Revista Intelligence Info este o publicație trimestrială din domeniile intelligence, geopolitică și securitate, și domenii conexe de studiu și practică. -/- Cuprins: -/- EDITORIALE / EDITORIALS -/- Tiberiu TĂNASE Considerații privind necesitatea educării și formării resursei umane pentru intelligence–ul național Considerations regarding the need to educate and train human resources for national intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Epistemologia activității de intelligence Epistemology of intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Rolul serviciilor de informații în război The role of the intelligence agencies in a war Nicolae SFETCU (...) Evoluția inteligenței artificiale în domeniul securității naționale The evolution of artificial intelligence in the field of national security -/- INTELLIGENCE / INTELLIGENCE -/- Ovidiu BOUREANU O scurtă istorie a spionajului: spionajul modern de la Războiul Rece la Războiul împotriva terorii A Brief History of the Spy: Modern Spying from the Cold War to the War on Terror Ioana PĂIUȘ, Tiberiu TĂNASE Securitate și informații într-o lume în schimbare Security and intelligence in a changing world Nicolae SFETCU Activitatea de intelligence - Ciclul intelligence Intelligence Activity – Intelligence Cycle Tiberiu TĂNASE Controlul asupra Intelligence –ului Control over Intelligence Tiberiu TĂNASE Informația și nevoia de gestionare a resurselor informaționale Information and the need to manage information resources Tiberiu TĂNASE Controlul parlamentar al serviciilor de informații Parliamentary control of intelligence services Tiberiu TĂNASE Mecanisme de control democratic al activității serviciilor de informații Mechanisms of democratic control of the activity of intelligence agencies Nicolae SFETCU Analiza informațiilor Intelligence Analysis Bogdan-George RĂDULESCU Cum ar trebui să fie utilizată analiza intelligence pentru a contracara războiul cognitiv? How should intelligence analysis be utilized to counter cognitive warfare? -/- ISTORIE / HISTORY -/- Tiberiu TĂNASE Biroul de Informații al Secției Militare din Transilvania și rolul său în campania pentru apărarea României Mari The Intelligence Office of the Transylvanian Military Section and its role in the campaign for the defense of Greater Romania Stan PETRESCU Pacepa, Kuklinski, Pollard și românii Pacepa, Kuklinski, Pollard and the Romanians Tiberiu TĂNASE Contracararea de către SSI a activităților informative și acțiunilor Serviciilor Germane și Sovietice de Informații implicate în evenimentele din 21 - 23 ianuarie 1941 Countering by the SSI of the informational activities and actions of the German and Soviet Intelligence Services involved in the events of January 21-23, 1941 Tiberiu TĂNASE Alexandru Ioan Cuza, fondatorul Intelligence-lui statului modern românesc Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Founder of the Intelligence of the Modern Romanian State Tiberiu TĂNASE, Bogdan MUSCALU Puncte de vedere privind tradițiile romane în istoria intelligence-lui Viewpoints on Roman traditions in history intelligence Tiberiu TĂNASE Istoria Serviciului Român de Informații – serviciu de intelligence competitiv, și strategiile de intelligence History of the Romanian Intelligence Service – competitive intelligence service, and intelligence strategies Rodica LISEANU Reformele serviciilor secrete de la Mihail Moruzov la Eugen Cristescu, între inovație și decadență Secret service reforms from Mihail Moruzov to Eugen Cristescu Rodica LISEANU Take Ionescu – O biografie vectorială în istoria partidelor politice și în semantica diplomației Take Ionescu - A Vectorial Biography in the History of Political Parties and the Semantics of Diplomacy Remus MACOVEI Trădători și trădători Traitors and traitors -/- GEOPOLITICA / GEOPOLITICS -/- Antoaneta AVRAM Pandemia de COVID-19 și consecințele ei în peisajul anului 2022 The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences in the landscape of 2022 Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ, Ioan MANCI Analiza conflictului ruso-cecen din perspectivă militară Analysis of the Russian-Chechen conflict from a military perspective Lisa-Maria ACHIMESCU Apusul universalismului european The decline of European universalism Emilian M. DOBRESCU Hegemonia chineză în producția de pământuri rare Chinese Hegemony in the Production of Rare Earths Ionuț-Daniel GORGOVAN ”Descurajarea integrată”. Analiză asupra strategiei SUA în Pacific "Integrated deterrence". Analysis of US Pacific Strategy Tiberiu TĂNASE, Violeta Ioana NAGÂȚ Conflictul arabo-israelian. Percepții privind cauzele și natura conflictului. Repere istorice și actualitate The Arab-Israeli conflict. Perceptions of the causes and nature of conflict. Historical landmarks and current affairs -/- SECURITATE / SECURITY -/- Tănase TIBERIU Minighid de pregătire și protecție contrainformativă Counterintelligence preparation and protection mini-guide Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ ISIS - Jocul morții - Martiri, asasinate și fascinație The Killing Game - Martyrdom, Murder and the Lure of ISIS Traian OSTAHIE Abordări generale ale conceptului de cultură de securitate For a 21st century realism Dalia Elena SILAGHI Terorismul cibernetic: o formă contemporană de terorism Cyber Terrorism: A Contemporary Form of Terrorism Paul Alexandru HELER Conflictul asimetric și consecințele sale în securitatea Asiei Asymmetric Conflict and Its Consequences in Asian Security Daria-Maria TÂRNĂVEAN Confruntarea informațională și repercusiunile sale asupra mediului actual de securitate The Information Confrontation and its Repercussions on the Current Security Environment Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ Analiza atacurilor cibernetice, precum APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) și ransomware Analysis of cyber attacks such as APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) and ransomware Daniela Georgiana GOLEA, Oana Ștefania COȘA Nevoia de adaptare managerială a noilor probleme de securitate modernă The need for managerial adaptation to new modern security issues Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ, Corneliu PREJA Implicarea NATO în domeniul apărării cibernetice NATO's involvement in cyber defence Alexandru CRISTIAN Paradigme în mediul internațional de securitate Paradigms in the international security environment Alexandru CRISTIAN Schimbarea paradigmelor în mediul internațional de securitate Changing paradigms in the international security environment Dan D. FARCAȘ Adevăr și dezinformare în fenomenul OZN Truth and disinformation in the UFO phenomenon Alexandru CRISTIAN Un nou mediu de securitate A new security environment -/- ȘTIINȚA INFORMAȚIEI / INFORMATION SCIENCE -/- Oana Ștefania COȘA Rolul structurilor de intelligence medical în atingerea obiectivul de consolidare a sistemului de sănătate The role of medical intelligence structures in achieving the objective of strengthening the health system Nicolae SFETCU Preocupări legislative în mineritul datelor Legislative concerns in data mining Nicolae SFETCU Utilizarea analiticii rețelelor sociale în intelligence Using social network analytics in intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Ingineria cunoașterii în colectarea informațiilor Knowledge Engineering in Intelligence Gathering -/- ISSN 2971 – 9089 ISSN-L 2821 – 8159, DOI: 10.58679/II26972. (shrink)

Social advertising often employs persuasive imagery in support of a morally laden cause. These visual arguments can take the form of veridical representations of the given situation or the form of purposeful visual blends. Both visual routes to persuasion have serious ethical issues to confront. In what concerns the purportedly veridical images, controversies about picture retouching and framing have cast many doubts on their success in offering unmediated access to a given reality. Editorial interests have proven far too influential on (...) the destiny of what and how is presented to the audience from the amount of visual material available on a topic. Even when the audience is certain that photos are not doctored, the use of veridical images may be seen as unethical. Their disproportionate affective impact may lead the audience to hold biased opinions, since other concerns may be impossible to capture in a vivid picture. Visual blends may be the answer to this problem, employing the fictional or the figurative to help the viewer grasp the moral anatomy of a given situation. Their generous use of figurative meaning may be seen as their strength and their weakness at the same time. It makes them less likely to face accusations of distorting reality, because they do not claim to be windows on reality per se. At the same time, it makes them vulnerable to interpretations that miss their true point – one might appreciate the artistry of a visual metaphor or a visual pun and fail to consider the statement it makes about a given situation. Contemporary philosophical approaches to the place of visuals in moral persuasion inform my analysis of the use of visual arguments in charity-oriented advertising. (shrink)

Many hypotheses have been advanced to explain the collective irrationality of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, such as partisanship and ideology, exposure to misinformation and conspiracy theories or the effectiveness of public messaging. This paper presents a complementary explanation to epistemic accounts of collective irrationality, focusing on the moral reasons underlying people’s decisions regarding vaccination. We argue that the moralization of COVID-19 risk mitigation measures contributed to the polarization of groups along moral values, which ultimately led to the emergence of collective irrational (...) behaviors. Collective irrationality arises from groups explicitly or implicitly endorsing values that ultimately harm both themselves and those around. The role of social media platforms in amplifying this polarization and contributing to the emergence of collective irrationality is also examined. Finally, potential strategies for addressing the moral sources of collective irrationality are discussed. (shrink)

From Gnỗthi seautόn (‘Know Thyself’) to cognitive theories of the self there has been a long time, but the paradigm has almost remained the same. This article proposes a reconsideration of their rediscovery filtered through Jean Rhys’ post-colonial sensitivity. Between the ‘core self’ and its iridescent, exotic edges, broadly speaking, the thoroughly analyzed facets of cultural identity interpose.

Este artículo explora el uso del cuento “¡Quiero dinero!”, parte de la colección “Cuentos para pensar” de Angélica Sátiro, como recurso pedagógico en sesiones de filosofía para niños y niñas, en distintos contextos. Entre 2015 y 2019, se organizaron talleres tanto en escuelas primarias como en espacios de organización ciudadana, involucrando a adultos en proyectos relacionados con la “otra economía”. Los talleres tenían como objetivos fomentar la conciencia sobre los significados personales atribuidos a conceptos y prácticas económicas, así como los (...) vinculados a la participación en comunidades de diálogo. Se empleó también como herramienta para recolectar datos en investigación de campo. Los resultados de las sesiones con adultos destacan que el cuento facilitó el diálogo necesario para construir un sentido común en torno a prácticas colectivas, mediante la reflexión sobre la propia praxis. El artículo concluye con una comparación de dos sesiones, una con niños y otra con adultos. (shrink)

The New Evil Demon Problem presents a serious challenge to externalist theories of epistemic justification. In recent years, externalists have developed a number of strategies for responding to the problem. A popular line of response involves distinguishing between a belief’s being epistemically justified and a subject’s being epistemically blameless for holding it. The apparently problematic intuitions the New Evil Demon Problem elicits, proponents of this response claim, track the fact that the deceived subject is epistemically blameless for believing as she (...) does, not that she is justified for so believing. This general strategy—which I call the “unjustified-but-blameless maneuver”—is motivated, in part, by the assumption that the distinction between epistemic justification and blamelessness is merely an extension of the familiar distinction between moral justification and blamelessness. In this paper, I consider three ways of drawing the distinction between justification and blamelessness familiar from the moral domain: the first in terms of a connection with reactive attitudes, the second in terms of the distinction between wrongness and wronging, and the third in terms of reasons-responsiveness. All three ways of drawing the distinction, I argue, make it difficult to see how an analogous distinction in the epistemic domain could help externalists explain away the intuitions which underwrite the New Evil Demon Problem. Motivating the unjustified-but-blameless maneuver, I conclude, is a much less straightforward task than its proponents tend to assume. (shrink)

In this essay, I address some questions and challenges brought about by the contributors to this special issue on my book ‘Democracy without Shortcuts’. First, I clarify different aspects of my cri...

The alleged for-me-ness or mineness of conscious experience has been the topic of considerable debate in recent phenomenology and philosophy of mind. By considering a series of objections to the notion of for-me-ness, or to a properly robust construal of it, this paper attempts to clarify to what the notion is committed and to what it is not committed. This exercise results in the emergence of a relatively determinate and textured portrayal of for-me-ness as the authors conceive of it.

David Lewis may be regarded as an antiessentialist. The reason is that he is said to believe that individuals do not have essential properties independent of the ways they are represented. According to him, indeed, the properties that are determined to be essential to individuals are a matter of which similarity relations among individuals are salient, and salience, in turn, is a contextual matter also determined to some extent by the ways individuals are represented. Todd Buras argues that the acknowledgment (...) of natural properties in counterpart theoretic ontology affects Lewis’s theory with regard to essentialism. Buras’s reasoning is appealing. He claims that, since natural properties determine the existence of similarity relations among individuals that are salient independent of context, Lewis can no longer be claimed to be an antiessentialist. The aim of this paper is to argue, against Buras, that if counterpart theory was antiessentialist before natural properties were taken into account, then it remains so afterwards. (shrink)

Lewis (1968) claims that his language of Counterpart Theory (CT) interprets modal discourse and he adverts to a translation scheme from the language of Quantifed Modal Logic (QML) to CT. However, everybody now agrees that his original translation scheme does not always work, since it does not always preserve the ‘intuitive’ meaning of the translated QML-formulas. Lewis discusses this problem with regard to the Necessitist Thesis, and I will extend his discourse to the analysis of the Converse Barcan Formula. Everyone (...) also agrees that there are CT-formulas that can express the QMLcontent that gets lost through the translation. The problem is how we arrive to them. In this paper, I propose new translation rules from QML to CT, based on a suggestion by Kaplan. However, I will claim that we cannot have ‘the’ translation scheme from QML to CT. The reason being that de re modal language is ambiguous. Accordingly, there are diferent sorts of QML, depending on how we resolve such ambiguity. Therefore, depending on what sort of QML we intend to translate into CT, we need to use the corresponding translation scheme. This suggests that all the translation problems might just disappear if we do what Lewis did not: begin with a fully worked out QML that tells us how to understand de re modal discourse. (shrink)

L.A. Paul calls “deep” the kind of essentialism according to which the essential properties of objects are determined independently of the context. Deep essentialism opposes “shallow essentialism”, of which David Lewis is said to be a prominent advocate. Paul argues that standard forms of deep essentialism face a range of issues (mainly based on an interpretation of Quinean skepticism) that shallow essentialism does not. However, Paul claims, shallow essentialism eliminates the very heart of what motivates essentialism, so it is better (...) to be deep than shallow. Accordingly, she proposes a very sharp novel account of essentialism, which, while attempting to preserve some of the advantages of shallow essentialism over the classical forms of deep essentialism, can be deemed to be deep. In this paper, I compare Paul’s proposal for a kind of deep essentialism with Lewis’s account, as it is presented by Paul. My aim is to show that the differences between the two approaches are not as significant as Paul takes them to be, and that Paul’s account can be taken to be deeper than Lewis’s only at the cost of sacrificing the very idea at the bottom of deep essentialism. This might be taken to suggest that, if Paul is correct in asserting that shallow essentialism is better equipped to address some skeptical challenges, but it is generally preferable to be deep than shallow, then Lewis’s account should be re-evaluated, since, as shallow as it can be, it might be deeper than it looks. (shrink)

The Internet has been identified in human enhancement scholarship as a powerful cognitive enhancement technology. It offers instant access to almost any type of information, along with the ability to share that information with others. The aim of this paper is to critically assess the enhancement potential of the Internet. We argue that unconditional access to information does not lead to cognitive enhancement. The Internet is not a simple, uniform technology, either in its composition, or in its use. We will (...) look into why the Internet as an informational resource currently fails to enhance cognition. We analyze some of the phenomena that emerge from vast, continual fluxes of information–information overload, misinformation and persuasive design—and show how they could negatively impact users’ cognition. Methods for mitigating these negative impacts are then advanced: individual empowerment, better collaborative systems for sorting and categorizing information, and the use of artificial intelligence assistants that could guide users through the informational space of today’s Internet. (shrink)

The Lewisean counterpart theorist– despite not defending a genuinely essentialist view of what is possible, de re, of individuals – generally has a way to make essentialist claims come out as true, in those contexts in which they are endorsed by a committed essentialist. In this paper, I am going to show that the normal system that the Lewisean adopts when she wants to make the essentialist a truth-teller does not work with Kit Fine: his essentialist beliefs, which support his (...) counterexamples to the modal account of essentialism, cannot come out as true, in any contexts whatsoever, under the Lewisean view. After arguing that this represents a genuine problem for Lewis’s theory, I will propose a solution. I will indeed show that the Lewisean has a principled way to account for Fine’s essentialist beliefs, consistently with her own counterpart-theorist reading of them. (shrink)

The present study investigates the interaction between personal characteristics that are considered nowadays strengths used to face difficult events or transition period. A number of 200 married or living together participants completed self-reports for common goals, motivational persistence, resilience and well-being. Results show that persistence and resilience do interact with each other at an individual level but also from a family concept perspective. Moreover, maintaining apositive outlook and family spirituality do have an impact over the intensity and direction of the (...) relationship between long term purposes pursuing (LTPP) and recurrence of unattained purposes (RUP) and changes in well-being registered in time. Resiliency as a personal characteristic and family resilience show good psychometric qualities for this study. Although some of the results are descriptive, in-depth analyses of direction and intensity of the relationships lead the finalconclusions to suggestions for further research and implications for psychological practice. (shrink)

El artículo tiene como objetivo explorar el papel del juego y del enfoque lúdico dentro de la Filosofía Lúdica (Filú), un movimiento educativo arraigado en la Filosofía para Niños y Niñas (FpN). Desde la perspectiva de un aprendiz, se subraya que, en la evolución de Filú, el juego no se considera simplemente un componente adicional, sino un pilar esencial, especialmente cuando lo lúdico se integra de manera crucial en el proceso de aprendizaje junto al cuerpo. La dimensión lúdica abarca diversos (...) aspectos, incluyendo el movimiento emocional, verbal, cognitivo y corporal, ofreciendo la posibilidad de vivenciar el proceso de aprendizaje de forma holística. (shrink)

This essay focuses on recent proposals to confer decisional status upon deliberative minipublics such as citizen juries, Deliberative Polls, citizen’s assemblies, and so forth. Against such proposals, I argue that inserting deliberative minipublics into political decision-making processes would diminish the democratic legitimacy of the political system as a whole. This negative conclusion invites a question: which political uses of minipublics would yield genuinely democratic improvements? Drawing from a participatory conception of deliberative democracy, I propose several uses of minipublics that could (...) enhance the democratic legitimacy of political decision-making in current societies. (shrink)

In this essay, I address several questions and challenges brought about by the contributors to the special issue on my book Democracy without Shortcuts. In particular, I address some implications of my critique of deep pluralism; distinguish between three senses of ‘blind deference’: political, reflective, and informational; draw a critical parallelism between the populist conception of representation as embodiment and the conception of ‘citizen-representatives’ often ascribed to participants in deliberative minipublics; defend the democratic attractiveness of participatory uses over empowered uses (...) of deliberative minipublics; clarify why accepting public reason constraints does not imply limiting deliberation to questions about constitutional rights, and argue that overcoming a state-centric conception of democracy does not require replacing the ‘all subjected’ principle with the ‘all affected’ principle. (shrink)

Disponibile anche in versione cartacea: in Almanacco Equilibri 2024, La società dell’educazione, P. Alfieri e N. Zanardi (curatori). Collana Equilibri Magazine, Mimesi edizioni, Milano. -/- **Abstract:** -/- Questo articolo esplora l'importanza della filosofia pratica e della cittadinanza creativa nel contesto delle attuali transizioni epocali. Riprendendo le origini del concetto di "scuola" nell'Antica Grecia, l'autrice evidenzia come il processo di insegnamento-apprendimento fosse centrato sull'auto-direzione della crescita individuale. Rifacendosi alle riflessioni di filosofi come Hadot e Foucault, si sottolinea il carattere pratico della (...) filosofia antica, fondata non solo sulla teoria ma anche su esercizi spirituali e pratiche di cura di sé. -/- L'articolo discute il cambiamento nell'insegnamento della filosofia nelle scuole secondarie italiane, passando da una prospettiva storicista a un approccio che favorisce il confronto diretto con i testi della tradizione filosofica. Vengono esplorate anche esperienze educative alternative, come la pedagogia proposta da Danilo Dolci e la Scuola di Barbiana, che enfatizzano il dialogo, la cooperazione e la promozione della creatività. -/- Inoltre, si esamina il ruolo della Philosophy for Children (P4C) nel promuovere il pensiero complesso e la partecipazione attiva degli studenti attraverso il dialogo filosofico. Si illustrano le sfide e i successi dell'implementazione della P4C in Italia, evidenziando l'importanza della formazione dei docenti e delle pratiche di ricerca filosofica nelle comunità educative. -/- Infine, si introduce il concetto di Filosofia Ludica e il Curriculum Noria, sottolineando il loro approccio ludico e multiculturale alla promozione del pensiero critico e della cittadinanza creativa. Si evidenzia come queste pratiche si inseriscano nel movimento più ampio della Cittadinanza Creativa, offrendo agli studenti strumenti per affrontare le sfide contemporanee e contribuire alla costruzione di un futuro migliore. (shrink)

In the present paper, we shall discuss the notion of prototype and show its benefits. First, we shall argue that the prototypes of common-sense concepts are necessary for making prompt and reliable categorisations and inferences. However, the features constituting the prototype of a particular concept are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for determining category membership; in this sense, the prototype might lead to conclusions regarded as wrong from a theoretical perspective. That being said, the prototype remains essential to handling most (...) ordinary situations and helps us to perform important cognitive tasks. To exemplify this point, we shall focus on disease concepts. Our analysis concludes that the prototypical conception of disease is needed to make important inferences from a practical and clinical point of view. Moreover, it can still be compatible with a classical definition of disease, given in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. In the first section, we shall compare the notion of stereotype, as it has been introduced in philosophy of language by Hilary Putnam, with the notion of prototype, as it has been developed in the cognitive sciences. In the second section, we shall discuss the general role of prototypical information in cognition and stress its centrality. In the third section, we shall apply our previous discussion to the specific case of medical concepts, before briefly summarising our conclusions in section four. (shrink)

The paper addresses the methodology used by the teacher-KEYWORDS: facilitator to plan P4C sessions. The classic method consists of identifying the guidelines of the dialogue from a provisional mapping of the text, but this can be supplemented or replaced by other tools‡. GrupIREF and the Filosofía Lúdica movement§ use an approach that focuses on thinking skills. The P4C session is planned from the choice of the thinking skills to be trained - or possibly the attitudes and ethical values that appear (...) in the stimulus used. This article proposes an alternative to the classical planning approach, examining the basis of the model considered and offering a practical example. ITA_Focus dell’articolo è la modalità di pianificazione delle sessioni di Philosophy for Children, P4C, da parte del docente-facilitatore. Il metodo classico consiste nell’individuazione di linee-guida del dialogo a partire da una mappatura orientativa del testo-pretesto, ma ciò può essere integrato, o sostituito da altre modalità*. Il GrupIREF e il movimento della Filosofía Lúdica† utilizzano un approccio che privilegia le abilità di pensiero. La sessione P4C viene pianificata a partire dalla scelta dell’abilità di pensiero da allenare – o eventualmente dell’atteggiamento etico e dei valori legati al pre-testo utilizzato. Il presente lavoro suggerisce un’alternativa alla progettazione classica, attraverso una disamina delle basi del modello considerato, e ne offre un esempio pratico. (shrink)

The developmental properties of organisms play important roles in the generation of variation necessary for evolutionary change. But how can individual development steer the course of evolution? To answer this question, we introduce developmental channeling as a disposition of individual organisms that shapes their possible developmental trajectories and evolutionary dappling as an evolutionary outcome in which the space of possible organismic forms is dappled—it is only partially filled. We then trace out the implications of the channeling-dappling framework for contemporary debates (...) in the philosophy of evolution, including evolvability, reciprocal causation, and the extended evolutionary synthesis. (shrink)

Necessitism is the controversial thesis that necessarily everything is necessarily something, namely that everything, everywhere, necessarily exists. What is controversial about necessitism is that, at its core, it claims that things could not have failed to exist, while we have a pre-theoretical intuition that not everything necessarily exists. Contingentism, in accordance with common sense, denies necessitism: it claims that some things could have failed to exist. Timothy Williamson is a necessitist and claims that David Lewis is a necessitist too. The (...) paper argues that, granted the assumptions that lead to interpret the Lewisian as a necessitist, she can preserve contingentist intuitions, by genuinely agreeing with the folk that existence is contingent. This is not just the uncontroversial claim that the Lewisian, as a result of the prevalence of restricted quantification in counterpart theoretic regimentations of natural language, can agree with the folk while disagreeing with them in the metaphysical room. Rather, this is the claim that it is in the metaphysical room that the Lewisian can endorse the intuitions lying behind contingentism. (shrink)

This chapter explains the rationale behind the book. It provides basic definitions of the concept of the sharing economy as well as the primary meanings related to the subject of the analysis undertaken in the subsequent chapters. This Introduction also includes a description of the main benefits of the analysis of the sharing economy from a European perspective. It highlights that the idea of the book emerged from the collaboration of most co-authors in the COST Action CA16121 ‘From Sharing to (...) Caring: Examining Socio-Technical Aspects of the Collaborative Economy.’ Finally, the outline of the book is presented, providing a description of the content of each chapter within this academic collection. (shrink)

In this paper we focus on some new normativist positions and compare them with traditional ones. In so doing, we claim that if normative judgments are involved in determining whether a condition is a disease only in the sense identified by new normativisms, then disease is normative only in a weak sense, which must be distinguished from the strong sense advocated by traditional normativisms. Specifically, we argue that weak and strong normativity are different to the point that one ‘normativist’ label (...) ceases to be appropriate for the whole range of positions. If values and norms are not explicit components of the concept of disease, but only intervene in other explanatory roles, then the concept of disease is no more value-laden than many other scientific concepts, or even any other scientific concept. We call the newly identified position “value-conscious naturalism” about disease, and point to some of its theoretical and practical advantages. (shrink)

Philosophers have proposed accounts of forgiveness in which the victim is warranted in forgiving only if the wrongdoer makes amends for the wrong done. According to such an account, forgiveness is made rational by the wrongdoer apologizing. But this account creates a puzzle because it seems to render cases of undeserved elective forgiveness (where there is no apology or repentance) unjustified. My aim in the present contribution is to argue that electively forgiving unrepentant wrongdoers can be justified if we accept (...) as genuine a minimalist form of forgiveness, according to which a victim can forgive and still resent. Further, I suggest that undeserved elective forgiveness can be admirable if we extend our conception of reasons to include non- desert-type reasons, such as reasons of altruism, generosity or reasons of social context. (shrink)

In the debate between contextualism and relativism about predicates of taste, the challenge from disagreement (the objection that contextualism cannot account for disagreement in ordinary exchanges involving such predicates) has played a central role. This paper investigates one way of answering the challenge consisting on appeal to certain, less focused on, uses of predicates of taste. It argues that the said thread is unsatisfactory, in that it downplays certain exchanges that constitute the core disagreement data. Additionally, several arguments to the (...) effect that the exchanges in question don’t amount to disagreement are considered and rejected. (shrink)

Several theorists have been attracted to the idea that in order to account for counterpossibles, i.e. counterfactuals with impossible antecedents, we must appeal to impossible worlds. However, few have attempted to provide a detailed impossible worlds account of counterpossibles. Berit Brogaard and Joe Salerno’s ‘Remarks on Counterpossibles’ is one of the few attempts to fill in this theoretical gap. In this article, I critically examine their account. I prove a number of unanticipated implications of their account that end up implying (...) a counterintuitive result. I then examine a suggested revision and point out a surprising implication of the revision. (shrink)

In this essay I address the difficult question of how citizens with conflicting religious and secular views can fulfill the democratic obligation of justifying the imposition of coercive policies to others with reasons that they can also accept. After discussing the difficulties of proposals that either exclude religious beliefs from public deliberation or include them without any restrictions, I argue instead for a policy of mutual accountability that imposes the same deliberative rights and obligations on all democratic citizens. The main (...) advantage of this proposal is that it recognizes the right of all democratic citizens to adopt their own cognitive stance in political deliberation in the public sphere without giving up on the democratic obligation to provide reasons acceptable to everyone to justify coercive policies with which all citizens must comply. (shrink)

As it emerged from philosophical analyses and cognitive research, most concepts exhibit typicality effects, and resist to the efforts of defining them in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. This holds also in the case of many medical concepts. This is a problem for the design of computer science ontologies, since knowledge representation formalisms commonly adopted in this field (such as, in the first place, the Web Ontology Language - OWL) do not allow for the representation of concepts in terms (...) of typical traits. The need of representing concepts in terms of typical traits concerns almost every domain of real world knowledge, including medical domains. In particular, in this article we take into account the domain of mental disorders, starting from the DSM-5 descriptions of some specific disorders. We favour a hybrid approach to concept representation, in which ontology oriented formalisms are combined to a geometric representation of knowledge based on conceptual space. As a preliminary step to apply our proposal to mental disorder concepts, we started to develop an OWL ontology of the schizophrenia spectrum, which is as close as possible to the DSM-5 descriptions. (shrink)

During the last few years, burnout has gained more and more attention for its strong connection with job performance, absenteeism, and presenteeism. It is a psychological phenomenon that depends on occupation, also presenting differences between sexes. However, to properly compare the burnout levels of different groups, a psychometric instrument with adequate validity evidence should be selected (i.e., with measurement invariance). This paper aims to describe the psychometric properties of the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) version adapted for workers from Brazil and (...) Portugal, and to compare burnout across countries and sexes. OLBI's validity evidence based on the internal structure (dimensionality, reliability, and measurement invariance), and validity evidence based on relationships with other variables (work engagement) are described. Additionally, it aims presents a revision of different OLBI's versions—since this is the first version of the instrument developed simultaneously for both countries—it is an important instrument for understanding burnout between sexes in organizations. Data were used from 1,172 employees across two independent samples, one from Portugal and the other from Brazil, 65 percent being female. Regarding the OLBI internal structure, a reduced version (15 items) was obtained. The high correlation between disengagement and exhaustion, suggested the existence of a second-order latent factor, burnout, which presented measurement invariance for country and sex. Confirmatory factor analysis of the Portuguese OLBI version presented good goodness-of-fit indices and good internal consistency values. No statistically significant differences were found in burnout between sexes or countries. OLBI also showed psychometric properties that make it a promising and freely available instrument to measure and compare burnout levels of Portuguese and Brazilian employees. (shrink)

Come è emerso dall’analisi filosofica e dalla ricerca nelle scienze cogni- tive, la maggior parte dei concetti, tra cui molti concetti medici, esibisce degli “effetti prototipici” e non riesce ad essere definita nei termini di condizioni necessarie e sufficienti. Questo aspetto rappresenta un problema per la pro- gettazione di ontologie in informatica, poiché i formalismi adottati per la rap- presentazione della conoscenza (a partire da OWL – Web Ontology Langua- ge) non sono in grado di rendere conto dei concetti nei (...) termini dei loro tratti prototipici. Nel presente articolo ci concentriamo sulla classe dei disordini mentali facendo riferimento alle descrizioni che ne vengono date nel DSM-5. L’idea è quella di proporre un approccio ibrido, in cui i formalismi delle ontologie sono combinati a una rappresentazione geometrica della conoscenza basata sugli spazi concettuali. (shrink)

In the debate between relativism and contextualism about various expressions, the Operator Argument, initially proposed by Kaplan , has been taken to support relativism. However, one widespread reaction against the argument has taken the form of arguing against one assumption made by Kaplan: namely, that certain natural language expressions are best treated as sentential operators. Focusing on the only extant version of the Operator Argument proposed in connection to predicates of personal taste such as “tasty” and experiencer phrases such as (...) “for Anna” ), in this paper I investigate whetherthe reasons offered by Cappelen and Hawthorne against various assumptions of the argument failing in the case of modal, temporal, locationaland precisional expressions transfer to the case of experiencer phrases to undercut support for relativism about predicates of personal taste. My aim is to show that they don’t. Thus, I first show that their considerations against experiencer phrases such as “for Anna” being sentential operators are not decisive. Second, I show that even if granting that such experiencer phrases are not sentential operators, a suitably modified version of the Operator Argument can be defended from the objections they raise. (shrink)

Philosophers of medicine have formulated different accounts of the concept of disease. Which concept of disease one assumes has implications for what conditions count as diseases and, by extension, who may be regarded as having a disease and for who may be accorded the social privileges and personal responsibilities associated with being sick. In this article, we consider an ideal diagnostic test for coronavirus disease 2019 infection with respect to four groups of people—positive and asymptomatic; positive and symptomatic; negative; and (...) untested—and show how different concepts of disease impact on the disease and sickness judgements for these groups. The suggestion is that sickness judgements and social measures akin to those experienced during the current COVID-19 outbreak presuppose a concept of disease containing social harm as a component. We indicate the problems that arise when adopting this kind of disease concept beyond a state of emergency. (shrink)

The De hebdomadibus (DH) of Boethius presents a problem with the idea that ordinary finite substances are good and then proposes a solution to the problem. Careful reconstruction of Boethius’ arguments reveals that his solution relies on an account of finite goodness that he does not make explicit. Moreover, accounts of finite goodness that commentators have supplied to the DH should be rejected. Instead, the account of finite goodness given in book III of the Consolatio successfully resolves the problem raised (...) in the DH. (shrink)

According to the Monist Interpretation of Descartes, there is really only one corporeal substance—the entire extended plenum. Evidence for this interpretation seems to be provided by Descartes in the Synopsis of the Meditations, where he claims that all substances are incorruptible. Finite bodies, being corruptible, would then fail to be substances. On the other hand, ‘body, taken in the general sense,’ being incorruptible, would be a corporeal substance. In this paper, I defend a Pluralist Interpretation of Descartes, according to which (...) there are many corporeal substances. In particular, I show that none of the claims in the Synopsis about incorruptibility and substance entail either that finite bodies are not substances, or that the only corporeal substance is the entire plenum. (shrink)

The latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders included the Social Communication Disorder as a new mental disorder characterized by deficits in pragmatic abilities. Although the introduction of SPCD in the psychiatry nosography depended on a variety of reasons—including bridging a nosological gap in the macro-category of Communication Disorders—in the last few years researchers have identified major issues in such revision. For instance, the symptomatology of SPCD is notably close to that of Autism Spectrum Disorder. This (...) opens up the possibility that individuals with very similar symptoms can be diagnosed differently and receive different clinical treatments and social support. The aim of this paper is to review recent debates on SPCD, particularly as regards its independence from ASD. In the first part, we outline the major aspects of the DSM-5 nosological revision involving ASD and SPCD. In the second part, we focus on the validity and reliability of SPCD. First, we analyze literature on three potential validators of SPCD, i.e., etiology, response to treatment, and measurability. Then, we turn to reliability issues connected with the introduction of the grandfather clause and the use of the concepts of spectrum and threshold in the definition of ASD. In the conclusion, we evaluate whether SPCD could play any role in contemporary psychiatry other than that of an independent mental disorder and discuss the role that non-epistemic factors could play in the delineation of the future psychiatry nosography. (shrink)

In this chapter we focus on the debate over publicly-maintained racist monuments as it manifests in the mid-2010s Anglosphere, primarily in the US (chiefly regarding the over 700 monuments devoted to the Confederacy), but to some degree also in Britain and Commonwealth countries, especially South Africa (chiefly regarding monuments devoted to figures and events associated with colonialism and apartheid). After pointing to some representative examples of racist monuments, we discuss ways a monument can be thought racist, and neutrally categorize removalist (...) and preservationist arguments heard in the monument debate. We suggest that both extremist and moderate removalist goals are likely to be self-defeating, and that when concerns of civic sustainability are put on moral par with those of fairness and justice, something like a Mandela-era preservationist policy is best: one which removes the most offensive of the minor racist monuments, but which focuses on closing the monumentary gap between peoples and reframing existing racist monuments. (shrink)

The idea that there are some facts that call for explanation serves as an unexamined premise in influential arguments for the inexistence of moral or mathematical facts and for the existence of a god and of other universes. This book is the first to offer a comprehensive and critical treatment of this idea. It argues that calling for explanation is a sometimes-misleading figure of speech rather than a fundamental property of facts.

In this paper I discuss the Newman problem in the context of contemporary epistemic structural realism (ESR). I formulate Newman’s objection in terms that apply to today’s ESR and then evaluate a defence of ESR based on Carnap’s use of Ramsey sentences and Hilbert’s ε-operator. I show that this defence improves the situation by allowing a formal stipulation of non-structural constraints. However, it fails short of achieving object individuation in the context of satisfying the Ramsified form of a theory. Thus, (...) while limiting the scope of Newman’s argument, Carnap sentences do not fully solve the problem. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on a recently discussed phenomenon illustrated by sentences containing predicates of taste: the phenomenon of " perspectival plurality " , whereby sentences containing two or more predicates of taste have readings according to which each predicate pertains to a different perspective. This phenomenon has been shown to be problematic for (at least certain versions of) relativism. My main aim is to further the discussion by showing that the phenomenon extends to other perspectival expressions than predicates (...) of taste and by proposing a general solution to the problem raised by it on behalf of the relativist. The core claim of the solution (" multiple indexing ") is that utterances of sentences containing perspectival expressions should be evaluated with respect to (possibly infinite) sequences of perspective parameters. (shrink)

Non-skeptical robust realists about normativity, mathematics, or any other domain of non- causal truths are committed to a correlation between their beliefs and non- causal, mind-independent facts. Hartry Field and others have argued that if realists cannot explain this striking correlation, that is a strong reason to reject their theory. Some consider this argument, known as the Benacerraf–Field argument, as the strongest challenge to robust realism about mathematics, normativity, and even logic. In this article I offer two closely related accounts (...) for the type of explanation needed in order to address Field's challenge. I then argue that both accounts imply that the striking correlation to which robust realists are committed is explainable, thereby discharging Field's challenge. Finally, I respond to some objections and end with a few unresolved worries. (shrink)

In this paper I review how the notion of gender is understood in psychiatry, specifically in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). First, I examine the contraposition between sex and gender, and argue that it is still retained by DSM-5, even though with some caveats. Second, I claim that, even if genderqueer people are not pathologized and gender pluralism is the background assumption, some diagnostic criteria still conceal a residue of gender dualism and (...) essentialism. Third, I consider gender dysphoria, which is characterized by an incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender; since this condition pertains to distress and disability, not to the incongruence per se, it does not pathologize transgender people. Still, I contend that it should be removed from DSM-5 for theoretical reasons. (shrink)

Debates about political correctness often proceed as if proponents see nothing to fear in erecting norms that inhibit expression on the one side, and opponents see nothing but misguided efforts to silence political enemies on the other.1 Both views are mistaken. Political correctness, as I argue, is an important attempt to advance the legitimate interests of certain groups in the public sphere. However, this type of norm comes with costs that mustn’t be neglected–sometimes in the form of conflict with other (...) values we hold dear, but often by creating an internal schism that threatens us with collective irrationality. Political correctness thus sets up dilemmas I wish to set out (but not, alas, resolve). The cliché is that political correctness tramples on rights to free-speech, as if the potential loss were merely expressive; the real issue is that in filtering public discourse, political correctness may defeat our own substantive aims. (shrink)

As it emerged from philosophical analyses and cognitive research, most concepts exhibit typicality effects, and resist to the efforts of defining them in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. This holds also in the case of many medical concepts. This is a problem for the design of computer science ontologies, since knowledge representation formalisms commonly adopted in this field do not allow for the representation of concepts in terms of typical traits. However, the need of representing concepts in terms of (...) typical traits concerns almost every domain of real world knowledge, including medical domains. In particular, in this article we take into account the domain of mental disorders, starting from the DSM-5 descriptions of some specific mental disorders. On this respect, we favor a hybrid approach to the representation of psychiatric concepts, in which ontology oriented formalisms are combined to a geometric representation of knowledge based on conceptual spaces. (shrink)

The paper argues that members of future generations have an entitlement to natural resources equal to ours. Therefore, if a currently living individual destroys or degrades natural resources then he must pay compensation to members of future generations. This compensation takes the form of “primary goods” which will be valued by members of future generations as equally useful for promoting the good life as the natural resources they have been deprived of. As a result of this policy, each generation inherits (...) a “Commonwealth” of natural resources plus compensation. It is this inherited “Commonwealth” which members of that generation must then pass on to members of the next generation. Once this picture is accepted, the standard bundle of property rights is problematic, for it takes the owner of a constituent of the Commonwealth to have the right to “waste, destroy or modify” that item at will. This paper therefore presents a revised set of property rights which takes seriously the idea that each generation has an equal claim on the resources that nature has bequeathed us, whilst allowing certain effects on those natural resources by each generation, and a degree of exclusive use of those natural resources owned by an individual. (shrink)

With AI permeating our lives, there is widespread concern regarding the proper framework needed to morally assess and regulate it. This has given rise to many attempts to devise ethical guidelines that infuse guidance for both AI development and deployment. Our main concern is that, instead of a genuine ethical interest for AI, we are witnessing moral diplomacies resulting in moral bureaucracies battling for moral supremacy and political domination. After providing a short overview of what we term ‘ethics washing’ in (...) the AI industry, we analyze the 2021 UNESCO Intergovernmental Meeting of Experts (Category II) tasked with drafting the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and show why the term ‘moral diplomacy’ is better suited to explain what is happening in the field of the ethics of AI. Our paper ends with some general considerations regarding the future of the ethics of AI. (shrink)

Philosophers of physics have long debated whether the Past State of low entropy of our universe calls for explanation. What is meant by “calls for explanation”? In this article we analyze this notion, distinguishing between several possible meanings that may be attached to it. Taking the debate around the Past State as a case study, we show how our analysis of what “calling for explanation” might mean can contribute to clarifying the debate and perhaps to settling it, thus demonstrating the (...) fruitfulness of this analysis. Applying our analysis, we show that two main opponents in this debate, Huw Price and Craig Callender, are, for the most part, talking past each other rather than disagreeing, as they employ different notions of “calling for explanation”. We then proceed to show how answering the different questions that arise out of the different meanings of “calling for explanation” can result in clarifying the problems at hand and thus, hopefully, to solving them. (shrink)