This essay frames systemic patterns of mental abuse against women of color and Indigenous women on Turtle Island (North America) in terms of larger design-of-distribution strategies in settler colonial societies, as these societies use various forms of social power to distribute, reproduce, and automate social inequalities (including public health precarities and mortality disadvantages) that skew socio-economic gain continuously toward white settler populations and their descendants. It departs from traditional studies in gender-based violence research that frame mental abuses such as gaslighting--commonly (...) understood as mental manipulation through lying or deceit--stochastically, as chance-driven interpersonal phenomena. Building on structural analyses of knowledge in political epistemology (Dotson 2012, Berenstain 2016), political theory (Davis and Ernst 2017), and Indigenous social theory (Tuck and Yang 2012), I develop the notion of cultural gaslighting to refer to the social and historical infrastructural support mechanisms that disproportionately produce abusive mental ambients in settler colonial cultures in order to further the ends of cultural genocide and dispossession. I conclude by proposing a social epidemiological account of gaslighting that a) highlights the public health harms of abusive ambients for minority populations, b) illuminates the hidden rules of social structure in settler colonial societies, and c) amplifies the corresponding need for structural reparations. (shrink)

Adam Ferguson’s imperial thought casts new light on the age-old republican dilemma of the tension between empire and liberty. Generations of republican writers had been haunted by this issue as the decline of Rome proved that imperial expansion would eventually ruin the liberty of a state. Many eighteenth-century Scottish thinkers regarded this as an insoluble conundrum and thus became critics of empire. Ferguson shared their basic views but, paradoxically, was still able to defend the British Empire in the debates over (...) the American Revolution. His argument effectively offered a viable solution to the republican dilemma, which distinguished him from his contemporaries. In light of this, I argue that political representation was the pivotal conception for Ferguson to make empire and liberty compatible. It was on this ground that he could advocate the union with Ireland, which he believed would lead to a lasting balance of power in Europe. -/- ; British Empire; liberty; balance of power; political representation; American Revolution; Anglo-Irish Union. (shrink)

This paper discusses von Wright's theory of causation from Explanation and Understanding and Causality and Determinism in contemporary context. I argue that there are two important common points that von Wright's view shares with the version of manipulability currently supported by Woodward: the analysis of causal relations in a system modelled on controlled experiments, and the explanation of manipulability through counterfactuals - with focus on the counterfactual account of unmanipulable causes. These points also mark von Wright's departure from previous action-based (...) theories of causation. Owing to these two features, I argue that, upon classifying different versions of manipulability theories, von Wright's view should be placed closer to the interventionist approach than to the agency theory, where it currently stands. Furthermore, given its relevance in contemporary context, which this paper aims to establish, I claim that von Wright's theory can be employed to solve present problems connected to manipulability approaches to causation. (shrink)

The question whether AI systems have agency is gaining increasing importance in discussions of responsibility for AI behavior. This paper argues that an approach to artificial agency needs to be teleological, and consider the role of human goals in particular if it is to adequately address the issue of responsibility. I will defend the view that while AI systems can be viewed as autonomous in the sense of identifying or pursuing goals, they rely on human goals and other values incorporated (...) into their design, and are, as such, dependent on human agents. As a consequence, AI systems cannot be held morally responsible, and responsibility attributions should take into account normative and social aspects involved in the design and deployment of the said AI. My argument falls in line with approaches critical of attributing moral agency to artificial agents, but draws from the philosophy of action, highlighting further philosophical underpinnings of current debates on artificial agency. (shrink)

This article examines how specific realist and projectivist versions of manipulability theories of causation deal with the problem of objectivity. Does an agent-dependent concept of manipulability imply that conflicting causal claims made by agents with different capacities can come out as true? In defence of the projectivist stance taken by the agency view, I argue that if the agent’s perspective is shown to be uniform across different agents, then the truth-values of causal claims do not vary arbitrarily and, thus, reach (...) a satisfactory level of objectivity. My argument connects Price’s considerations on the situation of deliberation, whose structure, common to all agents, is the same with respect to both decision making and causal claims on a concept inspired by Douglas’s classification of objectivity of thought processes: the perspective of the detached agent. I further argue that, despite his agent-independent concept of intervention, Woodward’s claim of a stronger objectivity standard cannot be achieved, as the relativity of causal concepts to a variable set brings about the issue of the agent’s choice of variables. Consequently, a more permissive objectivity standard applies to both views. (shrink)

I argue that, for Aristotle, virtues of character like bravery and generosity are, like the emotions, properties that require a hylomorphic analysis. In order to understand what the virtues are and how they come about, one needs to take into account their formal components and their material components. The formal component of a virtue of character is a psychic disposition, its material component is the appropriate state and composition of the blood. I defend this thesis against two potential objections and (...) I show that it is relevant for a study of Aristotle’s ethics. (shrink)

I argue that a study of the Nicomachean Ethics and of the Parva Naturalia shows that Aristotle had a notion of attention. This notion captures the common aspects of apparently different phenomena like perceiving something vividly, being distracted by a loud sound or by a musical piece, focusing on a geometrical problem. For Aristotle, these phenomena involve a specific selectivity that is the outcome of the competition between different cognitive stimuli. This selectivity is attention. I argue that Aristotle studied the (...) common aspects of the physiological processes at the basis of attention and its connection with pleasure. His notion can explain perceptual attention and intellectual attention as voluntary or involuntary phenomena. In addition, it sheds light on how attention and enjoyment can enhance our cognitive activities. (shrink)

Gender-based forms of administrative violence, such as reproductive violence, are the result of systems designed to enact population-level harms through the production and forcible imposition of colonial systems of gender. Settler statecraft has long relied on the strategic promotion of sexual and reproductive violence. Patterns of reproductive violence adapt and change to align with the enduring goals and evolving needs of settler colonial occupation, dispossession, and containment. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to end the constitutional right to abortion in (...) Dobbs v Jackson is but one instance of this larger pattern. We analyze reproductive and obstetric violence and the structural trauma they produce through the lenses of i) historical continuity and ii) the global architectures of neoliberal settler capitalism in order to connect reproductive rights rollbacks in the U.S. with the expansion of reproductive violence across a world connected by colonial globalization. (shrink)

Achille Varzi è uno dei maggiori metafisici viventi. Nel corso degli anni ha scritto testi fondamentali di logica, metafisica, mereologia, filosofia del linguaggio. Ha sconfinato nella topologia, nella geografia, nella matematica, ha ragionato di mostri e confini, percezione e buchi, viaggi nel tempo, nicchie, eventi e ciambelle; e non ha disdegnato di dialogare con gli abitanti di Flatlandia, con Neo e con Terminator. Tra le sue opere principali: Holes and Other Superficialities e Parts and Places. The Structures of Spatial Representation, (...) entrambi scritti insieme a R. Casati per MIT Press; Il mondo messo a fuoco, Laterza; e il suo libro più recente: Le tribolazioni del filosofare, con C. Calosi, per Laterza. -/- Da una giornata all’Università di Urbino nasce questa conversazione a molte voci sulla e con la filosofia di Achille C. Varzi. In un dialogo critico al quale l’Autore si presta con generosità e onestà intellettuale, Andrea Borghini, Francesco Calemi, Claudio Calosi, Elena Casetta, Valeria Giardino, Pierluigi Graziani, Patrizia Pedrini, Daniele Santoro e Giuliano Torrengo lo interrogano e mettono alla prova sui temi affrontati, nel corso degli anni, in campi diversi. Il risultato è un percorso che si snoda attraverso molti mondi, dalla logica alla metafisica, dalla filosofia del linguaggio alla filosofia della matematica, dalla mereologia alla filosofia del tempo, spingendosi in qualche caso oltre i confini del saggio filosofico. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a logical-cognitive approach to argumentation and advocate an idea that argumentation presupposes that intelligent agents engaged in it are cognitively diverse. My approach to argumentation allows drawing distinctions between justification, conviction and persuasion as its different kinds. In justification agents seek to verify weak or strong coherency of an agent’s position in a dialogue. In conviction they argue to modify their partner’s position by means of demonstrating weak or strong cogency of their positions before a (...) ‘rational judge’. My approach to argumentation employs a ‘light’ version of Dung’s abstract argumentative frameworks. It is based on Stich’s idea of agents’ cognitive diversity the epistemic aspect of which is argued to be close to Pavilionis’s conception of meaning continuum. To illustrate my contributions I use an example based on the Kitchen Debate (1959) between Khrushchev and Nixon. (shrink)

Ganeri's [2018] discussion of mental time travel and the self focuses on remembering the past, but has less to say with respect to the status of future-oriented mental time travel. This paper aims to disambiguate the relation between prospection and the self from the framework of Ganeri's interpretation of three Buddhist views—by Buddhaghosa, Vasubandhu, and Dignaga. Is the scope of Ganeri's discussion confined to the past, or is there a stronger assumption that future thought always entails self-representation? I argue that (...) if mental time travel towards the past and towards the future are continuous, both past and future thought should be possible independently of self-representation. An assumption of discontinuity however would enable the employment of the self as one of the defining differences between remembering the past and imagining the future. The two options can be further contrasted on the basis of distinct ways of constructing past/future scenarios (field vs. observer perspective), modes of experiencing time (known vs. lived), and the origin of mental time travel (episodic vs. semantic memory). I further assess the compatibility of future-oriented thought with the three Buddhist views on the basis of these coordinates. (shrink)

This paper takes a critical stance on Tallis’s separation of causation and agency. While his critique of the causal theory of action and the assumptions about causation underlying different versions of determinism, including the one based on neuroscience is right, his rejection of causation (of all sorts) has implausible consequences. Denying the link between action and causation amounts to overlooking the role action plays in causal inference and in the origin of causal concepts. I suggest that a weaker version of (...) Tallis’ claim, compatible with causation understood as agency, would work better. (shrink)

This paper investigates the concept of behavioral autonomy in Artificial Life by drawing a parallel to the use of teleological notions in the study of biological life. Contrary to one of the leading assumptions in Artificial Life research, I argue that there is a significant difference in how autonomous behavior is understood in artificial and biological life forms: the former is underlain by human goals in a way that the latter is not. While behavioral traits can be explained in relation (...) to evolutionary history in biological organisms, in synthetic life forms behavior depends on a design driven by a research agenda, further shaped by broader human goals. This point will be illustrated with a case study on a synthetic life form. Consequently, the putative epistemic benefit of reaching a better understanding of behavioral autonomy in biological organisms by synthesizing artificial life forms is subject to doubt: the autonomy observed in such artificial organisms may be a mere projection of human agency. Further questions arise in relation to the need to spell out the relevant human aims when addressing potential social or ethical implications of synthesizing artificial life forms. (shrink)

This paper discusses Simone de Beauvoir’s views on the meaning of life as presented in The Ethics of Ambiguity. I argue that Beauvoir’s view matches contemporary hybrid views on the meaning of life, incorporating both subjective and objective elements, while connecting them in a distinct way—through the tension between self and other. I then analyze the meaning of excessively competitive projects through Beauvoir’s ethics and conclude that success that amounts to denying other people’s access to the things one values is (...) absurd. I use the case of contemporary academia as an illustration of extreme competition, then employ Beauvoir’s views to suggest a shift towards more meaningful practices. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 63, Issue 3, pp 229 - 256 I argue that, for Aristotle, akratic actions are against one’s general commitment to act in accordance with one’s correct conception of one’s ends overall. Only some akratic actions are also against one’s correct decision to perform a particular action. This thesis explains Aristotle’s views on impetuous _akrasia_, weak _akrasia_, stubborn opinionated action and inverse _akrasia_. In addition, it sheds light on Aristotle’s account of practical rationality. Rational actions are coherent primarily (...) with one’s commitments to one’s conception of the good and only secondarily with one’s decisions to perform a particular action. (shrink)

This article provides a conceptual account of causal understanding by connecting current psychological research on time and causality with philosophical debates on the causal asymmetry. I argue that causal relations are viewed as asymmetric because they are understood in temporal terms. I investigate evidence from causal learning and reasoning in both children and adults: causal perception, the temporal priority principle, and the use of temporal cues for causal inference. While this account does not suffice for correct inferences of causal structure, (...) I show it to serve as a preliminary understanding of causal concepts as asymmetric, that later incorporates other types of evidence. This approach supplies causal models with an asymmetric concept of causation that underlies hypotheses about causal structure, as I will illustrate from the framework of the knowledge-based causal induction model. I further argue for an integrating perspective, showing how the understanding of causes as preceding their effects underlies both psychological models and philosophical debates over time and the causal asymmetry, particularly regarding problem cases such as simultaneous causation or backwards causation, and the conceptual connection between causation and action. (shrink)

Se leggiamo tra le righe del suo lavoro, possiamo scoprire che Varzi prende i mostri molto sul serio. Troviamo, per esempio, mostri mereologici frutto della composizione non ristretta, come l’entità costituita dalla metà sinistra di questa mela e dal bracciolo di quella poltrona.10 Oppure mostri topologici dai quali una teoria mereotopologica delle nicche deve rifuggire, come le curve riempispazio di Peano e Hilbert.11 O, ancora, mostri ontologici come l’antimateria;12 le entità “inesistenti” che, come si sa, non possono esistere, dato che (...) non ci sono cose che non esistono; e le entità “negative”: buchi, mancanze e omissioni, conferenze non date.13 In questo contributo, seguendo il suggerimento di Varzi, parlerò, appunto, di mostri, prendendo l’avvio da alcune creature che popolano il regno della finzione, per poi passare a trattare dei mostri che popolano il nostro mondo. Essendo poco lo spazio e molti i mostri, procederò dapprima proponendone una tassonomia – punto di partenza per ogni generalizzazione che si rispetti – e in seguito cercando di illustrare perché i mostri vadano presi sul serio in metafisica. È d’obbligo precisare che si tratterà di una tassonomia parziale e provvisoria, ma lo è altrettanto ricordare che le tassonomie, quelle biologiche in particolare, lo sono sempre, per due ragioni. In parte, perché la vita è in costante evoluzione, in parte perché le nostre conoscenze e decisioni condizionano la struttura e i contenuti dei nostri sistemi di categorie: basti pensare che la prima edizione del Systema naturae di Linneo contava undici pagine, mentre la tredicesima ben tremila, ripartite in sei volumi. Quando un tassonomo scopre un organismo che ritiene – dopo accurati esami comparativi – essere appartenente a una specie fino ad allora sconosciuta, ne deposita nella letteratura scientifica, insieme al nome binomiale (cioè il nome specifico, composto dall’indicazione del genere e della specie, come Homo sapiens), una descrizione in termini di caratteri fenetici. Quel token è chiamato tipo nomenclaturale, o esemplare-tipo, ed è il portatore del nome della specie di cui viene considerato tipo. Sulla falsariga della procedura appena descritta, riporterò la descrizione di alcuni tipi nomenclaturali per una tassonomia mostruosa che si baserà su tre criteri principali: (1) l’origine, (2) la costituzione genetica, (3) l’aspetto fenotipico. Prima di procedere, vorrei però sottolineare tre rispetti sotto i quali classificare mostri mitologici differisce dal classificare individui “ordinari”. Innanzitutto, nel caso dei mostri mitologici non è possibile, a causa del frequente intervento divino, ricorrere al criterio dell’interfecondità per stabilire se due mostri appartengono alla medesima specie. Ma d’altro canto, tale criterio, benché sia abbastanza affidabile per gli animali, non lo è affatto, per ragioni diverse dai mostri, per molte piante, alghe e funghi. Un’altra peculiarità da segnalare – di cui però non avremo modo di occuparci oltre – è che le entità mitologiche sono frequentemente soggette a trasformazioni sostanziali, mentre la nostra biologia sembra, aristotelicamente, escluderne la possibilità: una tigre non può trasformarsi in un canguro, pena la sua uscita dall’esistenza. Meno paradossalmente, una larva di mosca e la mosca adulta saranno considerate appartenenti alla medesima sorta – la mosca, appunto – benché dall’una all’altra non vi sia praticamente alcuna continuità materiale (nella metamorfosi la larva viene distrutta quasi completamente e l’adulto si genera a partire da pochi aggregati cellulari indifferenziati). Infine, nel caso dei mostri mitologici, parlerò più genericamente di “gruppo tassonomico” anziché di “specie” (e dunque il nome dei tipi nomenclaturali non sarà un nome binomiale) dal momento che, come diverrà chiaro nel corso della lettura, è proprio il concetto di “specie” come diverrà chiaro nel corso della lettura, è proprio il concetto di “specie” come articolazione naturale non oltrepassabile che i mostri che andiamo a classificare ci chiedono di mettere in discussione. (shrink)

The question of how democracy can deal with cultural diversity has become more central than ever. The increasing flow of people to many Western democratic countries indicates that our societies will become more and more multicultural. But what is the best way for democracy to deal with cultural diversity? It has been argued that, given its communicative core, the Habermasian model of deliberative democracy provides a platform where cultural groups can concur on peaceful agreements. In this paper, I show the (...) limits of this model of democracy in relation to diverse cultural traditions to public interactions. I will discuss the case of societies and ethnic groups of a Confucian heritage and show that Habermas’ account of public deliberation is not a neutral method for facilitating political decision making, but is culturally biased. (shrink)

A credible fear test is an in-depth interview process given to undocumented people of any age arriving at a U.S. port of entry to determine qualification for asylum-seeking. Credible fear tests as a typical immigration procedure demonstrate not only what structural epistemic violence looks like but also how this violence lives in and through the design of asylum policy. Key terms of credible fear tests such as “significant possibility,” “evidence,” “consistency,” and “credibility” can never be neutral in the context of (...) colonial administrative violence. We argue that these terms function as mechanisms of exclusion and demonstrate that the capacity to be violent (i.e. to be an instrument of violence) is built into these tests, ready to be deployed when an administration wants to stop certain people from certain places from entering without regard to their own ongoing occupation of Indigenous lands. Not only are such practices instruments of violence, but the concept of ‘violence’ continues to be organized, defined, and conceived within settler colonial epistemologies so as to exclude these administrative forms of violence deployed against Indigenous peoples and people of color from recognition and nameability. We argue that this is an intentional strategy of colonial power preservation that is functionalized through social processes that remain structurally stable and self-regenerating across historical and political changes. (shrink)

How many scientific demonstrations can a single phenomenon have? This paper argues that, according to Aristotle's theory of scientific knowledge as laid out in the Posterior Analytics, a single conclusion may be demonstrated via more than one explanatory middle term. I also argue that this model of multiple demonstration is put into practice in the biological writings. This paper thereby accomplishes two related goals: it clarifies certain relatively obscure passages of the Posterior Analytics and uses them to show how Aristotle (...) explains biological phenomena by reference to both final and material causes in the Parts of Animals. The first part of the paper explains the account of multiple demonstration present in the Posterior Analytics and distinguishes it from another kind of plural explanation rejected by Aristotle. The second part of the paper turns to the biological explanation in the Parts of Animals and shows how Aristotle's account of multiple demonstrations works in practice. The paper thus provides evidence for the claim that the ‘applied’ reasoning on display in the biological works is in harmony with the framework of the logical treatises, and thus may also shed light on questions of the unity of the Aristotelian corpus. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a dynamic interpretation of Kant’s logical hylomorphism. Firstly, various types of the logical hylomorphism will be illustrated. Secondly, I propose to reevaluate Kant’s constitutivity thesis about logic. Finally, I focus on the design of logical norms as specific kinds of artefacts.

Aristotle is a political scientist and a student of biology. Political science, in his view, is concerned with the human good and thus it includes the study of ethics. He approaches many subjects from the perspective of both political science and biology: the virtues, the function of humans, and the political nature of humans. In light of the overlap between the two disciplines, I look at whether or not Aristotle’s views in biology influence or explain some of his theses in (...) political science. I show that we should not seek a unified answer to this question, for the relationship between the two disciplines varies depending on the topic. In some cases, e.g. the nature of the human function, the biological background is likely to be endorsed as one of the presuppositions of the ethical enquiry. In other cases, e.g. the study of social hierarchies, even though the ethical works and the biological works come to similar conclusions, it is hard to establish that the biological approach is intended to provide support to the ethico-political approach. In conclusion, I show that Aristotle’s political science and his biology are in conflict at least in two important cases: his account of justice towards non-human animals and his exhortation to contemplate. (shrink)

Aristotle’s works on natural science show that he was aware of the affective powers of colour. At De an. 421a13, for example, he writes that hard-eyed animals can only discriminate between frightening and non-frightening colours. In the Nicomachean Ethics, furthermore, colours are the source of pleasures and delight. These pleasures, unlike the pleasures of touch and taste, neither corrupt us nor make us wiser. Aristotle’s views on the affective powers of colours raise a question about the limits he seems to (...) place on the affective powers of pictures at De an. 427b15-24, where he implies that pictures do not affect us immediately. In this paper, I examine the contrast between the affective powers of colour and the affective powers of pictures. I argue that colours can give rise to pleasure and pain in themselves and generate emotions incidentally. Similarly, pictures can please us or affect us in themselves and incidentally. In light of this account, I suggest that, on a plausible reading of De an. 427b15-24, the affective powers of pictures as mimetic objects are not immediate because they require an intervening cause in order to be effective. The representations of pictures and statues affect us either with the mediation of deception or with the mediation of interpretation. (shrink)

The famous dispute between Protagoras and Euathlus concerning Protagoras’s tuition fee reportedly owed to him by Euathlus is solved on the basis of practical argumentation concerning actions. The dispute is widely viewed as a kind of a logical paradox, and I show that such treating arises due to the double confusion in the dispute narrative. The linguistic expressions used to refer to Protagoras’s, Euathlus’s and the jurors’ actions are confused with these actions themselves. The other confusion is the collision between (...) the pairs of incompatible actions ambiguously expressed by two different pairs of sentences, one of which is a propositionally consistent pair whereas the other is an inconsistent one. The actional paradox solution aims to clear up these confusions by means of two core borderlines, propositional and expressive, drawn between the actions and the propositions. The propositional distinction says that actions are empirical facts and they lack truth values unlike propositions, which are mental entities and are often employed for referring to the actions. This distinction helps to avoid the confusion between the empirical incompatibility of actions and the truth-functional inconsistency of propositions. The expressive distinction claims that although the same linguistic sentences can be used to refer both to actions and propositions, two empirically incompatible actions can be expressed both by a pair of inconsistent propositions as well as by a pair of consistent ones. Therefore, the action of Protagoras’s being paid may be linguistically symbolized in four different ways: Protagoras gets paid due to the verdict, Protagoras gets paid due to the contract that amount to Protagoras does not get paid by the contract and Protagoras does not get paid by the verdict respectively, and likewise for Euathlus’s actions. The two distinctions are used for classifying the two groups of paradox solutions, legal and logical, proposed so far depending on which of the two confusions they purport to escape from. The actional reconstruction of the paradox suggests that there is only one single agent in the dispute, Protagoras, while the other named Euathlus is a ‘phantom,’ which most probably was invented by Protagoras himself for the sake of creating this challenging sophism. (shrink)

This paper examines philosophical debates about concepts of biodiversity, making the case for conceptual pluralism. Taking a pragmatist perspective, I argue that normative concepts of biodiversity and eco-centric concepts of biodiversity can serve different purposes. The former would help stress the values of local communities, which have often been neglected by both early scientific approaches to conservation, and by policy makers prioritizing the political or economic interests of specific groups. The latter would help build local research programs independent of pressures (...) from economic or political actors. I employ a case study on environmental research on walnut forests in Kyrgyzstan in support of my argument. Against tendencies to frame different understandings of biodiversity in terms of geographical areas, I propose an interpretation drawing on the philosophy of ecology. Adherence to environmental pragmatism enables a sufficiently complex picture of developing environmental research in the area, capturing issues about scientific framings and local understandings. (shrink)

Responsibility has entered the academic discourse of logicians hardly more than few decades ago. I suggest a logical concept of responsibility which employs ideas both from a number of theories belonging to different branches of logic as well from other academic areas. As a comment to this concept, I suggest five steps narrative scenario in order to show how the logical dimension of responsibility emerges from diverse tendencies in logic and other sciences. Here are the five steps briefly stated: Step (...) 1. Developing modal formalisms capable of evaluative analysis of situations (deontic, epistemic and etc.). Step 2. Drawing a conceptual borderline between normal and non-normal (weak) logical systems. Step 3. Using different kinds of models. Step 4. Agent- and action- friendly turn in logic. Step 5. Creating formalisms for modeling different types of agency. An idea advocated here within 5-Steps route to responsibility is that this concept is a complex causal and evaluative (axiological) relation. A logical account may be given for causal and normative aspects of this relation. Unfolding the responsibility back and forth through 5 Steps will result in different concepts. The technicalities are minimized for the sake of keeping the philosophical scope of the paper. For the same reason I also refrain from discussing legal and juridical ramifications of the issue. (shrink)

In this paper, I reconstruct the reasons why Aristotle thinks that musical education is important for moral education. Musical education teaches us to enjoy appropriately and to recognize perceptually fine melodies and rhythms. Fine melodies and rhythms are similar to the kind of movements fine actions consist in and fine characters display. By teaching us to enjoy and recognise fine melodies and rhythms, musical education can train us to recognize and to take pleasure in fine actions and characters. Thus, musical (...) education can, up to a point, lead us toward the actions and character dispositions a virtuous life requires. (shrink)

One could say that we are human beings to the degree to which our conscience is developed. My paper analyses the conscience from an ethical point of view and states that it is to be understood as the measure of morality within a person. [‘Moral’ refers to a sense of right and wrong, and ethics to the principles of “good” and “bad” agreed by a society]. Taking into consideration that there are people who feel an acute sense of guilt when (...) committing a crime and others who feel nothing, my work tries to identify the factors responsible for such a state of affairs. Therefore, it deals with the question, “Why are there considerable differences among people from the point of view of morality?”. I shall elaborate mainly on the role of education and genetic heritage, which are instrumental in the development of moral conscience within a person. Their influence in shaping it is ensured by the activity of the neurons and of other processes within the brain, which firstly produce the human consciousness. Other elements ‘grow’ on it. (shrink)

For Aristotle, human cognition has a lot in common both with non-human animal cognition and with divine cognition. With non-human animals, humans share a non-rational part of the soul and non-rational cognitive faculties (DA 427b6–14, NE 1102b29 and EE 1219b24–6). With gods, humans share a rational part of the soul and rational cognitive faculties (NE 1177b17– 1178a8). The rational part and the non-rational part of the soul, however, coexist and cooperate only in human souls (NE 1102b26–9, EE 1219b28–31). In this (...) chapter, I show that a study of this cooperation helps to uncover some distinctive aspects of human cognition and desire. (shrink)

The Système de philosophie by Pierre Sylvain Régis can be considered as the achievement both of the scientific liveliness of the Académie des Sciences in the 17th century and of its fruitful relationship with the Royal Society. Since it aims to shape the new conception of the universe in terms of a system, the Système represents one of the most mature achievements of Cartesian philosophy and it is characterized by an empirical interpretation of Descartes’ thought. The Système therefore reflects two (...) important phenomena occurring in the Europe of the 17th century: the scientific revolution and the proliferation of Academies. In fact, this ambitious work could be undertaken with the support of the Académie des Sciences and the Journal des Sçavants. My paper will analyse the French context by focusing to outline the role which the Académie de France had both in France, as the medium of dissemination of the new philosophy despite censorship, and abroad, in particular through the relationship with the Royal Society in England. I aim to analyse the role of the Journal des Sçavants as a means to share ideas other than by correspondence and as a trait d’union between “rationalist France” and “empiricist England”. I intend to question whether it is possible to establish a connection between the empirical interpretation of French Cartesianism, the consolidation of the Académie de France and the employment of new means of academic communication. The paper will show that the second half of 17th century France represents a remarkable exception to the conventional picture, which states that in 17th century Europe, following the success of a mechanistic interpretation of reality, two philosophical school clashed: rationalism, predominating on the continent, and empiricism, in England. (shrink)

As we know, there is a difference between a simple wish and the will of an individual. Not only a concrete action is required in order to alleviate the impact of various factors that inhibit the former before it becomes ‘will’, but also a deep level of human consciousness. It implies conscientious motivation, clear goals, etc. My paper introduces some of the elements instrumental in the leap from the wish to the human will. As the issue of Free Will is (...) central to the paper because when I say ‘human will’ I refer to ‘free will’, I need to mention that my perspective on this notion is pragmatic. I. e. I understand that even though any decision we make is conditioned by various factors, we do not think of this state of affair when we carry out our activities – at least not always. Because of that we feel free – free enough to be able to function according to social norms. (shrink)

One of the most mature achievements of the Cartesian philosophy is the aim to diffuse Descartes’ thought among a wider audience by presenting his philosophy in an encyclopedic way. A relevant contribution in this field is Pierre Sylvain Régis’s Système. Régis’s contribution consists both in reconciling the new scientific discoveries with les principes de Monsieur Descartes by combining them into a scholarly manual whose aim is to stimulate the ars inveniendi and in recognizing the relevance of Arnauld’s and Nicole’s L’art (...) de penser as manual of Cartesian logic. In an article published on the «Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa», pp. 517-55: L’«Art de penser» nella logica del «Système» di Régis) I analysed Régis’s logic in order to point out that, even if L’art de penser represents its only source, La logique of the Système has not to be considered as a mere compendium of the Port-Royal Logique, but as a revision of the latter according to a specific philosophical system, characterized by the empirical interpretation of Descartes’s philosophy. In this paper I provide a synopsis of the comparison between the logic of the Système and the Logique of Port-Royal, in order to resume in a schematic way the results of my research. (shrink)

Temporal ontology is the philosophical debate on the existence of the past and the future. It features a three-way confrontation between supporters of presentism (the present exists, the past and the future do not), pastism (the past and the present exist, the future does not), and eternalism (the past, the present, and the future all exist). Most philosophers engaged in this debate believe that presentism is much more in agreement with common sense than the rival views; moreover, most of them (...) believe that being in agreement with common sense is epistemically valuable for a philosophical view. We studied experimentally non-experts’ ideas pertaining to the domain of temporal ontology, i.e., as we called it, common-sense temporal ontology, focusing on the Italian population. We found that a non-overwhelming majority of participants (~64%) favoured presentism, while two significant minorities favoured pastism (~19%) and eternalism (~17%). We think that our findings provide some support, albeit weaker than expected, for the view that presentism is more in agreement with common sense than the rival positions. (shrink)

Los estudiantes de la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración de la Universidad de la República deben realizar, como trabajo final de carrera, una investigación o ensayo monográfico en un área de su interés, tutorados por un docente universitario o un investigador de reconocida trayectoria. Un gran número de estos trabajos monográficos han hecho un aporte valioso al conocimiento pero, lamentablemente, la poca difusión de éstos hace que ese conocimiento termine olvidado en los fondos de la biblioteca de la (...) Facultad, entre cientos de producciones monográficas. Se pretende en este libro, mostrar los aportes que se han generado en el área tanto de Economía de la Cultura como de Gestión de Organizaciones Culturales. Varias de las monografías fueron realizadas en la línea de investigación Costos y Gestión de Organizaciones Culturales, la cual coordino. Otros fueron realizados con antelación, como los trabajos tutorados por el referente de la Economía de la Cultura en Uruguay, el hoy fallecido Luis Stolovich. También se incluyen dos trabajos monográficos tutorados por el Dr Gustavo Buquet, quien siempre está presente a la hora de crear investigación de calidad en Economía de la Cultura. Como cada trabajo supera el centenar de páginas, no es posible publicarlos completamente, por lo que para este libro se hicieron resúmenes de esos trabajos, intentando adecuar la terminología y quitándoles el formato estrictamente científico –poco amigable para un no especialista-, de forma tal que su lectura sea accesible al público en general. Se resumieron ocho, clasificados en tres capítulos: Patrimonio, Artes Escénicas e Industria Cultural. El capítulo de Patrimonio comienza con un trabajo realizado por las Economistas Fernanda Arezo y Verónica Pereyra, titulado “Museos y Ciudadanos, el comportamiento del consumidor”, tutorado por Raúl Ramírez y por mí. Este estudio tuvo como centro explicar la modalidad de conducta de consumo del visitante montevideano hacia tres importantes instituciones museísticas como lo son el Museo del Cabildo, el Museo del Carnaval y el Museo de Historia del Arte. El objetivo del trabajo es estimar la demanda y obtener un indicador de la propensión a pagar por el consumo de dichos museos. El segundo trabajo, titulado “Disposición a pagar por la restauración de la Puerta de la Ciudadela”, fue realizado por las Contadoras Beatriz Torres, María Elena Olarán y María Carolina Duarte, y tutorado en forma conjunta por el Phd. Juan José Goyeneche y quien les escribe. En este trabajo se realiza una valoración contingente para medir la disposición a pagar por la restauración de la “Puerta de la Ciudadela”, un monumento fundamental de identidad montevideana. El capítulo de Patrimonio finaliza con un trabajo realizado por las Economistas Malena Rodríguez y María de la Paz Besada y tutorado por el Ec. Luis Stolovich. El mismo se denomina “El arte uruguayo: un estudio sobre el mercado y la pintura como alternativa de inversión” y explora el mercado de arte uruguayo, analizando la rentabilidad de la inversión en pintura uruguaya. Tratan la rentabilidad de la inversión para tres casos específicos: las obras vendidas por el Banco Comercial en su proceso de recuperación de activos, un portafolio de obras de Pedro Figari y otro de Joaquín Torres García. En cuanto al segundo capítulo, Artes Escénicas, comienza con un trabajo realizado para la obtención del título de Contador Público realizado por Pamela Cambeiro, Martín Cami e Ignacio Mouradián. Se denomina “La gestión de teatros. Caso de estudio: Aplicación del Cuadro de Mando Integral al Teatro Solís” y trata sobre la identificación de indicadores que faciliten las tareas de gestión para la dirección del Teatro. Luego se presenta un trabajo realizado por las Economistas Tania Cruz y Natalia Nollenberger titulado “Análisis económico del teatro independiente en Montevideo: una aproximación al problema de la fatalidad de los costos”. Este trabajo, también tutorado por el Ec. Luis Stolovich, muestra un exhaustivo análisis del teatro independiente montevideano identificando los problemas económicos que afectan al sector. El capítulo de Industria Cultural incluye tres trabajos. El primero, fue realizado por el Economista Diego Traverso y tutorado por el Dr. Gustavo Buquet, y su título es “Análisis de competitividad del sector exportador de Productoras Audiovisuales Publicitarias en Uruguay”. El sector audiovisual publicitario es un sector dinámico que se ha internacionalizado tempranamente y que generó divisas para el país del orden de los US$ 24 millones durante el año 2005 por concepto de exportaciones. En este trabajo se caracteriza al sector audiovisual publicitario en Uruguay y se analiza las ventajas competitivas que posee frente a sus principales competidores extranjeros. El segundo trabajo fue realizado por las Contadoras Natalia Rivera, Antonella Triay y María Eugenia Triay y se denomina “Gestión aplicada a las empresas radiales”. En este se identifican el sector radial, su proceso productivo y la complejidad al definir al “cliente”. Se proponen una serie de indicadores con el doble objetivo de medir el desempeño de la empresa y proveer incentivos a su organización. Finalmente, el último trabajo monográfico, fue una investigación interdisciplinaria, que sirvió simultáneamente para obtener el título de Licenciado en Economía a Ernesto Pienika y el de Licenciado en Administración a Nicolás Cohnheim y a Damián Geinsinger. Este trabajo, tutorado por el Dr. Gustavo Buquet y el Cr. Cecilio García de título “Impactos de las nuevas tecnologías en la .industria musical”, muestra cuáles son los principales impactos en esa industria que las nuevas tecnologías han provocado y cuáles son las posibles estrategias para adaptarse a estos cambios, así como los nuevos modelos de negocio. Espero que este libro sea el primero de una larga lista. Las áreas de Economía de la Cultura y Gestión de Organizaciones Culturales son disciplinas jóvenes que necesitan seguir creciendo. La investigación realizada por trabajos monográficos de fin de carrera en estas áreas, será siempre bienvenida. (shrink)

In A Case for Irony, Jonathan Lear aims to advance “a distinguished philosophical tradition that conceives of humanity as a task” by returning this tradition to the ironic figure at its origin — Socrates. But he is hampered by his reliance on well-worn philosophical examples. I suggest that Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter illustrates the mode of ironic experience that interests Lear, and helps us to think through his relation to Christine Korsgaard, arguably the greatest contemporary proponent of the (...) philosophical tradition at issue. Lear needs a central idea from Korsgaard’s model of practical thinking in order to characterise the phenomenology of ironic experience, but he also needs to jettison her idea that reasons for action come from an agent’s “practical identities” if he wants to follow through on his claim that irony is a form of radical and committed reflection. (shrink)

This paper responds to an essay by Elena Ferrante on male literary figures acknowledging the influence of female ones. She poses a question about her reception by males which I address.

This article deals with women-centred prose texts of the 1990s and 2000s in Russia written by women, and focuses especially on generation narratives. By this term the author means fictional texts that explore generational relations within families, from the perspective of repressed experiences, feelings and attitudes in the Soviet period. The selected texts are interpreted as narrating and conceptualizing the consequences of patriarchal ideology for relations between mothers and daughters and for reconstructing connections between Soviet and post-Soviet by revisiting and (...) remembering especially the gaps and discontinuities between (female) generations. The cases discussed are Liudmila Petrushevskaia’s ‘povest’ Vremia noch [The Time: Night] (1991), Liudmila Ulitskaia’s novel Medeia i ee deti [Medea and her Children] (1996) and Elena Chizhova’s novel Vremia zhenshchin [The Time of Women] (2009). These novels reflect on the one hand the woman-centredness and novelty of representation in women’s prose writing in the post-Soviet period. On the other hand, the author suggests that they reflect the diverse methods of representing the Soviet era and experience through generation narratives. The texts reassess the past through intimate, tactile memories and perceptions, and their narration through generational plots draws attention to the process of working through, which needs to be done in contemporary Russia. The narratives touch upon the untold stories of those who suffered in silence or hid the family secrets from the officials, in order to save the family. The narration delves into the different layers of experience and memory, conceptualizing them in the form of multiple narrative perspectives constructing different generations and traditions. In this way they convey the ‘secrets’ hidden in the midst of everyday life routines and give voice to the often silent resistance of women towards patriarchal and repressive ideology. The new women’s prose of the 1980s–90s and the subsequent trend of women-centred narratives and generation narratives employ conceptual metaphors of reassessing, revisiting and remembering the cultural, experiential, and emotional aspects of the past, Soviet lives. (shrink)

This essay is my review of Colleen Dyble’s book, Taming Leviathan: Waging a War of Ideas around the World. Dyble is affiliated with the legendary classical liberal British think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs. Her anthology is a collection of essays by people around the world who have been involved with similar free-market think tanks in countries with historically statist economic systems. These writers include Greg Lindsay, founder of the Center for Independent Studies in Australia; Margaret Tse, of the (...) Instituto Liberdade in Brazil; Michael Walker, co-founder of the Fraser Institute in Canada; Cristian Larroulet, of Libertad y Desarrollo in Chile; Giancarlo Ibarguen, of the Center for Economic and Social Studies in Guatemala (which actually founded a free-market-oriented university); Parth Shah, founder of the Center for Civil Society in India; Daniel Doron, co-founder of the Israeli Center for Social and Economic Progress; Alberto Mingardi, of the Instituto Bruno Leoni in Italy; Masaru Uchigama, founder of the Japanese for Tax Reform; Elena Leontjeva, co-founder of the Lithuanian Free Market Institute; Alexander Magno, co-founder of the Foundation for Economic Freedom in the Philippines; and last, Leon Louw, of the Free Market Foundation of South Africa. I then discuss seven important reasons why classical liberal think tanks are so important in modern societies. (shrink)

The enactive approach to cognition distinctively emphasizes autonomy, adaptivity, agency, meaning, experience, and interaction. Taken together, these principles can provide the new sciences of language with a comprehensive philosophical framework: languaging as adaptive social sense-making. This is a refinement and advancement on Maturana’s idea of languaging as a manner of living. Overcoming limitations in Maturana’s initial formulation of languaging is one of three motivations for this paper. Another is to give a response to skeptics who challenge enactivism to connect “lower-level” (...) sense-making with “higher-order” sophisticated moves like those commonly ascribed to language. Our primary goal is to contribute a positive story developed from the enactive account of social cognition, participatory sense-making. This concept is put into play in two different philosophical models, which respectively chronicle the logical and ontogenetic development of languaging as a particular form of social agency. Languaging emerges from the interplay of coordination and exploration inherent in the primordial tensions of participatory sense-making between individual and interactive norms; it is a practice that transcends the self-other boundary and enables agents to regulate self and other as well as interaction couplings. Linguistic sense-makers are those who negotiate interactive and internalized ways of meta-regulating the moment-to-moment activities of living and cognizing. Sense-makers in enlanguaged environments incorporate sensitivities, roles, and powers into their unique yet intelligible linguistic bodies. We dissolve the problematic dichotomies of high/low, online/offline, and linguistic/nonlinguistic cognition, and we provide new boundary criteria for specifying languaging as a prevalent kind of human social sense-making. (shrink)

Intersectionality is a term that arose within the black feminist intellectual tradition for the purposes of identifying interlocking systems of oppression. As a descriptive term, it refers to the ways human identity is shaped by multiple social vectors and overlapping identity categories (such as sex, race, class) that may not be readily visible in single-axis formulations of identity, but which are taken to be integral to robustly capture the multifaceted nature of human experience. As a diagnostic term, it captures the (...) confluence of power and domination on the social construction of identity in order to remedy concrete harms that result from this convergence. It is not a prescriptive methodology or closed system of analysis, but rather an open-ended hermeneutic lens through which interconnected systems of oppression can come into focus in the fight for social justice. (shrink)

Approaching mental health on a global scale with particular reference to low- and mid-income countries raises issues concerning the disregard of the local context and values and the imposition of values characteristic of the Global North. Seeking a philosophical viewpoint to surmount these problems, the present paper argues for a value-laden framework for psychiatry with the specific incorporation of value pluralism, particularly in relation to the Global South context, while also emphasizing personal values such as the choice of treatment. In (...) sketching out this framework, the paper aims to overcome the clash between universalism and relativism about psychiatric categories by focusing on how overlaps between cultures can contribute to ontology-building. A case study analyzing ethnopsychiatric research in the context of South India will illustrate the proposed view, while also pointing out avenues for further research on the causal efficacy of local shared beliefs about mental disorder. If approaches across different traditions and theoretical frames are shown to work in treating similar ailments, causal connections appear to cut across the different ontologies. Ethnopsychiatry would play a central role in such research, namely in disclosing the variables and mechanisms at work within the local approaches. (shrink)

Russians and Westerners access, process and communicate information in different ways. Whilst Westerners favour detailed analysis of subject matter, Russians tend to focus on certain components that are, in their view, significant. This disparity makes it difficult to achieve constructive dialogues between Western and Russian stakeholders contributing to cross-cultural communication problems. The author claims that the difference in the ways Russians and Westerners negotiate information is a significant cultural difference between Russia and West rather than an irritating (and in principle (...) amenable) lack of analytical skills on the Russian partners’ part. Understanding the reasons behind the Russian-specific approaches to dealing with information would be a positive step towards a more effective cross-cultural communication, important in business situations and essential in diplomacy. (shrink)

East Asia’s economy is leading the world into the new Asian century. While meritocratic practices in the educational and private sectors are often considered pivotal conditions for East Asia’s economic success, experts have pointed out that the path ahead requires new approaches to ensure social cohesion and stability, which depend on the quality of relations across social divides. These considerations raise multiple questions for philosophers: What forms of social meritocracy are necessary to sustain social cohesion? Moreover, how can the detrimental (...) effects of meritocratic practices be contained? Is it possible to utilise some of the intellectual resources indigenous to East Asia to generate innovative solutions? This paper argues that the answers to these questions lie in the indigenous Confucian conceptual resources. Confucian ideas can inspire a more desirable societal ideal for the future of East Asia. In particular, the Confucian emphasis on cultivating reciprocal harmonious human relationships and others’ morality can guide new approaches to fostering social cohesion. As Confucian personal cultivation through harmonious relations is a process of social cohesion, these ideas inspire a) a multiple approach to policymaking that is not only grounded in economic redistribution, b) a richer understanding of societal progress, and c) a democratic approach to fostering social cohesion. Unlike Confucian meritocrats and scholars who defend the Confucian roots of East Asian forms of political and social meritocracy, this paper proves that Confucian conceptual resources can help formulate a societal vision that strengthens cohesion and mitigates the adverse effects of meritocratic practices. (shrink)

Slurs have become a big topic of discussion both in philosophy and in linguistics. Slurs are usually characterised as pejorative terms, co-extensional with other, neutral, terms referring to ethnic or social groups. However, slurs are not the only ethnic/social words with pejorative senses. Our aim in this paper is to introduce a different kind of pejoratives, which we will call “ethnic/social terms used as insults”, as exemplified in Spanish, though present in many other languages and mostly absent in English. These (...) are ethnic terms like gitano, ‘Romani’, which can have an extensional and neutral use, but also a pejorative meaning building on a negative stereotypical representation of the Romani community. (shrink)

The collective monograph "Ontology of Stative Situations - Linguistic Modeling. A Contrastive Bulgarian-Russian Study" includes research carried out within the project of the same name "Ontology of stative situations – linguistic modeling. A contrastive Bulgarian-Russian study", supported by the "Scientific Research" Fund of the Ministry of Education and Science in Bulgaria (№ КП-06-РУСИЯ / 23) and from the Russian Fund for Fundamental Research (No. 20-512-18005).

This essay offers an overview of the diversity of women’s prose writing that emerged on the Czech cultural scene in the post-communist era. To that end it briefly characterizes the work of eight Czech women authors who were born within the first two decades after World War II and began to create during the post-1968 era of ‘normalization’. In this broad sense they belong to a single generation. With rare exception their work was not officially published in their homeland until (...) the 1990s. The writers included are: Lenka Procházková, Tereza Boučková, Alexandra Berková, Zuzana Brabcová, Daniela Hodrová, Sylvie Richterová, Iva Pekárková, and Eva Hauserová. The overview is followed by a concise comparative analysis of texts by three very different writers (Procházková, Pekárková, and Hodrová), using a feminist critical approach. There is also an appendix of works by these writers available in English translation. (shrink)

An exchange of letters among proper names and natural-kind terms, dealing with various identity and individuation problems (rigid designation, use-mention ambiguities, translation) from their point of view.

The red pill or the blue pill? Obviously the red. But are we sure it will work the way it is supposed to? Are we sure it will take us out of the Matrix? We are proud to announce that we have found a document that will throw some new light (and a renewed cloud of suspicion) on this matter: the product packaging of RedPill®, complete with all directions for use and warnings against side-effects.

Cet article a pour but d’étudier les perspectives que l’approche performative de la preuve fournit, afin de répondre à deux questions classiques liées à l’interprétation de l’argument cartésien : Cogito ergo sum. La première question est la suivante : quel type de contrainte logique ou non-logique ergo exprime-t-il dans la formulation de cet argument? La seconde question est celle-ci : quel type d’existence est manifesté par l’argument Cogito, ou Cogito ergo quis est ?