Whilst the distinction between French and Anglo-American feminism was always rather dubious two specific linguistic differences between French and English have nevertheless determined two streams of feminist thought, and complicated the relation between them. Since the 1960s, English-language feminisms, in so far as they are distinctive, have centrally either presupposed or explicitly theorized the category of gender, for which there is no linguistic equivalent in French. At the same time, much (although not all) that came to be categorized as ʻFrenchʼ (...) feminism has been articulated around the category of le féminin, for which there is no ready equivalent in English, although there is an obvious translational choice: ʻthe feminineʼ. Various Anglo-American feminisms have made consideration of what have been seen as feminine attributes and values central to their critical and reconstructive projects, but it is not this (adjectival) sense which is at issue here in the translation of le féminin, a noun. For despite the fact that the French and English words connote differently (in particular, le féminin also covers most of what is meant by the English ʻfemaleʼ), ʻthe feminineʼ, as a direct translation of the different and specific uses of le féminin in various French discourses, has become a common category in English-language feminist discourse, specifically English-language feminist philosophy of a ʻcontinentalʼ disposition, where it is often presumed to be both the proper object of such a philosophy and the proper goal of feminism. But is it? Or what exactly is at stake in making it so? Is ʻthe feminineʼ a necessary or useful category for feminism today? (shrink)

According to some critics, Aristotle’s elenctic defence (elenchos, elenchus) of the Law of Non-Contradiction (Metaphysics IV) would be ineffective because it viciously begs the question. After briefly recalling the elenctic refutation of the denier of the Law of Non-Contradiction, I will first focus on Filippo Costantini’s objection to the elenchus, which, in turn, is based on the dialetheic account of negation developed by Graham Priest. Then, I will argue that there is at least one reading of the elenchus that might (...) not be viciously question-begging. In doing so, I will leverage, reinterpret and adjust the distinction between two senses of epistemic dependence, offered by Noah Lemos and originally based on some thoughts about George Edward Moore’s ‘proof of an external world.’ The key point of my counter-objection to recover the elenchus is to use the distinction between a necessary-condition relation between propositions (p only if q) and a grounding relation between facts (the fact that an epistemic agent S believes that p is grounded in the fact that S believes that q), where p and q are the content of S’s beliefs. (shrink)

In the philosophical works of Emmanuel Levinasʼs early career, it is in a phenomenology of Eros that he claims to have uncovered the site of what he calls ʻtranscendenceʼ. This is no small claim. According to the argument of the later Totality and Infinity (1961), the history of Western philosophy is to be thought as the history of the ʻphilosophy of the sameʼ. Within this polemical generalization almost the whole of Western philosophy is characterized as a totalizing discourse which aims (...) to reduce everything to the categories of a thematizing consciousness. Conceptual structures are employed (or presupposed) in order to make diverse phenomena commensurable within a system, and according to Levinas this operation always constitutes a reduction of what is ʻotherʼ to the order of the ʻsameʼ. In agreement with a certain transcendentalism which is itself implicated in Levinasʼs critique, these structures of thought are then equated with consciousness itself; the thematizing project is one of mastery in which noemata will of necessity conform to noesis, in which the object is constituted for and by the subject. The experience of transcendence, so rare in this version of philosophyʼs history, is the experience of whatever is and truly remains other than me, recalcitrant to mastery through conceptualization and to the transcendental project of the subject to construe everything as originating from within itself. If, then, it is first of all in the erotic relation that the possibility of the experience of transcendence is said to arise, Eros can in no sense be dismissed as an unimportant or peripheral theme for Levinas, and a full investigation is warranted, especially given the current interest in Levinasʼs work, interest which is not limited to the discipline of philosophy. Furthermore, as the notion of Eros is closely associated, textually and conceptually, with what Levinas calls ʻthe feminineʼ, critical attention has been excited amongst feminist scholars of various persuasions, with claims – both positive and negative – being made for Levinasʼs significance as a resource for feminist philosophy and feminist politics. If assertions of a ʻLevinasianʼ feminism, no matter how qualified, tend to rest on the idea that Levinasʼs phenomenology of Eros, and analyses of ʻthe feminineʼ mark a break in or a new departure from a ʻmasculinistʼ tradition, this article seeks, in part, to argue to the contrary. (shrink)

In this paper we will address the following points: (1) we will question the general belief that Kant’s philosophical approach has a geographical character, by showing how critical philosophy and physical geography establish, in their respective systems, two inverse relationships between the rational and the aesthetic form of spatiality; (2) we will argue that cartography still plays a role in the realization of a scientific system of cognition, and that this role consists in guiding this very realization; (3) lastly, we (...) will develop the hypothesis that the map of the cognitive faculties, exemplified by the transcendental topic, is part of a device aimed at keeping the subject from the adventures of thought typical of dogmatism. (shrink)

This article comprises a critical examination of some aspects of the English-language comparative literature on Heidegger and East Asian thought. It questions both its transcendental conceptual ground – the conditions of possibility for the comparative exercise – and its account of Heideggerʼs philosophy itself. For the comparative literature, I will argue, can only make its specific claims, sympathetic to the Heideggerian philosophical project, with a reading of that project that represses most of what is fundamental to Heideggerʼs conception of philosophy (...) and almost everything that we know about his politics. Furthermore, in its emphasis on the ancient it facilitates the repression of the history of Heideggerian fascism in modern East Asian, and particularly Japanese, thought. The point of this critical examination of the comparative literature is not, however, to expose a misreading of Heidegger. It is to reveal what is at stake in the mobilization of the imaginary geopolitical and geophilosophical unities of ʻthe Eastʼ and ʻthe Westʼ in relation to Heideggerʼs political-philosophical thinking of ʻthe Westʼ. Accordingly, I will look first at the claims typical in the advocatory comparative literature and then at the problematic conceptual ground of the comparison, both in terms of its immanent logic and its relation to Heideggerʼs conception of the history of philosophy. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to account for the (metaphorical) movement of the property of being present (or presentness) within the so-called Moving Spotlight Theory (MST). I will be leveraging the key argument by Emanuele Severino’s masterpiece, 'La Gloria' (2001), according to which it is impossible that a (maximal consistent) state of affairs begins to appear and lasts forever in our experience. After a brief overview of the MST’s main tenets (§1.1), I argue that Severino’s ontology might be interpreted (...) as a sort of MST (§1.2), following the hint by Federico Perelda (2017). Thereafter, I briefly recall Severino’s original argument in his own jargon, also proposing English lexical and conceptual translations of the main Italian phrases (§1.3). Then, I propose both a semi-formalization of Severino’s argument (§2.1) and a full formalization by means of temporal logic (§2.2). Finally, I assess all the three versions of the argument, concluding that my formalization might account for the movement of presentness in a non-metaphorical way (§2.3). (shrink)

In this contribution, we formulate the thesis that the methodological criticism against Wolff raised by Kant in his early writings is fully justified only if one grasps the different philosophies of language in the two authors. Depending on the function performed by linguistic usage in the analysis of concepts, a certain relationship between word, concept and thing is determined, which conditions the success of the analysis itself. Since Wolff abandons the use of language as soon as he has reached the (...) degree of clarity and distinction of concepts, his definitions end up being inventions of meanings, constructions of concepts. This seems to be the reason why Kant emphasises that the only concepts that can be analysed are given, i.e. applied, concepts, and that words do not obtain their meaning except in linguistic use. In general, Kant appears to be averse to the technicalization of language, which distances the philosopher from the world that should be the object of their knowledge. (shrink)

Across two studies, one of which was pre-registered, we find that a simple questionnaire that measures intellectual virtue and vice predicts how many fake news articles and conspiracy theories participants accept. This effect holds even when controlling for multiple demographic predictors, including age, household income, sex, education, ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, and news consumption. These results indicate that self-report is an adequate way to measure intellectual virtue and vice, which suggests that they are not fully immune to introspective awareness or (...) “stealthy” in the sense that Cassam (2015) argues. This is an important methodological result and may pave the way for future research on intellectual virtue and vice. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to build an interpretation of Passion according to G.H. (1964), by the Ukrainian-Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, having hospitality as our horizon for the discussions that follow. Discussions concerning the personal/home aspects, but also the external and political side of the discussions. This analysis has the Freudian concept of the Unheimlich as the conductor for the debates on identity questions, which range from race, nationality and the construction of subjectivities. Keywords: Das Unheimliche, Literature and Philosophy, (...) Psychoanalysis. (shrink)

This paper treats of Husserl’s phenomenology of happiness or eudaimonia in five parts. In the first part, we argue that phenomenology of happiness is an important albeit relatively neglected area of research, and we show that Husserl engages in it. In the second part, we examine the relationship between phenomenological ethics and virtue ethics. In the third part, we identify and clarify essential aspects of Husserl’s phenomenology of happiness, namely, the nature of the question concerning happiness and the possibility of (...) a phenomenological answer, the power of the will, the role of vocation, the place of obligation, the significance of habituation, the necessity of selfreflection and self-criticism, the importance of sociability and solidarity, the impact of chance and destiny, and the specter of regret. In the fourth part, we establish the inextricable linkage between Husserl’s metaethics and his metaphysics. In the fi ft h part, we provide a provisional exploration of his conception of the connection between happiness and blessedness. We acknowledge that there is an extensive literature on Husserl’s phenomenological ethics, and our study has benefitted greatly from it, but we also suggest that our holistic approach critically clarifies his description of happiness, virtue, and blessedness by fully recognizing that his phenomenological metaethics is embedded in his phenomenological metaphysics. (shrink)

A view that emancipates free will by means of quantum indeterminism is frequently rejected based on arguments pointing out its incompatibility with what we know about quantum physics. However, if one carefully examines what classical physical causal determinism and quantum indeterminism are according to physics, it becomes clear what they really imply–and, especially, what they do not imply–for agent-causation theories. Here, we will make necessary conceptual clarifications on some aspects of physical determinism and indeterminism, review some of the major objections (...) against libertarian conjectures, and show that there is no conceptual incompatibility preventing us from taking a ‘quantum-libertarian’ approach to the problem of free will. In particular, we will illustrate the possible role of self-causation (causa sui) as a potential solution to otherwise apparently incompatible or even paradoxical statements concerning free will and quantum indeterminism. (shrink)

Nel suo intento di rinnovare il nostro modo di comprendere l’esistenza e questa stessa comprensione, Morin spiega una retorica affatto singolare che si contraddistingue per il ricorso ‘disinvolto’ a concetti filosofici e scientifici già consolidati, ma reinterpretati nel suo quadro concettuale, ed a termini da egli stesso coniati. Per tali ragioni, oltre che per le parole non italiane e quando è specificato altrimenti, mi servirò del corsivo tutte le volte che riferisco un concetto originale del filosofo francese. Ciò non solo (...) per mantenermi il più possibile fedele alla lettera dei suoi scritti ma anche e soprattutto per rendere l’intenzione locutoria, ovvero l’enfasi e a tratti la ‘drammaticità’ del suo discorso. Per tutte le citazioni, non solo di Morin, uso le virgolette doppie e tra parentesi quadre inserisco eventuali miei interventi. Le virgolette singole intendono il senso lato di un termine. Quando invece impiego concetti scientifici o filosofici nel significato tecnico che hanno acquisito all’interno del loro orizzonte disciplinare (quindi non nell’interpretazione di Morin, per intenderci), mi servo dei caporali. Una precisazione ulteriore merita il concetto di complessità organizzazionale che rientra tra quelli che hanno guadagnato a Morin la critica di abusare di neologismi. Tale concetto si propone di mettere in rilievo il carattere attivo e creativo della complessità. In francese questa differenza emerge chiaramente perché egli cambia organisation con organisaction. In italiano essa può rendersi per iscritto con organizz-azione ma nel parlato si può apprezzare meglio nell’attributo appunto organizzazionale. La messe di note a corredo del testo si propone, oltre che fornire ulteriori approfondimenti, confronti e una puntuale fonte bibliografica, di mettere in rilievo la coerenza che au fonde il «sistema» di idee elaborato da Morin mantiene al suo interno e, forse a dispetto delle sue stesse intenzioni, con il pensiero filosofico occidentale (fin dalla sua denominazione come metodo). (shrink)

What is sex? Some feminists have harboured suspicions about this form of question, given its philosophical (or ‘metaphysical’1) pedigree. But philosophy no longer has the disciplinary monopoly on it. Indeed, with regard to sex, the more interesting task today is to pose and to attempt to answer the question from within a transdisciplinary problematic. For the question requires a theoretical response capable of recognizing that it concerns a cultural and political (and therefore neither a specifically philosophical nor a merely empirical) (...) problem. It requires an account of sex which is theoretically satisfying whilst being both adequate to and critical of everyday experience; a critical-theoretical account capable of embracing the everyday experience of sex, its lived contradictions. This article represents a first attempt to construct a transdisciplinary concept of sex to this end. It traces a line from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex to some recent attempts to define ‘sex’ and various related but importantly different concepts, and ends by proposing an answer to the question ‘What is sex?’ that draws on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. For our transdisciplinary efforts will of necessity spring from some specific discipline(s) while not remaining confined within them, and not allowing them to remained confined within themselves (which has been something of a problem for philosophy, historically). (shrink)

In this paper, I contend that there are at least two essential traits that commonly define being an I: self-identity and self-consciousness. I argue that they bear quite an odd relation to each other in the sense that self-consciousness seems to jeopardize self-identity. My main concern is to elucidate this issue within the range of the transcendental philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. In the first section, I shall briefly consider Kant’s own rendition of the problem of the Egosplitting. (...) My reading of the Kantian texts reveals that Kant himself was aware of this phenomenon but eventually deems it an unexplainable fact. The second part of the paper tackles the same problematic from the standpoint of Husserlian phenomenology. What Husserl’s extensive analyses on this topic bring to light is that the phenomenon of the Ego-splitting constitutes the bedrock not only of his thought but also of every philosophy that works within the framework of transcendental thinking. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Aufsatz behandelt zwei Bereiche, deren Zusammenhang in der aktuellen Husserlforschung zu Unrecht in Vergessenheit geraten zu sein scheint: Zum einen konturiere ich den Habitusbegriff und das damit verbundene Problem der Habituskonstitution im Spätwerk E. Husserls. Zum anderen dient das Ergebnis dieser ersten Untersuchung dann als Grundlage für die Frage nach dem Wesen des Ich in der genetischen Phänomenologie. Die Untersuchung besteht aus drei Teilen: Zuerst stelle ich, um die Bedeutung des Begriffs „Habitus“ zu klären, Ingardens Interpretationsalternativen der Habituskonstitution (...) vor. Im Anschluss daran werde ich mich mit dem sogenannten „transzendentalen Okkasionalismus“ befassen, der eine der zuvor vorgestellten Alternativen Ingardens aufgreift und weiterführt. Der „transzendentale Okkasionalismus“ vertritt die These, dass die habituellen Eigenschaften des Ich durch den einfachen Vollzug der Akte entstünden. Weil diese These als Interpretation des Habitusbegriffs bei Husserl weit verbreitet ist, muss sie als Lösungsansatz in Erwägung gezogen werden. Jedoch zeigt eine genaue Lektüre der Forschungsmanuskripte Husserls, dass dieser scheinbare Lösungsansatz einen dort wichtigen Begriff außer Acht lässt: die „Geschichte des Ich“. Diese wird im dritten und letzten Teil dieses Aufsatzes näher betrachtet und erläutert. Husserl selbst hob nämlich einen wesenhaften Zusammenhang zwischen den mannigfaltigen Erfahrungen des Ich hervor, durch den die Bezeichnung der Habituskonstitution als „Okkasionalismus“ nicht zutreffend sein kann. Aus diesem Grund geht dieser Beitrag über die reine Wiedergabe der Habitusproblematik in Husserls Phänomenologie hinaus und beschreibt eine Auffassung der transzendentalen Subjektivität, die aus dem Spätwerk Husserls stammt. (shrink)

Husserl’s phenomenology of imagination embraces a cluster of different theories and approaches regarding the multi-faced phenomenon of imaginative experience. In this paper I consider one aspect that seems to be crucial to the understanding of a particular form of imagination that Husserl names pure phantasy. I argue that the phenomenon of Ego-splitting discloses the best way to elucidate the peculiarity of pure phantasy with respect to other forms of representative acts and to any simple form of act modification. First, I (...) unravel the phenomenological distinctions which, respectively, oppose phantasy to perception, on the one hand, and phantasy to other forms of the so-called “intuitive re-presentations”. Second, I introduce the difference between presentative and representative acts, arguing that this cannot help us to single out the defining feature of phantasy experiences. The third section draws again an important distinction between pure phantasy and neutrality modification, which allows me to finally determine an internal trait of phantasy experiences, which Husserl refers to as the “Ego-splitting”. In this way, I hope to contribute to a refined characterization of Husserl’s phenomenology of imagination. (shrink)

Structural representations are increasingly popular in philosophy of cognitive science. A key virtue they seemingly boast is that of meeting Ramsey's job description challenge. For this reason, structural representations appear tailored to play a clear representational role within cognitive architectures. Here, however, I claim that structural representations do not meet the job description challenge. This is because even our most demanding account of their functional profile is satisfied by at least some receptors, which paradigmatically fail the job description challenge. Hence, (...) the functional profile typically associated with structural representations does not identify representational posits. After a brief introduction, I present, in the second section of the paper, the job description challenge. I clarify why receptors fail to meet it and highlight why, as a result, they should not be considered representations. In the third section I introduce what I take to be the most demanding account of structural representations at our disposal, namely Gładziejewski's account. Provided the necessary background, I turn from exposition to criticism. In the first half of the fourth section, I equate the functional profile of structural representations and receptors. To do so, I show that some receptors boast, as a matter of fact, all the functional features associated with structural representations. Since receptors function merely as causal mediators, I conclude structural representations are mere causal mediators too. In the second half of the fourth section I make this conclusion intuitive with a toy example. I then conclude the paper, anticipating some objections my argument invites. (shrink)

Review of the books: Jerry A. Fodor. Concepts: Where Cognitive Science went wrong. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998, 174 pp., ISBN 0-19-823636-0. Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star. Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999, 377 pp., ISBN 0-262-02461-6.

Cognitive Robotics can be defined as the study of cognitive phenomena by their modeling in physical artifacts such as robots. This is a very lively and fascinating field which has already given fundamental contributions to our understanding of natural cognition. Nonetheless, robotics has to date addressed mainly very basic, low­level cognitive phenomena like sensory­motor coordination, perception, and navigation, and it is not clear how the current approach might scale up to explain high­level human cognition. In this paper we argue that (...) a promising way to do that is to merge current ideas and methods of 'embodied cognition' with the Russian tradition of theoretical psychology which views language not only as a communication system but also as a cognitive tool, that is by developing a Vygotskyan Cognitive Robotics. We substantiate this idea by discussing several domains in which language can improve basic cognitive abilities and permit the development of high­level cognition: learning, categorization, abstraction, memory, voluntary control, and mental life. (shrink)

Radical enactivists claim that cognition is split in two distinct kinds, which can be differentiated by how they relate to mental content. In their view, basic cognitive activities involve no mental content whatsoever, whereas linguistically scaffolded, non-basic, cognitive activities constitutively involve the manipulation of mental contents. Here, I evaluate how this dichotomy applies to imagination, arguing that the sensory images involved in basic acts of imaginations qualify as vehicles of content, contrary to what radical enactivists claim. To argue so, I (...) leverage what has appropriately been dubbed a “compare to prototype” argument. Hence, I will first identify, within the enactivist literature, the general functional profile of a vehicle of content complying with the austere standard of contentfulness radical enactivists adhere to. Provided such a profile, I will show, relying on a mixture of reasoning and empirical evidence, that basic sensory images satisfy it, and thus that they can rightfully be identified as vehicles of content. This, I claim, provides a sufficient reason to identify the sensory images involved in basic acts of imagination as vehicles of content, thereby denying that basic imagination does not involve mental content. (shrink)

Jesse Prinz (2006, 2007) claimed that emotions are necessary and sufficient for moral judgments. First of all, I clarify what this claim amounts to. The view that he labels emotionism will then be critically assessed. Prinz marshals empirical findings to defend a series of increasingly strong theses about how emotions are essential for moral judgments. I argue that the empirical support upon which his arguments are based is not only insufficient, but it even suggests otherwise, if properly interpreted. My criticism (...) is then extended to his sentimentalist theory, that accounts for how emotions are integrated into moral judgments. The central problem is that Prinz’s view fails to capture the rational aspect of moral evaluation. I make this failure explicit and defend that some version or other of neosentimentalism is a more promising route. (shrink)

The notion of schema has been given a major role by Recanati within his conception of primary pragmatic processes, conceived as a type of associative process. I intend to show that Recanati’s considerations on schemata may challenge the relevance theorist’s argument against associative explanations in pragmatics, and support an argument in favor of associative (versus inferential) explanations. More generally, associative relations can be shown to be schematic, that is, they have enough structure to license inferential effects without any appeal to (...) genuine inferential processes. Associative processes are thus able to explain a number of pragmatic and linguistic phenomena which have instead been thought to require specialized inferential processes. (shrink)

I discuss Clark’s predictive processing/extended mind hybrid, diagnosing a problem: Clark’s hybrid suggests that, when we use them, we pay attention to mind-extending external resources. This clashes with a commonly accepted necessary condition of cognitive extension; namely, that mind-extending resources must be phenomenally transparent when used. I then propose a solution to this problem claiming that the phenomenal transparency condition should be rejected. To do so, I put forth a parity argument to the effect that phenomenal transparency cannot be a (...) necessary condition on cognitive extension: roughly, since internal cognitive resources can fail to be transparent when used, by parity, external resources can fail to be phenomenally transparent too. Further, I argue that phenomenal transparency is not even a reliable indicator of cognitive extension; hence its absence should not be considered a problem for Clark’s extended mind-predictive processing hybrid. Lastly, I consider and allay a number of worries my proposal might raise, and conclude the paper. (shrink)

This contribution consists of two parts. The first aims to clarify the structure of the nosology of psychopathologies that Kant proposes in the "Versuch über die Krankheiten des Kopfes". Such nosology consists of two series, arranged in ascending order, one relating to the social manifestations of madness, the other to its individual manifestations, which specifically concern the faculties of the soul. We will try to demonstrate the existence of a connection between these two series, and to illustrate how this occurs. (...) The second part of the contribution, on the other hand, intends to question the thesis according to which Kant in his "Versuch" provided a social aetiology of psychopathologies. We will show, in spite of this thesis, how society creates conditions only for the manifestation of these pathologies, and not for their production, which must instead be sought in the body. (shrink)

Introduzione alla raccolta di saggi di Rahel Jaeggi "Forme di vita e capitalismo", curata e tradotta da Marco Solinas. L'introduzione presenta una breve panoramica del pensiero dell'autrice e si sofferma sul suo progetto incentrato sulla critica immanente del capitalismo come forma di vita.

A obra de Dilthey desempenha um papel fundamental para a filosofia contemporânea, na medida em que Dilthey distingue duas esferas por meio das quais temos acesso ao todo da realidade: a experiência objetiva ( die Erfahrung ) e a vivência ( das Erlebnis ). É esta distinçáo que possibilita a Dilthey, em oposiçáo às ciências da natureza, conceber as condições de evidência e validade das ciências do espírito. Ainda que náo nomeada com estes termos, esta distinçáo vai estar na base (...) dos textos de muitos autores do final do século XIX e do século XX. Conquanto Dilthey elabore sua teoria no decorrer de uma vasta obra, nosso objetivo é reconstruir a distinçáo que ele estabelece a partir do modo como ele reinterpreta o princípio de razáo suficiente, conforme formulado por Leibniz e Wolff. Também procuramos mostrar, a seguir, como esta reinterpretaçáo permite a Dilthey opor, à esfera dos conhecimentos teóricos circunscrita por Kant, a esfera dos conhecimentos relativos à vivência. Assim, o argumento principal aqui exposto estabelece um vínculo entre o modo como Dilthey reinterpreta o princípio de razáo suficiente e o modo como reconstrói cientificamente a fundamentaçáo das ciências do espírito, concebendo-as a partir de uma relaçáo específica entre evidência e validade. (shrink)

What is, after all, the famous method of Descartes? The brief and vague passages devoted to this subject in Descartes’ corpus have always puzzled his readers. In this paper, I investigate not only the two essays in which it is directly addressed (the Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii, and the Discours de la Méthode), but also his scientific works and correspondence. I finally advocate an interpretation that makes the best sense of his overt comments as well as of his actual scientific (...) practice. Contrary to widely accepted views, I argue that there are no substantial discontinuities in his understanding of his own method, or between his theory and practice. I claim, by contrast, that Descartes advocated a minimal method: a method that says little, but that, nonetheless, marks a revolutionary rupture with the existing forms of explanation. (shrink)

The view that perceptual experience has representational content, or the content view, has recently been criticized by the defenders of the so-called object view. Part of the dispute, I claim here, is based on a lack of grasp of the notion of content. There is, however, a core of substantial disagreement. Once the substantial core is revealed, I aim to: (1) reject the arguments raised against the content view by Campbell (2002), Travis (2004), and Brewer (2006); (2) criticize Brewer’s (2006, (...) 2007, 2008, 2011) attempts to defend the object view; (3) refine Pautz’ (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011) arguments against the object view, which mainly resort to the fact that it cannot account for the grounding role of hallucinatory experiences; (4) and finally adjudicate in favor of the content view and against the overestimation of the naïve intuition. (shrink)

Zum Andenken an Marco Kleber und zum Weiterdenken geben wir diesen Band heraus. Er enthält seine noch nicht publizierte Masterarbeit, eine Skizze der unvollendeten Dissertation und weitere veröffentlichte und unveröffentlichte Artikel. Wir halten das für angemessen, weil diese Texte anspruchsvoll und innovativ sind. Thematisch kreisen sie um Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, dessen Logik und praktische Philosophie sprachanalytisch erweitert wird. Daran schließen sich Untersuchungen zur Sprachphilosophie von Ludwig Wittgenstein und zur Ökonomiekritik von Karl Marx an. Es folgen Texte zu aktuellen (...) Problemen der Globalisierung und zur Tierethik. Marco war keineswegs ein purer Philologe, sondern ein eigenständiger Philosoph, der sich mit den gegenwärtigen Krisen auseinandergesetzt hat. (shrink)

AI-based technologies are increasingly pervasive in a number of contexts. Our affective and emotional life makes no exception. In this article, we analyze one way in which AI-based technologies can affect them. In particular, our investigation will focus on affective artificial agents, namely AI-powered software or robotic agents designed to interact with us in affectively salient ways. We build upon the existing literature on affective artifacts with the aim of providing an original analysis of affective artificial agents and their distinctive (...) features. We argue that, unlike comparatively low-tech affective artifacts, affective artificial agents display a specific form of agency, which prevents them from being perceived by their users as extensions of their selves. In addition to this, we claim that their functioning crucially depends on the simulation of human-like emotion-driven behavior and requires a distinctive form of transparency—we call it emotional transparency—that might give rise to ethical and normative tensions. (shrink)

The standard view of classical cognitive science stated that cognition consists in the manipulation of language-like structures according to formal rules. Since cognition is ‘linguistic’ in itself, according to this view language is just a complex communication system and does not influence cognitive processes in any substantial way. This view has been criticized from several perspectives and a new framework (Embodied Cognition) has emerged that considers cognitive processes as non-symbolic and heavily dependent on the dynamical interactions between the cognitive system (...) and its environment. But notwithstanding the successes of the embodied cognitive science in explaining low-level cognitive behaviors, it is still not clear whether and how it can scale up for explaining high-level cognition. In this paper we argue that this can be done by considering the role of language as a cognitive tool: i.e. how language transforms basic cognitive functions in the high-level functions that are characteristic of human cognition. In order to do that, we review some computational models that substantiate this view with respect to categorization and memory. Since these models are based on a very rudimentary form of non-syntactic ‘language’ we argue that the use of language as a cognitive tool might have been an early discovery in hominid evolution, and might have played a substantial role in the evolution of language itself. (shrink)

This paper aims to engineer the concept of biomimetic design for its application in agricultural technology as an innovation strategy to sustain non-human species’ adaptation to today’s rapid environmental changes. By questioning the alleged intrinsic morality of biomimicry, a formulation of it is sought that goes beyond the sharp distinction between nature as inspiration and the human field of application of biomimetic technologies. After reviewing the main literature on Responsible Innovation, we support Vincent Blok’s “eco-centric” perspective on biomimicry, which considers (...) the human and natural worlds as indistinguishable parts of a shared Earth. We propose this approach as a complement to the “evomimetic” critique, which warns biomimetic research against the limits of adaptationism. By merging these two reframing of the biomimicry concept, we thus pave the way for a new understanding of the use of human-inspired technology (such as artificial intelligence) to help the “evolution” of domesticated species into (semi)autonomous natural-technological hybrids. In particular, the examples we consider concern the potential of AI-enabled robotic bases in technological beekeeping. (shrink)

Since the early days of physics, space has called for means to represent, experiment, and reason about it. Apart from physicists, the concept of space has intrigued also philosophers, mathematicians and, more recently, computer scientists. This longstanding interest has left us with a plethora of mathematical tools developed to represent and work with space. Here we take a special look at this evolution by considering the perspective of Logic. From the initial axiomatic efforts of Euclid, we revisit the major milestones (...) in the logical representation of space and investigate current trends. In doing so, we do not only consider classical logic, but we indulge ourselves with modal logics. These present themselves naturally by providing simple axiomatizations of different geometries, topologies, space-time causality, and vector spaces. (shrink)

Some philosophers search for the mark of the cognitive: a set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions identifying all instances of cognition. They claim that the mark of the cognitive is needed to steer the development of cognitive science on the right path. Here, I argue that, at least at present, it cannot be provided. First (§2), I identify some of the factors motivating the search for a mark of the cognitive, each yielding a desideratum the mark is supposed (...) to satisfy (§2.1). I then (§2.2) highlight a number of tensions in the literature on the mark of the cognitive, suggesting they’re best resolved by distinguishing two distinct programs. The first program (§3) is that of identifying a mark of the cognitive capturing our everyday notion of cognition. I argue that such a program is bound to fail for a number of reasons: it is not clear whether such an everyday notion exists; and even if it existed, it would not be able to spell out individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for cognition; and even if it were able to spell them out, these conditions won’t satisfy the desiderata a mark of the cognitive should satisfy. The second program is that of identifying a mark of the cognitive spelling out a genuine scientific kind. But the current state of fragmentation of cognitive science, and the fact that it is splintered in a myriad of different research traditions, prevent us from identifying such a kind. And we have no reason to think that these various research traditions will converge, allowing us to identify a single mark. Or so, at least, I will argue in (§4). I then conclude the paper (§5) deflecting an intuitive objection, and exploring some of the consequences of the thesis I have defended. (shrink)

Many philosophers claim that the neurocomputational framework of predictive processing entails a globally inferentialist and representationalist view of cognition. Here, I contend that this is not correct. I argue that, given the theoretical commitments these philosophers endorse, no structure within predictive processing systems can be rightfully identified as a representational vehicle. To do so, I first examine some of the theoretical commitments these philosophers share, and show that these commitments provide a set of necessary conditions the satisfaction of which allows (...) us to identify representational vehicles. Having done so, I introduce a predictive processing system capable of active inference, in the form of a simple robotic “brain”. I examine it thoroughly, and show that, given the necessary conditions highlighted above, none of its components qualifies as a representational vehicle. I then consider and allay some worries my claim could raise. I consider whether the anti-representationalist verdict thus obtained could be generalized, and provide some reasons favoring a positive answer. I further consider whether my arguments here could be blocked by allowing the same representational vehicle to possess multiple contents, and whether my arguments entail some extreme form of revisionism, answering in the negative in both cases. A quick conclusion follows. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to try to understand the role of pornography through a number of different channels, namely: the work of art and technology. To understand how the work of art passed from an erotic position to a pornographic one, with explicitly political motivations. To this end, our main references are Walter Benjamin’s work The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility (1936) and Polly Barton’s Porn: An Oral History (2023). -/- O presente artigo (...) tem por objetivo elaborar uma tentativa de compreender o papel da pornografia através de algumas instâncias, nomeadamente da obra de arte e da tecnologia. Compreender como a obra de arte passou de uma posição erótica para uma posição pornográfica com motivações explicitamente políticas. Para isso, temos como principal referência o texto de Walter Benjamin, A obra de arte na era de sua reprodutibilidade técnica (1936) e o texto de Polly Barton, Porn: An Oral History (2023). (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine two important issues concerning the agency theory of causality: the charge of anthropomorphism and the relation of simultaneous causation. After a brief outline of the agency theory, sections 2–4 contain the refutation of the three main forms in which the charge of anthropomorphism is to be found in the literature. It will appear that it is necessary to distinguish between the subjective and the objective aspect of the concept of causation. This will (...) lead, in section 5, to contrast two kinds of anthropomorphism, one which has been rightly rejected by modern science and one which is fully compatible with the objective reality of the causal processes. Finally, section 6 will apply the preceding considerations to simultaneous causation. On the one hand, in a basic sense, there can be no simultaneous causal relations. On the other hand, simultaneous causation arises when we consider the natural change by abstracting from the agent and from her/his projects of interven.. (shrink)

In the philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and psychology, the causal relationship between phenomenal consciousness, mentation, and brain states has always been a matter of debate. On the one hand, material monism posits consciousness and mind as pure brain epiphenomena. One of its most stringent lines of reasoning relies on a ‘loss-of-function lesion premise,’ according to which, since brain lesions and neurochemical modifications lead to cognitive impairment and/or altered states of consciousness, there is no reason to doubt the mind-brain identity. On (...) the other hand, dualism or idealism (in one form or another) regard consciousness and mind as something other than the sole product of cerebral activity pointing at the ineffable, undefinable, and seemingly unphysical nature of our subjective qualitative experiences and its related mental dimension. Here, several neuroscientific findings are reviewed that question the idea that posits phenomenal experience as an emergent property of brain activity, and argue that the premise of material monism is based on a logical correlation-causation fallacy. While these (mostly ignored) findings, if considered separately from each other, could, in principle, be recast into a physicalist paradigm, once viewed from an integral perspective, they substantiate equally well an ontology that posits mind and consciousness as a primal phenomenon. (shrink)

According to the interpretational theory of logical validity (IR), logical validity is preservation of truth in all interpretations compatible with the intended meaning of logical expressions. IR suffers from a seemingly defeating objection, the so-called cardinality problem: any instance of the statement ‘There are n things’ is true under all interpretations, since it can be written down using only logical expressions that are not to be reinterpreted; yet ‘There are n things’ is not logically true. I argue that the cardinality (...) problem is indeed a serious problem for IR, when understood in terms of ‘asymmetry of information’. I then argue that IR can be rehabilitated by making quantifiers context-sensitive: what we do not reinterpret is the Kaplanian character of a quantifier, rather than its content. ‘There are n things’ is false in a context where fewer than n things are relevant, so it is not logically true in IR. I finally discuss some objections and ramifications of my account: I discuss how to make space for the possibility of an explicitly absolutely general quantifier in my framework, how terms can be logical even though context-sensitive, and how to recapture classical logic within my framework. (shrink)

Recent advancements in the brain sciences have enabled researchers to determine, with increasing accuracy, patterns and locations of neural activation associated with various psychological functions. These techniques have revived a longstanding debate regarding the relation between the mind and the brain: while many authors claim that neuroscientific data can be employed to advance theories of higher cognition, others defend the so-called ‘autonomy’ of psychology. Settling this significant issue requires understanding the nature of the bridge laws used at the psycho-neural interface. (...) While these laws have been the topic of extensive discussion, such debates have mostly focused on a particular type of link: reductive laws. Reductive laws are problematic: they face notorious philosophical objections and they are too scarce to substantiate current research at the intersection of psychology and neuroscience. The aim of this article is to provide a systematic analysis of a different kind of bridge laws—associative laws—which play a central, albeit overlooked role in scientific practice. (shrink)

"Der Aufsatz zielt darauf, der Prozess der historischen Überlagerung, Substitution und Verbreitung des theoretischen Paradigmas der Depression gegenüber jenem der Melancholie darzustellen. Im ersten Teil wird versucht, einige der einschneidenden Eigenschaften der Thematisierungen der Melancholie in der Frühen Neuzeit anzugeben, auch im Verhältnis zum Geist des Kapitalismus. Nachdem eine Skizze der Entstehung der moderne Kategorie der Depression, geht es darum, den Verlauf nachzuzeichnen, der im 20. Jahrhundert zu ihrer Transformation in ein weitläufiges theoretisches Paradigma geführt hat, das schließlich jenes der (...) Melancholie ersetzt hat. Der zweite Teil stellt den Versuch dar, eine Zeitdiagnose umzureißen: An dieser Stelle ist die psychosoziale Bedeutung bestimmter sozioökonomischer und kultureller Mechanismen zu untersuchen, unter besonderem Hinweis auf das, was als »der neue Geist des Kapitalismus« bezeichnet worden ist, sowie auf neue Formen des Individualismus und ihre paradoxen Dynamiken. Abschließend wird eine Brücke geschlagen, zwischen der Geschichte der beiden bezeichneten Paradigmen und der zeitgenössischen psychosozialen Dynamiken, die mit dem als »depressive Epidemie« interpretierten Phänomen verbunden sind. -/- The essay aims to analyse the gradual historical process of the partial overlap, replacement and expansion of the theoretical paradigm of depression with respect to that of melancholy. The first part is devoted to analysing some of the central features of the multivalent thematizations of melancholy drawn up during modernity, also with relation to the spirit of capitalism (in its Weberian acceptation). This is followed by an overview of the birth of the modern category of depression, and the process that during the twentieth century led to its transformation into a theoretical and nosological paradigm which in the end replaced that of melancholy. The second part is the attempt to draw up a Zeitdiagnose: the aim is to assess the ‘depressive’ psychosocial impact exercised by particular socio-economic mechanisms and cultural trends, with particular reference to what has been defined as the ‘new spirit of capitalism’, as well as the new forms of individualism and their paradoxical dynamics. In conclusion, I will form a bridge between the history of the two aforesaid paradigms and the contemporary psychosocial dynamics correlated to the phenomenon today interpreted as a ‘depression epidemic’.". (shrink)

Festival is a performative dimension of cultural praxis that strengthens bonds of cohesion in society. Festivals are also an integral part of religious praxis. They have the potentiality of bringing its adherents and non-adherents together thus creating and sustaining social communion among them. This reality of sustaining social communion confirms an important function of religion in society with particular reference to its social integrative effects. Therefore, this article assesses how religious festival, Christmas, fosters social integration among Igbos in Nigeria. On (...) a related note, many Igbos, see Christmas festival as unique occasion for them to visit their communities; attend meetings of their associations and/or town unions and consolidate family ties. These are opportunities for building social integrations, otherwise denoted as social communion in this research. This work makes use of critical analysis of relevant texts and questionnaire survey methods as means of gathering materials and data for this research. In view of understanding how Christmas festival aids social communion among the Igbo ethnic group, the theories of structural functionalism, social capital and social integration are being utilised as theoretical frameworks for this study. Finally, this study avers that religious festival cements social communion between the Igbos in Calabar Metropolis and their ancestral communities. (shrink)

The article is focused on Honneth’s teleology of history, presented as a historical process of gradual realization of an immanent normative ‘telos’, and not only as a form of axiological evaluation...

What are fictional emotions and what has phenomenology to say about them? This paper argues that the experience of fictional emotions entails a splitting of the subject between a real and a phantasy ego. The real ego is the ego that imagines something; the phantasy ego is the ego that is necessarily co-posited by any experience of imagining something. Fictional emotions are phantasy emotions of the phantasy ego. The intentional structure of fictional emotions, the nature of their fictional object, as (...) well as the process of constituting the phantasy ego in representificational acts of consciousness are further elaborated to provide the groundwork for a phenomenological analysis of fictional emotions. (shrink)

Since the publication of Kitcher’s influential paper The Division of Cognitive Labor, some philosophers wondered about these two related issues: (1) which is the optimal distribution of cognitive efforts among rival methods within a scientific community?, and (2) whether and how can a community achieve such an optimal distribution? Though not committing to any specific answer to question (1), I claim that issue (2) does not depend exclusively on an invisible hand like mechanism, since both intra-scientific and extra-scientific institutions may (...) play a major role. Finally, I examine some practical difficulties of reallocating scientists from a method to another, which leads to stress the importance of well-planned training and recruitment. (shrink)

The extended mind thesis claims that a subject’s mind sometimes encompasses the environmental props the subject interacts with while solving cognitive tasks. Recently, the debate over the extended mind has been focused on Markov Blankets: the statistical boundaries separating biological systems from the environment. Here, I argue such a focus is mistaken, because Markov Blankets neither adjudicate, nor help us adjudicate, whether the extended mind thesis is true. To do so, I briefly introduce Markov Blankets and the free energy principle (...) in Section 2. I then turn from exposition to criticism. In Section 3, I argue that using Markov Blankets to determine whether the mind extends will provide us with an answer based on circular reasoning. In Section 4, I consider whether Markov Blankets help us track the boundaries of the mind, answering in the negative. This is because resorting to Markov Blankets to track the boundaries of the mind yields extensionally inadequate conclusions which violate the parity principle. In Section 5, I further argue that Markov Blankets led us to sidestep the debate over the extended mind, as they make internalism about the mind vacuously true. A brief concluding paragraph follows. (shrink)

Within the field of neuroscience, it is assumed that the central nervous system is divided into two functionally distinct components: the brain, which does the cognizing, and the spinal cord, which is a conduit of information enabling the brain to do its job. We dub this the “Cinderella view” of the spinal cord. Here, we suggest it should be abandoned. Marshalling recent empirical findings, we claim that the spinal cord is best conceived as an intrabodily cognitive extension: a piece of (...) biological circuitry that, together with the brain, constitutes our cognitive engine. To do so, after a brief introduction to the anatomy of the spinal cord, we briefly present a number of empirical studies highlighting the role played by the spinal cord in cognitive processing. Having so done, we claim that the spinal cord satisfies two popular and often endorsed criteria used to adjudicate cases of cognitive extension; namely the parity principle and the so-called “trust and glue” criteria. This, we argue, is sufficient to vindicate the role of the spinal cord as an intrabodily mental extension. We then steel our case considering a sizable number of prominent anti-extension arguments, showing that none of them poses a serious threat to our main claim. We then conclude the essay, spelling out a number of far-from trivial implications of our view. (shrink)