In this work we argue that there is no strong demarcation between pure and applied mathematics. We show this first by stressing non-deductive components within pure mathematics, like axiomatization and theory-building in general. We also stress the “purer” components of applied mathematics, like the theory of the models that are concerned with practical purposes. We further show that some mathematical theories can be viewed through either a pure or applied lens. These different lenses are tied to different communities, which endorse (...) different evaluative standards for theories. We evaluate the distinction between pure and applied mathematics from a late Wittgensteinian perspective. We note that the classical exegesis of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics, due to Maddy, leads to a clear-cut but misguided demarcation. We then turn our attention to a more niche interpretation of Wittgenstein by Dawson, which captures aspects of the aforementioned distinction more accurately. Building on this newer, maverick interpretation of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics, and endorsing an extended notion of meaning as use which includes social, mundane uses, we elaborate a fuzzy, but more realistic, demarcation. This demarcation, relying on family resemblance, is based on how direct and intended technical applications are, the kind of evaluative standards featured, and the range of rhetorical purposes at stake. (shrink)

El arte no es solamente una fuente inagotable de goce estético, es además una huella, una evidencia de nuestro pasado histórico. A partir del arte es posible remitirnos a nuestra raíz cultural, y es por eso que la obra artística constituye una parte importante del patrimonio de un pueblo. Es evidente el estrecho vínculo entre el patrimonio artístico y la identidad cultural; por eso es importante dar un justo valor a ese patrimonio que, a su vez, se reflejará en la (...) consolidación de una identidad propia. De esas expresiones tomamos únicamente las de la arquitectura de algunas iglesias barrocas. En ellas podemos notar una serie de variables del mestizaje cultural. La arquitectura del barroco novohispano, como uno de los lenguajes del arte, generó una reflexión sobre la identidad del individuo iberoamericano. (shrink)

El presente ensayo plantea la posibilidad de considerar nuevamente al diseño editorial como una actividad artística. Este campo no pudo escapar al fenómeno de la sociedad del espectáculo que hoy envuelve a casi toda actividad humana. Ello indiscutiblemente afecta la manera en que se valora esta actividad actualmente, vista las más de las veces como un simple aditamento utilitario con más fines comerciales que artísticos. A pesar de ello no deja de ser loable una revaloración de la disciplina que la (...) considere como una producción también transutilitaria, un fenómeno a la vez estético y extraestético y una actividad que, a través de su propia praxis, construye al ser histórico... (shrink)

Como parte del trabajo del taller interno permanente del Cuerpo Académico de Estética y Arte de la Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, el 12 de noviembre de 2013 se realizó una Mesa Redonda sobre el tema “Universalidad e identidad cultural”. En esta Mesa participaron los doctores José Ramón Fabelo Corzo, José Antonio Pérez Diestre y Ramón Patiño Espino, como ponentes principales; además, se contó con la asistencia del doctor Jesús Márquez Carrillo, quien se integró al debate. Diferentes (...) disciplinas —la filosofía, la antropología, la historia del pensamiento y del arte, incluso la biología— pueden, cada una, ofrecer sus aportes al tan socorrido tema de la relación entre lo universal y lo propio en la cultura latinoamericana. El debate suscitado puso de manifiesto esa diversidad de aportaciones. En este trabajo presentamos las intervenciones realizadas por cada uno de los integrantes de la mesa, en el orden en que se produjeron. (shrink)

In their target article, Mikhalevich & Powell (M&P) argue that we should extend moral protection to arthropods. In this commentary, we show that there are some unforeseen obstacles to applying the sort of individualistic welfare-based ethics that M&P have in mind to certain arthropods, namely, insects. These obstacles have to do with the fact that there are often many more individuals involved in our dealings with insects than our ethical theories anticipate, and also with the fact that, in some sense, (...) some insects count as more than an individual and, in another sense, they sometimes count as less than an individual. (shrink)

Lovers typically entertain two sorts of thoughts about their beloveds. On the one hand, they think that some qualities of their beloveds provide reasons for loving them. Romeo would say that he loves Juliet in virtue of the way she is. On the other hand, they regard their beloveds as irreplaceable. Romeo would never be willing to exchange Juliet with another maiden. Yet it may be asked how these two sorts of thoughts can coherently coexist. If some qualities of Juliet (...) justify Romeo’s love for her, shouldn’t another maiden with the same qualities be equally lovable for him? This paper draws some distinctions that we take to be crucial to the understanding of reasons for love. Its aim is to show that, even though the claim that beloveds as irreplaceable is plausible to some extent, there is at least one interesting sense in which lovers are replaceable. (shrink)

Antonio Caso, “La existencia como economía y como caridad” (1916). Translated with Jose G. Rodriguez Jr. as “Existence as Economy and as Charity,” in 20th Century Mexican Philosophy: Essential Readings, eds. Carlos Alberto Sánchez and Robert Eli Sanchez, Jr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

La “Cultura de la Sensibilidad (Sensibility)” ha sido un término destacado por algunos crı́ticos, para denominar una época entre la Era Augusta y el movimiento romántico. La Sensibilidad (Sensibility) estuvo unida a un sentido de la compasión producida por el sufrimiento del otro. Su máxima expresión fue la “novela sentimental” de Richardson y Sterne. David Hume, con una moral fundada en los conceptos de simpatı́a y benevolencia, ha sido considerado como uno de los artı́fices de esta Cultura. Sin embargo, llevó (...) a cabo una crı́tica del género emergente de la novela, a la que acuso de una afectación excesiva y artificial. En este artı́culo pretendo analizar el papel que tuvo Hume en la Era de la Sensibilidad (Sensibility). (shrink)

Police officers are vital to maintaining security and the continuity of national functions. Thus, Police officers are more exposed to different kinds of psychological concerns. However, a female in this kind of profession, based on various studies, experienced higher levels of stress because of other factors. Further, the primary goal of this study is to investigate the psychological well-being, lived experiences, challenges, and coping mechanisms of female police officers. Employing the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the findings of this study were: (1) (...) Female police officers had conceptualized themselves as brave, flexible, and adaptive. And they cope with stress with positive thinking that results in healthy psychological well-being. (2) Female police officers showed dedication and engagement to serve the people. They even used their resources for the public and sacrificed most of their time in the office. (3) Female police officers' primary motivation to continue their careers is their families, and serving the public brings joy to them. (4) However, female police officers experience disrespect while working in the field, and they always have fear in their life as police officers. Moreover, they need more time to spend with their families. Furthermore, it is highly suggested to provide opportunities for enhancing quality time with their family, specifically with their children. (shrink)

Este artículo trata de una inscripción constructiva omeya andalusí del año 387 / 4 enero 997-2 enero 998, hoy perdida, pero transmitida a través de un resumen castellano incluido en una lápida de 1259 "reparada" en 1575. Se intenta la restitución del texto árabe original y se estudian los hechos y los personajes documentados.

El presente escrito tiene por objeto tematizar la colonialidad del ser en el sur-global. Para ello, se identifican, por una parte, las diferencias entre el colonialismo y la colonialidad y, por otro lado, se analiza la emergencia del sintagma colonialidad del ser en el marco de las teorías de la colonialidad, las cuales se sitúan, como punto de partida, en la obra de Aníbal Quijano. La colonialidad del ser consiste en la infravaloración o inferiorización cultural de la vida humana colonizada. (...) La colonialidad del ser enuncia el despojo de la condición humana (des-humanización o sub-humanización) que padecieron los pueblos amerindios colonizados (siglo XVI-XVIII) y que, actualmente, continúan padecido los habitantes que constituyen el sur-global. (shrink)

El trabajo realiza un recorrido histórico sumario por la siempre presente temática axiológica en el pensamiento filosófico latinoamericano. Luego de una introducción en la que se abunda sobre las razones por las cuales el tema de los valores siempre ha estado presente en la filosofía, se analiza su trayectoria en América Latina a través de los siguientes apartados: "El pensamiento latinoamericano: una historia cargada de contenido axiológico", "La crítica al positivismo y la introducción a un pensamiento explícitamente axiológico", "Adopción de (...) un paradigma axiológico preponderante", "Oposición al predominio axiológico del objetivismo fenomenológico", "Multidireccionalidad axiológica hacia los setenta", ¿Fin del pensamiento axiológico latinoamericano?", "Renacer teórico de la axiología". (shrink)

En el trabajo se hace un recorrido por los principales autores latinoamericanos que trabajan el tema de los valores en el siglo XX. Se trata de apresar algunas regularidades generales en el itinerario del pensamiento axiológico en América Latina durante la pasada centuria.

RESUMEN Se exploran las relaciones entre hegemonía y filosofía de la praxis en A. Gramsci. Se examina la influencia de la filosofía hegeliana sobre estas nociones en los Cuadernos de la cárcel. Asimismo, se estudia la crítica a estas nociones a la luz del feminismo de la diferencia y del debate sobre hegemonía, universalidad y contingencia iniciado por E. Laclau, J. Butler y S. Žižek. Se concluye que concebir la hegemonía desde la perspectiva de la filosofía de la praxis significa (...) que la acción político-intelectual, según Gramsci, no solo implica la formación de una hegemonía alternativa, sino una crítica políticamente operante a la pretensión de universalidad del discurso hegemónico a partir de la exposición de su contingencia histórica. ABSTRACT The paper explores the relations between hegemony and the philosophy of praxis in A. Gramsci, and examines the influence of Hegelian philosophy on these notions as set forth in the Prison Notebooks. Likewise, it studies the critique of these notions from the perspective of difference feminism and of the debate over hegemony, universality, and contingency initiated by E. Laclau, J. Butler, and S. Žižek. The conclusion is that conceiving hegemony from the perspective of the philosophy of praxis means that, according to Gramsci, political-intellectual action implies not only the formation of an alternative hegemony, but also a politically operative critique of the claim to universality of hegemonic discourse, on the basis of the unveiling of its historical contingency. (shrink)

Luego de un rápido bosquejo de las etapas por las que ha pasado el pensamiento filosófico-cristiano en América Latina, el trabajo se concentra en la principales tendencias y autores en el período que va de la década del 40 del siglo XX hasta el momento que se publica el ensayo en 1998.

Se realiza una investigación documentada sobre el contenido semántico del concepto "América Latina" en sus orígenes y en su evolución posterior. Se muestra que en sus inicios el concepto tuvo un significado emancipador y descolonizador en el uso que de él hicieron Francisco Bilbao y José María Torres Caicedo. Luego fue utilizado con propósitos recolonizadores en los marcos de la invasión napoleónica a México, a partir de lo cual mantuvo esa polisemia colonizadora-descolonizadora. A propósito de lo anterior el libro (...) realiza una comparación en el significado que le atribuyen al concepto dos autores contemporáneos: Roberto Fernández Retamar y Walter Mignolo. La traducción al portugués corrió a cargo de Altamir Botoso, Andre Rezende Benatti y Márcio Antonio De Souza Maciel. (shrink)

Reseña al libro de María Rosa Palazón Mayoral titulado "La estética en México. Siglo XX. Diálogo entre filósofos". El libro reseñado es de gran importancia al compilar las propuestas teóricas sobre el tema de pensadores tan destacados como Antonio Caso, José Vasconcelos, Alfonso Reyes, Samuel Ramos, Eduardo Nicol, María Zambrano, Ramón Xirau, Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, Joaquín Sánchez Mcgrégor, Bolívar Echeverría, Néstor García Canclini, María Noël Lapoujade, Ana María Martínez de la Escalera, Silvia Durán Payán y muchos otros.

I argue that the best available parent view, in its present formulation, struggles to accommodate for our very weighty duty not to perpetuate historical injustices. I offer an alternative view that reconciles this tension.

We often feel survivor guilt when the very circumstances that harm others leave us unscathed. Although survivor guilt is both commonplace and intelligible, it raises a puzzle for the standard philosophical account of guilt, according to which people feel guilt only when they take themselves to be morally blameworthy. The standard account implies that survivor guilt is uniformly unfitting, as people are not blameworthy simply for having fared better than others. In this paper, we offer a rival account of guilt, (...) the relational account of guilt, which makes sense of survivor guilt and other forms of guilt without self-blame while preserving the intelligibility of guilt about culpable wrongdoing. According to this account, guilt involves the feeling of being unable to justify ourselves to others, and we lack self-justification when we (however blamelessly) stand on the positive side of an undesirable asymmetry with them. When someone survives something that those around her do not, the disparity in outcome constitutes an asymmetry that is often undesirable, because it arises from luck or violates a requirement of solidarity. Thus, survivor guilt is often fitting. (shrink)

Are demands for equality motivated by envy? Nietzsche, Freud, Hayek, and Nozick all thought so. Call this the Envy Objection. For egalitarians, the Envy Objection is meant to sting. Many egalitarians have tried to evade the Envy Objection.. But should egalitarians be worried about envy? In this paper, I argue that egalitarians should stop worrying and learn to love envy. I argue that the persistent unwillingness to embrace the Envy Objection is rooted in a common misunderstanding of the nature of (...) the charge, what it reveals, and what can be said in response to it. I develop what Bernard Williams might call a vindicatory genealogy of envy, thereby allowing us to see that envy, rather than undermining egalitarian intuitions, can in fact play a distinct justificatory role (when it is fitting), which undermines the Envy Objection. (shrink)

Strawson (1994) and Peacocke (1992) introduced thought experiments that show that it seems intuitive that there is, in some way, an experiential character to mental events of understanding. Some (e.g., Siewert 1998, 2011; Pitt 2004) try to explain these intuitions by saying that just as we have, say, headache experiences and visual experiences of blueness, so too we have experiences of understanding. Others (e.g., Prinz 2006, 2011; Tye 1996) propose that these intuitions can be explained without positing experiences of understanding. (...) Call this the debate between Realism and Anti-Realism about experiences of understanding. This paper aims to advance that debate in two ways. In the first half, I develop more precise characterizations of what Realists and Anti-Realists propose. In the second half, I distinguish the four most plausible versions of Anti-Realism and argue that Realism better explains the target intuition than any of them does. (shrink)

The #MeToo movement generated a feminist insistence that we “believe women.” But the men accused of assault, harassment, and other violations frequently defended themselves with the insistence that they had always “respected women” – sometimes, going so far as to get numerous women to sign letters swearing that these men had always respected them. This common MeToo defense reveals the core inconsistency – and the core entitlement – at the heart of misogyny and sexual injustice: some women deserve respect. But (...) the duty to respect those women relies on an invisible entitlement to disrespect – indeed, to assault, harass, dominate, or exploit – others. This chapter explores consent’s role within the superstructure of misogyny and sexual injustice, arguing what consent is a key apparatus of white supremacy. It argues that consent has been constructed through dynamics of colonial and racist sexual entitlement, mapping some (white) women as deserving of respect and the right to consent, while marking other women as expendable or disposable within the sexual economy. This means not only that consent is historically constructed as white, but also that whiteness, and in particular, white womanhood, is constructed through consent. Thus, white women’s right to consent – or to refuse – is premised upon the inability of other women to do so. In this way, the right to sexual consent does not disrupt the norm of male sexual entitlement. Consent has always been premised on non-consent, from coloniality and slavery to contemporary porn, which offers a vision of the world without proper consent, so that granting consent to actual women is an exceptional practice, an “act of respect.” By including race and class alongside gender in my analysis of consent, I argue that contemporary feminist visions of sexual justice must do more than defend or ameliorate consent, but develop intersectional interrogations of sexual justice that reckon with the complicities of consent. (shrink)

We propose a nonmonotonic Description Logic of typicality able to account for the phenomenon of combining prototypical concepts, an open problem in the fields of AI and cognitive modelling. Our logic extends the logic of typicality ALC + TR, based on the notion of rational closure, by inclusions p :: T(C) v D (“we have probability p that typical Cs are Ds”), coming from the distributed semantics of probabilistic Description Logics. Additionally, it embeds a set of cognitive heuristics for concept (...) combination. We show that the complexity of reasoning in our logic is EXPTIME-complete as in ALC. (shrink)

Chemical kinds (e.g. gold) are generally treated as having timelessly fixed identities. Biological kinds (e.g. goldfinches) are generally treated as evolved and/or evolving entities. So what kind of kind is a biochemical kind? This paper defends the thesis that biochemical molecules are clustered chemical kinds, some of which–namely, evolutionarily conserved units–are also biological kinds.On this thesis, a number of difficulties that have recently occupied philosophers concerned with proteins and kinds are shown to be resolved or dissolved.

Personalized genomics companies (PG; also called ‘direct-to-consumer genetics’) are businesses marketing genetic testing to consumers over the Internet. While much has been written about these new businesses, little attention has been given to their roles in science communication. This paper provides an analysis of the gene concept presented to customers and the relation between the information given and the science behind PG. Two quite different gene concepts are present in company rhetoric, but only one features in the science. To explain (...) this, we must appreciate the delicate tension between PG, academic science, public expectation, and market forces. (shrink)

The paper introduces an extension of the proposal according to which conceptual representations in cognitive agents should be intended as heterogeneous proxytypes. The main contribution of this paper is in that it details how to reconcile, under a heterogeneous representational perspective, different theories of typicality about conceptual representation and reasoning. In particular, it provides a novel theoretical hypothesis - as well as a novel categorization algorithm called DELTA - showing how to integrate the representational and reasoning assumptions of the theory-theory (...) of concepts with the those ascribed to the prototype and exemplars-based theories. (shrink)

Are workers dominated? A recent suite of neo-republican and relational egalitarian philosophers think they are. Suppose they are right; that is, suppose that some workers are governed by an unjust and arbitrary power existing in labour relations, which persists even in the presence of the actual ability to exit. My question is this: does that give us reason to impose restrictions on firms? According to the so-called Efficiency Objection there are relevant trade-offs that need to be considered between the efficiency (...) of firms and the freedom of workers, and upon considering these trade-offs, we should reject workplace democracy. In this paper, I present a dilemma for the Efficiency Objection. I argue that either the Efficiency Objection is justified on moral grounds or non-moral grounds; if the Efficiency Objection is justified on moral grounds, then it fails because efficiency cannot be valued for its own sake (it is only instrumentally good); if the Efficiency Objection is justified on non-moral grounds, then it fails because of the respect that we owe to persons as persons; therefore, the Efficiency Objection fails. (shrink)

Rules are meant to apply equally to all within their jurisdiction. However, some rules are frequently broken without consequence for most. These rules are only occasionally enforced, often at the discretion of a third-party observer. We propose that these rules—whose violations are frequent, and enforcement is rare—constitute a unique subclass of explicitly codified rules, which we call ‘phantom rules’ (e.g., proscribing jaywalking). Their apparent punishability is ambiguous and particularly susceptible to third-party motives. Across six experiments, (N = 1440) we validated (...) the existence of phantom rules and found evidence for their motivated enforcement. First, people played a modified Dictator Game with a novel frequently broken and rarely enforced rule (i.e., a phantom rule). People enforced this rule more often when the “dictator” was selfish (vs. fair) even though the rule only proscribed fractional offers (not selfishness). Then we turned to third person judgments of the U.S. legal system. We found these violations are recognizable to participants as both illegal and commonplace (Experiment 2), differentiable from violations of prototypical laws (Experiments 3) and enforced in a motivated way (Experiments 4a and 4b). Phantom rule violations (but not prototypical legal violations) are seen as more justifiably punished when the rule violator has also violated a social norm (vs. rule violation alone)—unless the motivation to punish has been satiated (Experiment 5). Phantom rules are frequently broken, codified rules. Consequently, their apparent punishability is ambiguous, and their enforcement is particularly susceptible to third party motives. (shrink)

Several recent criticisms of the somatic marker hypothesis (SMH) identify multiple ambiguities in the way it has been formulated by its chief proponents. Here we provide evidence that this hypothesis has also been interpreted in various different ways by the scientific community. Our diagnosis of this problem is that SMH lacks an adequate computational-level account of practical decision making. Such an account is necessary for drawing meaningful links between neurological- and psychological-level data. The paper concludes by providing a simple, five-step (...) model of practical decision making. Recasting SMH in terms of this model generates more precise and empirically tractable computational-level hypotheses about the various ways that somatic markers might influence practical decisions. (shrink)

Roy Sorensen introduced the concept of an epistemic blindspot in the 1980s. A proposition is an epistemic blindspot for some individual at some time if and only if that proposition is consistent but unknowable by that individual at that time. In the first half of this paper, I extend Sorensen work on blindspots by arguing that there exist blindspots that essentially involve hopes. In the second half, I show how such blindspots can contribute to and impair different pursuits of self-understanding. (...) My arguments throughout this paper draw on Luc Bovens’s account of hope. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the view that self-deception is a moral failure. Instead of saying that self-deception is bad because it undermines our moral character or leads to morally deleterious consequences, as has been argued by Butler, Kant, Smith, and others, I argue the distinctive badness of self-deception lies in the tragic relationship that it bears to our own values. On the one hand, self-deception is motivated by what we value. On the other hand, it prevents us from valuing (...) those things properly. I argue that we owe it ourselves to take seriously our own values, by striving to properly value them. This gives us both prudential and moral reasons to avoid self-deception. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers and scientists have done much to expand our understanding of the structure and neural mechanisms of joint action. But the phenomenology of joint action has only recently become a live topic for research.One method of clarifying what is unique about the phenomenology of joint action is by considering the alternative perspective of agents subsumed in group action. By group action we mean instances of individual agents acting while embedded within a group agent, instead of with individual coordination. Paradigm (...) examples are educational bureaucracies, corporations, and nation states. There is a phenomenological difference between agents whose actions are subsumed within a group action as compared to agents who act jointly. Attending to this difference clarifies what is phenomenologically distinctive about joint action.Appealing to an Aristotelian account of agency and to the metaphysical concept of weak emergence, we argue that what makes paradigmatic group action distinctive is the relative inaccessibility, un-revisability, and evaluative simplicity of the group agent’s goal from the perspective of individual agents. This suggests that a distinctive feature of joint agency is the maintenance of a greater sense of individual agency. Put simply, joint agency is often experienced as an enhancement of the individuals’ agency precisely because our paradigmatic agential powers are extended intersubjectively as we act together. In contrast, group agency often involves a loss of the sense of agency, precisely because it is the emergent group agent that maintains the agential powers. (shrink)

Agent-regret seems to give rise to a philosophical puzzle. If we grant that we are not morally responsible for consequences outside our control (the ‘Standard View’), then agent-regret—which involves self-reproach and a desire to make amends for consequences outside one’s control—appears rationally indefensible. But despite its apparent indefensibility, agent-regret still seems like a reasonable response to bad moral luck. I argue here that the puzzle can be resolved if we appreciate the role that agent-regret plays in a larger social practice (...) that helps us deal with bad moral luck. That agent-regret is a component in a social practice limits the questions that we can reasonably ask about it. While we can ask whether an experience of agent-regret is rational given the norms of this practice, we cannot ask the question that motivates the puzzle of agent-regret, viz. whether agent-regret is rationally defensible according to the Standard View. (shrink)

This chapter connects the phenomenon of double bookkeeping to two critical debates in the philosophy of delusion: one from the analytic tradition and one from the phenomenological tradition. First, I will show how the failure of action guidance on the part of some delusions suggests an argument to the standard view that delusions are beliefs (doxasticism about delusion) and how its proponents have countered it by ascribing behavioral inertia to avolition, emotional disturbances, or a failure of the surrounding environment in (...) supporting the agent’s motivation to act. Second, I will show how the mismatch between the experience of double bookkeeping and that of having the usual propositional attitudes of folk psychology suggests another, more recalcitrant argument not only against doxasticism but against the very attempt to fit delusion into folk psychology. Third, I will show how phenomenologically inspired theories of delusion, such as the multiple realities hypothesis, bypass the debates above and focus on describing and understanding the disturbances in the structure of experience undergone by patients. I conclude that the philosophical discussions ensuing from an appreciation of double bookkeeping show some of the limitations of the analytic philosophical approach to delusion. (shrink)

Shamik Dasgupta (2016) proposes to tame the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) to apply to only non-autonomous facts, which are facts that are apt for explanation. Call this strategy to tame the PSR the taming strategy. In a recent paper, Della Rocca (2020a) argues that proponents of the taming strategy, in attempting to formulate a restricted version of the PSR, nevertheless find themselves committed to endorsing a form of radical monism, which, in turn, leads right back to an untamed-PSR. Suppose, (...) for the sake of argument, that Della Rocca is right. My question is this: Is there reason to believe the principle of sufficient reason (in its untamed version)? In this paper, I argue that it is impossible for there to be a reason to believe the untamed-PSR. (shrink)

This article addresses an open problem in the area of cognitive systems and architectures: namely the problem of handling (in terms of processing and reasoning capabilities) complex knowledge structures that can be at least plausibly comparable, both in terms of size and of typology of the encoded information, to the knowledge that humans process daily for executing everyday activities. Handling a huge amount of knowledge, and selectively retrieve it according to the needs emerging in different situational scenarios, is an important (...) aspect of human intelligence. For this task, in fact, humans adopt a wide range of heuristics (Gigerenzer & Todd) due to their “bounded rationality” (Simon, 1957). In this perspective, one of the requirements that should be considered for the design, the realization and the evaluation of intelligent cognitively-inspired systems should be rep- resented by their ability of heuristically identify and retrieve, from the general knowledge stored in their artificial Long Term Memory (LTM), that one which is synthetically and contextually relevant. This requirement, however, is often neglected. Currently, artificial cognitive systems and architectures are not able, de facto, to deal with complex knowledge structures that can be even slightly comparable to the knowledge heuris- tically managed by humans. In this paper I will argue that this is not only a technological problem but also an epistemological one and I will briefly sketch a proposal for a possible solution. (shrink)

Philosophers have often understood self-knowledge's value in instrumentalist terms. Self-knowledge may be valuable as a means to moral self-improvement and self-satisfaction, while its absence can lead to viciousness and frustration. These explanations, while compelling, do not fully explain the value that many of us place in self-knowledge. Rather, we have a tendency to treat self-knowledge as its own end. In this article, I vindicate this tendency by identifying a moral reason that we have to value and seek self-knowledge that is (...) independent of the reason that we have to value the beneficial ends that it helps us achieve. I argue that we are in an inescapable relationship with ourselves that requires both self-love and self-respect. Self-love gives us a noninstrumental reason to know ourselves, while self-respect demands that we take this reason seriously. To pursue a project of self-discovery carefully and for its own sake, then, is part of what it is to stand in a loving and respectful relationship with ourselves. -/- . (shrink)

Endowing artificial systems with explanatory capacities about the reasons guiding their decisions, represents a crucial challenge and research objective in the current fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Computational Cognitive Science [Langley et al., 2017]. Current mainstream AI systems, in fact, despite the enormous progresses reached in specific tasks, mostly fail to provide a transparent account of the reasons determining their behavior (both in cases of a successful or unsuccessful output). This is due to the fact that the classical problem (...) of opacity in artificial neural networks (ANNs) explodes with the adoption of current Deep Learning techniques [LeCun, Bengio, Hinton, 2015]. In this paper we argue that the explanatory deficit of such techniques represents an important problem, that limits their adoption in the cognitive modelling and computational cognitive science arena. In particular we will show how the current attempts of providing explanations of the deep nets behaviour (see e.g. [Ritter et al. 2017] are not satisfactory. As a possibile way out to this problem, we present two different research strategies. The first strategy aims at dealing with the opacity problem by providing a more abstract interpretation of neural mechanisms and representations. This approach is adopted, for example, by the biologically inspired SPAUN architecture [Eliasmith et al., 2012] and by other proposals suggesting, for example, the interpretation of neural networks in terms of the Conceptual Spaces framework [Gärdenfors 2000, Lieto, Chella and Frixione, 2017]. All such proposals presuppose that the neural level of representation can be considered somehow irrelevant for attacking the problem of explanation [Lieto, Lebiere and Oltramari, 2017]. In our opinion, pursuing this research direction can still preserve the use of deep learning techniques in artificial cognitive models provided that novel and additional results in terms of “transparency” are obtained. The second strategy is somehow at odds with respect to the previous one and tries to address the explanatory issue by avoiding to directly solve the “opacity” problem. In this case, the idea is that one of resorting to pre-compiled plausible explanatory models of the word used in combination with deep-nets (see e.g. [Augello et al. 2017]). We argue that this research agenda, even if does not directly fits the explanatory needs of Computational Cognitive Science, can still be useful to provide results in the area of applied AI aiming at shedding light on the models of interaction between low level and high level tasks (e.g. between perceptual categorization and explanantion) in artificial systems. (shrink)

This Article shows how three modern English thinkers — Hobbes, Locke and Bentham — construe the law as an intersection of secular eternity on the one one hand and transience in modernity on the other, allowing for immovability and movement at the same time, combining stability with change. It details how these theorists, who undoubtedly have earned themselves places of honor in the canon of modern political thought, tried to solve the problem of self-grounding in three different and yet paradigmatically (...) modern ways, each of them intertwining law and time in a different fashion, and each of them connecting both law and temporality to happiness. Thus this Article shows not only that these three British thinkers claim in one way or another that while natural desires may provide pleasure, only the law can bring happiness, but also emphasizes that, in their view, the transformation of the former into the latter entails a transformation of temporal consciousness. Thereby this Article foregrounds two elements that are crucial to an understanding of how seventeenth and eighteenth century British thinkers envisaged the transformation of pleasure into happiness by means of the law: first, the notion that the law creates or reinforces duration in social life, and second, the idea that the law can harness the immediacy of desires by assuring the legal protection of enduring pleasures, which lead to happiness. (shrink)

A partir del reto axiológico que presupone el hecho de que sea el propio ser humano el creador de los principales peligros que amenazan su supervivencia, tanto en sus efectos naturales como sociales, en el trabajo se argumenta por qué ello es indicador del extravío de los valores fundamentales que debe guiar el accionar humano y cómo el rescate de una confiable brújula axiológica debe partir por asumir a la vida como el criterio último de lo valioso.

Persuasive technologies can adopt several strategies to change the attitudes and behaviors of their users. In this work I synthesize the lessons learned from three empirical case studies on automated persuasion that have been carried out in the last decade in the contexts of: persuasive news recommendations, social robotics, and e-commerce, respectively. In particular, such studies have assessed, in the technological domain, the effects of nudging techniques relying on well known persuasive argumentation schemas and on framing strategies. In discussing the (...) main findings, I will argue that the obtained persuasive effects are due to the fact that such techniques leverage on cognitive mechanisms that refer to the “system 1” types of automatic processes hypothesized in the context of the dual process theory of reasoning. As a consequence of this state of affairs, any automated persuasive systems (used for ethical purposes: e.g. suggesting good health habits) should be able to re-use these types of system 1 strategies in order to gradually take the users in an argumentation territory where system 2 processes can take place. -/- . (shrink)

Gregory the Great depicts himself as a contemplative who, as bishop of Rome, was compelled to become an administrator and pastor. His theological response to this existential tension illuminates the vexed questions of his relationships to predecessors and of his legacy. Gregory develops Augustine’s thought in such a way as to satisfy John Cassian’s position that contemplative vision is grounded in the soul’s likeness to the unity of Father and Son. For Augustine, “mercy” lovingly lifts the neighbor toward life in (...) God. Imitating God’s own love for humankind, this mercy likens the Christian to God’s essential goodness and, by this likeness, prepares him or her for the vision of God, which Augustine expects not now but only in the next life. For Augustine, the exercise of mercy can—when useful—involve a shared affection or understanding. Gregory makes this shared affection essential to the neighborly love that he calls “compassion.” In this affective fellowship, Gregory finds a human translation of the passionless unity of Father and Son—so that, for Gregory, compassion becomes the immediate basis for and consequence of seeing God—even in this life. Compassion does not degrade; rather, it retrenches the perfection of contemplation. Reconciling compassionate activity and contemplative vision, this creative renegotiation of Augustine and Cassian both answered Gregory’s own aspirations and gave to the tumultuous post-Imperial West a needed account of worldly affairs as spiritual affairs. (shrink)

El ensayo tiene como tema central el desarrollo de la capacidad valorativa y la participación que en este proceso tienen lo genético y lo sociocultural. Nos interesa mostrar las premisas biológicas generales de esa relación y enfatizar en la especificidad cualitativamente humana de su desarrollo, todo ello sobre todo desde el ángulo del vínculo entre las influencias genéticas y del medio y sus respectivos papeles en la determinación del desarrollo de aquella capacidad que a nivel humano identificamos como valoración. -/- (...) . (shrink)

Combining typical knowledge to generate novel concepts is an important creative trait of human cognition. Dealing with such ability requires, from an AI perspective, the harmonization of two conflicting requirements that are hardly accommodated in symbolic systems: the need of a syntactic compositionality (typical of logical systems) and that one concerning the exhibition of typicality effects (see Frixione and Lieto, 2012). In this work we provide a logical framework able to account for this type of human-like concept combination. We propose (...) a nonmonotonic Description Logic of typicality called TCL (Typicality-based Compositional Logic). (shrink)