It is a widely held principle that no one is able to do something that would require the past to have been different from how it actually is. This principle of the fixity of the past has been presented in numerous ways, playing a crucial role in arguments for logical and theological fatalism, and for the incompatibility of causal determinism and the ability to do otherwise. I will argue that, assuming bivalence, this principle is in conflict with standard views about (...) knowledge and the semantics for ‘actually’. I also consider many possible responses to the argument. (shrink)

Recent research in the field of social robotics has shed light on the considerable role played by biases in the design of social robots. Cues that trigger widespread biased expectations are implemented in the design of social robots to increase their familiarity and boost interaction quality. Ethical discussion has focused on the question concerning the permissibility of leveraging social biases to meet the design goals of social robotics. As a result, integrating ethically problematic social biases in the design of robots-such (...) as, e.g., discriminatory gender stereotypes-has been opposed as morally unacceptable. Building on this debate, the present paper explores a related but different question: would it be permissible to design social robots in ways that intentionally challenge widespread discriminatory social biases, thus fostering moral education? The analysis shows that, while the potential benefits of such a design strategy could be significant, its practical endorsement raises important ethical issues. Hence, caution and further discussion are advised. (shrink)

David Chalmers argued against the claim that for all p, or even for all entertainable p, it is knowable a priori that p iff actually p. Instead of criticizing Chalmers’s argument, I suggest that it can be generalized, in a sense, and in interesting ways, concerning other principles about contingent a priori truths. In particular, I will argue that the puzzle presented by Chalmers runs parallel to others that do not turn on ‘actually’. Furthermore, stronger arguments can be presented that (...) do not turn on apriority either, though they do entail the conclusion of Chalmers’s argument. All such puzzles involve interactions between rigidifying sentence-forming devices with factive operators. (shrink)

One of the major challenges in the philosophy of religion is theological fatalism—roughly, the claim that divine omniscience is incompatible with free will. In this article, I present new reasons to be skeptical of what I consider to be the strongest argument for theological fatalism. First, I argue that divine foreknowledge is not necessary for an argument against free will if we take into account divine knowledge of contingent a priori truths. Second, I show that this argument can be generalized (...) so that ordinary human knowledge of contingent a priori truths also leads to an argument against free will. This, I believe, results in an absurd conclusion that is unacceptable to both theists and non-theists. But if there is something wrong with this argument, there is something wrong, too, with the argument for theological fatalism. Although there is a range of possible responses, I suggest that the core issue in all cases is a closure principle—specifically, the principle that ‘no choice about’ is closed under entailment (or strict implication). (shrink)

This essay explores Jonas’s multifaceted and rich enquiries into the notion of image. In particular, it argues that reflecting on the “image” helps Jonas clarify the unique condition of human existence, where the twine of thought and being reveals a paradoxical (and yet crucial) relationship between time and eternity, change and permanence, immanence and transcendence. The employ of the interpretative device provided by the image enables a nuanced understanding of the human complexity which goes beyond the partial and reductive descriptions (...) of relativistic immanentism, on the one hand, and immutable transcendence, on the other. By commenting upon its anthropological, aesthetic, and ethical significance, we propose that the study of Jonas’s thoughts on the image not only offers valuable insights into the philosophical understanding of such a fascinating object, but also sheds a new and interesting light on the unity of his oeuvre. (shrink)

En este artículo se plantean algunas consideraciones clásicas que santo Tomás de Aquino formuló sobre la fundamentación de la ley como producto de la razón y su relación con las leyes de los hombres. Se analiza el papel de la sindéresis como vínculo del individuo con la ius naturae y se concluye que la vida buena tiene un referente en el “estado de derecho” y en la práctica sistemática de las virtudes morales.

Evolutionary Debunking Arguments are defined as arguments that appeal to the evolutionary genealogy of our beliefs to undermine their justification. Recently, Helen De Cruz and her co-authors supported the view that EDAs are self-defeating: if EDAs claim that human arguments are not justified, because the evolutionary origin of the beliefs which figure in such arguments undermines those beliefs, and EDAs themselves are human arguments, then EDAs are not justified, and we should not accept their conclusions about the fact that human (...) arguments are unjustified. De Cruz's objection to EDAs is similar to the objection raised by Reuben Hersh against the claim that, since by Gödel's second incompleteness theorem the purpose of mathematical logic to give a secure foundation for mathematics cannot be achieved, mathematics cannot be said to be absolutely certain. The response given by Carlo Cellucci to Hersh's objection shows that the claim that by Gödel's results mathematics cannot be said to be absolutely certain is not self-defeating, and can be adopted to show that EDAs are not self-defeating as well in a twofold sense: an argument analogous to Cellucci's one may be developed to face De Cruz's objection, and such argument may be further refined incorporating Cellucci's response itself in it, to make it stronger. This paper aims at showing that the accusation of being self-defeating moved against EDAs is inadequate by elaborating an argument which can be considered an EDA and which can also be shown not to be self-defeating. (shrink)

A critical review of the main themes arising out of recent literature on the semantics of ordinary event talk. The material is organized in four sections: (i) the nature of events, with emphasis on the opposition between events as particulars and events as universals; (ii) identity and indeterminacy, with emphasis on the unifier/multiplier controversy; (iii) events and logical form, with emphasis on Davidson’s treatment of the form of action sentences; (iv) linguistic applications, with emphasis on issues concerning aspectual phenomena, the (...) telicity/atelicity distinction, the treatment of statives, and temporal quantification. (shrink)

This article presents a challenge that those philosophers who deny the causal interpretation of explanations provided by population genetics might have to address. Indeed, some philosophers, known as statisticalists, claim that the concept of natural selection is statistical in character and cannot be construed in causal terms. On the contrary, other philosophers, known as causalists, argue against the statistical view and support the causal interpretation of natural selection. The problem I am concerned with here arises for the statisticalists because the (...) debate on the nature of natural selection intersects the debate on whether mathematical explanations of empirical facts are genuine scientific explanations. I argue that if the explanations provided by population genetics are regarded by the statisticalists as non-causal explanations of that kind, then statisticalism risks being incompatible with a naturalist stance. The statisticalist faces a dilemma: either she maintains statisticalism but has to renounce naturalism; or she maintains naturalism but has to content herself with an account of the explanations provided by population genetics that she deems unsatisfactory. This challenge is relevant to the statisticalists because many of them see themselves as naturalists. (shrink)

In the last decades two different and apparently unrelated lines of research have increasingly connected mathematics and evolutionism. Indeed, on the one hand different attempts to formalize darwinism have been made, while, on the other hand, different attempts to naturalize logic and mathematics have been put forward. Those researches may appear either to be completely distinct or at least in some way convergent. They may in fact both be seen as supporting a naturalistic stance. Evolutionism is indeed crucial for a (...) naturalistic perspective, and formalizing it seems to be a way to strengthen its scientificity. The paper shows that, on the contrary, those directions of research may be seen as conflicting, since the conception of knowledge on which they rest may be undermined by the consequences of accepting an evolutionary perspective. (shrink)

In this paper I provide an exposition and critique of Johnson and Noorman’s (2014) three conceptualizations of the agential roles artificial systems can play. I argue that two of these conceptions are unproblematic: that of causally efficacious agency and “acting for” or surrogate agency. Their third conception, that of “autonomous agency,” however, is one I have reservations about. The authors point out that there are two ways in which the term “autonomy” can be used: there is, firstly, the engineering sense (...) of the term, which simply refers to the ability of some system to act independently of substantive human control. Secondly, there is the moral sense of the term, which has traditionally grounded many notions of human mor-al responsibility. I argue that the continued usage of “autonomy” in discussions of artificial agency complicates matters unnecessarily. This occurs in two ways: firstly, the condition of autonomy, even in its engineering sense, fails to accurately describe the way “autonomous” systems are developed in practice. Secondly, the continued usage of autonomy in the moral sense introduces unnecessary meta-physical baggage form the free will debate into discussions about moral agency. In order to understand the debate surrounding autonomy, we would therefore first need to settle many seemingly intractable metaphysical questions regarding the existence of free will in human beings. (shrink)

Scientific Realism (SR) has three crucial aspects: 1) the centrality of the concept of truth, 2) the idea that success is a reliable indicator of truth, and 3) the idea that the Inference to the Best Explanation is a reliable inference rule. It will be outlined how some realists try to overcome the difficulties which arise in justifying such crucial aspects relying on an adaptationist view of evolutionism, and why such attempts are inadequate. Finally, we will briefly sketch some of (...) the main difficulties the realist has to face in defending those crucial aspects, and how such difficulties are deeply related: they derive from the inability of SR to satisfyingly avoid the sceptical challenge of the criterion of truth. Indeed, SR seems not to be able to fill the so-called ‘epistemic gap’ (Sankey 2008). In fact, the epistemic gap cannot be filled in no way other than obtaining a criterion of truth, but such a criterion cannot be obtained if the epistemic gap obtains. (shrink)

The semantic view of theories is normally considered to be an ac-count of theories congenial to Scientific Realism. Recently, it has been argued that Ontic Structural Realism could be fruitfully applied, in combination with the semantic view, to some of the philosophical issues peculiarly related to bi-ology. Given the central role that models have in the semantic view, and the relevance that mathematics has in the definition of the concept of model, the fo-cus will be on population genetics, which is (...) one of the most mathematized areas in biology. We will analyse some of the difficulties which arise when trying to use Ontic Structural Realism to account for evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Peter D. Thomas’s book The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism draws us to reflect on a point that Gramsci’s interpreters have often neglected: the particular structure of the Prison Notebooks, i.e., the ways in which the text was constituted and, dependent on that, the fundamental methodological criteria for its interpretation. Thomas’s book is a consummate synthesis between the deep and detailed study of the Notebooks text and the need to reconstruct some order within; between close historicalphilosophical assessment and theoretical (...) proposal within contemporary Marxist (and para-Marxist) debate. Consequently, this book confronts us – as Gramsci’s present-day readers – with a task that no-one can face alone, but that is nonetheless extraordinarily urgent: the task of intervening in the debate within the post-modern and post-Marxist Left so that the link between Marxism and philosophy is resumed, starting out from Gramsci himself. In short: a revival of Marx through Gramsci, through – in turn – a return of the philosophy of praxis as Marxism for our own day. (shrink)

During the Fifties and the Early Sixties Hans Jonas developed a theory of man based on a series of concepts as separation of form from matter, image and symbol. By reflecting on these themes, Jonas seems to refer to the aesthetic abilities man embodies as the essence of human life. In this article I try to analyse Jonas’ thoughts on man and to determine to what extent it is possible to consider his theory as an aesthetic anthropology. Eventually, I discuss (...) what Aesthetics may win by directing its attention to this author. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are ubiquitous. From social media timelines, video recommendations on YouTube, and the kinds of adverts we see online, AI, in a very real sense, filters the world we see. More than that, AI is being embedded in agent-like systems, which might prompt certain reactions from users. Specifically, we might find ourselves feeling frustrated if these systems do not meet our expectations. In normal situations, this might be fine, but with the ever increasing sophistication of AI-systems, this (...) might become a problem. While it seems unproblematic to realize that being angry at your car for breaking down is unfitting, can the same be said for AI-systems? In this paper, therefore, I will investigate the so-called “reactive attitudes”, and their important link to our responsibility practices. I then show how within this framework there exist exemption and excuse conditions, and test whether our adopting the “objective attitude” toward agential AI is justified. I argue that such an attitude is appropriate in the context of three distinct senses of responsibility (answerability, attributability, and accountability), and that, therefore, AI-systems do not undermine our responsibility ascriptions. (shrink)

This book offers a systematic and thorough philosophical analysis of the ways in which driving automation crosses path with ethical values. Upon introducing the different forms of driving automation and examining their relation to human autonomy, it provides readers with in-depth reflections on safety, privacy, moral judgment, control, responsibility, sustainability, and other ethical issues. Driving is undoubtedly a moral activity as a human act. Transferring it to artificial agents such as connected and automated vehicles necessarily raises many philosophical questions. When (...) driving is automated, what happens to its ethical dimensions? Could artificial agents accomplish ethical objectives on our behalf, take moral decisions in our place, and drive us into a more ethical transportation future? In doing so, would they be “moral” as we are or in a way that is similar to, but also remarkably different from, our own? And what role is yet to be played by human responsibility and commitment? The book addresses these questions with the aim of stimulating an interdisciplinary dialogue between different stakeholders. They include automotive engineers, computer scientists, and moral philosophers, as well as industry representatives, policymakers, regulators, transportation experts, and the general public. Indeed, connected and automated vehicles will not take the high road for us . We must drive them there. (shrink)

The main theme of this work is rescue the Samuel Ramos proposal for a philosophical anthropology from his new humanism. Two main issues discussed: the dichotomy material-spiritual world; and the sense of complexity that resizes the man as ideal being or identity in response to the Kantian question: Was ist der Mensch?

Among the many forms of artistic expression that characterize the digital era, remix occupies a rather central position. At the same time, however, the success of remix as an artistic practice raises several hard questions. What is original and what is derived? How can we sort out and make sense of questions concerning origination and derivation in situations where one thing is appropriated, reused, and repurposed for something else? What theory of moral and aesthetic value can accommodate and explain these (...) situations where authorship, authority, and origination are already distributed across a network of derivations, borrowings, and re-appropriated found objects? This paper develops a response to these questions, and it does so in three steps or movements. The first briefly introduces the concept of remix and the opportunities and challenges that this now wide-spread, content creation practice presents to existing models and theories of moral and aesthetic value. The second outlines the three elements of what I call “remixology”—a new axiology (or theory of moral and aesthetic value) that is designed to scale to these new opportunities and challenges. The third and final movement investigates the consequences of this proposal, demonstrating how remixology can be read backwards through time, providing us with some new perspectives on artistry and creativity in all human endeavors, and read forwards into the emerging challenges that have been made available by innovations in algorithmic content generation and computational creativity. (shrink)

We consider a natural-language sentence that cannot be formally represented in a first-order language for epistemic two-dimensional semantics. We also prove this claim in the “Appendix” section. It turns out, however, that the most natural ways to repair the expressive inadequacy of the first-order language render moot the original philosophical motivation of formalizing a priori knowability as necessity along the diagonal.

Philosophers of science have given up on the quest for a silver bullet to put an end to all pseudoscience, as such a neat formal criterion to separate good science from its contenders has proven elusive. In the literature on critical thinking and in some philosophical quarters, however, this search for silver bullets lives on in the taxonomies of fallacies. The attractive idea is to have a handy list of abstract definitions or argumentation schemes, on the basis of which one (...) can identify bad or invalid types of reasoning, abstracting away from the specific content and dialectical context. Such shortcuts for debunking arguments are tempting, but alas, the promise is hardly if ever fulfilled. Different strands of research on the pragmatics of argumentation, probabilistic reasoning and ecological rationality have shown that almost every known type of fallacy is a close neighbor to sound inferences or acceptable moves in a debate. Nonetheless, the kernel idea of a fallacy as an erroneous type of argument is still retained by most authors. We outline a destructive dilemma we refer to as the Fallacy Fork: on the one hand, if fallacies are construed as demonstrably invalid form of reasoning, then they have very limited applicability in real life. On the other hand, if our definitions of fallacies are sophisticated enough to capture real-life complexities, they can no longer be held up as an effective tool for discriminating good and bad forms of reasoning. As we bring our schematic “fallacies” in touch with reality, we seem to lose grip on normative questions. Even approaches that do not rely on argumentation schemes to identify fallacies fail to escape the Fallacy Fork, and run up against their own version of it. (shrink)

Lo scopo di questo saggio consiste nell’individuare un punto di partenza adeguato per lo sviluppo di una teoria filosofica delle etiche applicate, cioè di un discorso che si assuma il compito di comprendere che cosa siano le etiche applicate, quali siano le loro strutture principali, in che cosa consista la loro novità e quale significato esse rivestano nei confronti del pensiero morale. Un approccio organico e unitario a questi temi, tuttavia, non è ancora stato impostato. Per questo motivo si rende (...) innanzitutto necessaria una analisi preliminare volta sia a chiarire la possibilità di una simile indagine, sia ad individuare un punto di partenza da cui muovere. Si propone così per prima cosa una discussione critica dei diversi termini a cui si ricorre per nominare il fenomeno sotto esame (§2, problema terminologico). In seguito si affronta la questione dei rapporti reciproci delle diverse etiche applicate e della relazione che esse intrattengono con la filosofia morale e i saperi in cui si inscrivono (§3, problema architettonico). Infine, si riconducono le controversie ad un problema fondamentale (§4), relativo al tema dell’applicazione e del rapporto di teoria e prassi nell’esperienza morale. L’esperienza di tale problema rappresenta il contenuto unificante delle etiche applicate e, allo stesso tempo, ne rende evidente il carattere propriamente filosofico. Da una sua discussione non solo l'etica applicata può trarre preziose informazioni su di sé, ma la stessa filosofia morale può guadagnare un nuovo accesso ad alcuni dei suoi temi principali. (shrink)

In a recent article, P. Roger Turner and Justin Capes argue that no one is, or ever was, even partly morally responsible for certain world-indexed truths. Here we present our reasons for thinking that their argument is unsound: It depends on the premise that possible worlds are maximally consistent states of affairs, which is, under plausible assumptions concerning states of affairs, demonstrably false. Our argument to show this is based on Bertrand Russell’s original ‘paradox of propositions’. We should then opt (...) for a different approach to explain world-indexed truths whose upshot is that we may be morally responsible for some of them. The result to the effect that there are no maximally consistent states of affairs is independently interesting though, since this notion motivates an account of the nature of possible worlds in the metaphysics of modality. We also register in this article, independently of our response to Turner and Capes, and in the spirit of Russell’s aforementioned paradox and many other versions thereof, a proof of the claim that there is no set of all true propositions one can render false. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Pruss proves the validity of the rule beta-2 relative to Lewis’s semantics for counterfactuals, which is a significant step forward in the debate about the consequence argument. Yet, we believe there remain intuitive counter-examples to beta-2 formulated with the actuality operator and rigidified descriptions. We offer a novel and two-dimensional formulation of the Lewisian semantics for counterfactuals and prove the validity of a new transfer rule according to which a new version of the consequence argument can (...) be formulated. This new transfer rule is immune to the counter-examples involving the actuality operator and rigidified descriptions. However, we show that counter-examples to this new rule can also be generated, demanding that the Lewisian semantics be generalized for higher dimensions where counter-examples can always be generated. (shrink)

We present a new puzzle about logical truth, necessity, and moral responsibility. We defend one solution to the puzzle. A corollary of our preferred solution is that prominent arguments for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility are invalid.

In this paper, I argue that the temporal connective prima (‘before’) is a comparative adverb. The argument is based on a number of grammatical facts from Italian, showing that there is an asymmetry between prima and dopo (‘after’). On the ground of their divergent behaviour, I suggest that dopo has a different grammatical status from prima. I propose a semantic treatment for prima that is based on an independently motivated analysis of comparatives which can be traced back to Seuren (in: (...) Kiefer and Ruwet (eds.) Generative grammar in Europe, 1973). Dopo is analyzed instead as an atomic two-place predicate which contributes a binary relation over events to the sentence meaning. The different semantic treatments of the two connectives provide an explanation for the grammatical asymmetries considered at the outset; interestingly, they also shed some light on other asymmetries between prima and dopo, which are known to hold for the English temporal connectives before and after as well: these asymmetries are related to the veridicality properties, the distribution of NPIs, and the logical properties of these connectives first described in Anscombe (Philos Rev 73:3–24, 1964). (shrink)

We present a sound and complete Fitch-style natural deduction system for an S5 modal logic containing an actuality operator, a diagonal necessity operator, and a diagonal possibility operator. The logic is two-dimensional, where we evaluate sentences with respect to both an actual world (first dimension) and a world of evaluation (second dimension). The diagonal necessity operator behaves as a quantifier over every point on the diagonal between actual worlds and worlds of evaluation, while the diagonal possibility quantifies over some point (...) on the diagonal. Thus, they are just like the epistemic operators for apriority and its dual. We take this extension of Fitch’s familiar derivation system to be a very natural one, since the new rules and labeled lines hereby introduced preserve the structure of Fitch’s own rules for the modal case. (shrink)

In response to the many social impacts of automated mobility, in September 2020 the European Commission published Ethics of Connected and Automated Vehicles, a report in which recommendations on road safety, privacy, fairness, explainability, and responsibility are drawn from a set of eight overarching principles. This paper presents the results of an interdisciplinary research where philosophers and engineers joined efforts to operationalize the guidelines advanced in the report. To this aim, we endorse a function-based working approach to support the implementation (...) of values and recommendations into the design of automated vehicle technologies. Based on this, we develop methodological tools to tackle issues related to personal autonomy, explainability, and privacy as domains that most urgently require fine-grained guidance due to the associated ethical risks. Even though each tool still requires further inquiry, we believe that our work might already prove the productivity of the function-based approach and foster its adoption in the CAV scientific community. (shrink)

Los autores hacen una valoración de los fundamentos para el desarrollo no sólo conceptual, sino práctico, de la regionalización universitaria. A modo de propuesta, enumeran algunas de las ventajas y alternativas que el modelo ofrece, contextualizado a la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, específicamente al Complejo Regional Nororiental.

In this paper I critically evaluate the value neutrality thesis regarding technology, and find it wanting. I then introduce the various ways in which artifacts can come to influence moral value, and our evaluation of moral situations and actions. Here, following van de Poel and Kroes, I introduce the idea of value sensitive design. Specifically, I show how by virtue of their designed properties, artifacts may come to embody values. Such accounts, however, have several shortcomings. In agreement with Michael Klenk, (...) I raise epistemic and metaphysical issues with respect to designed properties embodying value. The concept of an affordance, borrowed from ecological psychology, provides a more philosophically fruitful grounding to the potential way(s) in which artifacts might embody values. This is due to the way in which it incorporates key insights from perception more generally, and how we go about determining possibilities for action in our environment specifically. The affordance account as it is presented by Klenk, however, is insufficient. I therefore argue that we understand affordances based on whether they are meaningful, and, secondly, that we grade them based on their force. (shrink)

Several theists, including Linda Zagzebski, have claimed that theism is somehow committed to nonvacuism about counterpossibles. Even though Zagzebski herself has rejected vacuism, she has offered an argument in favour of it, which Edward Wierenga has defended as providing strong support for vacuism that is independent of the orthodox semantics for counterfactuals, mainly developed by David Lewis and Robert Stalnaker. In this paper I show that argument to be sound only relative to the orthodox semantics, which entails vacuism, and give (...) an example of a semantics for counterfactuals countenancing impossible worlds for which it fails. (shrink)

The question on the essence of man and his relationship to nature is certainly one of the most important themes in the philosophy of Hans Jonas. One of the ways by which Jonas approaches the issue consists in a comparison between the contemporary interpretation of man and forms of wisdom such as those conveyed by ancient Greek philosophy and the Jewish tradition. The reconstruction and discussion of these frameworks play a fundamental role in Jonas’s critique of the modern mind. In (...) the first section I introduce the anthropological problem in Hans Jonas’s oeuvre. Moreover, I clarify why it becomes essential for Jonas to resort to different forms of traditional wisdom. In the second and third sections I try to give an account (as complete as possible) of the two generalisations which Jonas shapes in order to criticise the modern concepts of man and nature. In the last section I show how Jonas links these generalisations to his own philosophical assessment of modernity. Finally, I focus on his methodology, which exemplifies how critical thinking may arise from a reconsideration of traditional contents. (shrink)

Interview with Stathis Psillos regarding realism in the philosophy of science and recent realist trends in Continental Philosophy.

The present paper aims at contributing to the ethical debate on the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) systems on human autonomy. More specifically, it intends to offer a clearer understanding of the design challenges to the effort of aligning driving automation technologies to this ethical value. After introducing the discussion on the ambiguous impacts that AI systems exert on human autonomy, the analysis zooms in on how the problem has been discussed in the literature on connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). (...) On this basis, it is claimed that the issue has been mainly tackled on a fairly general level, and mostly with reference to the controversial issue of crash-optimization algorithms, so that only limited design insights have been drawn. However, integrating ethical analysis and design practices is critical to pursue the implementation of such an important ethical value into CAV technologies. To this aim, it is argued, a more applied approach targeted at examining the impacts on human autonomy of current CAV functions should also be explored. As an example of the intricacy of this task, the case of automated route planning is discussed in some detail. (shrink)

Prediction Error Minimization theory (PEM) is one of the most promising attempts to model perception in current science of mind, and it has recently been advocated by some prominent philosophers as Andy Clark and Jakob Hohwy. Briefly, PEM maintains that “the brain is an organ that on aver-age and over time continually minimizes the error between the sensory input it predicts on the basis of its model of the world and the actual sensory input” (Hohwy 2014, p. 2). An interesting (...) debate has arisen with regard to which is the more adequate epistemological interpretation of PEM. Indeed, Hohwy maintains that given that PEM supports an inferential view of perception and cognition, PEM has to be considered as conveying an internalist epistemological perspective. Contrary to this view, Clark maintains that it would be incorrect to interpret in such a way the indirectness of the link between the world and our inner model of it, and that PEM may well be combined with an externalist epistemological perspective. The aim of this paper is to assess those two opposite interpretations of PEM. Moreover, it will be suggested that Hohwy’s position may be considerably strengthened by adopting Carlo Cellucci’s view on knowledge (2013). (shrink)

Il problema della rappresentazione, connaturato ad ogni mediazione linguistica del rapporto di mente e mondo, è nelle sue molteplici forme un tema antico della riflessione filosofica. La rappresentazione letteraria appartiene alla stessa categoria e pone problemi analoghi al pensiero. Che cosa significa rappresentare poeticamente? Il concetto di finzione letteraria può avere solo un senso peggiorativo o limitante nei confronti della comunicazione dell’universale, o ne può essere una modalità? Il tema del saggio è il rapporto tra realtà e finzione letteraria che (...) pare emergere da I falsari di André Gide. Seguendo le intuizioni e i suggerimenti dello scrittore, si proverà a tracciare le linee principali di un’interpretazione positiva della finzione letteraria, che ne riconosca la potenza espressiva senza soffocarne i caratteri distintivi. Non è detto, poi, che ciò che vale per la rappresentazione poetica non possa avere un senso anche sotto punti di vista più generali. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer some philosophical remarks concerning the concept of moral application in applied ethics. In doing so, I argue in favour of a philosophical approach towards applied ethics as a unitary form of moral experience. In fact every form of applied ethics, no matter how specific, moves from a problem of application and tries to fill a gap between moral theory and practice. This essential unity of applied ethics as a moral phenomenon is of (...) great philosophical interest, since it belongs to the core problem from which moral thinking itself originates. For this reason, what applied ethics may reveal to a philosophical inquiry could provide valuable insight into the nature of moral experience itself. This is why it is important to reflect on what applied ethics is and whether the way in which application is usually framed be ts the properties of moral experience or not. In the first section I submit some preliminary remarks concerning the theoretical requirements to any philosophical approach to applied ethics. In the second section I present how application is commonly understood in the applied ethics debate by discussing the deductive and the procedural models of application. Both models, however, draw upon a technological conception of application which fails to t the structure of moral experience. Finally, I brie y sketch out the main features and the future tasks of what seems to me to be the most promising approach to the issue, i.e., the hermeneutic concept of application. (shrink)

In this article, we perform a detailed proof theoretic investigation of a wide number of relevant logics by employing the well-established methodology of labelled sequent calculi to build our intended systems. At the semantic level, we will characterise relevant logics by employing reduced Routley-Meyer models, namely, relational structures with a ternary relation between worlds along with a unique distinct element considered as the real (or actual) world. This paper realizes the idea of building a variety of modular labelled calculi by (...) reflecting, at the syntactic level, semantic informations taken from reduced Routley-Meyer models. Central results include proofs of soundness and completeness, as well as a proof of cut- admissibility. (shrink)

In the present work is addressed three defining aspects of the question hermeneutics as didactic and condition to generate a shared horizon of meaning. In the first place the dialog between the text, author and reader. Second, the opening of the horizon of meaning through the question and its radical ontological. Third, the role of tradition in the construction of rational discourse and breaking through a language polysemic. Finally, we conclude that the dialog that opens horizon and shared sense is (...) the only capable of building long-term consensus and, specifically, solutions. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problem of evil from the perspective of saint Thomas Aquinas. It is argued that the nature of moral evil is in the individual who for some reason lost it departs from the pursuit of the good that is inherent to being. Synderesis is the only indissoluble bridge that man has with natural law and even with eternal. Converted into noluntas will guide man intrinsically evil acts but the synderesis, as a power with a natural habit, is (...) the best guide for the contingent decision-making under the rubric of the first practical principles from transcendent. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to analyze the problem proposed by John R. Searle in the third chapter of his work Rationality in Action (2003) about the gap or distance that mediates between a decision and action, and how it intends to solve through the concept of the Self. We believe that this explanation is insufficient in some aspects and introduce the term Synderesis (Συντηρηοη in Greek) as argumentative line to defend the existence of decisions not contingent but free (...) from a Thomist perspective, in contrast to the proposal of the gap and the Self No-Humean. (Spanish). (shrink)

L’Intelligenza Artificiale Generativa (IAG) pone sfide inedite all’educazione universitaria. Dalla definizione dei contenuti alla valutazione delle prove e alla determinazione delle modalità di esame, questo nuovo e potente strumento inaugura una stagione di cambiamenti su cui è urgente riflettere. La tecnologia contribuisce da sempre a dare forma al lavoro didattico, il quale evolve anche alla luce delle opportunità e dei rischi che essa introduce. Come far sì che l’evoluzione stimolata dall’IAG sia felice, ovvero serva i valori e gli obiettivi della (...) didattica e delle persone che la vivono? Ne ho discusso con alcuni colleghi dell’Unità di Studi META del Politecnico di Milano – docenti impegnati a vario titolo in corsi di carattere filosofico e sociale rivolti a studenti di formazione tecnica. (shrink)

Il pensiero di Hans Jonas è comunemente inteso nel segno di una netta reazione all’interpretazione gnostica del sé e del mondo. Egli si dedicò allo studio della gnosi dalla metà degli anni venti fino al secondo dopoguerra, e il frutto delle sue ricerche è raccolto nei due volumi di Gnosi e spirito tardoantico (1934, 1964). Questa lettura polemica della sua filosofia è davvero in grado di rendere conto dei rapporti che la proposta jonasiana, come filosofia della biologia e etica della (...) responsabilità, intrattiene con le strutture caratteristiche del mito gnostico? Attraverso una approfondita analisi de Il concetto di Dio dopo Auschwitz, momento nel quale l’approccio unitario della filosofia jonasiana è più evidente, possono essere ritrovati i segni di un confronto positivo con la gnosi. Anche i caratteri del pensiero gnostico, dunque, concorrono a guidare la ricerca di Hans Jonas verso i temi propri della sua riflessione matura. (shrink)

In scientific communications, journal articles, and philosophical aesthetic debates the words “art”, “creativity”, and “machine” are put together more and more frequently. Since some machines are designed to, or happens to, imitate human artistic creativity, it seems natural to use the same words to talk about human artists and machines which imitate them. However, the evolution of language in light of technology may conceal specific features of the phenomena it is supposed to describe. This makes it difficult to understand what (...) machine creativity actually is and how it is connected to human creativity. The aim of the paper is to investigate why, and in what sense, the functioning of some machines may be described in terms of artistic creativity and what is the relation between machine creativity and its human archetype. I start (§1) by introducing some general ideas concerning how language evolves alongside new technologies and focusing on the case of machine creativity. In §2 I review how some creative machines have been presented to the public, thus showing that a linguistic habit which connects machines to artistic creativity has already formed. In §3 I survey the debate on machine aesthetics and I highlight the main traits of the issue. In §4 I submit a primary scheme of machine creativity which draws on the concept of functional autonomy. Finally (§5), I argue that machine creativity cannot be mistaken for a substitute of the human kind, despite the fact that the word is the same. Creative machines are technological mediums by which new forms of human aesthetic experience can be explored. The kind of creativity machines enjoy displays a functional nature. (shrink)

Il principale obiettivo teoretico di questo lavoro consiste nel tentativo di verificare, attraverso un’indagine storico-genealogica e concettuale, come nella filosofia di Gilles Deleuze si assista ad un radicale mutamento del paradigma relativo alla nozione di trascendentale. Si tratta, in altre parole, di ripercorrere alcune delle tappe fondamentali che conducono il filosofo parigino a “purificare” il trascendentale da ogni riferimento ad una coscienza soggettiva egologica che si fondi in quanto principio genetico del mondo. Si riterrà utile procedere analizzando, in primo luogo, (...) il rapporto che Deleuze intrattiene con le istanze originarie del soggettivismo trascendentale kantiano, ove il trascendentale stesso, nel pensiero del filosofo tedesco, è strettamente connesso all’Io penso in quanto facoltà appercettiva dell’intelletto che incarnerebbe le condizioni di possibilità dell’esperienza. In secondo luogo, si tratterà di orientarsi nel dibattito critico che Deleuze intrattiene con la fenomenologia di Edmund Husserl, ed in particolar modo con la lettura husserliana della Critica della Ragion Pura di Kant, ove il padre fondatore dell’indirizzo fenomenologico novecentesco è colui che fa leva sullo stretto rapporto che sussiste tra il trascendentale e la coscienza. Nonostante il percorso storico, tracciato dal concetto di trascendentale, abbia inizio con l’opera di Kant, ritengo non sia possibile evitare un pur breve confronto con il ruolo che l’ego ha avuto nella formulazione cartesiana del cogito; si dovrà, per ciò stesso, considerare la particolare lettura deleuziana che riconosce nel cogito cartesiano il “luogo” in cui confluiscono tutte le facoltà del soggetto, permettendo di identificare il cogito stesso con una forma embrionale di piano di immanenza, seppur non adeguatamente radicalizzata nella misura in cui il cogito cartesiano resta saldamente ancorato al soggetto. Ritengo, tuttavia, che il più considerevole obiettivo di questa proposta d’indagine non si risolva in una ricostruzione meramente storico-genealogica. Si tratterà, al contrario, di verificare come l’importanza degli esiti raggiunti da Deleuze mediante l’opera di purificazione della nozione di trascendentale sia da individuare su due fronti: 1. La teorizzazione del concetto di campo trascendentale permette a Deleuze di disegnare una forma di temporalità non psicologica e non cronologica fondata sul paradosso secondo cui il tempo costituirebbe un’interiorità non psicologica, o per meglio dire, una dimensione autenticamente trascendentale nella quale il soggetto vive e diviene. 2. In antitesi ai proponimenti della fenomenologia husserliana, l’esito autentico del progetto di purificazione del trascendentale da ogni istanza egologica consiste nell’interruzione della correlazione a priori tra il soggetto e il mondo, nella destituzione della filosofia da ogni pregiudizio antropocentrico, e nella rideterminazione dell’umano niente più che come un effetto, o un caso, del mondo. (shrink)