The literature on algorithmic fairness has examined exogenous sources of biases such as shortcomings in the data and structural injustices in society. It has also examined internal sources of bias as evidenced by a number of impossibility theorems showing that no algorithm can concurrently satisfy multiple criteria of fairness. This paper contributes to the literature stemming from the impossibility theorems by examining how informational richness affects the accuracy and fairness of predictive algorithms. With the aid of a computer simulation, we (...) show that informational richness is the engine that drives improvements in the performance of a predictive algorithm, in terms of both accuracy and fairness. The centrality of informational richness suggests that classification parity, a popular criterion of algorithmic fairness, should be given relatively little weight. But we caution that the centrality of informational richness should be taken with a grain of salt in light of practical limitations, in particular, the so-called bias-variance trade off. (shrink)

This paper examines the idea of education of the citizen derived from the texts of Rousseau, with particular attention to the role assigned to patriotism and civil religion. With respect to patriotic education, I critically question Rousseau's thesis about the incompatibility between love of one’s country and a sense of humanity, contrasting them with the idea of constitutional patriotism, founded on loyalty to universal values. I conclude with an examination of the idea that a civil religion constitutes an essential contribution (...) to the citizen’s education. I believe that the public ethics of political liberalism are better suited to the idea of civic education for democracy. (shrink)

Concept representation is still an open problem in the field of ontology engineering and, more generally, of knowledge representation. In particular, the issue of representing “non classical” concepts, i.e. concepts that cannot be defined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, remains unresolved. In this paper we review empirical evidence from cognitive psychology, according to which concept representation is not a unitary phenomenon. On this basis, we sketch some proposals for concept representation, taking into account suggestions from psychological research. In (...) particular, it seems that human beings employ both prototype-based and exemplar-based representations in order to represent non classical concepts. We suggest that a similar, hybrid prototype-exemplar based approach could also prove useful in the field of knowledge representation technology. Finally, we propose conceptual spaces as a suitable framework for developing some aspects of this proposal. (shrink)

The paper argues for the plausibility of the thesis that there are no genuine moral dilemmas. In particular, I examine Bernard Williams’ objection that agentregret in a situation of conflict among contradictory moral obligations would prove the existence of such dilemmas. Contrary to Williams’claim, agentregret in these situations is not sufficient to establish the existence of such moral dilemmas. Williams’ argument cannot undermine the logical consistency of moral theories, nor their capacity to solve moral conflicts. I also consider Monika Betzler’s (...) proposal that agentregret can be considered ‘rational in a looser sense’ without implying an inconsistency in moral theory. In order to discuss the plausibility of this proposal, I focus on the interpretation of agentregret as an emotional response which also restores offended moral integrity. I claim, in conclusion, that it is reasonable to assume this proposal, insofar as moral theory can determine some criteria of judgement which allow a distinction between authentic and false modalities of integration. (shrink)

Recently the educational task of the public school has been repeatedly challenged. Citizenship has not been spared from criticism and its legitimacy has been questioned. The article discusses the issue of the legitimacy of citizenship education in public schools, specifying the meaning of neutrality of which it proposes a narrow interpretation. On this basis the article examines four philosophical models of citizenship education (communitarianism, civic humanism, liberalism, republicanism). The analysis suggests that the republican model of citizenship education is the most (...) appropriate; it needs however a liberal adaptation. The proposed solution of a liberal republicanism is illustrated with a critical examination of the duty of civility. (shrink)

Many oppose the use of profile evidence against defendants at trial, even when the statistical correlations are reliable and the jury is free from prejudice. The literature has struggled to justify this opposition. We argue that admitting profile evidence is objectionable because it violates what we call “equal protection”—that is, a right of innocent defendants not to be exposed to higher ex ante risks of mistaken conviction compared to other innocent defendants facing similar charges. We also show why admitting other (...) forms of evidence, such as eyewitness, trace, and motive evidence, does not violate equal protection. (shrink)

A short presentation of James Steuart's neglected philosophical publications as well as of his well-known economic contribution.

Nel campo delle scienze cognitive molti oggi condividono l’ipotesi che siano necessari differenti tipi di rappresentazioni per modellare i sistemi cognitivi sia naturali, sia artificiali. Si considerino le rappresentazioni basate su reti neurali, i formalismi simbolici e rappresentazioni analogiche quali rappresentazioni diagrammatiche o modelli mentali. Tutti questi metodi hanno successo nello spiegare e modellare alcune classi di fenomeni cognitivi, ma nessuno è in grado di rendere conto di tutti gli aspetti della cognizione. A partire da queste considerazioni, riteniamo che sistemi (...) intelligenti e architetture cognitive possano trarre vantaggio dalla combinazione di sistemi di rappresentazione diversi. Si pone allora il problema di fare interagire rappresentazioni di natura differente in maniera cognitivamente e teoricamente fondata. La nostra ipotesi è che gli spazi concettuali possano offrire una sorta di lingua comune, che consentirebbe di integrare e generalizzare molti aspetti delle impostazioni sopra menzionate, superando i limiti delle varie proposte intese singolarmente. (shrink)

La logica modale è nata per studiare i ragionamenti su ciò che è possibile e ciò che è necessario. Negli ultimi decenni, a partire dal lavoro di logici e filosofi quali Rudolf Carnap, Saul Kripke e David Lewis, la sua applicazione è stata progressivamente estesa ad altri ambiti, quali il ragionamento sul tempo, sulla conoscenza e sui sistemi di norme. Queste ricerche hanno condotto a un complesso e intrigante dialogo con alcune fondamentali branche della filosofia: la metafisica, l’epistemologia, la filosofia (...) del linguaggio. Lo scopo del volume è offrire una panoramica di questo dialogo al contempo accessibile e rigorosa, pensata sia per gli studenti di un corso universitario, sia per il lettore non specialista. Se da un lato tutte le necessarie nozioni tecniche sono rese accessibili ai non addetti ai lavori, dall'altro si restituisce un'immagine fedele delle sfide concettuali che la ricerca in questi settori è oggi chiamata ad affrontare. (shrink)

Smith argues that, unlike other forms of evidence, naked statistical evidence fails to satisfy normic support. This is his solution to the puzzles of statistical evidence in legal proof. This paper focuses on Smith’s claim that DNA evidence in cold-hit cases does not satisfy normic support. I argue that if this claim is correct, virtually no other form of evidence used at trial can satisfy normic support. This is troublesome. I discuss a few ways in which Smith can respond.

Many philosophers have pointed out that statistical evidence, or at least some forms of it, lack desirable epistemic or non-epistemic properties, and that this should make us wary of litigations in which the case against the defendant rests in whole or in part on statistical evidence. Others have responded that such broad reservations about statistical evidence are overly restrictive since appellate courts have expressed nuanced views about statistical evidence. In an effort to clarify and reconcile, I put forward an interpretive (...) analysis of why statistical evidence should raise concerns in some cases but not others. I argue that when there is a mismatch between the specificity of the evidence and the expected specificity of the accusation, statistical evidence—as any other kind of evidence—should be considered insufficient to sustain a conviction. I rely on different stylized court cases to illustrate the explanatory power of this analysis. (shrink)

A short reconstruction of the discussion on the genesis of Western Modern individualism, of the arguments advanced by its critics and by recent vindications of ethical and political individualism.

The paper describes how a simple idea, that of a new foundation of moral philosophy taking Galilean new natural philosophy as a mode , lead to unforeseen developments once the competition between a Cartesian and a Newtonian paradigm emerged. Those developments are reconstructed in Hume, Smith, Ferguson.

A short presentation of the moral doctrines inspired by the Confucian tradition.

A discussion of the birth and adventures of a concept created by Marxist authors at the time of the Russian revolution, sometimes under the term 'economic materialism' and the subsequent discussion by Polanyi of Marx's own economicist fallacy.

The chapter reconstructs and criticizes one of Anscombe's famous three these, namely the claim that a ‘philosophy of psychology’ is a preliminary task to the construction of any possible ethical theory, or that moral philosophy ‘should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking’. The claim is that Anscombe’s idea of a philosophy of psychology cannot be simply identified with that of moral psychology with which we are familiar (...) now; that her main claim, namely that actions are analogous to language is quite promising; that among the implications there is not only a criticism to consequentialism but also acknowledgement of a central role for judgement, and accordingly not just a blunt refusal, but instead an unaware rediscovery of Kantian ethics; that her rediscovery of the idea of virtue is promising enough, albeit misunderstood by Anscombe herself when she presents it in terms of coming back to Aristotelian and Thomist ethics as contrasted with modern moral philosophy. (shrink)

A short reconstruction of the ethical, political and economic doctrines of Thomas Hodgskin, William Thompson and John Gray.

A short reconstruction of the method of casuistry in Medieval and early Modern moral theology.

This is one more edition of Voltaire's "Candide", meant to highlight the wealth of philosophical and theological discussions hidden behind the apparently innocent veil of the most renowned fable of modernity. The rather extended apparatus accordingly consists of a series of short chapters by Filippo Bruni on the Enlightenment and Metaphysics, and in more detail, on theology, Free choice, the problem of evil, and happiness in an imperfect world and another by Sergio Cremaschi on the Enlightenment and morality, and in (...) more detail on moral universalism, religion without metaphysics, toleration, and pacifism. -/- Table of contents I. Before the text A trick for priests A scandalous book Garden with view -/- II. Text Candide or optimism -/- III. Context Biography 1. The seven years war 2. Calvinists and Socinians 3. Jiansenists and Gesuits 4. Marranos and inquisitors 5. Conquistadores and slave-traders 6. Paraguay under the Jesuits -/- IV. Co-text 1. Enlightenment and Metaphysics 1.1. Theology 1.2. Free choice 1.3. The problem of evil 1.4. Being happy in an imperfect world -/- 2. Enlightenment and morality 2.1. Universal morality 2.2. Religion without Metaphysics 2.3. Toleration 2.4. Pacifism -/- 3. Enlightenment and the images of other places 3.1. The image of Eldorado 3.2. The image of Paraguay 3.3 The image of the Islamic world 3.4. The image of the Jew -/- 4. The conte philosophique -/- Bibliography Lexicon Index of names and concepts -/- V. Reader’s guide. (shrink)

A presentation of Adam Smith's epistemology, ethics, political theory and economics.

In recent years, a trend in AI research has started to pursue human-level, general artificial intelli-gence (AGI). Although the AGI framework is characterised by different viewpoints on what intelligence is and how to implement it in artificial systems, it conceptualises intelligence as flexible, general-purposed, and capable of self-adapting to different contexts and tasks. Two important ques-tions remain open: a) should AGI projects simu-late the biological, neural, and cognitive mecha-nisms realising the human intelligent behaviour? and b) what is the relationship, if (...) any, between the concept of general intelligence adopted by AGI and that adopted by psychometricians, i.e., the g factor? In this paper, we address these ques-tions and invite researchers in AI to open a dis-cussion on the theoretical conceptions and practi-cal purposes of the AGI approach. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that applied ethics is a phenomenon spontaneously emerged between the Sixties and the Seventies and resulting from interbreeding of theoretical discussion in ethics and public discourse of liberal-democratic societies. I contend that the phenomenon’s novelty is in a peculiar relationship it has helped in establishing between ethical theories and real-world issues, and besides that the true nature of applied ethics is that of deliberation, whose tool is the faculty of judgment, or casuistry, understood the Kantian (...) way. (shrink)

A discussion of the origins of the very notion of development, its role in eocnomic thoery, and its discussion in applied ethics.

According to the principle of epistemic closure, knowledge is closed under known implication. The principle is intuitive but it is problematic in some cases. Suppose you know you have hands and you know that ‘I have hands’ implies ‘I am not a brain-in-a-vat’. Does it follow that you know you are not a brain-in-a-vat? It seems not; it should not be so easy to refute skepticism. In this and similar cases, we are confronted with a puzzle: epistemic closure is an (...) intuitive principle, but at times, it does not seem that we know by implication. In response to this puzzle, the literature has been mostly polarized between those who are willing to do away with epistemic closure and those who think we cannot live without it. But there is a third way. Here I formulate a restricted version of the principle of epistemic closure. In the standard version, the principle can range over any proposition; in the restricted version, it can only range over those propositions that are within the limits of a given epistemic inquiry and that do not constitute the underlying assumptions of the inquiry. If we adopt the restricted version, I argue, we can preserve the advantages associated with closure, while at the same time avoiding the puzzle I’ve described. My discussion also yields an insight into the nature of knowledge. I argue that knowledge is best understood as a topic-restricted notion, and that such a conception is a natural one given our limited cognitive resources. (shrink)

The primary aim of this chapter is to explain the nature of evidential reasoning, the characteristic difficulties encountered, and the tools to address these difficulties. Our focus is on evidential reasoning in criminal cases. There is an extensive scholarly literature on these topics, and it is a secondary aim of the chapter to provide readers the means to find their way in historical and ongoing debates.

A review of Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, Foundations of Economic Evolution. A Treatise on the Natural Philosophy of Economics. I argue that the author's ultra-naturalist stance in epistemology lacks consistent justification.

A discussion of the historical development of the relationship between moral philosophy and political economy and economics qua disciplines, followed by a treatment of questions of justice in the contemporary discussion and then by an overview of the subdiscipline of busness ethics.

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

A short discussion of the history and main issues of the philosophy of the social sciences.

This note discusses three issues that Allen and Pardo believe to be especially problematic for a probabilistic interpretation of standards of proof: (1) the subjectivity of probability assignments; (2) the conjunction paradox; and (3) the non-comparative nature of probabilistic standards. I offer a reading of probabilistic standards that avoids these criticisms.

: The theory of objective value is the central feature in the paradigm of political economy. The Newtonian heritage plays a major role in giving political economy the status of a self-standing empirical science, and a reconstruction of this heritage casts fresh light on the idea of value and its role in the definition of the subject matter of political economy. Cognitive progress carried by classical political economy turns out to be related with the dilemmas of Newtonian epistemology and the (...) alternative between essentialist realism and instrumental conventionalism. (shrink)

Embodiment matters to perception and action. Beyond the triviality that, under normal circumstances, we need a body in order to perceive the world and act in it, our particular embodiment, right here, right now, both enables and constrains our perception of possibilities for action. In this chapter, we provide empirical support for the idea that the structural and morphological features of the body can narrow the set of our possible interactions with the environment by shaping the way we perceive the (...) possibilities for action provided. We argue that this narrowing holds true in the perception of what we call strongly embodied affordances, that is, relevant micro-affordances that have a genuinely demanding characteristic, as well as in the perception of actions performed by others. In particular, we show that perceptual contents are shaped by fine-grained morphological features of the body, such as specific hand-shapes, and that they change according to our possibility to act upon them with this body, in this situation, at this moment. We argue that these considerations provide insight into distinguishing a variety of experienced affordance relations that can aid us in better understanding the relevance of embodiment for perception and experience. (shrink)

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

I start with a reconstruction of the discussion on the nature of scientific models and on their relationship to metaphors that has taken place in the Anglo-Saxon philosophy of Science starting from the Fifties; the discovery started with Stephen Pepper and Kenneth Burke, reaching Thomas Kuhn, Marx Wartofsky, and George Lakoff via Max Black's and Mary Hesse's interaction view. I argue that Hesse's view has a number of weak points: uncritically accepting Black's idea of "interaction", for keeping too much of (...) a logical empiricist view of observation language, and for keeping too much of a Scholastic distinction between formal and material analogy. I argue that a few insights from Kuhn and Wartofsky seem to go in the same direction as Granger's view of metaphor as opposed to metonymy, thus severing the link between metaphor and the "qualitative". I argue that the Cartesian legacy and its implicit ideal of a "mirroring" relationship between the world and the mind is the main obstacle to be eventually overcome if we are to work out a satisfactory account of the language of science and that suggestions from pragmatism as well as from French epistemology may be used in order to work out a post-Cartesian view of science. -/- . (shrink)

Philosophical Issues, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 41-65, October 2021.

I argue that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as (...) a holistic procedure for assessing the salience of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases, but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. (shrink)

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

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

I comment on two analyses of the Simonshaven case: one by Prakken (2019), based on arguments, and the other by van Koppen and Mackor (2019), based on scenarios (or stories, narratives). I argue that both analyses lack a clear account of proof beyond a reasonable doubt because they lack a clear account of the notion of plausibility. To illustrate this point, I focus on the defense argument during the appeal trial and show that both analyses face difficulties in modeling key (...) features of this argument. (shrink)

Epistemic closure under known implication is the principle that knowledge of "p" and knowledge of "p implies q", together, imply knowledge of "q". This principle is intuitive, yet several putative counterexamples have been formulated against it. This paper addresses the question, why is epistemic closure both intuitive and prone to counterexamples? In particular, the paper examines whether probability theory can offer an answer to this question based on four strategies. The first probability-based strategy rests on the accumulation of risks. The (...) problem with this strategy is that risk accumulation cannot accommodate certain counterexamples to epistemic closure. The second strategy is based on the idea of evidential support, that is, a piece of evidence supports a proposition whenever it increases the probability of the proposition. This strategy makes progress and can accommodate certain putative counterexamples to closure. However, this strategy also gives rise to a number of counterintuitive results. Finally, there are two broadly probabilistic strategies, one based on the idea of resilient probability and the other on the idea of assumptions that are taken for granted. These strategies are promising but are prone to some of the shortcomings of the second strategy. All in all, I conclude that each strategy fails. Probability theory, then, is unlikely to offer the account we need. (shrink)

The book is quite convincing as far as it argues more autonomy from Mill and a more pro-working-class picture than the received image of Ricardo allows for. A severe pitfall is having ignored the relevance of Unitarianism as a matrix of political radicalism. A related defect is not having exploited less obvious sources than those included in Sraffa’s edition.

The paper focuses on the kind of expertise required by doctors in health communication and argues that such an expertise is twofold: both epistemological and communicative competences are necessary to achieve compliance with the patient. Firstly, we introduce the specific epistemic competences that deal with diagnosis and its problems. Secondly, we focus on the communicative competences and argue that an inappropriate strategy in communicating the reasons of diagnosis and therapy can make patient compliance unworkable. Finally, we focus on the case (...) of diabetes metaphor and propose the deliberate use of metaphors in health communication as an educational tool. On the one hand, metaphors might help doctors in explaining the disease in simpler terms and framing the experience of illness according to patient’s specific needs. On the other hand, metaphors might encourage a change in patient’s beliefs on their own experience of illness, and enable them to reach a shared decision making with doctors. (shrink)

During the last decades, many cognitive architectures (CAs) have been realized adopting different assumptions about the organization and the representation of their knowledge level. Some of them (e.g. SOAR [35]) adopt a classical symbolic approach, some (e.g. LEABRA[ 48]) are based on a purely connectionist model, while others (e.g. CLARION [59]) adopt a hybrid approach combining connectionist and symbolic representational levels. Additionally, some attempts (e.g. biSOAR) trying to extend the representational capacities of CAs by integrating diagrammatical representations and reasoning are (...) also available [34]. In this paper we propose a reflection on the role that Conceptual Spaces, a framework developed by Peter G¨ardenfors [24] more than fifteen years ago, can play in the current development of the Knowledge Level in Cognitive Systems and Architectures. In particular, we claim that Conceptual Spaces offer a lingua franca that allows to unify and generalize many aspects of the symbolic, sub-symbolic and diagrammatic approaches (by overcoming some of their typical problems) and to integrate them on a common ground. In doing so we extend and detail some of the arguments explored by G¨ardenfors [23] for defending the need of a conceptual, intermediate, representation level between the symbolic and the sub-symbolic one. In particular we focus on the advantages offered by Conceptual Spaces (w.r.t. symbolic and sub-symbolic approaches) in dealing with the problem of compositionality of representations based on typicality traits. Additionally, we argue that Conceptual Spaces could offer a unifying framework for interpreting many kinds of diagrammatic and analogical representations. As a consequence, their adoption could also favor the integration of diagrammatical representation and reasoning in CAs. (shrink)