pandemic is fully recognized, this paper intends to discuss potential issues and limitations that may arise when adopting a strict expert-based approach. By drawing attention to the interests of minorities, the paper also claims a broader notion of “relevant expertise.” This critical essay thus calls for the necessity of wider inclusiveness and representativeness in the process underlying public health policymaking. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive exposition of the early contributions to the so-called Campbell, Baker, Hausdorff, Dynkin Theorem during the years 1890–1950. Related works by Schur, Poincaré, Pascal, Campbell, Baker, Hausdorff, and Dynkin will be investigated and compared. For a full recovery of the original sources, many mathematical details will also be furnished. In particular, we rediscover and comment on a series of five notable papers by Pascal (Lomb Ist Rend, 1901–1902), which nowadays are almost (...) forgotten. (shrink)

This essay deals with Girolamo Fracastoro’s ensouled cosmology. His Homocentrica sive de stellis (1538), an astronomy of concentric spheres, was discussed by the Padua School of Aristotelians. Since the polemics over the immortality of the human soul, which had famously opposed Pomponazzi to Nifo, psychological discussions—including those about heavenly spheres’ souls—raised heated controversies. Fracastoro discussed the foundations of his homocentric planetary theory in a dialogue titled Fracastorius, sive de anima (1555). In a 1531 exchange with Gasparo Contarini, Fracastoro discussed celestial (...) physics, including problems linked to mathematical analysis of physical causation. Contarini expressed his doubts over Fracastoro’s lack of consideration of Aristotelian viewpoints on heavenly souls and intelligences. Fracastoro offered an account of cosmic animation in his later dialogue “On the Soul,” taking a different path than his Paduan teachers. He picked up the Platonic idea of the “world soul,” freely connecting it with Aristotelian views about the ensouled cosmos of concentric spheres, resulting in an eclectic composition of Platonic, Aristotelian, and Averroistic elements. Fracastoro grounded his renewed mathematical astronomy on an understanding of the cosmos as a living whole. His animated homocentric cosmos represented a development of Aristotelian premises and a step beyond this legacy. (shrink)

This paper explores Thomas Kuhn’s mature conception of incommensurable theories as collective structured lexicons that are not mutually translatable. As will be argued, his view on this issue can profitably be approached in the light of the broad pragmatist attitude that one finds at the core of Wittgenstein’s late philosophy of language, which can also consistently be ascribed to Kuhn.

The Handbook of Formal Argumentation is a community effort aimed at providing a comprehensive and up-to-date view of the state of the art and current trends in the lively research field of formal argumentation. The first volume of the Handbook is organised into five parts, containing nineteen chapters in all, each written by leading experts in the field. The first part provides a general and historical perspective on the field. The second part gives a comprehensive coverage of the argumentation formalisms (...) available in the literature at various levels of abstraction. The third part is devoted to cover some of the many dialogical aspects of argumentation, while the fourth one deals with algorithmic, computational and implementation issues. Finally, the fifth part provides some deeper analyses on the previously introduced topics. The Handbook of Formal Argumentation is an open-ended initiative of which the present volume is the first outcome. Further volumes are planned to cover topics not included in the present one and the initiative is conceived to grow by the support and feeding it receives from the community members. (shrink)

Orthodox decision theory is fanatical in the way it treats small probabilities of enormous value, if unbounded utility functions are allowed. Some have suggested a fix, Nicolausian discounting, according to which outcomes with small enough probabilities should be ignored when making decisions. However, there are lotteries involving only small-probability outcomes, none of which should intuitively be ignored. So the Nicolausian discounter needs a procedure for distinguishing the problematic cases of small-probability outcomes from the unproblematic ones. In this paper, I present (...) a dilemma for Nicolausian discounting: the view must be coupled either with a procedure that delivers fanatical verdicts of its own, as bad as those of orthodox decision theory, or with one that entails intransitive cyclic preferences. (shrink)

We present a logic of evidence that reduces agents’ epistemic idealisations by combining classical propositional logic with substructural modal logic for formulas in the scope of epistemic modalities. To this aim, we provide a neighborhood semantics of evidence, which provides a modal extension of Fine’s semantics for relevant propositional logic. Possible worlds semantics for classical propositional logic is then obtained by defining the set of possible worlds as a special subset of information states in Fine’s semantics. Finally, we prove that (...) evidence is a hyperintensional and non-prime notion in our logic, and provide a sound and complete axiomatisation of our evidence logic. (shrink)

Irrespective of the presence of formal norms, behaviours such as plagiarism, data fabrication and falsification are commonly regarded as unethical and unfair. Almost unanimously, they are considered forms of academic misconduct. Is this the case also for newer behaviours that technology is making possible and are now entering the academic scenario?

This paper has a twofold aim. On the one hand, it explores the extent to which Mach was inspired by Kant’s approach to philosophical inquiry and tried to further elaborate it through his historico-critical method for enlightening scientific knowledge claims. On the other hand, it argues that the focus on the situated character of these claims that is implied in Mach’s epistemology makes it possible to compare his view to recent attempts to defend a perspectival realist account of scientific knowledge, (...) thus revealing the relevance of Mach’s own approach as a methodology in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Dans l’étude des relations entre la philosophie et la sociologie naissante en France, un chapitre demeure inexploré : l’interprétation des sciences sociales par Léon Brunschvicg. S’il apprécie la valeur de la recherche ethnologique de Lévy-Bruhl, sa critique de Durkheim est sévère. Il identifie deux problèmes dans le projet durkheimien, étroitement liés : avoir cherché l’origine de la connaissance dans des formes « primitives » de savoir ; avoir soumis l’autonomie du jugement au primat du social. L’idéalisme critique de Brunschvicg cherche (...) alors à opposer aux représentations collectives de Durkheim un autre modèle d’esprit collectif, incarné dans les avancées de la science et dans le progrès de la philosophie scientifique. (shrink)

Alternative agricultural systems, like organic and local agriculture, are becoming increasingly important in Europe to the detriment of conventional methods. As a matter of fact, sustainable agriculture, which started as a niche sector, has been able to conquer a significant share of the European agro-food market. Institutional promotion along with increasing consumer demand has allowed for the development of different agricultural models, from the farm to the fork, with an increasing focus on the ethical issues associated with the agro-food production (...) system. For instance, the organic agriculture agro-food chain is based on four principles, namely health, ecology, fairness and care with the goal of competing in the global agro-food market while respecting the environment, livestock, producers, and consumers. Within these themes, the seed market represents an extremely complex part of the whole picture. The present paper analyses the historical evolution of the seed sector by identifying the main issues related to sustainable agricultural systems and protection of biodiversity. It follows the identification of different seed markets based on different farm types. The two aspects are then discussed and matched in order to identify the main issues characterizing the sector. A review of possible solutions to those problems, taking into account their ethics, is also provided. (shrink)

Anaphoric deflationism is a kind of prosententialist account of the use of “true.” It holds that “true” is an expressive operator and not a predicate. In particular, “is true” is explained as a “prosentence.” Prosentences are, for sentences, the equivalent of what pronouns are for nouns: As pronouns refer to previously introduced nouns, so prosentences like “that’s true” inherit their semantic content from previously introduced sentences. So, if Jim says, “The candidate is going to win the election,” and Bill replies (...) “that’s true,” the real meaning of Bill’s statement is “It is true that the candidate is going to win the election.” This kind of prosententialist deflationism around the use of “true,” especially in Robert Brandom’s version, is an explanation given in terms of anaphora. The prosentence is an anaphoric dependent of the sentence providing its content. Båve (Philosophical Studies, 145, 297-310. 2009) argued that the anaphoric account is not as general as prosententialists claim, and that the analogy between prosentences and pronouns is explanatorily idle because it does not do any real explanatory work. The two criticisms are connected: The lack of unity within the anaphoric theory can be used to show its poor explanatory value. The plurality of uses of “is true” exceeds the anaphoric account indeed. Therefore, prosententialism is just a superficial re-description and the real work is done by means of more general semantic terms, namely “semantic equivalence and consequence” between “p” and ““p” is true.” I analyze Båve’s arguments and highlight that he fails to acknowledge the importance of a pragmatic and expressive dimension explained by the anaphoric account, a dimension that semantic “equivalence” and “consequence” are not capable of explaining. I then show that the anaphoric account can actually explain semantic equivalence and consequence, and this is crucial because equivalence and consequence do not explain anaphoric dependence. This reverses the allegation of generality: The anaphoric account is more general. Again, the cases typically used to defend prosententialism, if correctly described, show a unitary structure: They are all versions of lazy anaphoric dependence. Therefore, the unifying principle performing the explanation here is lazy anaphora. (shrink)