In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Many scholars have contended that Clare of Assisi’s original intention upon leaving her family home to take up religious life sometime around 1211 was to lead a life essentially like that of the mendicant friars.1 She and the women who soon joined her would be not only poor and penitential, but also itinerant and apostolic. Like the friars their life would be marked by both insertion into the world (...) and seclusion from it as they alternated between active service and recollected contemplation. The important proof text for this claim is a passage in a letter composed by Jacques de Vitry in 1216, just five years after Clare’s conversion. Many scholars, including Paul Sabatier, Luigi Pellegrini, Roberto Rusconi, Marco Bartoli, Ingrid Peterson, Chiara Frugoni, Giovanni Boccali, and Chiara Augusta Lainati believe the text to be the earliest witness to the manner of life led by Clare and her followers during their initial years.2 The letter has been used to argue further that the women were explicitly grouped together with the Lesser Brothers, were known by the parallel title of “Lesser Sisters,” and had the freedom to come and go as they wished during their early years in San Damiano.Since claims about the women’s early likeness to the friars’ mendicant way of life are often made as brief assertions resting on Jacques’s letter, I think it important to consider in a more detained fashion the provocative passage thought to support them. Closer scrutiny of Jacques’s text shows that while none of these claims can be entirely ruled out, importantly, none can be supported with any solid evidence. I agree essentially with scholars such as Lilly Zarncke, Ernest McDonnell, Maria Pia Alberzoni, Jacques Dalarun, and Lezlie Knox who consider the letter’s language too general to know if it refers specifically to Clare and her sisters.3 I suggest, furthermore, that there are reasons to conclude that this is certainly unlikely if the passage is interpreted to mean, specifically, that Clare and her sisters carried on an active apostolate outside of San Damiano.Jacques de Vitry is generally recognized as one of the most astute and forward-thinking observers of his time in terms of recognizing the importance of new religious groups. A Parisian master, canon regular, and bishop, Jacques had the opportunity to live in a variety of settings, including his native France, the Low Countries, Italy, and the holy land.4 In 1216, he traveled from Liège in the Low Countries to Perugia to be consecrated bishop by Honorius III, who himself had just been elevated to the papacy.5 Along with observations about other matters, Jacques shared the following comment about religious men and women in a letter that he sent almost certainly to a group of his friends back in Liège. He was writing in the early days of October 1216 as he was leaving Italy on a boat that would carry him to his new episcopal see in Acre. The letter, the first of six that survive, is prized not only for its reference to the Lesser Sisters, but also as the very first written testimony regarding the Franciscan movement in general. The great nineteenth-century historian Paul Sabatier thought it provided a more vivid and precise description of Francis’s ministry than any single passage contained in his early biographies.6 The passage, which represents less than seven percent of the entire letter, is rendered thus in a widely available English translation:I found one consolation in those parts, nevertheless: many men and women [multi enim utriusque sexus], rich and worldly, after renouncing everything for Christ, fled the world. They are called Lesser Brothers and Lesser Sisters [fratres minores et sorores minores]. They are held in great esteem by the Lord Pope and the cardinals. They do not occupy themselves with temporal affairs, but work each day with great desire and.. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to provide a fresh, wider, and more compelling account of democracy than the one we usually find in conventional contemporary political theory. Telling the story of democracy as a broad societal project rather than as merely a political regime, Frega delivers an account more in tune with our everyday experience and ordinary intuitions, bringing back into political theory the notion that democracy denotes first and foremost a form of society, and only secondarily a specific (...) political regime. The theoretical shift accomplished is major. Claiming that such a view of democracy is capable of replacing the mainstream categories of justice, freedom and non-domination in their hegemonic function of all-encompassing political concepts, Frega then argues for democracy as the broader normative framework within which to rethink the meaning and forms of associated living in all spheres of personal, social, economic, and political life. Drawing on diverse traditions of American pragmatism and critical theory, as well as tackling political issues which are at the core of contemporary theoretical debates, this book invites a rethinking of political theory to one more concerned with the political circumstances of social life, rather than remaining confined in the narrowly circumscribed space of a theory of government. (shrink)

A magisterial study of the philosophy of physics that both introduces the subject to the non-specialist and contains many original and important contributions for professionals in the area. Modern physics was born as a part of philosophy and has retained to this day a properly philosophical concern for the clarity and coherence of ideas. Any introduction to the philosophy of physics must therefore focus on the conceptual development of physics itself. This book pursues that development from Galileo and Newton through (...) Maxwell and Boltzmann to Einstein and the founders of quantum mechanics. There is also discussion of important philosophers of physics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and of twentieth-century debates. In the interest of appealing to the broadest possible readership the author avoids technicalities and explains both the physics and philosophical terms. (shrink)

In traditional decision theory, utility is regarded as a mathematical representation of preferences to be inferred from agents hedonic experiences. Some go as far as to contend that utility is literally computed by specific neural areas and urge economists to complement or substitute their notion of utility with some neuro-psychological construct. In this paper, I distinguish three notions of utility that are frequently mentioned in debates about decision theory and examine some critical issues regarding their definition and measurability. Moreover, I (...) provide various empirical and conceptual reasons to doubt that economists should base decision theoretic analyses on some neuro-psychological notion of utility. (shrink)

In recent years, several authors have called to ground descriptive and normative decision theory on neuro-psychological measures of utility. In this paper, I combine insights from the best available neuro-psychological findings, leading philosophical conceptions of welfare and contemporary decision theory to rebut these prominent calls. I argue for two claims of general interest to philosophers, choice modellers and policy makers. First, severe conceptual, epistemic and evidential problems plague ongoing attempts to develop accurate and reliable neuro-psychological measures of utility. And second, (...) even if these problems are solved, neuro-psychological measures of utility lack the potential to inform welfare analyses and policy evaluations. (shrink)

Damiano Costa has recently offered a novel mereological definition of endurantism based on the idea that for an object to be wholly present at a time is for it to be a whole at that time. In this paper, I argue that Costa’s is not a definition of endurantism, since the idea that every object is a whole at every time it exists can be accepted by endurantists and perdurantists alike.

Although Volk may be considered as a central concept in the work of Carl Schmitt, and one to which the German jurist dedicated a sizable amount of writing, a remarkably limited number of publications have so far provided an analytical study of how Schmitt conceptualised Volk, particularly in English-language secondary literature. This article intends to address this gap by systematically reviewing how the concept of Volk appears in the Schmitt’s theoretical effort, with a particular focus on his publications from the (...) late 1920s to 1945, and how it relates to his main legal-theoretical and political claims, both in his constitutional doctrine (Staatsrechtslehre) as well as in international law. It sketches some interpretive pathways to locate Volk in a broader historical and theoretical context, and it offers a conceptualisation of the relation between Schmitt and existentialist nationalism. (shrink)

Slippery slope arguments (SSAs) are used in a wide range of philosophical debates, but are often dismissed as empirically ill-founded and logically fallacious. In particular, leading authors put forward a meta-SSA which points to instances of empirically ill-founded and logically fallacious SSAs and to the alleged existence of a slippery slope leading to such SSAs to demonstrate that people should avoid using SSAs altogether. In this paper, I examine these prominent calls against using SSAs and argue that such calls do (...) not withstand scrutiny. I then identify several types of mechanisms leading to slippery slopes in real-life contexts to demonstrate that both the strength of SSAs and the justifiability of using SSAs are best assessed on a case-by-case basis. This result does not exempt the proponents of SSAs from the task of vindicating their use of SSAs. However, if correct, it undermines the often-made claim that people should avoid using SSAs altogether. (shrink)

Over the last decade, neuroeconomic research has attracted increasing attention by economic modellers and methodologists. In this paper, I examine five issues about neuroeconomic modelling and methodology that have recently been subject to considerable controversy. For each issue, I explicate and appraise prominent neuroeconomists' findings, focusing on those that are claimed to directly inform economic theorizing. Moreover, I assess often-made assertions concerning how neuroeconomic research putatively advances the economic modelling of choice. In doing so, I combine review and critical arguments (...) to provide a methodological evaluation of neuroeconomists' contributions. (shrink)

This paper combines considerations from ethics, medicine and public health policy to articulate and defend a systematic case for mask wearing mandates (MWM). The paper argues for two main claims of general interest in favour of MWM. First, MWM provide a more effective, just and fair way to tackle the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic than policy alternatives such as laissez-faire approaches, mask wearing recommendations and physical distancing measures. And second, the proffered objections against MWM may justify some exemptions for specific categories (...) of individuals, but do not cast doubt on the justifiability of these mandates. Hence, unless some novel decisive objections are put forward against MWM, governments should adopt MWM. (shrink)

This paper provides a fresh examination of John Dewey’s social philosophy in the light of new evidence made available by the recent discovery of the original manuscript Dewey wrote in preparation of the Lectures on Social and Political Philosophy delivered in China and published here for the first time. The paper reconstructs Dewey’s ambivalent relationship with social philosophy throughout his long career and focuses upon his attempt between 1919 and 1923 to develop his own’s social philosophy. It proceeds to examine (...) the contribution of the Chinese Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy to Dewey’s project in social philosophy and shows that our understanding of Dewey’s social philosophy was severely hampered by the unavailability of the original text. It concludes by assessing the critical potential of Dewey’s social philosophy. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

This paper offers an account of the social foundations of a theory of democracy. It purports to show that a social ontology of democracy is the necessary counterpart of a political theory of democracy. It notably contends that decisions concerning basic social ontological assumptions are relevant not only for empirical research, but bear a significant impact also on normative theorizing. The paper then explains why interactionist rather than substantialist social ontologies provide the most promising starting point for building a social (...) ontology of democracy. It then introduces and examines the three notions of habits, patterns of interaction, and forms of social organization, conceived as the main pillars of an interactionist social ontology of democracy and briefly discusses some major implications of this approach for democratic theory. (shrink)

The theory of the firm initially developed by Ronald Coase has made explicit the political nature of firms by putting hierarchy at the heart of the economic process. Theories of workplace democracy articulate this intuition in the normative terms of the conditions under which this political power can be legitimate. This paper presents an organizational theory of workplace democracy, and contends that the democratization of firms requires that we take their organizational dimension explicitly into account. It thus construes democracy as (...) an organizational principle and juxtaposes it to market, hierarchy, and norm-compliance as rival principles for the organization of economic activities. Attempts to construe democracy as an organizational principle with unique features in the tradition of transaction-cost economics are discussed before proposing an innovative solution based on an updated version of grid/group cultural theory of politics, adjusted to accommodate the basic requirements of democratic theory. (shrink)

In this paper, we use a ‘normality operator’ in order to generate logics of formal inconsistency and logics of formal undeterminedness from any subclassical many-valued logic that enjoys a truth-functional semantics. Normality operators express, in any many-valued logic, that a given formula has a classical truth value. In the first part of the paper we provide some setup and focus on many-valued logics that satisfy some of the three properties, namely subclassicality and two properties that we call fixed-point negation property (...) and conservativeness. In the second part of the paper, we introduce normality operators and explore their formal behaviour. In the third and final part of the paper, we establish a number of classical recapture results for systems of formal inconsistency and formal undeterminedness that satisfy some or all the properties above. These are the main formal results of the paper. Also, we illustrate concrete cases of recapture by discussing the logics $\mathsf{K}^{\circledast }_{3}$, $\mathsf{LP}^{\circledast }$, $\mathsf{K}^{w\circledast }_{3}$, $\mathsf{PWK}^{\circledast }$ and $\mathsf{E_{fde}}^{\circledast }$, that are in turn extensions of $\mathsf{{K}_{3}}$, $\mathsf{LP}$, $\mathsf{K}^{w}_{3}$, $\mathsf{PWK}$ and $\mathsf{E_{fde}}$, respectively. (shrink)

Over the last decade, several European countries and the Council of Europe itself have strongly supported the use of advance directives as a means of protecting patients’ autonomy, and adopted specific norms to regulate this matter. However, it remains unclear under which conditions those regulations should apply to people who are placed in correctional settings. The issue is becoming more significant due to the increasing numbers of inmates of old age or at risk of suffering from mental disorders, all of (...) whom might benefit from using advance directives. At the same time, the closed nature of prisons and the disparate power relationships that characterise them mean that great caution must be exercised to prevent care being withdrawn or withheld from inmates who actually want to receive it. This paper explores the issue of prisoners’ advance directives in the European context, starting with the position enshrined in international and European law that prisoners retain all their human rights, except the right to liberty, and are therefore entitled to self-determination regarding health care decisions. (shrink)

"a book about religion and a religious work in its own right, it proposes the content of a religion that can survive faith in a transcendent God and in life after death. According to this religion—the religion of the future—human beings can be more human by becoming more godlike, not just later, in another life or another time, but right now, on Earth and in their own lives."--Publishers website.

Proponents of neuroeconomics often argue that better knowledge of the human neural architecture enables economists to improve standard models of choice. In their view, these improvements provide compelling reasons to use neural findings in constructing and evaluating economic models. In a recent article, I criticized this view by pointing to the trade-offs between the modeling desiderata valued by neuroeconomists and other economists, respectively. The present article complements my earlier critique by focusing on three modeling desiderata that figure prominently in economic (...) and neuroeconomic modeling. For each desideratum, I examine findings that neuroeconomists deem to be especially relevant for economists and argue that neuroeconomists have failed to substantiate their calls to use these findings in constructing and evaluating economic models. In doing so, I identify methodological and evidential constraints that will continue to hinder neuroeconomists’ attempts to improve such models. Moreover, I draw on the literature on scientific modeling to advance the ongoing philosophical discussion regarding the prospects of interdisciplinary models of choice. (shrink)

Riassunto : Il presente articolo intende lumeggiare l’esito tanto fecondo quanto problematico a cui conduce l’originale opera laskiana di risemantizzazione del concetto di soggettività. Al centro di tale opera si staglia la progressiva elaborazione di ciò che il filosofo rubrica, al termine del suo Denkweg, sotto il titolo di soggetto ricettivo. Con tale concetto, a cui è intimamente legato quello di “dedizione”, Lask individua in una mera ricettività intuitiva il momento sorgivo e originario di ogni processo cognitivo; il solo momento (...) che rende possibile un accesso diretto all’oggetto trascendente. Ma come si realizza questo accesso? Qual è lo statuto di ciò che il filosofo nomina “dedizione”? L’insufficiente risposta a tali quesiti conduce il pensiero laskiano ad un esito aporetico, ossia alla riduzione della dedizione a momento ideale e alla conseguente riattivazione, in ambito conoscitivo, dell’inaggirabile distanza tra soggetto e oggetto. Ma, se in tale aporia è riconosciuto il limite del modello della conoscenza elaborato da Lask nel suo sistema maturo, non è comunque possibile occultare il decisivo contributo offerto dalla sua riflessione al problema gnoseologico: il superamento del coscienzialismo attraverso l’elaborazione di un soggetto concreto-ricettivo e, accanto a esso, di un peculiare realismo. Parole chiave : Emil Lask; Soggettività; Ricettività; Coscienza; Concreto/astratto Emil Lask. Subjectivity and Receptiveness: This paper intends to illuminate the problematic outcome of Lask’s redefinition of the concept of subjectivity. The main result of this operation is the elaboration of the notion of receptive subject. With this concept, strictly linked to the notion of Hingabe, Lask identifies the original element of every cognitive process in simple intuitive receptivity. Intuitive receptivity alone provides direct access to the transcendent object. But how is this access possible? What is the relation between the receptive-intuitive element of knowledge and predicative activity? What is the status of Hingabe? The insufficient answers to these questions lead the Lask’s thought to an aporetic outcome, namely, the reduction of Hingabe to an exclusively abstract and ideal receptivity, and consequently to the reactivation, in the theory of knowledge, of the distance between subject and object. However, while this distance marks the limit of the model of knowledge developed by Lask, the main contribuition of his thought remains valid: the overcoming of trascendental subjectivism through the elaboration of a concrete-receptive subject and of an original form of realism. Keywords : Emil Lask; Subjectivity; Receptivity; Consciousness; Concreteness/Abstractness. (shrink)

In this paper I take a sceptical view of the standard cosmological model and its variants, mainly on the following grounds: (i) The method of mathematical modelling that characterises modern natural philosophy-as opposed to Aristotle's-goes well with the analytic, piecemeal approach to physical phenomena adopted by Galileo, Newton and their followers, but it is hardly suited for application to the whole world. (ii) Einstein's first cosmological model (1917) was not prompted by the intimations of experience but by a desire to (...) satisfy Mach's Principle. (iii) The standard cosmological model-a Friedmann-Lematre-Robertson-Walker spacetime expanding with or without end from an initial singularity-is supported by the phenomena of redshifted light from distant sources and very nearly isotropic thermal background radiation provided that two mutually inconsistent physical theories are jointly brought to bear on these phenomena, viz the quantum theory of elementary particles and Einstein's theory of gravity. (iv) While the former is certainly corroborated by high-energy experiments conducted under conditions allegedly similar to those prevailing in the early world, precise tests of the latter involve applications of the Schwarzschild solution or the PPN formalism for which there is no room in a Friedmann-Lematre-Robertson-Walker spacetime. (shrink)

Male-to-female transsexualism manifests itself in the form of a discrepancy between the male sex assigned at birth and the subjective experience of belonging to the female gender, which in many cases also involves a somatic transition by cross-sex hormone treatment and genital surgery. Until now, no studies related to MtF transsexualism have been carried out within the framework of a phenomenological/existential approach. This paradigm would make it possible to better articulate the transsexual experience beyond the simplistic diagnostic criteria by which (...) it is currently defined. In this study, I will reread MtF transsexualism in the light of Ludwig Binswanger’s theories on Mannerism and Jean Paul Sartre’s remarks on the self and the body. I will do this largely by focusing on first-hand accounts of the MtF transsexual’s experience, in other words from a first-person viewpoint. Finally, I will present some considerations on the meaning of psychological intervention in this field. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The demand for basic research ethics training has grown considerably in the past few years. Research and education organizations face the challenge of providing this training with limited resources and training tools available. To meet this need, Family Health International (FHI), a U.S.‐based international research organization, recently developed a Research Ethics Training Curriculum (RETC). It was designed as a practical, user‐friendly tool that provides basic, up‐to‐date, standardized training on the ethics of human research. The curriculum can easily be adapted (...) to different audiences and training requirements. The RETC was reviewed by a group of international experts and field tested in five countries. It is available in English, French, and Spanish as a three‐ring binder and CD‐ROM, as well as on the Web. It may be used as either an interactive self‐study program or for group training. (shrink)

This intervention concerns the different statute of abstraction in Marx's work. By means of a critical confrontation with Chris Arthur's work, Finelli presents his thesis of the presence of a double theory and fuction of abstraction in Marx's work. In the early Marx, until the German Ideology, abstraction is, in accordance with the traditional meaning of this term, a product of the mind, an unreal spectre. More exactly, it consists in negating the common essence belonging to labouring humanity and projecting (...) it, as alienated universal, into the idea of philosophy, into the state of politics and into the money of the market. In the later Marx, the nature of abstraction is, rather than mental, practical. It is directly related to the quantity without quality of capitalist labour, and it is the product of the systemic connection of machines to labour-power. In contrast to Arthur, Finelli maintains that practical abstraction in the Marx of Capital is not located in the zone of exchange and the market, where there is the mediation of money. On the contrary, it is located in the zone of production, which, for Marx, is a social ensemble not mediated by money but by relations of technological domination. (shrink)

An inspired and provocative exploration of mankind's relationship with myth, the divine, and the idea of transformation.

There are two major possible responses to the question: what (if anything) can justify a basic income experiment? An experiment might be justified either because it gathers positive empirical evidence supporting rolling out a basic income, or because it justifies the moral desirability of such a measure. This paper critically explores both responses, the “empirical” and “ethical claim” in light of the Barcelona B-MINCOME pilot, alongside other similar experiments. We sustained that although the empirical claim is necessary, there seems to (...) be sufficient data to easily predict that all future experiments are to gather positive results too. Consequently, we argue that experiments are particularly well-equipped to foster debates on the work ethics and on the ethical dimension of social policies and welfare regimes in general. (shrink)

and in Sect. 5 should be reformulated as follows.

O artigo tenta diferenciar, caracterizar e ordenar diversas figuras da identidade na fenomenologia pós-husserliana. Em primeiro lugar, assinalam-se questões formuladas pela análise da ipseidade em Heidegger. Em segundo lugar, chama-se a atenção para duas tendências divergentes. Por um lado, Lévinas sustenta que uma fissão da identidade é o resultado da responsabilidade pelos outros, e Waldenfels desenvolve uma lógica da responsividade que questiona o autodesenvolvimento e a autopreservação. Por outro lado, Ricoeur sustenta que o ordenamento da vida num relato equivale a (...) uma identidade narrativa, e M. Henry oferece uma elaborada análise da vida interior como um processo de auto-afecção. Por último, tendo como base as distinções delineadas por X. Zubiri, afirma-se que existem fenômenos que oferecem um sustento a um sentido experiencial da identidade, e que isso pode se vincular à noção husserliana do eu como pólo, isto é, ao ponto de partida dos desenvolvimentos fenomenológicos.El artículo intenta diferenciar, caracterizar y ordenar diversas figuras de la identidad en la fenomenología post-husserliana. En primer lugar, se señalan cuestiones planteadas por el análisis de la ipseidad en Heidegger. En segundo lugar, se presta atención a dos tendencias divergentes. Por un lado, Levinas sostiene que una fisión de la identidad es el resultado de la responsabilidad por lo otros, y Waldenfels desarrolla una lógica de la responsividad que cuestiona el autodesarrollo y la autopreservación. Por otro lado, Ricoeur sostiene que el ordenamiento de la vida en un relato equivale a una identidad narrativa, y M. Henry ofrece un elaborado análisis de la vida interior como un proceso de autoafección. Por último, sobre la base de distinciones delineadas por X. Zubiri, se sostiene que hay fenómenos que ofrecen un sustento a un sentido experiencial de la identidad, y que esto puede vinculares a la noción husserliana de yo como polo, esto es, al punto de partida de los desarrollos fenomenológicos.This article attempts to differentiate, characterize and order various figures of identity in post-Husserlian phenomenology. First, issues raised by Heidegger's analysis of selfhood are pointed out. Secondly, attention is given to two divergent trends. On the one hand, Levinas contends that a fission of identity is the outcome of responsibility for others, and Waldenfels advances a logic of responsiveness that questions self-development and self-preservation. On the other hand, Ricoeur argues that the ordering of life in a story amounts to a narrative identity, and M. Henry affords an elaborate analysis of inward life as a process of self-affection. Finally, on the basis of distinctions outlined by X. Zubiri, it is contended that there are phenomena that uphold an experiential sense of identity. This can be linked to the Husserlian notion of an ego as a pole of acts, i.e., the starting point of phenomenological developments. (shrink)

Husserl proceeds to show how a world-representation emerges from our world-experience, and how an idea of the world plays a role in the expansion of world-representations. He also draws our attention to the appropriation of other world-representations in a process of adjustment and compensation leading to intersubjective world-representations, and offers an analysis of the status of world-representations within transcendental phenomenology. In this article I will underline the relevance of Husserl’s concept of horizonedness to the characterization of the three levels of (...) world-experience, worldrepresentation, and the world as an idea. In getting clear on this relevance several points must be emphasized. (shrink)

This book intends to make known, in a detailed but accessible way to the general public, an old idea, but which has had a renewed interest in recent years: the proposal of attributing an unconditional basic income for all. This idea, often discarded and disqualified for allegedly belonging to the mere domain of utopia, understood in a pejorative sense as something unrealizable, has been the target of the interest of many people (academics, politicians, businesspeople, activists and, of course, all citizens (...) concerned with the common good) is presented as being feasible through several concrete experiences and pilot projects. (shrink)

Joining an antagonistic phosphoinositide (PtdInsP) kinase and phosphatase into a single protein complex may regulate rapid and local PtdInsP changes. This may be important for processes such as membrane fission that require a specific PtdInsP and that are innately local and rapid. Such a complex could couple vesicle formation, with erasing of the identity of the donor organelle from the vesicle prior to its fusion with target organelles, thus preventing organelle identity intermixing. Coordinating signals are postulated to switch the relative (...) activities of the kinase and phosphatase in a spatio‐temporal manner that matches membrane fission events. The discovery of two such complexes supports this hypothesis. One regulates the interconversion of phosphatidylinositol and PtdIns(3)P by joining the Vps34 PtdIns 3‐kinase and the myotubularin 3‐phosphatases. The other regulates the interconversion between PtdIns(3)P and PtdIns(3,5)P2 through the Fab1/PIKfyve kinase and the Fig4/mFig4 phosphatase. These lipids are essential components of the endosomal identity code. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with certain ontological issues in the foundations of geographic representation. It sets out what these basic issues are, describes the tools needed to deal with them, and draws some implications for a general theory of spatial representation. Our approach has ramifications in the domains of mereology, topology, and the theory of location, and the question of the interaction of these three domains within a unified spatial representation theory is addressed. In the final part we also consider (...) the idea of non-standard geographies, which may be associated with geography under a classical conception in the same sense in which non-standard logics are associated with classical logic. (shrink)

Reasons-first theorists claim that facts about reasons for attitudes are normatively primitive, and that all other normative facts ultimately reduce to facts about reasons. According to their view, for example, the fact that something is good ultimately reduces to facts about reasons to favour it. I argue that these theories face a challenging dilemma due to the normativity of arational lifeforms, for instance the fact that water is good for plants. If all normative facts are, ultimately, facts about reasons for (...) attitudes, then reasons-first theorists must either (a) show that these facts do reduce to facts about reasons, or (b) concede that they do not and, instead, show that this is not a problem for their view. Both options, however, are riddled with difficulties—or so I will try to argue. (shrink)

Mathematical game theory – developed starting from the publication of The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior , by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern – aims to outline an ideal model of behaviour of rational agents involved in some interaction with other rational agents. For this reason, game theory has immediately attracted the attention of philosophers dealing with practical rationality and, since the fifties, has been applied to the analysis of several issues concerning ethics and philosophy of politics. Here (...) we will focus on one of the most interesting applications of game theory to ethical-political inquiry, i.e., with the game theoretic analysis of some problems related to the evolution of moral norms. Firstly, we will provide a short outline of the development of game theory, which has lead to the formulation of a plurality of different game theories. It will be shown that such theories can be classified in two main groups: rationalistic game theories –in two different versions: classical and epistemic – and evolutionary game theories. Moreover, some basic elements of classical game theory will be introduced and the key ideas of epistemic and evolutionary game theories will be illustrated. Afterwards, the main approaches developed within the ethical-political applications of game theory will be shortly described. Finally, some results obtained in the last twenty years by the researchers who have analysed the evolution of moral norms by the conceptual tools of evolutionary and epistemic game theories, will be examined. (shrink)

The idea that what we perceive are tropes is anything but new. In fact, it was one of the reasons why the ontology of tropes was postulated in the first place. Still, the claim that we perceive tropes is invariably and purely based on pre-philosophical intuitions or, indirectly, either as a supporting argument for the advantages of content view when compared to the relational view of experience, or as a supporting argument in favor of the irreducible subjective character of experience. (...) In this paper, I take the content view for granted and argue in favor of what is herein referred to as the trope-content view of experience. My defense is a case of inference to the best explanation. The trope-content view can meet all reasonable desiderata on the experience and its content without assuming gaps or making the ad hoc assumption that there are different layers of content, or so shall I argue. (shrink)