Vittorio Hösle , , | : Cet article ambitionne de comprendre la crise écologique dans sa portée métaphysique. Pour ce faire, l’auteur analyse d’abord ce qu’il considère comme l’interprétation métaphysique la plus courante de cette crise, soit la métaphysique de l’esprit, qui trouve sa source dans une lecture simpliste de la pensée de G.W.F. Hegel. Ensuite, il examine les deux principales critiques adressées à cette métaphysique de l’esprit, soit d’une part l’interprétation heideggérienne de l’histoire de l’être et, d’autre part, (...) le panthéisme naturaliste d’inspiration écologiste dont le philosophe allemand Klaus Michael Meyer-Abich est le principal représentant. Enfin, en guise de synthèse, l’auteur élabore sa propre analyse en mettant en lumière le phénomène d’éloignement croissant de la subjectivité et de l’être à l’époque moderne comme la principale source métaphysique de la présente crise écologique. | : This article aims to understand the ecological crisis in its metaphysical significance. To do so, the author first analyzes what he sees as the most common metaphysical interpretation of the crisis, viz. the metaphysics of the mind, which is rooted in a simplistic reading of the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. Next, he examines the two main criticisms of the metaphysics of mind, on the one hand, Heidegger’s interpretation of the history of Being and, on the other hand, the naturalistic ecologist pantheism best represented by the German philosopher Klaus Michael Meyer-Abich. Finally, by way of summary, the author develops his own analysis by highlighting the phenomenon of growing alienation of subjectivity and Being in modern times as the main metaphysical source of the current ecological crisis. (shrink)

Vittorio Cotesta's Eurasian Visions of the World traces the origin of the images of the world typical of the Graeco-Roman, Ancient Chinese and Medieval Islamic civilisations. Each of them had its own peculiar way of understanding the universe, life, death, society, power, humanity and its destiny. The comparative analysis carried out here suggests that they all shared a common human aspiration despite their differences: human being is unique; differences are details which enrich its image. Today, the traditions derived from (...) these civilisations are often in competition and conflict. Reference to a common vision of humanity as a shared universal entity should lead, instead, to a quest for understanding and dialogue. (shrink)

In this article we provide a unifying neural hypothesis on how individuals understand the actions and emotions of others. Our main claim is that the fundamental mechanism at the basis of the experiential understanding of others' actions is the activation of the mirror neuron system. A similar mechanism, but involving the activation of viscero-motor centers, underlies the experiential understanding of the emotions of others.

Concepts are the elementary units of reason and linguistic meaning. They are conventional and relatively stable. As such, they must somehow be the result of neural activity in the brain. The questions are: Where? and How? A common philosophical position is that all concepts—even concepts about action and perception—are symbolic and abstract, and therefore must be implemented outside the brain’s sensory-motor system. We will argue against this position using (1) neuroscientific evidence; (2) results from neural computation; and (3) results about (...) the nature of concepts from cognitive linguistics. We will propose that the sensory-motor system has the right kind of structure to characterise both sensory-motor and more abstract concepts. Central to this picture are the neural theory of language and the theory of cogs, according to which, brain structures in the sensory-motor regions are exploited to characterise the so-called “abstract” concepts that constitute the meanings of grammatical constructions and general inference patterns. (shrink)

A new class of visuomotor neuron has been recently discovered in the monkey’s premotor cortex: mirror neurons. These neurons respond both when a particular action is performed by the recorded monkey and when the same action, performed by another individual, is observed. Mirror neurons appear to form a cortical system matching observation and execution of goal-related motor actions. Experimental evidence suggests that a similar matching system also exists in humans. What might be the functional role of this matching system? One (...) possible function is to enable an organism to detect certain mental states of observed conspecifics. This function might be part of, or a precursor to, a more general mind-reading ability. Two different accounts of mind-reading have been suggested. According to “theory theory‘, mental states are represented as inferred posits of a naive theory. According to “simulation theory‘, other people’s mental states are represented by adopting their perspective: by tracking or matching their states with resonant states of one’s own. The activity of mirror neurons, and the fact that observers undergo motor facilitation in the same muscular groups as those utilized by target agents, are findings that accord well with simulation theory but would not be predicted by theory theory. (shrink)

Background The 2020-2021 coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is just the latest epidemic event that requires us to rethink and change our understanding of health. Health should no longer be conceived only in relation to human beings, but in unitary terms, as a dimension that connects humans, animals, plants, and the environment (holistic view, One Health). In general, alterations occurring in this articulated chain of life trigger a domino effect. Methodology In this paper, we review the One Health paradigm in the light (...) of the Covid-19 pandemic and distinguish two approaches within it that might be dubbed the Prudent one and the Radical one. Each approach is structured in three levels – epistemological, medical, and ethical. Results In this way, we show how we humans can better address the pandemic today and how, in the future, we can treat the whole living system better, by renouncing our anthropocentric perspective on health. Conclusion We hold that the Prudent approach can be very helpful, and we discuss the medical and ethical issues related to it. We also consider the Radical view and the epistemological turn it requires compared to the Prudent one. (shrink)

My initial scope will be limited: starting from a neurobiological standpoint, I will analyse how actions are possibly represented and understood. The main aim of my arguments will be to show that, far from being exclusively dependent upon mentalistic/linguistic abilities, the capacity for understanding others as intentional agents is deeply grounded in the relational nature of action. Action is relational, and the relation holds both between the agent and the object target of the action , as between the agent of (...) the action and his/her observer . Agency constitutes a key issue for the understanding of intersubjectivity and for explaining how individuals can interpret their social world. This account of intersubjectivity, founded on the empirical findings of neuroscientific investigation, will be discussed and put in relation with a classical tenet of phenomenology: empathy. I will provide an 'enlarged' account of empathy that will be defined by means of a new conceptual tool: the shared manifold of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

This article rejects the received view that Post-Truth is a new, unprecedented political phenomenon. By showing that Truth and Post-Truth share the same genesis, this article will submit the idea of a Consensus Theory of Post-Truth. Part 1 looks at the difference between Post-Truth, lies and bullshit. Part 2 suggests reasons behind the current preoccupation with Post-Truth. Part 3 focuses on Habermas’s influential consensus theory of truth to suggest that truth and Post-Truth have more in common than is generally assumed. (...) Part 4 puts forward the Consensus Theory of Post-Truth. Part 5 suggests three ways to emasculate the potentially destructive effect of Post-Truth on democratic society. (shrink)

Foucault and Derrida react in two different ways to the new paradigm imposed by structuralism. Foucault uses structuralism to overcome phenomenology, in fact structuralism shows the naivety of phenomenology, in its claim to rely on conscience to constitute meaning. Instead, Derrida on the contrary immediately nurtures a certain distrust of structuralism, especially in its philosophical ambitions and uses the resources of phenomenology to criticize it, showing the metaphysical implications operating in it. We want to show how this opposing position is (...) generated by the specific way in which the two philosophers have responded to the open problems and bequeathed by Husserlian phenomenology. In particular, the theme of “passive genesis,” which was raised in the French debate by Tran-Duc-Thao and Merleau-Ponty, is central. In the first writings it emerges how Foucault has received Merleau-Ponty’s theses and it is precisely to overcome them that he inaugurates an archaeological analysis to try to distance himself from the normalizing anthropological discourse present in the passive synthesis. Derrida reads passive genesis in a radically different way from Merleau-Ponty (and therefore Foucault): the radical nature of Husserl’s phenomenology has opened a space to question the transcendental genesis of philosophical discourse and its possibility of transcending its historical, social and psychological genesis and therefore the sciences that preside over these dimensions. Consequently, showing the naivety of structuralism, Derrida’s research of the sixties is configured as post-structuralist. (shrink)

In this article, I show that (i) from what I call a “Kripkean” account of the relations between conceivability and metaphysical necessities, (ii) an apparently plausible principle relating conceivability and epistemic modality, and (iii) the duality of epistemic modalities, one can show the utterly anti-Kripkean result that every metaphysical necessity is an epistemic necessity. My aim is to present and diagnose the problem and evaluate the costs of some possible Kripkean reactions. In particular, I will evaluate the consequences and theoretical (...) costs of rejecting the main ingredients of the argument, namely that we cannot genuinely conceive the negations of metaphysical necessities, that there is no postulated relation between conceivability and epistemic possibility (actually, between unconceivability and epistemic impossibility), and that epistemic possibility and necessity are not dualities. (shrink)

O autor mostra a necessidade de uma nova reflexão sobre a relação entre teologia, filosofia e religião nos tempos atuais. Para isso, define, primeiramente, esses três fenômenos, para depois apresentar a resposta, tanto no nível descritivo quanto no normativo, à pergunta sobre a relação entre essas três esferas.

Simulation theories of social cognition abound in the literature, but it is often unclear what simulation means and how it works. The discovery of mirror neurons, responding both to action execution and observation, suggested an embodied approach to mental simulation. Over the last years this approach has been hotly debated and alternative accounts have been proposed. We discuss these accounts and argue that they fail to capture the uniqueness of embodied simulation (ES). ES theory provides a unitary account of basic (...) social cognition, demonstrating that people e their own mental states or processes represented with a bodily format in functionally attributing them to others. (shrink)

Dante's Commedia compels readers to confront the mystery of their existence, to seek understanding of their relationship to the living conscious reality from which all possible experience arises. By pursuing these lines of inquiry, says Vittorio Montemaggi, readers can reach an ultimate reality that Dante calls love. Montemaggi offers a detailed theological reading of the Commedia, examining the theme of human interaction, both as it is represented in the poem-the narrator Dante's interaction with other characters-and by the relationship between (...) author and reader. In doing so, he locates a Dante we may not be used to imagining, a man aware both of the spiritual power of his work, and of his profound, essential vulnerability and moral failing. Montemaggi shows that, for this Dante, truth emerges only through human limitation and failure, and not in spite of it.Applying this interpretive framework to a reflection on the methodology of scholarship itself, Montemaggi offers a vision of what the academy could be-not individual scholars in competition with others, but a community that seeks to foster the understanding that can arise through interaction, vulnerability, and love. His vision constitutes a benign challenge to some of the ethos and practices of the modern academy, while simultaneously reflecting on the dynamics of one of the most inspiring and influential texts ever written about the relationship between humanity and divinity. (shrink)

We consider the notions of static and dynamic reasonableness of requests by an authority in a trust game experiment. The authority, modeled as the experimenter, systematically varies the experimental norm of what is expected from trustees to return to trustors, both in terms of the level of each request and in terms of the sequence of the requests. Static reasonableness matters in a self-biased way, in the sense that low requests justify returning less, but high requests tend to be ignored. (...) Dynamic reasonableness also matters, in the sense that, if requests keep increasing, trustees return less compared to the same requests presented in random or decreasing order. Requests never systematically increase trustworthiness but may decrease it. (shrink)

Dieses Buch bietet die umfassende neuere Darstellung und Analyse des ganzen Hegelschen Systems. Dabei wird Hegels Philosophie in einer klaren und leichtverständlichen Sprache einer immanenten Kritik unterzogen, die sich weder in Paraphrasen erschöpft noch mit der Versicherung entgegengesetzter Behauptung ihr Ende findet. "Ein wirklich faszinierendes Werk, das das systematische Philosophieren selbst erneut zu wecken vermag" Philosophisches Jahrbuch.

Opinion: as socialism once again becomes a global force to be reckoned with, it's time to assess just what socialism is - and also what it's not.

The political clout and influence of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez owes much to her distinctive political philosophy.

En el presente ensayo se buscará exponer, a través de una problematización histórica, la radical novedad filosófica que representa la teoría freudiana de la constitución de la autoconsciencia moral a partir de la introyección de la ley paterna. Para esto, se mostrarán, en primer lugar, los hitos históricamente relevantes que permitieron instalar una reflexión sobre la interioridad moral en la filosofía agustiniana, contraponiéndola con el pensamiento helénico clásico. Posteriormente, se expondrá la hipótesis nietzscheana sobre la aparición de la moralidad como (...) una estrategia de poder dentro de la tradición judeo-cristiana para, por un lado, mostrar sus insuficiencias y, por el otro, dar paso a la teoría freudiana de la formación de la consciencia moral como un proceso identificatorio con respecto a la figura del padre, lo que permite explicar el fenómeno de la autocrítica moral como un tipo particular de autodistanciamiento con respecto a sí. (shrink)

Mit dem vorliegenden Band wurde erstmalig eine Sammlung von Beiträgen in die Reihe Schriften zur Transzendentalphilosophie aufgenommen, deren thematischer Schwerpunkt nicht auf der systematischen Erörterung und Fortführung eines transzendentalphilosophischen Ansatzes liegt, sondern auf der kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit der idealistischen, insbesondere der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie, die sich historisch als Antwort auf und Weiterführung der von Kant und Fichte erreichten Positionen verstand. Die Aufnahme des Bandes in diese Reihe trägt damit der Tatsache Rechnung, daß sich gerade auf dem Gebiet der Rechtsphilosophie die Differenz (...) zwischen transzendentalphilosophischer und spekulativer Begründung besonders deutlich und faßbar zeigt, und zwar so, daß die Notwendigkeit und Fruchtbarkeit des transzendentalphilosophischen Ansatzes noch einmal in einem anderen Licht erscheint. (shrink)

SAGGI DI VITTORIO MARCHIS, UMBERTO BOTTAZZINI, FABIO TOSCANO, MASSIMO NEGROTTI, GIUSEPPE O. LONGO, STEFANO A. E. LEONI, ALBERTO CASADEI, SILVANO TAGLIAGAMBE.