El presente trabajo se desarrolla a partir de una reconstrucción de los análisis de Roberto Rubio acerca de las dificultades en que incurre la oposición entre enfoque fenomenológico y semiótico, a la hora de aportar posibles soluciones al debate actual en filosofía de la imagen. Después de haber confrontado las perspectivas husserliana y heideggeriana con la teoría derridiana de la escritura, la referencia al arte de Duane Michals permitirá acercar el problema-imagen hacia el pensamiento de la diferencia y del acontecer (...) diferencial, terreno icónico en donde el juego inestable e indefinido de las oposiciones produce toda posibilidad de efecto semántico. (shrink)

Through his theory of the iconic difference, Boehm has emphasized the differential character of the image. This has led some researchers to relate Boehm’s approach to the thought of Jacques Derrida. Following that line of interpretation, we propose a deconstructive approach to Boehm’s theory about the iconic difference. This means, specifically, that we will bring out internal tensions in Boehm’s proposal between emphases directed towards the differential character of the image, on the one hand, and dualistic approaches, as well as (...) hierarchical distinctions that could cover up such character, on the other hand. Starting from these tensions, we attempt to radicalize the orientation towards the differential structure of the image by incorporating Derrida’s proposals, but making clear, at the same time, the challenges that this would bring to Boehm’s theory and the open questions that would arise therefrom. (shrink)

We propose to develop the problems of selfness, of the tension between the other and the same, and of the singularity, by questioning the philosophies of Kant, Levinas and Stirner, and by reading them trough the theoretical eyes of Jacques Derrida. We will reflect on the irreducibility of the Levinasian other, trying to find out how, to what extent and with what difficulties, the emphasis on singularity can open a dialogical field between, on the one hand, the demand for ethical (...) transcendence required by the encounter with the other, and, on the other hand, the unconditional nature of the moral law in Kantian practical philosophy. After having underlined the limits of the latter, we will compare the non-conceptual and un-graspable character of the other with the radical Stirnerian uniqueness and his need to open the way to what escapes any logocentric chain. The relation between language, singularity and encounter will follow a resumption of Levinasian alterity under a more critical perspective. (shrink)

The Origin of Scientific Notions in the Circle of the Roman Accademia della Virtù around 1550. Between c. 1537 and 1555 a group of humanists, clerics, architects and philologists known as the so‐called Accademia della Virtù got together in Rome to work on a program which was formulated in a letter by the Sienese humanist Claudio Tolomei in 1542 and published in 1547. Starting out with the intention to understand the only surviving antique book on architecture and architectural theory – (...) Vitruvius’ De architectura libri decem – the program describes a series of 24 books, eleven containing the classical text and its translation with commentaries, 13 books systematically illustrating and documenting all known and available material remains from Roman antiquity. This program for a scientific classical archaeology in a modern sense was not only intended to serve the intellectual curiosity of some humanist antiquarians but to help architects and their patrons to develop a new architecture of the same high quality as the idealized Roman examples. To achieve this practical as well as theoretical goal it was obviously necessary to re‐create the antique vocabulary of architecture and its rules as well as to unify the contemporary usage of notions and norms in a canon. The first results of this project seem to be the In decem Libros M. Vitruvii Pollionis de Architectura Annotationes by Guillaume Philandrier (Rome, 1544) – up to this day a very valuable explanation of ambiguous parts in the Vitruvian text. Until the 1980s, it was believed that this book was the only outcome of the ambitious project; but then two codices of drawings after antique reliefs were identified as preparations for one of the other 23 volumes – and, because of their systematic approach, regarded as the ‘first systematic archaeological book’. Now it seems that there are some other corpora of manuscripts and drawings documenting antique artifacts that should be regarded as results of the Accademia’s work, too, showing antique buildings, inscriptions and coins. Other results of the unfinished project may be the theoretical and practical works of the two most influencial architects of the sixteenth century: Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola and Andrea Palladio. (shrink)

Jacopo Zabarella’s two treatises On Methods and On Regressus (1578) are among the most important Renaissance discussions of how scientific knowledge should be acquired, arranged, and transmitted. They belong to a lively debate about the order in which sciences should be taught and the method to be followed in scientific demonstration that roiled the Late Renaissance world for decades. In these famous works Zabarella rejected the views of Ramists and modern Galenists in favor of the pure doctrine of Aristotle, (...) freed from misunderstandings foisted upon it by medieval interpreters. The influence of these works on Galileo’s scientific method and Descartes’ famous Discourse on Method (1637) has long been debated. They are here translated into English for the first time, along with a new Latin text based on the corrected 1586 edition. Volume 1 contains On Methods, Books I-II. Volume 2 contains On Methods, Books III-IV, and On Regressus. (shrink)

Jacopo Zabarella’s two treatises On Methods and On Regressus (1578) are among the most important Renaissance discussions of how scientific knowledge should be acquired, arranged, and transmitted. They belong to a lively debate about the order in which sciences should be taught and the method to be followed in scientific demonstration that roiled the Late Renaissance world for decades. In these famous works Zabarella rejected the views of Ramists and modern Galenists in favor of the pure doctrine of Aristotle, (...) freed from misunderstandings foisted upon it by medieval interpreters. The influence of these works on Galileo’s scientific method and Descartes’ famous Discourse on Method (1637) has long been debated. They are here translated into English for the first time, along with a new Latin text based on the corrected 1586 edition. -/- Volume 1 contains On Methods, Books I-II. (shrink)

_Riassunto_: Il dibattito contemporaneo sull’impatto causale degli stati mentali e delle decisioni consce sui fenomeni naturali e sociali fa largo uso di dati ricavati da test neurofisiologici e comportamentali, che esplorano il ruolo di processi cognitivi inconsci e interpretazioni post-hoc caratterizzate da intenzionalità dichiarativa. I dati neuroscientifici sono spesso utilizzati per sostenere una prospettiva fisicalista che privilegia il determinismo neurocognitivo rispetto alle discussioni sul libero arbitrio. Tuttavia, questa impostazione tende a ignorare, almeno parzialmente, il dibattito sui limiti epistemologici e tecnici (...) nella generazione dei dati e i pregiudizi filosofici insiti nelle interpretazioni. Questo lavoro evidenzia tali limiti, proponendo un’analisi filosofica della relazione complessa tra razionalità, esercizio del libero arbitrio e costruzione dell’identità personale. Distinguendo il concetto di scelta autentica da quello di impulso o spinta ad agire, si sostiene una concezione enattiva e fenomenologica dell’azione umana libera, offrendo così un’interpretazione del libero arbitrio che respinge l’eliminativismo come inadeguato. Rifiutando un dualismo semplicistico, il libero arbitrio viene definito come la capacità di una soggettività incarnata, situata ed enattiva di interagire con un ambiente naturale e sociale attraverso compiti che implicano processi stratificati di valutazione e decisione. In conclusione, si argomenta che, sebbene le scienze fisiche e psicologiche possano indagare le basi dell’esecuzione dell’azione, non sono in grado di risolvere né di spiegare l’aspetto più complesso del processo decisionale stratificato ed esteso. Questo riguarda la relazione intenzionale tra la persona, considerata nella sua interezza, e un mondo ricco di valori, che conferisce senso e orientamento alle scelte individuali. Parole chiave: Libertà; Persona; Cervello; Inconscio; Determinismo/Eliminativismo; Thomas Fuchs _Embodied freedom. The role of person in decision-making_ _Abstract_: The contemporary debate on the causal impact of mental states and conscious decisions on natural and social phenomena extensively relies on data derived from neurophysiological and behavioral tests. These tests investigate the role of unconscious cognitive processes and post-hoc interpretations characterized by declarative intentionality. Neuroscientific data are often employed to support a physicalist perspective that prioritizes neurocognitive determinism over discussions of free will. However, this approach tends to partially overlook the epistemological and technical limitations inherent in data generation and the philosophical biases embedded in interpretations. This paper highlights these limitations by proposing a philosophical analysis of the complex relationship between rationality, the exercise of free will, and the construction of personal identity. By distinguishing the concept of genuine choice from that of impulse or urge to act, it advocates for an enactive and phenomenological conception of human free action, offering an interpretation of free will that rejects eliminativism as inadequate. Rejecting a simplistic dualism, free will is defined as the capacity of an embodied, situated, and enactive subjectivity to engage with a natural and social environment through tasks involving layered processes of evaluation and decision-making. In conclusion, it is argued that while physical and psychological sciences may explore the foundations of action execution, they cannot resolve nor explain the more complex aspect of the stratified and extended decision-making process. This aspect concerns the intentional relationship between the person, considered as a whole, and a world rich in values, which gives meaning and direction to individual choices. _Keywords_: Freedom; Person; Brain; Unconscious; Determinism/Eliminativism; Thomas Fuchs. (shrink)

In the present paper we use the theory of exact completions to study categorical properties of small setoids in Martin-Löf type theory and, more generally, of models of the Constructive Elementary Theory of the Category of Sets, in terms of properties of their subcategories of choice objects. Because of these intended applications, we deal with categories that lack equalisers and just have weak ones, but whose objects can be regarded as collections of global elements. In this context, we study the (...) internal logic of the categories involved, and employ this analysis to give a sufficient condition for the local cartesian closure of an exact completion. Finally, we apply this result to show when an exact completion produces a model of CETCS. (shrink)

The paper aims at detecting and evaluating Deleuze’s symptomatological and minoritarian concepts at work within his transcendental theory. By using these two philosophical items, the paper refers to the Nietzschean posture Deleuze develops within the transcendental field and to the N-1 formula that accompanies his conceptual path. In this vein, the essay retakes the issue highlighted by Rametta in his essay «The Transcendental and its Metamorphoses in Modern Thinking». In particular, if Rametta insists on Deleuze’s reading of Kant as a (...) kind of deconstruction of the relationships between philosophical concepts and the primacy of Representation, but also on the freeing of multiplicities that such a deconstruction allows, the present essay proposes three minoritarian paths that Deleuze takes from the history of philosophy and lead to transcendental empiricism. The first path is focused on “experience”, the second on “forces and violence”, while the third on “events and concepts”. (shrink)

Il s’agit de situer la pensée des programmes de Flusser dans le cadre d’un ensemble de questions centrales de la théorie politique contemporaine, à la croisée entre écologie et biopolitique. La notion de « post-histoire » constitue un espace où effectuer cette jonction qui relie la philosophie de la technique flusserienne aux trajectoires critiques et créatives tramant notre monde anthropocènique. Il est possible, en ce sens, apercevoir le retournement d’une post-histoire des programmations gestionnaires vers une post-histoire d’imprévisibles individuations, collectives et (...) environnementales. (shrink)

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. Three entries are incorrect in the reference list. The corrected references are given below.

While the debate on values in science focuses on normative questions on the level of the individual (e.g. should researchers try to make their work as value free as possible?), comparatively little attention has been paid to the institutional and professional norms that researchers are expected to follow. To address this knowledge gap, we conduct a content analysis of leading national codes of conduct for research integrity of European countries, and structure our analysis around the question: do these documents allow (...) for researchers to be influenced by “non-epistemic” (moral, cultural, commercial, political, etc.) values or do they prohibit such influence in compliance with the value-free ideal (VFI) of science? Our results return a complex picture. On the one hand, codes of conduct consider many non-epistemic values to be a legitimate influence on the decision-making of researchers. On the other, most of these documents include what we call _VFI-like positions_: passages claiming that researchers should be free and independent from any external influence. This shows that while many research integrity documents do not fully endorse the VFI, they do not reject it and continue to be implicitly influenced by it. This results in internal tensions and underdetermined guidance on non-epistemic values that may limit some of the uses of research integrity codes, especially for purposes of ethical self-regulation. While codes of conduct cannot be expected to decide how researchers should act in every instance, we do suggest that they acknowledge the challenges of how to integrate non-epistemic values in research in a more explicit fashion. (shrink)

In this paper, I give an analysis of neg-raising inferences as scalar implicatures. The main motivation for this account as opposed to a presupposition-based approach like Gajewski (Linguist Philos 30(3):289–328, 2007) comes from the differences between presuppositions and neg-raising inferences. In response to this issue, Gajewski (2007) argues that neg-raising predicates are soft presuppositional triggers and adopts the account of how their presuppositions arise by Abusch (J Semantics 27(1):1–44, 2010). However, I argue that there is a difference between soft triggers (...) and neg-raising predicates in their behavior in embeddings; a difference that is straightforwardly accounted for in the present approach. Furthermore, by adopting Abusch’s (2010) account of soft triggers, Gajewski (2007) inherits the assumptions of a pragmatic principle of disjunctive closure and of a non-standard interaction between semantics and pragmatics—assumptions that are not needed by the present proposal, which is just based on a regular theory of scalar implicatures. I also show that the arguments that Gajewski (2007) presents in favor of the presuppositional account can be explained also by the scalar implicatures-based approach proposed here. Finally, while the main point of the paper is a comparison with the presuppositional account, I sketch a preliminary comparison with more syntactic approaches to neg-raising. (shrink)

In the last few years, a remarkable convergence of interests and results has emerged between scholars interested in the arts and aesthetics from a variety of perspectives and cognitive scientists studying the mind and brain within the predictive processing (PP) framework. This convergence has so far proven fruitful for both sides: while PP is increasingly adopted as a framework for understanding aesthetic phenomena, the arts and aesthetics, examined under the lens of PP, are starting to be seen as important windows (...) into our mental functioning. The result is a vast and fast-growing research programme that promises to deliver important insights into our aesthetic encounters as well as a wide range of psychological phenomena of general interest. Here, we present this developing research programme, describing its grounds and highlighting its prospects. We start by clarifying how the study of the arts and aesthetics encounters the PP picture of mental functioning (§1). We then go on to outline the prospects of this encounter for the fields involved: philosophy and history of art (§2), psychology of aesthetics and neuroaesthetics (§3) and psychology and neuroscience more generally (§4). The upshot is an ambitious but well-defined framework within which aesthetics and cognitive science can partner up to illuminate crucial aspects of the human mind. -/- This article is part of the theme issue ‘Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives’. -/- . (shrink)

This paper builds on previous work that investigated anticancer drugs as ‘informed materials’, i.e., substances that undergo an informational enrichment that situates them in a dense relational web of qualifications and measurements generated by clinical experiments and clinical trials. The paper analyzes the recent transformation of anticancer drugs from ‘informed’ to ‘informing material’. Briefly put: in the post-genomic era, anti-cancer drugs have become instruments for the production of new biological, pathological, and therapeutic insights into the underlying etiology and evolution of (...) cancer. Genomic platforms characterize individual patients’ tumors based on their mutational landscapes. As part of this new approach, drugs targeting specific mutations transcend informational enrichment to become tools for informing their targets, while also problematizing the very notion of a ‘target’. In other words, they have become tools for the exploration of cancer pathways and mechanisms. While several studies in the philosophy and history of biomedicine have called attention to the heuristic relevance and experimental use of drugs, few have investigated concrete instances of this role of drugs in clinical research. (shrink)

The paper aims to describe the stakes of a Nietzschean influence on Deleuze's reflections on the transcendental and conversely to highlight the Deleuzian operation of politicising Nietzsche by ‘minorising’ him. In order to further understand such a complex relationship of becoming between Deleuze and Nietzsche, the first objective of the paper is to focus on active and reactive forces, which seem to be the core of this very relation. Thus, the paper suggests that micropolitics has its conditions of possibility in (...) the Nietzschean corpus and, in particular, in the symptomatology of decadence, resentment and nihilism. In this sense, now the title of the paper reveals its meaning: the whole Deleuzian operation could be summarised as the passage from the criticism and questioning of an image of Nietzsche ‘forbidden to minors’, typical of the interpretations of the first half of the twentieth century, to a becoming-minor of these very same Nietzschean concepts. It is precisely through such a becoming-minor that Nietzsche's diagnosis and concepts are translated in a political and emancipatory key, in order to give power to minorities. (shrink)

This special issue is devoted to trust, institutions, and their ties, specifically. Such ties have been of central concern for philosophers and social scientists for a while, and seem to become an increasingly widespread subject of public debate. This bundle covers two distinct worries, resulting in two (generally complementary) directions of investigation. The classic one, inherited from Hobbes, deals with the importance of institutions for trust. The other one, which is more central to this...

Even if the “value-free ideal of science” (VFI) were an unattainable goal, one could ask: can it be a useful fiction, one that is beneficial for the research community and society? This question is particularly crucial for scholars and institutions concerned with research integrity (RI), as one cannot offer normative guidance to researchers without making some assumptions about what ideal scientific research looks like. Despite the insofar little interaction between scholars studying RI and those working on values in science, the (...) overlap of topics and interests make collaboration between the two fields promising for understanding research and its ethics. Here, we identify—for the use of RI scholars—the non-epistemic reasons (societal, political, professional) for and against the VFI considered in the literature. All of these are concerned with the beneficial or detrimental consequences that endorsing the VFI would have on society, policy-making, or the scientific community, with some authors appealing to the same principles to argue for opposite positions. Though most of the reviewed articles do not endorse the VFI, it is generally agreed that some constraints have to be put on the use of non-epistemic values. Disagreement on the utility of the VFI lies both on the different epistemic-descriptive positions taken by different authors, and on the scarcity of relevant empirical studies. Engaging critically with the reasons here identified and more in general with the values in science debate will help the RI community decide whether the VFI should be included in future codes of conduct. (shrink)

Les technologies numériques facilitent de nombreuses manières nos interactions sociales — communication, échange, délégation, réputation, etc. Quel est l’impact de ces technologies sur les institutions qui sont le support et le cadre de nos vies sociales? Une réponse classique voit ces technologies comme des outils qui renforcent l’initiative individuelle et la possibilité de développer directement des relations en se passant de tiers de confiance. La transition numérique est alors comprise comme désintermédiation. L’article critique cette approche. En ce qui concerne leurs (...) conséquences sociales, les technologies numériques, les technologies numériques devraient elles–mêmes être traitées comme des intermédiaires sociaux spécifiques. Peut–on se fier à ces nouveaux niveaux d’intermédiation sociale? Trois raisons sont identifiées, pour lesquelles, en l’état actuel, ces institutions numériques ne méritent pas notre confiance. Des tentatives actuelles pour bâtir la fiabilité de ces intermédiaires sociaux sont présentées. (shrink)

La forme alternative d’une Europe à venir est aussi dessinée par les infrastructures médiales qui en tisseront la trame relationnelle déterminée par la circulation des attentions, des récits et des idées. C’est à l’échelle européenne que pourraient être envisagées des initiatives pour déjouer l’emprise médiatique que les nouveaux empires numériques (comme les GAFAM) entretiennent aujourd’hui en croisant les mass-media traditionnels. Il s’agit ainsi de transformer la médiasphère de notre continent dans un laboratoire de fabrication de conditions « post-média » (Guattari) (...) d’existence collective. (shrink)

El texto bíblico de Sap 11:21 tuvo una notable influencia en la historia de la filosofía medieval. Un ejemplo interesante de su importancia para la especulación teológica de la época se puede encontrar en la doctrina del vestigio de la Trinidad que Agustín elabora y configura en el sentido de una triple correspondencia entre Dios y la criatura. Esta doctrina se extenderá hasta los siglos XIII y XIV donde será central en el contexto del debate sobre el estado de las (...) esencias creaturales, así como sobre el tema de la relación entre Dios y las criaturas. La teoría de Juan Duns Escoto será examinada en profundidad por su originalidad respecto de la tradición agustiniana y de las doctrinas de sus contemporáneos. (shrink)

La riflessione politica di Francesco di Meyronnes (m. 1328) contiene un’elaborazione personale connessa ai concetti di sottomissione (subiectio) e obbedienza (oboedientia), e si inscrive all’interno del pensiero teologico-politico del suo tempo, dove il dibattito sul potere assume forme e direzioni molto diverse. Nei suoi scritti, la concezione politica di Meyronnes è espressa attraverso analogie cosmologiche, naturalistiche e metafisiche, in cui il dato filosofico e quello religioso si riverberano all’interno di un discorso circolare che da Dio va all’uomo e dall’uomo a (...) Dio. L’interrogazione dell’uomo, rivolta al funzionamento di ciò che sta al di sopra, ricerca l’ordine migliore tra i vari tipi di potere. Tra potere spirituale e potere temporale esiste un nesso che muove il secondo termine al primo “sicut ad finem”, e grazie ad esso viene nobilitato. L’obbedienza (oboedientia) di uno all’altro, che implica sottomissione (subiectio) – pur trovando il proprio fondamento implicito nello ius naturale e nella lex divina – non avviene se non per mezzo di un atto volontario. (shrink)

Un nouveau cinéma italien, illustré ici par le film Le quattro volte de Michelangelo Frammartino, propose une redéfinition radicale d’une éthique documentaire qui se situe aux confins de l’esthétique et de l’écopolitique. En l’absence d’une construction fictionnelle, la vie s’expose dans sa totalité multiple et non hiérarchique où tout acte, tout objet, toute sensation (aussi humble, minime et singulière soit-elle) garde un droit de perception et conséquemment de pensée.

Fin dalle sue origini l’alchimia ha dovuto confrontarsi con il problema dell’ordine. La sua eccentricità rispetto agli altri saperi medievali poneva questioni sulla sua collocazione e sulla natura dell’oggetto che cercava, la pietra filosofale. L’articolo presenta il tentativo fatto dal medico Pietro Bono da Ferrara di riordinare la materia alchemica e di incasellarla nel sistema scientifico scolastico. Nella sua opera, la _ Pretiosa Margarita Novella _, egli utilizza il sillogismo per ordinare la trattazione dell’alchimia, la _ subalternatio _ per definirla (...) come una tra le scienze naturali e collocarla all’interno del sistema dei saperi e il concetto di _ forma specifica _ per descrivere la pietra filosofale e inserirla nel processo di generazione dei metalli. In questo modo Bono concepisce l’alchimia come una scienza che risponde a due ordini, quello naturale di generazione dei metalli, nel quale opera, e quello divino, al quale deve fare appello per trovare la pietra, che sono complementari tra loro, poiché hanno la loro origine in Dio. _ Since its origins, alchemy has had to deal with the problem of order. His eccentricity compared to other medieval knowledge posed questions about his collocation and the nature of the object he was looking for, the philosopher’s stone. This article presents the attempt, made by the doctor Pietro Bono da Ferrara, to embed alchemy in the school scientific system. In his work, the Pretiosa Margarita Novella, he uses syllogism to order the treatment of alchemy, the subalternatio to place it within the system of sciences and the concept of forma specifica to describe the philosopher’s stone and insert it in metals’ generation process. In this way, Bono conceives alchemy as a science referring to two orders, the natural one of metal generation, in which it operates, and the divine one, to which he must appeal to find the philosopher’s stone, which are complementary to each other since they both have their origin in God. _. (shrink)

Idea generation, the process of creating and developing candidate solutions that when implemented can solve ill-defined and complex problems, plays a pivotal role in creativity and innovation. The algorithms that underlie classical evolutionary, cognitive, and process models of idea generation, however, appear too inefficient to effectively help solve the ill-defined and complex problems for which one would engage in idea generation. To address this, these classical models have recently been redesigned as forward models, drawing heavily on the “predictive mind” literature. (...) These pose that more efficiency can be achieved by making predictions based on heuristics, previous experiences, and domain knowledge about what material to use to generate ideas with, and evaluate these subsequently generated ideas based on whether they indeed match the initial prediction. When a discrepancy occurs between prediction and evaluation, new predictions are made, and thus shaping what actions, and how these actions, are undertaken. Although promising, forward models of idea generation remain theoretical and thus no empirical evidence exists about whether such predictions and evaluations indeed form part of the idea generation process. To take a first empirical look at this, a mixed-methods study was conducted by analyzing people’s self-reports for the reasons of the actions that they take during an idea generation task. The results showed that predictions and evaluations are pervasive in the idea generation process. Specifically, switching between concept selection and conceptual combination and idea generation, as well as repeating idea generation based on earlier selected conceptual combination, and possibly (but to a lesser extent) concept selection and the repetition thereof, are likely to be driven by predictions and evaluations. Moreover, the frequencies of the predictions and evaluations that drive these actions influenced the amount of ideas generated, amount of concepts used, and within-concept fluency (the ratio of the amount of ideas generated per concept used). Therefore, the contribution of this paper is the first empirical evidence that indicates that the idea generation process is driven by both predictions and evaluations. (shrink)

Volume 1, Books I-II. On methods -- Volume 2, Books III-IV. On methods-On regressus.

Les positions philosophiques d'Anthony Collins étaient audacieuses et novatrices, de son rejet de l'idée d'un Dieu doué d'intelligence et de volonté à celui de l'existence d'une âme immatérielle, en passant par sa conception déterministe de la nature et sa vision de l'homme comme machine proche de l'animal, et mue par des pulsions tout aussi hédonistes.

Institutions represent a solid basis to organize and stabilize human life in diferent social contexts. They are external events in the world, but they also have a strong anchorage in the mind and in last years many scholars tried to explore their cognitive ground. Starting from the original attempt of Douglass C. North, who at the end of his career tried to establish a program called “Cognitive Institutionalism”, we discuss the merits and the limits of this approach. First, we show (...) that his statements are cognitively onerous as they imply the notions of mental models and beliefs. Instead, we argue that shared institutions do not require such a convergence and that coordination takes place in the form of social practices and habits. Second, we clarify some aspects of North’s cognitive theory avoiding the ontological reading, i.e. explaining in what sense institutions might depend on the human mind and how people are joined into a practice made possible via institutions. (shrink)

Au carrefour entre une longue tradition théorique (de Benjamin à Rancière) et le contexte contemporain de la culture numérique, nous nous demandons si nos publics sont pris dans les filets de la production – institutionnelle, marchande, individualiste – ou bien s’ils leur échappent largement en tant que processus attentionnels collectifs animés par un dynamisme et une diffusion imprévisibles.

Bermúdez identifies the “Interface Problem” as the central problem in the philosophy of psychology: how commonsensical psychological explanations can be integrated with lower-level explanations? In particular, since folk psychology is meant to provide causal explanations on a par with, say, neurobiological explanations, the question of how to understand the relation between the two layers arises naturally. Donald Davidson claimed that the interface problem is actually ill-posed and put forward his version of the “Autonomy Picture”, the view known as anomalous monism. (...) This work reviews Davidson’s proposal in the light of digital universes: we model the key claims of the theory using cellular automata and show that Davidson’s original version of the Autonomy Picture is immune to two arguments against autonomy. (shrink)

This work investigates one of the most widespread yet elusive ideas about our experience of art: the idea that there is something cognitively valuable in engaging with great artworks, or, in other words, that we learn from them. This claim and the age-old controversy that surrounds it are reconsidered in light of the psychological and neuroscientific literature on learning, in one of the first systematic efforts to bridge the gap between philosophical and scientific inquiries on the topic. The work has (...) five chapters. Chapter 1 lays down its conceptual bases: it explains what learning is taken to be in the current philosophical debate and it points out how Bayesian cognitive science (particularly in its predictive processing formulations) might be well-suited to capture the kind of learning involved in our engagement with the arts. The following chapters test this latter hypothesis with respect to particular art forms, namely literature and literary language (Chapter 2), narrative (Chapter 3), and visual art, music and motor activities (Chapter 4). The fine-grained discussions conducted in each of these areas will enable us to see that the relationship between art and learning is indeed fundamental and pervasive. The final chapter (Chapter 5) examines the consequences of this fact for our understanding of the role of art in our epistemic practices, its ultimate usefulness and value, and its place in the interdisciplinary study of the human mind. The upshot is a novel and wide-ranging picture, both philosophically informed and empirically sound, that bypasses many of the problems and dead ends of the current philosophical debate on the topic and captures the deep sense in which art and learning are interrelated. (shrink)

This paper will be concerned with the role acquaintance plays in contemporary theories of introspection. Traditionally, the relation of acquaintance has been conceived in analytic epistemology and philosophy of mind as being only epistemically relevant inasmuch as it causes, or enables, or justifies a peculiar kind of propositional knowledge, i.e., knowledge by acquaintance. However, in recent years a novel account of the role of acquaintance in our introspective knowledge has been offered. According to this novel constitutive approach, acquaintance is, in (...) itself, a sui generis—i.e., non-propositional—kind of knowledge. As we will suggest, a stalemate between David Chalmers’ account of direct phenomenal concepts—as a prototypical example of a causal view—and Anna Giustina’s account of primitive introspection—as a prototypical example of a constitutive view—is looming in the current controversy between the two families of theories. Towards the end of the essay, we will point to some possible ways for a constitutive theorist to break the stalemate. (shrink)

La ricerca condotta tra le carte private del lessicografo piemontese Giacinto Carena, conservate all’Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, ha permesso di rintracciare una vasta quantità di materiali inediti di interesse storico-linguistico. Oltre all’epistolario (con circa 200 corrispondenti, tra cui Manzoni, che gli inviò la nota lettera Sulla lingua italiana, Cherubini, Cantù, Gherardini), sono conservati i diari di viaggio, che manifestano l’evolversi dei suoi interessi per la nomenclatura scientifica, e gli appunti preparatori al Prontuario di vocaboli che Carena darà alle stampe (...) nel 1846 e 1853 e a cui seguirà una terza parte postuma nel 1860. L’articolo intende dare conto del materiale presente nel fondo Carena, cercando di cogliere nei diari e negli scritti privati le diverse fasi del suo studio lessicologico ed onomasiologico; come si sia formata la sua idea di comporre un vocabolario basato sulla lingua toscana; con quali metodi abbia raccolto le informazioni dalla viva voce dei suoi interlocutori; come abbia sistemato il materiale raccolto durante le numerose esplorazioni sul campo. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the many challenges and difficulties of healthcare systems caring for older frail people. This public health crisis has indeed jeopardised the concept of the welfare state, in particular the right of older people to uncompromised healthcare. Together with the clinical challenges facing the geriatric patient and the organisational difficulties of the healthcare systems, sociocultural factors may have also played a substantial role in the strategies that countries have applied in coping with the pandemic. In this (...) opinion article, we report attitudes towards the older populations of two countries, Italy and Israel, during the COVID-19 pandemic as viewed through the looking-glass of the media. (shrink)

This article discusses the connection between Western socialist parties and technological development during the 1950s. The cases of the British Labour Party (LP), the German Social Democracy (SPD), and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) let us to examine socialist perspectives in managing technological progress and in conceiving programmes and purposes on scientific research. This choice allows to understand two different aspects: on the one hand, the new pragmatism of socialist and social democratic parties, which was a typical trait of Postwar's (...) socialist revisionism; on the other hand, the predominance assumed by domestic affairs in socialists’ vision, instead international topics. A very specific choice concerns the article's main focus. A large historiographical dispute has started to trace about Postwar Social Democracy's revisionism. Given such historiographical debate, this article firstly explores the behaviour and politics of the LP, the SPD, and the PSI about the the so-called modernization, a process which concerned the entire Postwar Europe. It also discusses programmes or ideas circulations about the 1950s ‘technological revolution’ and the agendas settled by socialist and social democratic parties to govern such global phenomena. (shrink)

This article criticizes Laura Valentini's criterion for distinguishing good and bad idealizations in normative political theory. I argue that, on an attentive reading of her criterion, all ideal theories she discusses must be written off as incorporating bad idealizations. This fact makes Valentini's criterion trivially implausible, for it is argued that there are good idealizations that succeed in promoting the action-guiding goal of ideal theory. Upon rejecting an attempt to salvage the idealizations that Valentini marks off as bad, I develop (...) an alternative criterion for demarcating good and bad idealizations. The criterion holds that the standing of a theory's idealized assumptions depends on whether the stipulated idealizations can be feasibly realized in the non-ideal world, and thus on whether the principles that the theory generates can be made relevant for real-world practice. I also claim that the feasibility criterion better reflects the function of idealization in promoting action-guidance. Unlike Valentini's criterion, the feasibility criterion yields the result that Rawls' theories of domestic and international justice both incorporate bad idealizations. (shrink)