Saul Kripke proposed a skeptical challenge that Romina Padró defended and popularized by the name of the Adoption Problem. The challenge is that, given a certain definition of adoption, there are some logical principles that cannot be adopted—paradigmatic cases being Universal Instantiation and Modus Ponens. Kripke has used the Adoption Problem to argue that there is an important sense in which logic is not revisable. In this essay, I defend two independent claims. First, that the Adoption Problem does not entail (...) that logic is never revisable in the sense that Kripke addresses. Second, that, to assess whether an agent can revise their logic in the sense that Kripke addresses, it is best to consider a different definition of adoption, according to which Universal Instantiation and Modus Ponens are sometimes adoptable. (shrink)

An old and well-known objection to non-classical logics is that they are too weak; in particular, they cannot prove a number of important mathematical results. A promising strategy to deal with this objection consists in proving so-called recapture results. Roughly, these results show that classical logic can be used in mathematics and other unproblematic contexts. However, the strategy faces some potential problems. First, typical recapture results are formulated in a purely logical language, and do not generalize nicely to languages containing (...) the kind of vocabulary that usually motivates non-classical theories—for example, a language containing a naïve truth predicate. Second, proofs of recapture results typically employ classical principles that are not valid in the targeted non-classical system; hence, non-classical theorists do not seem entitled to those results. In this paper, we analyze these problems and provide solutions on behalf of non-classical theorists. To address the first problem, we provide a novel kind of recapture result, which generalizes nicely to a truth-theoretic language. As for the second problem, we argue that it relies on an ambiguity and that, once the ambiguity is removed, there are no reasons to think that non-classical logicians are not entitled to their recapture results. (shrink)

Connexive logics are based on two ideas: that no statement entails or is entailed by its own negation (this is Aristotle’s thesis) and that no statement entails both something and the negation of this very thing (this is Boethius' thesis). Usually, connexive logics are contra-classical. In this note, I introduce a reading of the connexive theses that makes them compatible with classical logic. According to this reading, the theses in question do not talk about validity alone; rather, they talk in (...) part about (a property related to) the soundness of arguments. (shrink)

When logicians work with multiple-conclusion systems, they use a metalinguistic comma ‘,’ to aggregate premises and/or conclusions. In this note, I present an analogy between this comma and Prior’s infamous connective tonk. The analogy reveals that these expressions have much in common. I argue that, indeed, the comma can be seen as a structural incarnation of tonk. The upshot is that, whatever story one has to tell about tonk, there are good reasons to tell a similar story about the comma (...) in typical multiple-conclusion systems, and vice versa. (shrink)

A metainference is usually understood as a pair consisting of a collection of inferences, called premises, and a single inference, called conclusion. In the last few years, much attention has been paid to the study of metainferences—and, in particular, to the question of what are the valid metainferences of a given logic. So far, however, this study has been done in quite a poor language. Our usual sequent calculi have no way to represent, e.g. negations, disjunctions or conjunctions of inferences. (...) In this paper we tackle this expressive issue. We assume some background sentential language as given and define what we call an inferential language, that is, a language whose atomic formulas are inferences. We provide a model-theoretic characterization of validity for this language—relative to some given characterization of validity for the background sentential language—and provide a proof-theoretic analysis of validity. We argue that our novel language has fruitful philosophical applications. Lastly, we generalize some of our definitions and results to arbitrary metainferential levels. (shrink)

The infinitary function of the truth predicate consists in its ability to express infinite conjunctions and disjunctions. A transparency principle for truth states the equivalence between a sentence and its truth predication; it requires an introduction principle—which allows the inference from “snow is white” to “the sentence ‘snow is white’ is true”—and an elimination principle—which allows the inference from “the sentence ‘snow is white’ is true” to “snow is white”. It is commonly assumed that a theory of truth needs to (...) satisfy a transparency principle to fulfil the infinitary function. Picollo and Schindler (Erkenntnis 83:899–928, 2017) argue against this idea. They prove that, given certain assumptions, an elimination principle is sufficient for the purpose. Then, they pose a challenge: to show why we should incorporate introduction principles to our theory of truth. In this essay I take on the challenge. I show that, given the authors’ assumptions, an introduction principle is also sufficient to perform the infinitary function. (shrink)

En este capítulo ofrecemos una introducción sistemática e histórica a la lógica, disciplina que contribuyó en gran medida a la producción del conocimiento en general y a la formación del pensamiento científico en particular. La primera sección contiene la introducción sistemática: primero, presentamos las distintas disciplinas que forman parte de la lógica en el sentido amplio del término; luego, identificamos a la lógica en sentido canónico o estricto como el estudio la validez; por último, explicamos en qué sentido la validez (...) es una propiedad formal. La segunda sección contiene la introducción histórica; nos detenemos, en particular, a estudiar dos hitos: el nacimiento de la lógica como disciplina con Aristóteles, y la intervención de Gottlob Frege, a quien se debe, en gran parte, el surgimiento de la lógica tal como la conocemos. Finalmente, damos un breve comentario del estado actual de la disciplina. (shrink)

This article details the variety of critical strategies in Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, finding strong connections with her writing as a reviewer for the Analytical Review, the literary review published by the reformer and Dissenter Joseph Johnson. In Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft employed textual analyses and an evolving set of theoretical positions that had been introduced in the course of her career at the Analytical Review. By elucidating the importance of the reviews and the specificity (...) of Wollstonecraft’s procedures, this article contributes to a growing consensus that Rights of Woman initiated feminist literary criticism. (shrink)

Causal Modeling Semantics (CMS, e.g., Galles and Pearl 1998; Pearl 2000; Halpern 2000) is a powerful framework for evaluating counterfactuals whose antecedent is a conjunction of atomic formulas. We extend CMS to an evaluation of the probability of counterfactuals with disjunctive antecedents, and more generally, to counterfactuals whose antecedent is an arbitrary Boolean combination of atomic formulas. Our main idea is to assign a probability to a counterfactual (A ∨ B) > C at a causal model M as a weighted (...) average of the probability of C in those submodels that truthmake A∨ B (Briggs 2012; Fine 2016, 2017). The weights of the submodels are given by the inverse distance to the original model M, based on a distance metric proposed by Eva, Stern, and Hartmann (2019). Apart from solving a major problem in the epistemology of counterfactuals, our paper shows how work in semantics, causal inference and formal epistemology can be fruitfully combined. (shrink)

There seems to be a "what it is like" to the experience of the flow of time in any conscious activity of ours. In this paper, I argue that the feeling that time passes should be understood as a phenomenal modifier of our mental life, in roughly the same way as the blurred or vivid nature of a visual experience can be seen as an element of the experience that modifies the way it feels, without representing the world as being (...) in a certain way. I defend my positions against the deflationary view according to which the passing of time does not have a specific phenomenal character, and the representationalist view according to which the feeling of time passing is a feature of the representational content of our experience, like being red or yellow. (shrink)

Narrative medicine explores the stories that patients tell; this paper, conversely, looks at some of the stories that patients are told. The paper starts by examining the ‘story’ told by the Shambaa people of Tanzania to explain the bubonic plague and contrasts this with the stories told by Ghanaian communities to explain lymphatic filariasis. By harnessing insights from memory studies, these stories’ memorability is claimed to be due to their use mnemonic devices woven into stories. The paper suggests that stories (...) can be unpatronising, informative, and appropriate vehicles for communicating medical information to all age groups across all cultures. (shrink)

The article argues that AI can enhance the measurement and implementation of democratic processes within political parties, known as Intra-Party Democracy (IPD). It identifies the limitations of traditional methods for measuring IPD, which often rely on formal parameters, self-reported data, and tools like surveys. Such limitations lead to the collection of partial data, rare updates, and significant demands on resources. To address these issues, the article suggests that specific data management and Machine Learning (ML) techniques, such as natural language processing (...) and sentiment analysis, can improve the measurement (ML about) and practice (ML for) of IPD. The article concludes by considering some of the principal risks of ML for IPD, including concerns over data privacy, the potential for manipulation, and the dangers of overreliance on technology. (shrink)

In this paper, we articulate a version of non-standard A-theory—which we call Flow Fragmentalism—in relation to its take on the issue of supervenience of truth on being. According to the Truth Supervenes on Being (TSB) Principle, the truth of past- and future-tensed propositions supervenes, respectively, on past and future facts. Since the standard presentist denies the existence of past and future entities and facts concerning them that do not obtain in the present, she seems to lack the resources to accept (...) both past and future-tensed truths and the TSB Principle. Contrariwise, positions in philosophy of time that accept an eternalist ontology (e.g., B-theory, moving spotlight, and Fine’s and Lipman’s versions of fragmentalism) allow for a “direct” supervenience base for past- and future-tensed truths. We argue that Flow Fragmentalism constitutes a middle ground, which retains most of the advantages of both views, and allows us to articulate a novel account of the passage of time. (shrink)

The moving spotlight account (MS) is a view that combines an eternalist ontology and an A-theoretic metaphysics. The intuition underlying MS is that the present time is somehow privileged and experientially vivid, as if it were illuminated by a moving spotlight. According to MS-theorists, a key reason to prefer MS to B-theoretic eternalism is that our experience of time supports it. We argue that this is false. To this end, we formulate a new family of positions in the philosophy of (...) time, which differ from MS in that, intuitively, they admit a plurality of moving spotlights. We argue that these ‘deviant’ variants of MS cannot be dismissed as conceptually incoherent, and that they are as well-supported by our experience as is MS. One of these variants, however, is consistent with the B-theory. Thus, if our experience of time supports MS, then it supports the B-theory as well. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that the adoption of an unrestricted principle of bivalence is compatible with a metaphysics that (i) denies that the future is real, (ii) adopts nomological indeterminism, and (iii) exploits a branching structure to provide a semantics for future contingent claims. To this end, we elaborate what we call Flow Fragmentalism, a view inspired by Kit Fine (2005)’s non-standard tense realism, according to which reality is divided up into maximally coherent collections of tensed (...) facts. In this way, we show how to reconcile a genuinely A-theoretic branching-time model with the idea that there is a branch corresponding to the thin red line, that is, the branch that will turn out to be the actual future history of the world. (shrink)

Ostrich presentists maintain that we can use all the expressive resources of the tensed language to provide an explanation of why true claims about the past are true, without thereby paying any price in terms of ontology or basic ideology. I clarify the position by making a distinction between three kinds of explanation, which has general interest and applicability. I then criticize the ostrich position because it requires an unconstrained version of the third form of explanation, which is out of (...) place in metaphysics. (shrink)

Every criminal act ought to be matched by a corresponding punishment, or so we may suppose, and every punishment ought to reflect a criminal act. We know how to count punishments. But how do we count crimes? In particular, how does our notion of a criminal action depend on whether the prohibited action is an activity, an accomplishment, an achievement, or a state?

Sceptics about substantial disputes in ontology often argue that when two philosophers seem to disagree on a quantified claim, they are actually equivocating on the notion of existence that they are using. When temporal elements play a central role, as in the debate between presentists and eternalists, the hypothesis of an equivocation with respect to existence acquires more plausibility. However, the anti-sceptic can still argue that this hypothesis is unjustified.

Aristóteles comparte con Platón la concepción de la forma como causa del ser y del conocimiento de las cosas. Sin embargo, un análisis de sus críticas a las Ideas muestra que encuentra en la separación de las Ideas y las cosas sensibles la aporía fundamental de la teoría platónica. Con el propósito de circunscribir el significado de “separación” aplicable a las Ideas, concentraremos nuestro estudio en dos objeciones: 1) el argumento que conduce al tercer hombre y 2) la inutilidad de (...) las Ideas como causas. En el primer caso, creemos que la separación entraña homonimia, por lo que la solución aristotélica implicará la comunidad de naturaleza entre el individuo y su esencia. En el segundo, la separación implica trascendencia o falta de contacto entre generante y generado, por lo que la solución aristotélica apuntará a concebir la forma de las entidades naturales como un principio inmanente, inseparable de la materia y del movimiento, pero a la vez eterno a través de su reproducción en otros individuos de la misma especie. Creemos que en ambas soluciones opera un principio de sinonimia, que constituye su propia contribución al problema de la separación. (shrink)

As far as our experience goes, we live in a dynamic present. Those two phenomenal features of experience—presentness and dynamism—are obviously connected. However, how they are connected is not obvious at all. In this paper, I criticise the view according to which the former can explain the latter, which I call sophisticated representationalism. My criticism will be based on an ambiguity in the notion of tense found in the philosophical literature, that between the perspectival understanding and the dynamic understanding of (...) tenses. The distinction is not just of independent interest, but it has a role in providing indirect evidence for the claim that the feeling of passage of time should be understood in non-representationalist terms. (shrink)

Opponents of presentism have often argued that the presentist has difficulty in accounting for what makes true past-tensed propositions true in a way that is compatible with her metaphysical view of time and reality. The problem is quite general and concerns not only strong truth-maker principles, but also the requirement that truth be grounded in reality. In order to meet the challenge, presentists have proposed many peculiar present aspects of the world as grounds for truths concerning the past, such as (...) uninstantiated haecceities, Meinongian non-existents, ersatz times, and dispositional and distributional properties. The main problem with all such solutions is that any explanation of what grounds a TptP that involves the past is eo ipso a better explanation than any that involves only the present. Thus, the quest for an account of grounding for TptP that is compatible with the presentist ontology and ideology is doomed to be explanatorily deficient with respect to eternalism. In a recent article, Ben Caplan and David Sanson have claimed that presentists should change their strategy and, rather than seeking for exotic grounds for TptP, should adopt a more liberal view of explanation. That is, they should allow themselves to resort to “past directed” explanations, even if they do not accept the past in their ontology and ideology. I argue that such a proposal is not compatible with the tenet that there is a substantial distinction between the ideology of such a version of presentism and that of eternalism. Therefore, the presentist cannot endorse such “deflationist” explanations as an easy way out to the problem of the grounding of TptP. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a problem for the realist with respect to the institutional sphere, and suggest a solution. Roughly, the problem lies in a contradiction that arises as soon as institutional contexts are allowed to influence the institutional profile of objects and events not only in the present, but also in the past. If such “retroactive enactments” are effective, in order to avoid contradiction the realist seems to have to accept the unpleasant conclusion that institutions can create a (...) past that has never been present. I will defend a solution which involves a distinction between temporal and atemporal types of institutional kinds that has, I maintain, independent interest. (shrink)

The book is divided into three parts. The first, containing three papers, focuses on the characterization of the central tenets of previii sentism (by Neil McKinnon) and eternalism (by Samuel Baron and Kristie Miller), and on the ‘sceptical stance’ (by Ulrich Meyer), a view to the effect that there is no substantial difference between presentism and eternalism. The second and main section of the book contains three pairs of papers that bring the main problems with presentism to the fore and (...) outlines its defence strategy. Each pair of papers in this section can be read as a discussion between presentists and eternalists, wherein each directly responds to the arguments and objections offered by the other. This is a discussion that is sometimes absent in the literature, or which is at best carried out in a fragmented way. The first two papers of the section deal with the problem of the compatibility of Special Relativity Theory (SRT) and presentism. SRT is often considered to be a theory that contradicts the main tenet of presentism, thereby rendering presentism at odds with one of our most solid scientific theories. Christian Wüthrich’s paper presents arguments for the incompatibility of the two theories (SRT and presentism) within a new framework that includes a discussion of further complications arising from the theory of Qauantum Mechanics. Jonathan Lowe’s paper, by contrast, develops new general arguments against the incompatibility thesis and replies to Wüthrich’s paper. The second pair of papers focuses on the problem that presentists face, in providing grounds for past tensed truths. In the first (by Matthew Davidson), new arguments are provided to defend the idea that the presentist cannot adequately explain how what is now true about the past is grounded, since for the presentist the past is completely devoid of ontological ground. The second paper (by Brian Kierland) takes up the challenge of developing a presentist explanation of past truths, beginning by outlining some existing views in the literature before advancing an original proposal. (shrink)

This paper offers an argument in favour of a Lewisian version of concretism that maintains both the principle of material inheritance (according to which, if all the parts of an object x are material, then x is material) and the materiality-modality link (that is, the principle that, for every x, if x is material, then x is possible).

The goal of this paper is to defend the general tenet that time travelers cannot change the past within B-theoretical models of time, independently of how many temporal dimensions there are. Baron Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 98, 129–147 offered a strong argument intended to reach this general conclusion. However, his argument does not cover a peculiar case, i.e. a B-theoretical one-dimensional model of time that allows for the presence of internal times. Loss Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 96, 1–11 used the latter model (...) to argue that time travelers can change the past within such model. We show a way to debunk Loss’s argument, so that the general tenet about the impossibility of changing the past within B-theoretical models is maintained. (shrink)

I present a new problem for the tense realist concerning the evaluation of cross-temporal claims, such as ‘John is now taller than Michael was in 1984’. Time can play two different roles in the evaluation of an utterance of a sentence: either as an element that completes the content expressed by the utterance (the completion role), or as part of the circumstances against which the content is evaluated (the evaluation role). It is this latter role that time plays in the (...) realist view of tenses. I argue that if the content of a cross-temporal sentence is taken at face value (as an ascription of a crosstemporally instantiated relation), time does not play the evaluation role. Therefore, the world of the tense realist seems to leave no room for cross-temporality. (shrink)

Space and time are two obvious candidates as dimensions of reality. Yet, are they the only two dimensions of reality? Famously, David Lewis maintained the doctrine of.

I criticize Lockwood’s solution to the “paradoxes” of time travel, thus endorsing Lewis’s more conservative position. Lockwood argues that only in the context of a 5D space-time-actuality manifold is the possibility of time travel compatible with the Autonomy Principle (according to which global constraints cannot override what is physically possible locally). I argue that shifting from 4D space-time to 5D space-time-actuality does not change the situation with respect to the Autonomy Principle, since the shift does not allow us to have (...) a coincidence-free local dynamical theory. (shrink)

La exposición y crítica de las doctrinas antiguas tiene un lugar importante en los escritos de Aristóteles. Sin embargo, ciertas dudas se han vuelto corrientes acerca de la confiabilidad de sus descripciones. Más aún, se ha sostenido que Aristóteles deforma la comprensión histórica a través de la introducción de conceptos y términos propios. En este libro se aborda el problema a través de un análisis de las críticas que Aristóteles dirige a la teoría platónica de las Ideas, que permite explicar (...) la constitución y desarrollo de importantes conceptos aristotélicos a partir de la confrontación dialéctica con las doctrinas de su maestro. En efecto, las dificultades genuinas que Aristóteles descubre en el platonismo constituyen el motor para gestar nuevos conceptos, que no son ajenos, sino que surgen como implicaciones del examen crítico. Así, la imposición de términos propios no debe interpretarse como distorsión, sino como el modo que Aristóteles adopta para exhibir su particular solución a los problemas que los filósofos anteriores dejaron sin solución. (shrink)

There seems to be a minimal core that every theory wishing to accommodate the intuition that the future is open must contain: a denial of physical determinism (i.e. the thesis that what future states the universe will be in is implied by what states it has been in), and a denial of strong fatalism (i.e. the thesis that, at every time, what will subsequently be the case is metaphysically necessary).1 Those two requirements are often associated with the idea of an (...) objective temporal flow and the non-reality of the future. However, at least certain ways to frame the “openness” intuition do not rely on any of these. Branching Time Theory (BTT) is one such: it is compatible with the denial that time flow is objective and it is couched in a language with a (prima facie) commitment to an eternalist ontology. BTT, though, urges us to resist certain intuitions about the determinacy of future claims, which arguably do not lead either to physical determinism or to fatalism. Against BTT, supporters of the Thin Red Line Theory (TRL) argue that their position avoids determinism and fatalism, while also representing the fact that there is a future which is “special” because it is the one that will be the case. But starting with Belnap and Green 1994, some have objected to the tenability of TRL, mainly on metaphysical grounds. In particular, those argue that “positing a thin red line amounts to giving up objective indeterminism,”2 and that “has unacceptable consequences, ranging from a mistreatment of actuality to an inability to talk coherently about what would have happened had what is going to happen not taken place.”3 In this paper, we wish to reframe the.. (shrink)

Even hard-core metaphysicians should admit that certain disputesmay indeed turn out not tobe substantive. The debate between presentism and eternalism has recently come undersceptical attack. The aim of the paper is to argue that a certain approach to presentism is indeedin danger of succumbing to the sceptic, and thus a no-go for the presentist.

In this paper I present a problem for the conventionalist regarding temporal metrics, and I defend an objectivist position on the ground of its explanatory force. Roughly, the conventionalist has it that there is no fact of the matter with respect to the truth or falsity of judgments of the kind “event e1 lasted as long as event e2”, while the objectivist thinks that they are grounded in objective features of space-time. I argue that, by positing grounds for judgments of (...) relative temporal length, the objectivist gains an explanatory force that the conventionalist position lacks. (shrink)

I argue that, contrary to an idea to be found in popularizations of time travel, one cannot more easily multiply oneself by taking younger versions of oneself back in time than by travelling back in time on one’s own. The reason is that the suggested multiplication of the traveller is, from a global perspective, only apparent.

In this paper we discuss two issues addressed by Stanley in How Propaganda Works: the status of slurs (Section 1) and the notion of positive propaganda (Section 2). In particular, in Section 1 we argue contra Stanley that code words like ‘welfare’ are crucially different from slurs in that the association between the lexical item and an additional social meaning is not as systematic as it is for slurs. In this sense, slurs bring about a special kind of propagandistic effect, (...) even if it typically concerns informal contexts rather than public debates. In Section 2, we consider positive propaganda and its relation to emotional effects. For Stanley, positive propaganda relies on the production of emotional effects, feature which risks to erode rational debates even if there is a good purpose behind. Instead, we argue that positive propaganda can work with no appeal to emotions. To this end, we focus on the use of ‘she’ as the default personal pronoun in academic writing and suggest that this measure can count as positive propaganda which rather than eroding rational debates by relying on emotional effects, closely resembles affirmative action aimed at counterbalance a pre-existing form of injustice and inequality. (shrink)

This collection of papers by prominent feminist thinkers advances the positive feminist project of remapping the moral by developing theory that acknowledges the diversity of women.

Explanations of the genuine openness of the future often appeal to objective indeterminacy. According to the received view, such indeterminacy is indeterminacy of certain future-tensed state of affairs that presently obtain. We shall call this view the weak indeterminate present, to distinguish it from the view we will defend in this paper, which we dub the strong indeterminate present. According to our view, unsettledness of the future is grounded on the present indeterminacy of some present-tensed state of affairs. In order (...) for an indeterminate present-tensed state of affairs to explain the unsettledness of a future-tensed state of affairs, there has to be a connection between the two. We argue that this connection can only be provided if we look at the internal structure of the relevant state of affairs. Finally, we will suggest that the best background theory to explain the connection are the so-called spontaneous collapse models of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

It has been argued that quantum mechanics forces us to accept the existence of metaphysical, mind-independent indeterminacy. In this paper we provide an interpretation of the indeterminacy involved in the quantum phenomena in terms of a view that we call Plural Metaphysical Supervaluationism. According to it, quantum indeterminacy is captured in terms of an irreducibly plural relation between the actual world and various misrepresentations of it.

This paper sketches some elements that define the pedagogical significance of play for the construction and the conservation of a democratic community. Starting from the main principles of Dewey's pedagogy, the discourse focuses on play, intended as the philosophic category of the ludic, first, in connection to doing and experience, two fundamental notions of Dewey’s thought and his philosophy of education; then, it moves towards the relationship between play and work to come, finally, to play in connection to the social (...) and political sphere. Along this path, it will be highlighted the central place occupied by the aesthetic side and affective element, concentrated especially in the definition of emotion given by Dewey, in order to show the link that connects play and democracy. (shrink)

Even though the American thinker John Dewey and the Italian Luigi Pareyson belong to two different philosophical traditions, on the aesthetic ground they show many resonances and similarities. Using Pareyson’s words, “just as it happens between people, who in particularly happy encounters […] reveal themselves to each other,” it is therefore possible to have Dewey’s aesthetics and Pareyson’s dialogue with each other, highlighting their affinities. This operation can strengthen the idea that the aesthetic experience is a way to fulfil human (...) existence. Thus, the hermeneutic character of Pareyson’s aesthetics in combination with Deweyan pragmatist aesthetic theory not only have great importance for the artistic experience, but also considerable value for human beings’ everyday lives. -/- Starting from some Deweyan resonances in Pareyson’s aesthetics, the discourse focuses on his aesthetics in its educational and hermeneutic significance within the dialogue between the two philosophers, coming, finally, to Dewey’s and Pareyson’s aesthetics in connection with so-called “everyday aesthetics.” Although a Deweyan influence on Pareyson is ascertained, and the similarities between them are not superficial at all, it is worth bearing in mind the different backgrounds of the two philosophers in order to accurately situate their reflections. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyse the notion of familiarity in Dewey’s pragmatism in order to show its important role as a tool for human beings to interpret the reality, manage it, and act within it. Starting from an examination of Deweyan transactional realism, the discourse focuses on familiarity and its related terms (such as “familiar,”“to familiarize,”but also opposites such as “unknown” or “strange”) in Dewey’s thought, to finally come to highlight its fundamental hermeneutic role. This might be useful to account (...) for a subject of Deweyan thought not so deeply highlighted by scholarship and, at the same time, to show pragmatism’s closeness to hermeneutics regarding the relation between the human being and the real. -/- Questo articolo si prefigge di analizzare la nozione di familiarità nel pragmatismo di John Dewey, per mostrare come essa sia uno strumento importante a disposizione degli esseri umani per interpretare il reale, orientarsi ed agire in esso. Partendo da un esame del realismo transazionale deweyano, il discorso passa a delineare il ruolo della familiarità ed affini (termini come “familiare”, “familiarizzare” ma anche gli opposti “estraneo”, “ignoto” ecc.) nel filosofo americano fino ad evidenziarne il fondamentale ruolo ermeneutico. In tal modo, è fornito un resoconto su un aspetto del pensiero deweyano non adeguatamente messo in luce dalla ricerca e nello stesso tempo si individua un importante punto di contatto tra pragmatismo ed ermeneutica intorno alla questione del rapporto dell’essere umano con il reale. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyse the notion of familiarity in Dewey’s pragmatism in order to show its important role as a tool for human beings to interpret the reality, manage it, and act within it. Starting from an examination of Deweyan transactional realism, the discourse focuses on familiarity and its related terms (such as “familiar,” “to familiarize,” but also opposites such as “unknown” or “strange”) in Dewey’s thought, to finally come to highlight its fundamental hermeneutic role. This might be useful (...) to account for a subject of Deweyan thought not so deeply highlighted by scholarship and, at the same time, to show pragmatism’s closeness to hermeneutics regarding the relation between the human being and the real. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the inherent temporal orientation of fear, a matter on which philosophers seem to have contrasting opinions. According to some, fear is inherently present-oriented; others instead maintain that it is inherently future-oriented or that it has no inherent temporal orientation at all. Despite the differences, however, all these views seem to understand fear’s temporal orientation as one-dimensional—that is, as uniquely determined by the represented temporal location of the intentional object of fear. By contrast, we present a (...) view that introduces a two-dimensional account of fear’s temporal orientation. On such a view, we can say that fear is inherently future-oriented, independently of its being about something in the present or in the future. (shrink)

This paper explores taste fragmentalism, a novel approach to matters of taste and faultless disagreement. The view is inspired by Kit Fine’s fragmentalism about time, according to which the temporal dimension can be constituted—in an absolute manner—by states that are pairwise incompatible, provided that they do not obtain together. In the present paper, we will apply this metaphysical framework to taste states. In our proposal, two incompatible taste states (such as the state of rhubarb’s being tasty and the state of (...) rhubarb’s being distasteful) can both constitute reality in an absolute manner, although no agent can have joint access to both states. We will then develop a formalised version of our view by means of an exact truthmaker semantics for taste assertions. Within this framework—we argue—our linguistic and inferential practices concerning cases of faultless disagreement are elegantly vindicated, thus suggesting that taste fragmentalism is worth of further consideration. (shrink)

Starting from Hellenistic philosophy, this paper highlights the importance of the emotions for treatment of social evils on a path that links John Dewey to Martha Nussbaum. The main issue is how to treat those evils without excluding the individual from the society. Following the medical analogy as central idea, it is made visible that effective therapy must include, both theoretically and practically, the Deweyan notion of integration between individual and environment. Starting with this idea, both Nussbaum and Dewey claim (...) that a sound emotional development is a fundamental factor to treat social evils, and at the same time to fulfil the “human flourishing” of individuals embedded in their society. (shrink)

Il termine “eclisse” (o eclissi) rimanda al fenomeno astronomico dell’oscuramento della luna o del sole. La stessa parola nel linguaggio figurato indica l’offuscamento o la scomparsa definitiva di una personalità, di un movimento o perfino di un’intera epoca. In questo tempo pandemico assistiamo all’eclisse di molte (pseudo) certezze, a cominciare dall’inviolabilità della sfera personale. Si tratta di una definitiva scomparsa oppure di un occultamento solo temporaneo? Quando la pandemia sarà passata, tornerà tutto come prima? L’eclisse non è un fenomeno permanente: (...) il sole o la luna, dopo essere caduti nell’ombra, poi ritornano visibili e la vita prosegue normalmente. “Eclisse”, quindi, è un termine che in relazione alla pandemia lascia aperto un cospicuo spazio di riflessione giocato proprio sulla sua ambiguità, sul suo essere un tempo sospeso o l’ultimo atto di un tempo felice. (shrink)

Cosa sono le emozioni? Non è una domanda facile. I filosofi si interrogano su di esse fin dall’antichità e per rispondere al quesito hanno percorso molte strade, giungendo a spiegazioni diverse. Nonostante le ricerche fondamentali di fine Ottocento, non c’è ancora una risposta univoca né definitiva: Darwin, James e Dewey hanno posto le basi di un lavoro che oggi continua a impegnare la filosofia in stretta collaborazione con le scienze.