Arbitrariness is a distinctive feature of human language, and a growing body of comparative work is investigating its presence in animal communication. But what is arbitrariness, exactly? We propose to distinguish four notions of semiotic arbitrariness: a notion of opaque association between sign forms and semiotic functions, one of sign‐function mapping optionality, one of acquisition‐dependent sign‐function coupling, and one of lack of motivatedness. We characterize these notions, illustrate the benefits of keeping them apart, and describe two reactions to our proposal: (...) abandoning arbitrariness‐talk in favor of the newly introduced conceptual vocabulary, or feeding the distinctions back into the parent concept. (shrink)

According to Originalism, word types are non-eternal continuants which are individuated by their causal-historical lineage and have a unique possible time of origination. This view collides with the intuition that individual words can be added to the lexicon of a language at different times, and generates other problematic consequences. The paper shows that such undesired results can be accommodated without abandoning Originalism.

The combination of panpsychism and priority monism leads to priority cosmopsychism, the view that the consciousness of individual sentient creatures is derivative of an underlying cosmic consciousness. It has been suggested that contemporary priority cosmopsychism parallels central ideas in the Advaita Vedānta tradition. The paper offers a critical evaluation of this claim. It argues that the Advaitic account of consciousness cannot be characterized as an instance of priority cosmopsychism, points out the differences between the two views, and suggests an alternative (...) positioning of the Advaitic canon within the contemporary debate on monism and panpsychism. (shrink)

Arbitrariness is a distinctive feature of human language, and a growing body of comparative work is investigating its presence in animal communication. But what is arbitrariness, exactly? We propose to distinguish four notions of semiotic arbitrariness: a notion of opaque association between sign forms and semiotic functions, one of sign-function mapping optionality, one of acquisition-dependent sign-function coupling, and one of lack of motivatedness. We characterize these notions, illustrate the benefits of keeping them apart, and describe two reactions to our proposal: (...) abandoning arbitrariness-talk in favor of the newly introduced conceptual vocabulary, or feeding the distinctions back into the parent concept. (shrink)

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

The paper addresses the issue of scientific realism in Mach, and his pragmatist approach to epistemology. Firstly, Eric Banks’s interpretation of Mach as a direct realist about particulars will be explored and discussed. Secondly, Sami Pihlström’s pragmatic realism will be considered, and it will be suggested that this view can be more viably attributed to Mach. Finally, in the light of Mach’s 1910 paper on Sensory Elements and Scientific Concepts, it will be argued that Mach’s agnosticism was probably stronger than (...) any moderate form of realism he could have been committed to, and that he was a radical pragmatist in refusing to be concerned with any kind of metaphysical issue. (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)

According to the perceptual view of language comprehension, listeners typically recover high-level linguistic properties such as utterance meaning without inferential work. The perceptual view is subject to the Objection from Context: since utterance meaning is massively context-sensitive, and context-sensitivity requires cognitive inference, the perceptual view is false. In recent work, Berit Brogaard provides a challenging reply to this objection. She argues that in language comprehension context-sensitivity is typically exercised not through inferences, but rather through top-down perceptual modulations or perceptual learning. (...) This paper provides a complete formulation of the Objection from Context and evaluates Brogaards reply to it. Drawing on conceptual considerations and empirical examples, we argue that the exercise of context-sensitivity in language comprehension does, in fact, typically involve inference. (shrink)

What are words and how should we individuate them? There are two main answers on the philosophical market. For some, words are bundles of structural-functional features defining a unique performance profile. For others, words are non-eternal continuants individuated by their causal-historical ancestry. These conceptions offer competing views of the nature of words, and it seems natural to assume that at most one of them can capture the essence of wordhood. This paper makes a case for pluralism about wordhood: the view (...) that there is a plurality of acceptable conceptions of the nature of words, none of which is uniquely entitled to inform us as to what wordhood consists in. (shrink)

Ordinary disposition ascriptions appear to form a semantically heterogeneous class of clauses some of which can be straightforwardly analyzed as possibility claims, and some of which resist a simple quantificational treatment. For example, while “The block is breakable” is true if the block breaks at a relevant possible world, for “The block is fragile” to be true it doesn’t suffice that the block breaks at one of the worlds that matter to the evaluation of the ascription, since the block could (...) break accidentally and yet be sturdy. The contrast has been taken to indicate that sentences like “The block is fragile” don’t introduce mere existential quantification over sets of worlds, and should be represented as claims about sufficient ratios or proportions of worlds. However, recent work has suggested that by pairing the recalcitrant DAs with modified manifestation phrases, we can generalize the standard analysis of existential DAs to the problematic examples, and state a uniform characterization of DAs as claims of possibility. The paper discusses some counterexamples to the view that allegedly non-existential DAs are covert claims of fine-grained possibility, and sketches a hybrid account combining proportional quantification with fine-grained manifestations. (shrink)

Standard metasemantic frameworks render word meanings resistant to the control of ordinary speakers, and hinder our ability to exercise sovereignty over the denotations of words. The literature suggests three main responses to the problem: views on which ordinary denotational interventions cannot cause changes to semantic reality, views on which we should drop the metasemantic premises that generate the difficulty, and views on which denotational interventions boil down to operations on a non-recalcitrant region of the semantic spectrum. I review these responses (...) and argue that they face difficulties. Then, I draw on linguistic work on variation to make an alternative proposal. I suggest that part of the problem hinges on a tendency to think about standing meanings under heavily idealized assumptions of intra-linguistic homogeneity. To amend this, we should consider endorsing a localist ontology for semantic properties that allows individual vocabulary items to bear variable standing meanings at different communities of speakers of a public language. The result, I argue, is a middle-ground framework which accepts the difficulties of wide-scope meaning change while granting speakers semantic self-determination, and strikes an attractive balance between a few central desiderata. (shrink)

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

Arbitrariness is a distinctive feature of human language, and a growing body of comparative work is investigating its presence in animal communication. But what is arbitrariness, exactly? We propose to distinguish four notions of semiotic arbitrariness: a notion of opaque association between sign forms and semiotic functions, one of sign-function mapping optionality, one of acquisition-dependent sign-function coupling, and one of lack of motivatedness. We characterize these notions, illustrate the benefits of keeping them apart, and describe two reactions to our proposal: (...) abandoning arbitrariness-talk in favor of the newly introduced conceptual vocabulary, or feeding the distinctions back into the parent concept. (shrink)

This paper presents the hypothesis that the representational repertoire underpinning our ability to process the lexical items of a natural language can be modeled as a system of mental files. To start, I clarify the basic phenomena that an account of lexical knowledge should be able to elucidate. Then, I propose to evaluate whether the mental files theory can be brought to bear on an account of the representational format of lexical knowledge by modeling mental words as recognitional files.

Dans son Esthétique, Benedetto Croce présente Descartes comme la figure emblématique d’un courant rationaliste qui exclut l’imagination poétique de la pensée philosophique et empêche de reconnaître l’intuition comme mode de connaissance esthétique spécifique. Pour lui, les conséquences néfastes de l’esprit mathématique diffusé en France par le cartésianisme se retrouvent chez Locke, Leibniz, Wolff et Baumgarten, et il n’y a guère à la même époque que chez « l’italiano Giambattista Vico » que l’on peut parler d’une véritable science esthétique. Au cours (...) des années où prend corps sa Philosophie de l’esprit, Croce est amené à plusieurs reprises à stigmatiser l’intellectualisme de Descartes, le caractère abstrait de sa science et de sa morale ainsi que son ignorance de l’histoire. Si sa lecture est dépourvue d’originalité et dénote l’influence sur lui du climat culturel de son temps, elle s’appuie néanmoins sur une conception de l’art fortement novatrice et dont l’influence sera décisive dans la première moitié du XXe siècle. Un examen plus détaillé de l’œuvre vaste et complexe de Croce montre que sa lecture de Descartes révèle une connaissance profonde de l’histoire de la philosophie : Croce est capable à la fois de corriger les interprétations simplificatrices de certains aspects de la pensée cartésienne de la part de Vico, Hegel ou Valéry, et de reconnaître sa dette à l’égard de la théorie cartésienne de l’erreur. Certes, ses schématisations excessives donnent parfois lieu à quelque malentendu, par exemple sur le thème des passions de l’âme. Dans les écrits de Croce postérieurs à la Première guerre mondiale, la figure de Descartes commence à jouer un rôle différent. Le philosophe napolitain éprouve alors le besoin de réagir aux irrationalismes, aux vitalismes et aux nationalismes qui ont conduit au conflit, à la décadence de la culture européenne et mèneront à la seconde guerre mondiale. Il importe désormais de défendre la raison, dont Descartes reste le champion. Le philosophe français redevient pour lui le chef de file de la tendance fondamentale de la philosophie moderne. Loin de signifier un changement dans sa conception des axes primaires de la philosophie de l’esprit, ce déplacement d’accent reflète au contraire l’aptitude de la pensée de Croce à intégrer les exigences toujours nouvelles que l’histoire fait apparaître dans son développement. (shrink)

A traditional proposition in the philosophy and the sociology of science wants that consensus between specialists of a scientific discipline is a reliable indicator of their access to genuine knowledge. In an interesting reassessment of this principle, Aviezer Tucker has analyzed the implications and the significance of this thesis in relation to historical research, and has established that parts of the historiographical community that display high degrees of consensus among their practitioners can be described in terms of the same relationship (...) existing in empirical sciences between the exemplification of significant level of agreement and shared knowledge. After a concise summary of Tucker’s general view of the relationship between consensus and knowledge and an analysis of its discussion by Boaz Miller, this paper proposes a critical discussion of the limits and the virtues of this approach and concludes that it is possible to assume that a theory of the sort outlined by Tucker and Miller may describe in an exhaustive way the dynamics of the consensual communities only after some important caveats and integrations. In the closing section, a brief review of Tucker’s picture of historiographical consensus will be proposed. (shrink)

The paper offers a critical review of the role played by lexical meaning in the earlier stages of philosophical semantics and truth-conditional semantics. I shall address, both historically and theoretically, the relative neglect of lexical semantics within these fields, and argue that the approach to word meaning fostered in extensional frameworks is overall inconsistent with the customary assumption that truth-theoretic semantics can be considered a semantic theory proprio sensu.

Cet article étudie la réflexion de Pierre Gassendi sur la puissance divine, son rapport à la rationalité humaine et aux lois de la nature. La pensée du philosophe de Digne sur cette question a souvent donné lieu à des interprétations historiographiques marquées par la comparaison avec la théologie de Descartes, laquelle était vue comme l’expression d’une orientation de la pensée radicalement opposée. Néanmoins, à la lumière de la relecture d’une série de textes de Gassendi (principalement tirés de son Syntagma philosophicum (...) ), il apparaît que ces deux auteurs sont loin d’être irréconciliables et que leur opposition découle moins de deux visions divergentes de la puissance de Dieu que de deux méthodes antagonistes pour fonder et justifier leurs thèses respectives sur la nature. (shrink)

Consider the following sentence: “Mary meditated on the sentence ‘Bill is a good friend’ and concluded that he was a good friend.” It is standardly assumed that in sentences of this sort, containing so‐called “closed” quotations, the expressions occurring between quotation marks are mentioned and do not take their ordinary referents. The quoted NP “Bill” refers, if anything, to the name ‘Bill,’ not to the individual Bill. At the same time, the pronoun “he,” apparently anaphoric on quoted “Bill,” refers to (...) the individual Bill. The case seems thus to invalidate the intuitive principle that pronouns anaphoric on referential expressions inherit their reference from their antecedents. The paper formulates the argument, argues that sentences exhibiting the described pattern do not constitute evidence against the intuitive principle, and proposes an alternative account of the anaphoric relation involved. (shrink)

It is common belief that semantic properties supervene on non-semantic properties: no two possible worlds can be non-semantic duplicates and fail to be semantic duplicates. The view enjoys somewhat of an orthodoxy status in contemporary philosophy of language and metaphysics, and is often assumed without argument. Yet, work by Stephen Kearns and Ofra Magidor has claimed that it is vulnerable to a variant of the classical arguments against the supervenience of the phenomenal on the physical. This paper does three things: (...) it clarifies what semantic supervenience is about, it responds to the objections that have been leveled against it, and provides a new battery of arguments in its favor. I argue that the thesis of semantic supervenience is safe from classical anti-supervenience arguments, and show that its rejection generates unwelcome consequences. I conclude that there are substantial reasons to embrace the received wisdom: semantic properties supervene. (shrink)

Standard accounts hold that regularities of behavior must be arbitrary to constitute a convention. Yet, there is growing consensus that conventionality is a graded phenomenon, and that conventions can be more or less natural. I develop an account of natural conventions that distinguishes two basic dimensions of conventional naturalness: a probabilistic dimension and an inherent one. A convention is probabilistically natural if it is likely to emerge in a population of agents, and inherently natural if its content is a regularity (...) that scores high on relevant measures for naturalness. I motivate the proposal on conceptual grounds and then showcase its descriptive benefits by discussing two case studies in language: the tendency towards word-length optimality and the prevalence of shape opacity in spoken language vocabularies. (shrink)

I argue that ontologies of words should engage with the emergence of lexical communication in the deep history of our line. It may seem that the evolutionary origins of words are orthogonal to the analytical project of establishing the defining features of wordhood, and that an adequate ontology of words requires nothing more than an observation of the properties of modern languages. I suggest instead that models of the initial stages of language evolution can offer valuable insights into the matter. (...) There is consensus that lexical communication was an early achievement in the phylogeny of our language capacities, and that words became available to our ancestors before the maturation of other components of the grammar. At the beginning of their evolutionary trajectory, words are thus likely to have been significantly different from the vocabulary items of contemporary languages. Careful appreciation of such differences could be instrumental to a complete theory of the hallmarks of wordhood. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel argumentation framework to support Issue-Based Information System style debates on design alternatives, by providing an automatic quantitative evaluation of the positions put forward. It also identifies several formal properties of the proposed quantitative argumentation framework and compares it with existing non-numerical abstract argumentation formalisms. Finally, the paper describes the integration of the proposed approach within the design Visual Understanding Environment software tool along with three case studies in engineering design. The case studies show the potential (...) for a competitive advantage of the proposed approach with respect to state-of-the-art engineering design methods. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the role played by Ernst Mach on Nietzsche’s thought. Starting from the contents of his Beiträge zur Analyse der Empfindungen, I’ll show the close similarities between their view on both human knowledge and the scientific world description. In his writing on science Nietzsche shares Mach’s critique to the 19th century mechanism and its metaphysical ground, as much as his way of defining the substantial notions such as matter, ego and free will. Moreover, my investigation will (...) make it clear that Mach cannot be seen as a direct source of Nietzsche’s thought, since the latter wrote many times on the same subjects long before his first reading one of his works. Rather, it is possible to consider the writings of Lange, Spir and Spencer as the first sources of Nietzsche’s views on the main themes Mach dealt with in his work from 1886. (shrink)

What is the mental realization of our knowledge of the meaning of words? Does the lexical side of our semantic competence depend on the fact that we have dedicated representations of the semantic properties of lexemes or does it arise from world knowledge, encyclopedic information, and non-linguistic categorization? According to meaning eliminativism, lexical concepts have no robust psychological reality and our ability to use the words of a language should not be explained in terms of knowledge of their conventional semantic (...) value, conceived as their array of possible senses. To start, I will briefly explain what meaning eliminativism is and illustrate the key arguments that have been offered in its defense. Then, I will argue that such arguments are not as persuasive as they wish, and I will show that there are convincing theoretical and empirical reasons to maintain that meaning eliminativism is not a plausible claim about the nature of our lexical skills. (shrink)

A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Francis Bacon, Essays, I, “Of Truth”In the history of human knowledge, there is no dearth of small or great impostures. The one I am about to expose here...

Von Walchs Philosophischem Lexicon bis Zedlers Universal-Lexicon, von Diderots und D’Alemberts Encyclopédie bis zur Encyclopaedia Britannica: alle bedeutenden frühmodernen Wörterbücher und Enzyklopädien haben sich ziemlich viele Definitionen angeeignet, die der hugenottische Gelehrte Étienne Chauvin (1640 – 1725) in den beiden Ausgaben seines Lexicon philosophicum (1692 und 1713) bereits formuliert hatte. Chauvin verglich als erster die scholastische Tradition mit den Theorien der neuen Denker wie Descartes, Gassendi und deren Anhänger. Sein Werk befasst sich ausführlich mit der Naturphilosophie und beschreibt naturwissenschaftliche Instrumente (...) und Experimente. Erstaunlicherweise sind der komplexe Aufbau, die Quellen und die Nachwirkung von Chauvins Wörterbuch noch nie gründlich untersucht worden. Die vorliegende umfassende Studie über die Geschichte der philosophischen Terminologie und Ideen wirft ein helles Licht auf die „République des lettres“ zwischen dem Ende des 17. und dem Anfang des 18. Jahrhunderts. Sie behandelt Metaphysik, Logik, Ethik und anthropologische Themen sowie den Widerstreit zwischen alten und neuen Ansichten über die Natur. ---STIMMEN ZUM BUCH--- „Das Buch selbst bietet aber einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Aufklärungs- und Philosophie- bzw. Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Frühaufklärung sowie der Bildungsgeschichte Preußens. […] [Das Buch] bietet als solches auch aufschlußreiche Bausteine für das Projekt eines Vokabulars der europäischen Philosophien, dem man sich eben auch durch das Studium einschlägiger Lemmata alter Lexika nähern kann.“ (Till Kinzel, Informationsmittel (IFB), März 2017) From Walch’s Philosophisches Lexicon to Zedler’s Universal-Lexicon, from Diderot’s and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, all major early modern dictionaries and encyclopedias incorporate some of the definitions given by the Huguenot savant Étienne Chauvin (1640 - 1725) in the two editions of his Lexicon philosophicum (1692 and 1713). For the first time, Chauvin placed the scholastic tradition side by side with the theories of new thinkers like Descartes, Gassendi and their followers. His work covers natural philosophy extensively, describing scientific instruments and experiments. Surprisingly enough, the complex architecture of Chauvin’s dictionary, its sources, and its fortune have never been thoroughly investigated before. The present, broad study in the history of philosophical terminology and ideas casts light on the culture of the “République des lettres” between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. It deals with metaphysics, logic, moral, and anthropological themes, and the clash between ancient and modern visions of nature. (shrink)

Dans son Esthétique (1902-1908), Benedetto Croce présente Descartes comme la figure emblématique d’un courant rationaliste qui exclut l’imagination poétique de la pensée philosophique et empêche de reconnaître l’intuition comme mode de connaissance esthétique spécifique. Pour lui, les conséquences néfastes de l’esprit mathématique diffusé en France par le cartésianisme se retrouvent chez Locke, Leibniz, Wolff et Baumgarten, et il n’y a guère à la même époque que chez « l’italiano Giambattista Vico » que l’on peut parler d’une véritable science esthétique. Au (...) cours des années où prend corps sa Philosophie de l’esprit, Croce est amené à plusieurs reprises à stigmatiser l’intellectualisme de Descartes, le caractère abstrait de sa science et de sa morale ainsi que son ignorance de l’histoire. Si sa lecture est dépourvue d’originalité et dénote l’influence sur lui du climat culturel de son temps (l’idéalisme ; Francesco De Sanctis), elle s’appuie néanmoins sur une conception de l’art fortement novatrice et dont l’influence sera décisive dans la première moitié du XXe siècle. Un examen plus détaillé de l’œuvre vaste et complexe de Croce montre que sa lecture de Descartes révèle une connaissance profonde de l’histoire de la philosophie : Croce est capable à la fois de corriger les interprétations simplificatrices de certains aspects de la pensée cartésienne de la part de Vico, Hegel ou Valéry, et de reconnaître sa dette à l’égard de la théorie cartésienne de l’erreur. Certes, ses schématisations excessives donnent parfois lieu à quelque malentendu, par exemple sur le thème des passions de l’âme. Dans les écrits de Croce postérieurs à la Première guerre mondiale, la figure de Descartes commence à jouer un rôle différent. Le philosophe napolitain éprouve alors le besoin de réagir aux irrationalismes, aux vitalismes et aux nationalismes qui ont conduit au conflit, à la décadence de la culture européenne (allemande in primis) et mèneront à la seconde guerre mondiale. Il importe désormais de défendre la raison, dont Descartes reste le champion. Le philosophe français redevient pour lui le chef de file de la tendance fondamentale de la philosophie moderne. Loin de signifier un changement dans sa conception des axes primaires de la philosophie de l’esprit, ce déplacement d’accent reflète au contraire l’aptitude de la pensée de Croce à intégrer les exigences toujours nouvelles que l’histoire fait apparaître dans son développement. (shrink)

Le Lexicon philosophicum (1692 et 1713) d’Étienne Chauvin photographie une étape significative dans l’établissement de la terminologie de l’ontologie au sein de la scolastique moderne ; il enregistre la rupture définitive de l’unité de la métaphysique traditionnelle et sa dissolution dans plusieurs disciplines autonomes. La présente étude examine la constellation d’articles du Dictionnaire qui concernent la définition de la métaphysique et de ses branches, en s’arrêtant en particulier sur la notion claire et distincte de la substance, ou res, comme objet (...) premier de l’ontologie. Quelques observations portent ensuite sur les sources de la doctrine de l’étant déployée dans le Lexicon, qui relève du courant « claubergien » de l’ontologie, reçu par l’intermédiaire de l’œuvre du zurichois Johannes Lavater. (shrink)

Casati, Di Bona and Dokic have recently argued that sounds are identical to their event sources. In this paper, I review the arguments they have offered in support of this view, show that their claims fail to defend it in a completely persuasive and conclusive fashion, and present some new questions for their thesis.

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 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.