Ignorance is often a perfectly good excuse. There are interesting debates about whether non-culpable factual ignorance and mistake subvert obligation, but little disagreement about whether non-culpable factual ignorance and mistake exculpate. What about agents who have all the relevant facts in view but fail to meet their obligations because they do not have the right moral beliefs? If their ignorance of their obligations derives from mistaken moral beliefs or from ignorance of the moral significance of the facts they have in (...) view, should they be excused for failing to meet their moral obligations? It is not obvious that they should. In this paper we argue that the best non-skeptical accounts of moral responsibility acknowledge that factual ignorance and mistake will diminish moral responsibility in a way that moral ignorance and mistake will not. That is because factual ignorance is often non-culpable so long as it meets certain merely procedural epistemic standards but the same is not true of moral ignorance. Our argument is that the assumption that it is gets the standards of culpability for moral ignorance wrong, and that the mistake is encouraged by the thought that culpability in general requires an instance of known wrongdoing: that acting wrongly requires de dicto unresponsiveness to one’s obligations at some stage. We deny this and conclude that, therefore, ignorance and mistaken belief are indeed often perfectly good excuses – but far less often than some philosophers claim. (shrink)

In 1969 Harry Frankfurt published his hugely influential paper 'Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility' in which he claimed to present a counterexample to the so-called 'Principle of Alternate Possibilities' ('a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise'). The success of Frankfurt-style cases as counterexamples to the Principle has been much debated since. I present an objection to these cases that, in questioning their conceptual cogency, undercuts many of those debates. Such cases (...) all require a counterfactual mechanism that could cause an agent to perform an action that he cannot avoid performing. I argue that, given our concept of what it is for someone to act, this requirement is inconsistent. Frankfurt-style alleged counterexamples are cases where an agent is morally responsible for an action he performs even though, the claim goes, he could not have avoided performing that action. However, it has recently been argued, e.g. by John Fischer, that a counterexample to the Principle could be a 'Fischer-style case', i.e. a case where the agent can either perform the action or do nothing else. I argue that, although Fischer-style cases do not share the conceptual flaw common to all Frankfurt-style cases, they also fail as counterexamples to the Principle. The paper finishes with a brief discussion of the significance of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. (shrink)

Reasons can play a variety of roles in a variety of contexts. For instance, reasons can motivate and guide us in our actions (and omissions), in the sense that we often act in the light of reasons. And reasons can be grounds for beliefs, desires and emotions and can be used to evaluate, and sometimes to justify, all these. In addition, reasons are used in explanations: both in explanations of human actions, beliefs, desires, emotions, etc., and in explanations of a (...) wide range of phenomena involving all sorts of animate and inanimate substances. This diversity has encouraged the thought that the term 'reason' is ambiguous or has different senses in different contexts. Moreover, this view often goes hand in hand with the claim that reasons of these different kinds belong to different ontological categories: to facts (or something similar) in the case of normative/justifying reasons, and to mental states in the case of motivating/explanatory reasons. In this paper I shall explore some of the main roles that reasons play and, on that basis, I shall offer a classification of kinds of reasons. As will become clear, my classification of reasons is at odds with much of the literature in several respects: first, because of my views about how we should understand the claim that reasons are classified into different kinds; second, because of the kinds into which I think reasons should be classified; and, finally, because of the consequences I think this view has for the ontology of reasons. (shrink)

The specific role of empeiria in Aristotle’s ethics has received much less attention than its role in his epistemology, despite the fact that Aristotle explicitly stresses the importance of empeiria as a requirement for the receptivity to ethical arguments and as a source for the formation of phronêsis.1 Thus, while empeiria is an integral part of all explanations that scholars give of the Aristotelian account of the acquisition of technê and epistêmê, it is usually not prominent in explanations of the (...) acquisition of phronêsis.2 The abundant mentions of empeiria in Aristotle’s ethical treatises are often eclipsed in the secondary literature... (shrink)

In this paper we introduce two issues relevantly related to the cognitive phenomenology debate, which, to our minds, have not been yet properly addressed: the relation between access and phenomenal consciousness in cognition and the relation between conscious thought and inner speech. In the first case, we ask for an explanation of how we have access to thought contents, and in the second case, an explanation of why is inner speech so pervasive in our conscious thinking. We discuss the prospects (...) of explanation for both sides of the debate and argue that cognitive phenomenology defenders are in an overall advantageous position. We also propose an account of inner speech that differs from other influential explanations in some interesting respects. (shrink)

Many philosophers endorse “exclusionism”, the view that no instance of relearning qualifies as a case of genuine remembering, and vice versa. Appealing to simulationist, distributed causalist, and trace minimalist theories of remembering, I develop three conditional arguments against exclusionism. First, if simulationism is right to hold that some cases of remembering involve reliance on post-event testimonial information, then remembering does not exclude relearning. Second, if distributed causalism is right to hold that memory traces are promiscuous, then remembering does not exclude (...) relearning. Finally, if trace minimalism is right to hold that vicarious experiences sometimes produce the minimal traces that ground remembering, then remembering does not exclude relearning. While advocates of these theories might incorporate additional conditions designed to accommodate exclusionism, the only reason they can appeal to in favor of doing so is intuition: neither the fundamental components of the theories nor the empirical results on which they are based provide a reason to endorse exclusionism. An investigation of exclusionism thus raises metaphilosophical questions, so far overlooked in philosophy of memory, about the appropriate role of intuition in theorizing about remembering. (shrink)

How should we characterize the nature of conscious occurrent thought? In the last few years, a rather unexplored topic has appeared in philosophy of mind: cognitive phenomenology or the phenomenal character of cognitive mental episodes. In this paper I firstly present the motivation for cognitive phenomenology views through phenomenal contrast cases, taken as a challenge for their opponents. Secondly, I explore the stance against cognitive phenomenology views proposed by Restrictivism, classifying it in two strategies, sensory restrictivism and accompanying states. On (...) the one hand, I problematize the role of attention adopted by sensory restrictivism and I present and discuss in detail an argument that defends the limitation of sensory phenomenology so as to explain the distinction between visual and cognitive mental episodes on the basis of immediate experience. On the other hand, I address accompanying states views by discussing the empirical studies of Hurlburt et al. (2006, 2008) that defend the existence of “unsymbolized thinking”. I present how they can be construed as evidence for cognitive phenomenology views and I dispel some problems that have been raised against its acceptance. I thus conclude that cognitive phenomenology views hold up well against the restrictivist positions considered. (shrink)

In what ways and how far does virtue shield someone against suffering evils? In other words, how do non-moral evils affect the lives of virtuous people and to what extent can someone endure evils while staying happy? The central purpose of this chapter is to answer these questions by exploring what Aristotle has to say about the effects of evils in human well-being in general and his treatment of extreme misfortunes.

Two conceptions of motivating reasons, i.e. the reasons for which we act, can be found in the literature: (1) the dominant 'psychological conception', which says that motivating reasons are an agent's believing something; and (2) the 'non-psychological' conception, the minority view, which says that they are what the agent believes, i.e. his beliefs. In this paper I outline a version of the minority view, and defend it against what have been thought to be insuperable difficulties - in particular, difficulties concerning (...) 'error cases' (cases where what the agent believes is false); and difficulties concerning the explanation of action. Concerning error cases, I argue that if we are motivated by something believed that is true, what motivates us to act is a motivating reason. By contrast, if we are motivated by something believed that is false, then what motivates us to act is merely an apparent motivating reason. Either way, what motivates us is, as the non-psychological conception says, what we believe and not our believing it. I offer an account of the relation between motivating reasons and the explanation of action, and argue that this account helps bring out two important points. One is that the fact that we often do, and indeed sometimes must, use explanations such as 'He did it because he believed that p' does not vindicate the psychological conception of motivating reasons. The other is that endorsing the non-psychological conception of motivating reasons does not commit one to a non-factive view of explanations of action. (shrink)

The value of testimony as a source of knowledge has been a subject of epistemological debates. The "trust theory of testimony" suggests that human testimony is based on an affective relationship supported by social norms. However, the advent of generative artificial intelligence challenges our understanding of genuine testimony. The concept of "quasi-testimony" seeks to characterize utterances produced by non-human entities that mimic testimony but lack certain fundamental attributes. This article analyzes these issues in depth, exploring philosophical perspectives on testimony and (...) the implications of conversational AI technologies on our epistemic practices. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a way of characterizing human agency in terms of the concept of a two‐way power. I outline this conception of agency, defend it against some objections, and briefly indicate how it relates to free agency and to moral praise‐ and blameworthiness.

This paper seeks a better understanding of the elements of practical reasoning: premises and conclusion. It argues that the premises of practical reasoning do not normally include statements such as ‘I want to ϕ’; that the reasoning in practical reasoning is the same as in theoretical reasoning and that what makes it practical is, first, that the point of the relevant reasoning is given by the goal that the reasoner seeks to realize by means of that reasoning and the subsequent (...) action; second, that the premises of such reasoning show the goodness of the action to be undertaken; third, that the conclusions of such reasoning may be actions or decisions, that can be accompanied by expressions of intention, either in action, or for the future; and that these are justified, and might be contradicted, in ways that are not only peculiar to them (i.e. in ways that diverge from those found in theoretical reasoning), but are distinctively practical, in that they involve reference to reasons for acting and to expressions of intention, respectively.1. (shrink)

In this paper I examine some of the positive epistemic and moral dimensions of anger in Plato’s dialogues. My aim is to show that while Plato is clearly aware that retaliatory anger has negative effects on people’s behavior, the strategy we find in his dialogues is not to eliminate anger altogether; instead, Plato aims to transform or rechannel destructive retaliatory anger into a different, more productive, reformative anger. I argue that this new form of anger plays a crucial positive role (...) in our intellectual and moral development. In relation to our intellectual development, anger is often part of people’s reactions to the Socratic interrogations and it often helps or hinders attempts to acknowledge one’s ignorance and become motivated to learn. For anger to play a positive role in the context of philosophical conversations, Plato suggests its transformation from being an outward-looking and reactive emotion oriented towards retaliation (refutation), into a mostly inward-looking emotion aimed at ones’ own moral and intellectual reform or self-betterment. In relation to our moral progress, anger is strategically linked both to the control of our appetites and to the virtue of courage, so anger is crucial to the psychology of the good citizen. Concretely, anger is needed both for the development of the right opposition to injustice and greed, and for the formation of an adequate sensitivity to justice. (shrink)

Cancer research is experiencing ‘paradigm instability’, since there are two rival theories of carcinogenesis which confront themselves, namely the somatic mutation theory and the tissue organization field theory. Despite this theoretical uncertainty, a huge quantity of data is available thanks to the improvement of genome sequencing techniques. Some authors think that the development of new statistical tools will be able to overcome the lack of a shared theoretical perspective on cancer by amalgamating as many data as possible. We think instead (...) that a deeper understanding of cancer can be achieved by means of more theoretical work, rather than by merely accumulating more data. To support our thesis, we introduce the analytic view of theory development, which rests on the concept of plausibility, and make clear in what sense plausibility and probability are distinct concepts. Then, the concept of plausibility is used to point out the ineliminable role played by the epistemic subject in the development of statistical tools and in the process of theory assessment. We then move to address a central issue in cancer research, namely the relevance of computational tools developed by bioinformaticists to detect driver mutations in the debate between the two main rival theories of carcinogenesis. Finally, we briefly extend our considerations on the role that plausibility plays in evidence amalgamation from cancer research to the more general issue of the divergences between frequentists and Bayesians in the philosophy of medicine and statistics. We argue that taking into account plausibility-based considerations can lead to clarify some epistemological shortcomings that afflict both these perspectives. (shrink)

En este artículo se argumenta que el procedimentalismo epistémico de Estlund, en tanto que modelo democrático, requiere de disposiciones éticas mínimas que no son explicitadas en la propuesta. Para mostrar este punto, aborda la propuesta de Estlund desde la noción de modelo democrático de Macpherson. Con esto, se advierte que las disposiciones éticas mínimas que configurarían una base ética implícita en el procedimentalismo epistémico serían tres: una disposición frente al conocimiento que involucra el proceso; otra frente al procedimiento democrático mismo; (...) y, finalmente, una frente al reconocimiento de la legitimidad de los resultados. (shrink)

In our everyday interaction with the environment, we often perceive objects and spaces as opportunities to feel, maintain, enhance, and change our affective states and processes. The concept of affective affordance was coined to accommodate this aspect of ordinary perception and the many ways in which we rely on the material environment to regulate our emo- tions. One natural way to think of affective affordances in emotion regulation is to interpret them as tools for regulating felt affective states. We argue (...) that this way of conceiving of affective affordances is too restrictive. By analyzing the role of expressive properties of objects and spaces in emotion regulation, we show that our environment does not need to elicit felt affective states to regulate our emotions. Thus, we revise the concept of affective affordance to accommodate these cases. This revised concept explains more with less. Hence, it should be preferred in wide-reaching philosophical projects that aim to explain human affectivity as a situated phenomenon. (shrink)

Se plantea el problema de la existencia de una campo científico -el geográfico - para el cual existen candidaturas e disciplinas determinadas como la Geografía Física, La Humana, la R egional y la Universal, etc. Se plantea la diferencia entre ciencias naturales y humanas, así como entre ciencias texonómicas y ciencias mereológicas, como marcos de análisis para las ciencias geográficas.

Phenomenal contrast arguments (PCAs) are normally employed as arguments showing that a certain mental feature contributes to (the phenomenal character of) experience, that certain contents are represented in experience and that kinds of sui generis phenomenologies such as cognitive phenomenology exist. In this paper we examine a neglected aspect of such arguments, i.e., the kind of mental episodes involved in them, and argue that this happens to be a crucial feature of the arguments. We use linguistic tools to determine the (...) lexical aspect of verbs and verb phrases – the tests for a/telicity and for duration. We then suggest that all PCAs can show is the presence of a generic achievement-like phenomenology, especially in the cognitive domain, which contrasts with the role that PCAs are given in the literature. (shrink)

Philosophers of embodied and situated cognition have provided convincing explanations of what objects do in affective processes (e.g., in emotion regulation). They have often used the concept of 'affective affordance' to account for the affective role of objects but it is not clear how this concept relates to other concepts of affordance, in particular those used in empirical works in cognitive science. We start to fill this gap by providing a new definition of affective affordances and we suggest a possible (...) way to test this novel theoretical construct through a kinematic analysis of hand movements. (shrink)

Baruch Spinoza famously said, “Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God, nothing can be, or be conceived”. This form of Pantheism is quite like eastern Pantheism, where in Hinduism they assert that “everything is Brahma”, or in Taoism, where Lao Tzu says, “Heaven and I were created together, and all things and I are one”. Although the western and eastern world shared their respective ideas of Pantheism, Native Americans also contributed to such discussion. However, comparative philosophy between western and (...) Native American philosophy has been far neglected, and the same neglect has been shown regarding Native American contribution to Pantheism. Many Indigenous religions believe that there is a Great Spirit that is manifested as a life force or energy that communicates and speaks through nature. In other words, some Native American tribes believe that nature, or in extension the universe, is part of a Great Spirit that communicates to individuals in a naturalistic way. Such a Great Spirit created the world and is in everything that the Great Spirit created. Moreover, there are other Indigenous beliefs that not only hold a Pantheistic view but hold a Panentheistic perspective where God is a being that is present in creation but transcends from it. Therefore, although Indigenous beliefs about Pantheism or Panentheism have been much neglected, there is much to say about it. With such input from Native American religious culture, this paper seeks to show and compare Spinoza’s Pantheism and that of Native Americans. In addition, I wish to investigate in what ways Native American philosophy contributes to the discussion of cosmology, nature, and Pantheism. In particular, how do some Native American tribes understand God in a Pantheistic sense where nature and cosmology are one. (shrink)

En este artículo se emplea la epistemología del testimonio kantiana para analizar el concepto de _akrasia _epistémica (es decir, creer que p cuando se tienen motivos de orden epistémico para sostener que ¬p) en el caso de las teorías conspirativas. Se señala que las personas suelen mantener esa clase de discursos por motivos sociales (e.g. Pertenecer a un grupo que comparte esas ideas) antes que por una genuina incomprensión de la evidencia como tal, de modo que el problema es fundamentalmente (...) moral. Ante esto, se indica que la akrasia epistémica es primeramente una forma de akrasia moral que explica a través del autoengaño, en tanto que ningún agente moral quiere tenerse a sí mismo como malo. Por consiguiente, se puede afirmar que, desde el punto de vista de la audiencia, el sostener un testimonio que contenga teorías conspirativas en un asunto ético en principio, aunque con consecuencias epistémicas evidentes. _Palabras clave: akrasia epistémica, testimonio, teorías conspirativas, epistemología kantiana, autoengaño. (shrink)

En este artículo nos proponemos reconstruir las bases de la teoría política calviniana. Intentaremos comprender cómo define el reformador al sujeto político de su teología, donde es definido como Pueblo de Dios. A través de una Teología de la Alianza Calvino establece los términos de un contrato político en el que las instituciones humanas son queridas y establecidas por Dios. A continuación, veremos que el Estado cristiano según Calvino es la plataforma desde la que se promueve el conocimiento de la (...) Voluntad divina, a través de la predicación y la positivación de leyes conformes a la misma. Finalmente, veremos que las ideas del reformador sobre la organización y la naturaleza de la política tuvieron en Ginebra una realización evidente. Ni sus textos ni sus acciones nos permiten calificar a Calvino de constitucionalista o republicano, sino más bien de hombre de orden y defensor de la tradición del derecho divino de los reyes. (shrink)

Imagine a sculptor who molds a lump of clay to create a statue. Hylomorphism claims that the statue and the lump of clay are two different colocated objects that have different forms, even though they share the same matter. Recently, there has been some discussion on the requirements of consistency for hylomorphist theories. In this paper, we focus on an argument presented by Maegan Fairchild, according to which a minimal version of hylomorphism is inconsistent. We argue that the argument is (...) unsound or, at best, it just points to a well-known problem for hylmorphist theories. Additionally, we explore some general consequences of this fact. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss what the first phases of the long history of the transformation of Political in the Spiritual patria consisted of and those who made the development possible. In this essay the main protagonists will be Cicero and Saint Augustine. We will see how St. Augustine could complete the transformation of Cicero's political ideal not only theoretically but practically. St. Augustine's great work can be understood to be a replica of Cicero's Republic in which the City (...) of God is made into the Dream of Scipio and the Church occupies the place of the res publica. The theologizing of the political concepts is taken from the modernization process which Schmitt defined as illegitimate politics of the process of secularization of theoretical concepts. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In this text, we are going to try to introduce a few brief notes - without excessive pretensions -, concerning those things that, from a historical and also from an intellectual and point of view, surround the figures of Robert Owen, Fourier or Saint Simon. Certainly, intellectually, our sources do not let us notice a very specific influence on the "utopian socialists" of the 19th Century. It will be very difficult to find historical evidence. However, what we can do (...) is to assume the French Revolution of 1789 as a turning point for the radical traditions, both British and Continental, to introduce Romanticism as the real source from which the utopian nineteenth-century thought was derived from. Then, Romanticism is where we will be able to read something about Robert Owen. Likewise, we will approach a very succinct reading of paleo-socialism, focusing on the context of the British Islands where the Industrial Revolution took place to become another great event in the lifetime of the "utopian socialists". Key words: Christianity, Modernity, Industrialism, Utopian Socialism, Socialism, Rationality, History. (shrink)

Carl Schmitt suele ser considerado un crítico de la modernidad por sostener que los principales conceptos de la teoría del Estado son conceptos teológicos secularizados. En este trabajo pretendemos poner de manifiesto que la importancia que Schmitt concede a la teología es aún mayor. En efecto, la secularización se refiere a los conceptos claves de la teoría del Estado, pero la política es previa al Estado. Y para establecer sus categorías, Schmitt se sirve de la teología: el carácter conflictivo o (...) pacífico del hombre remite al pecado original; el dilema amigo/enemigo a la elección entre Dios y el diablo, etc. Exploraremos el .alcance de estas analogías, intentando mostrar el carácter inerradicablemente teológico del pensamiento de Schmitt. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In its historical deployment, socialist thought has attracted the attention of numerous experts and thinkers. The results reached from the above mentioned efforts, are quite irregular in fact. These studies are very often linked the marxist tradition, that shifted its identity to label previous social reformers as "utopian socialists". Specifically, our academic Spanish tradition has traditionally been dependant -historically and intellectually- on other Continental currents of thought. We state, that the preeminence and fundamental influence on our Spanish culture in (...) the Iberian Peninsula, has traditionally had its origin here, between modernity and industrialism, in France. Consistently, contributions concerning authors like Saint-Simon, Fourier or Cabet do exist. However, it is necessary to say that there is a bibliographical and very significant emptiness around one of the most relevant figures of European history in the 19th Century. Such emptiness has to do with the absence of publications concerning Robert Owen and his meaning in Spanish. Key words: Christianity, Modernity, Industrialism, Utopian Socialism, Socialism, Rationality, History. (shrink)

The story of the Ship of Theseus is one of the most venerable conundrums in philosophy. Some philosophers consider it a genuine puzzle. Others deny that it is so. It is, therefore, an open question whether there is or there is not a puzzle in the Ship of Theseus story. So, arguably, it makes sense to test empirically whether people perceive the case as a puzzle. Recently, David Rose, Edouard Machery, Stephen Stich and forty-two other researchers from different countries have (...) undertaken that task. We argue that their tests do not provide any evidence that bears on the question as to whether the Ship of Theseus case is a genuine puzzle. In our discussion we address also what should be taken into account if one wishes to test the puzzling, or not puzzling, status of the Ship of Theseus story. (shrink)

Authors deal with theoretical and social contexts of the teaching profession as a starting point for empirical research into ethical relationships among Slovak primary and secondary school teachers. They surveyed the opinions of teachers at that level regarding their relationship with students, parents, colleagues and superiors. According to the research results, more than 80% of respondents positively rate the behaviour of teachers towards their students and parents from the viewpoint of realising ethical values, based on which they could be an (...) ethical model for their students. The level of relationships among colleagues received a less optimistic rating. They were, however, much more critical in evaluating their superiors. Only approximately 60% of the members of school management could be an ethical model for other teachers. (shrink)

This work was my theses to get the MA in Philosophy. Their focus is the ethics implied in digital culture and networked society. Themes are Ethics, culture, technology, political control, autonomous systems.

Sometimes subjects have sufficient internal and external resources to retrieve information stored in memory, in particular information that carries socially charged content. Yet, they fail to do so: they forget it. These cases pose an explanatory challenge to common explanations of forgetting in cognitive science. In this paper, I take this challenge and develop a new explanation of these cases. According to this explanation, these cases are best explained as cases of norm-induced forgetting: cases in which forgetting is caused by (...) social norms in a relevant sense. These cases draw attention to the normative aspects of the mechanisms of forgetting. This is an important but neglected aspect of cases of everyday forgetting, in particular of those characterized by a social dimension. By investigating some ways in which the psychology of social norms is causally relevant in the mechanisms of retrieval failure, I begin to fill this gap. (shrink)

In this paper I consider whether it is possible to cause an event by letting it happen.

In Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes argues that one cannot trust one’s senses since they are not a reliable source of obtaining knowledge of the world. One of Descartes’s main contentions to support such an argument is from his explanation of dreams, where one can feel one is awake but instead one is dreaming. Native Americans, however, may argue that the experiences one has in dreams are real and are a source of knowledge of the real world. Although Descartes (...) uses dreams to support his argument, some Native Americans have a different take on dreams. Dreams for Native Americans are a source of knowledge as well as a source for obtaining one’s identity. Gregory Cajete, in American Indian Thought, notes that “Dreams and Visions are a natural means for accessing knowledge and establishing relationship to the world. They are encouraged and facilitated.” In other words, it is through dreams that individuals are guided, destined, and informed. Therefore, dreams as understood by some Native Americans are an extension of reality that anticipate events that will happen or can happen. The focus of this paper is an exploration of the philosophical and religious epistemology pertaining to Native Americans as described in their accounts of dreams. (shrink)

The International Conference "Tra rito e mito: il Carnevale nella cultura europea" was held online on the 16th and 17th of November 2020. We present twenty-two contributions coming from various fields of the Humanities and written in Italian, French, and German. This proceedings’ foreword traces back the thread that links these essays one with another, i.e., carnivalesque imagery between ritual and mythological dimensions. Moreover, this introduction provides a key to an interpretation of Carnival as a founding instance, both regenerative and (...) conservative, of the European identity. Recovering this instance today, in the midst of a pandemic, responds to the problem of its partial loss in contemporary society, in the hope to rebuild a “free and familiar contact among people”. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es dar noticia de la recepción del pragmatismo en la obra y el pensamiento de Eugenio d’Ors, reuniendo algunos resultados de nuestros trabajos preceden- tes2. Dedicamos una primera parte a describir el encuentro de Eugenio d’Ors con el pragmatismo. En segundo lugar describimos su conexión con William James a quien llegó a conocer en París. En tercer lugar, damos cuenta de en qué consiste la denominada “superación del pragmatismo” por parte de Eugenio d’Ors y, por (...) último, señalamos las afinidades más relevantes de su pensamiento con algunas de las intuiciones más originales del pragmatismo de Charles S. Peirce. (shrink)

L'etica, secondo Wittgenstein, ha a che fare con la mostrazione di un modo di vivere, inteso vuoi come disposizione complessiva del soggetto, vuoi come "habitus". In questo libro, Marta Cassina ripercorre le forme di questa mostrazione nell'opera del filosofo, argomentando, in primo luogo, che il modo di vivere indicato nel "Tractatus" come il contrassegno indicibile della vita giusta e felice debba essere compreso, man mano che il pensiero di Wittgenstein matura, come un "fare" e un uso condiviso della vita; (...) che questo uso, inoltre, possa essere letto nelle sue implicazioni teoretiche e nella maniera della sua genesi attraverso le "lenti" della credenza religiosa e della grammatica del voto di fede. (shrink)

This book provides a critical reflection on automated science and addresses the question whether the computational tools we developed in last decades are changing the way we humans do science. More concretely: Can machines replace scientists in crucial aspects of scientific practice? The contributors to this book rethink and refine some of the main concepts by which science is understood, drawing a fascinating picture of the developments we expect over the next decades of human-machine co-evolution. The volume covers examples from (...) various fields and areas, such as molecular biology, climate modeling, clinical medicine, and artificial intelligence. The explosion of technological tools and drivers for scientific research calls for a renewed understanding of the human character of science. This book aims precisely to contribute to such a renewed understanding of science. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: In the present text, we are going to introduce a series of notes without excessive pretensions. In these pages, we will try to study figures like Cabet, Fourier or Saint - Simon, and we will do so in order to achieve better understanding concerning their own historical and their own intellectual context. Consequently and leaving our papers on Robert Owen behind, we plan to set special emphasis on the European Continent now. In a special way, we raise awareness on (...) the very significant role that these "utopian socialists" played between modernity and industrial modernity, and also between the 18th and 19th Centuries. Key words: Christianity, Modernity, Industrialism, Utopian Socialism, Socialism, Rationality, History. (shrink)

In this paper, I will investigate the notion of mind within the “Extended Mind” theory, as it is defended by Andy Clark. The aim is to provide an explanation of its key ideas and to highlight some of its consequences. In the first part I will briefly explain the main features of Clark's theory. In the second part, I will discuss his account of the nature of language and its relationship to cognition, and I will relate it with the arguments (...) for cognitive and mental extension. Then I will use my analysis of Clark's arguments in order to individuate some problems, which characterize his philosophical position. Although I am sympathetic with his theory, I will argue that it is nonetheless committed to a narrow account of cognition and mind. For this reason, I will propose a way to integrate Clark's theory within a semiotic and pragmatist framework inspired by C.S. Peirce. I suggest that, if we conceive the cognition as a semiotic sense-making process, we can provide a broad account of cognition and a fully externalist position about the mind. (shrink)

This chapter describes the concept of enactive memory, which is quite new but increasingly discussed in contemporary philosophy of memory. Although the enactive approach has been used to investigate several memory sys- tems, e.g., procedural memory, episodic mem- ory, and autobiographical memory, this chapter focuses only on the enactive approach to epi- sodic memory because most of the current debate on enactive memory is about this mem- ory system. Section “Introduction” specifies what type of enactive memory is discussed in this (...) chapter. Section “The Concept of Enactive Memory” introduces the concept of enactive memory, clarifies its central theoretical com- mitments and goals, and describes how enactivists have explained episodic remember- ing. Section “The Philosophical Context of Enactive Memory” provides a brief contextu- alization of the enactive approach to memory with respect to approaches and theories with which, for one reason or another, it shares some theoretical insights, like the embodied, the extended, and the distributed approach, and the simulation theory. Section “Forgetting as a Challenge for Enactive Memory” explains why forgetting poses an important explanatory challenge to the enactive approach to memory and describes one philosophical proposal that has been developed to address this challenge. Section “Summary” provides a summary of the chapter, mentions some ongoing projects on enactive memory, and identifies some topics that advocates of the enactive approach to memory may want to investigate in the future. (shrink)

Are occurrent states of forgetting literal experiences of absences? I situate this question within the debate on mental time travel (MTT) to understand whether these states can be explained as literal experiences of absent episodic memories. To frame my argument, I combine Barkasi and Rosen’s literal approach to MTT with Farennikova’s literal approach to the perception of absences, showing that both are built on the idea that for an experience to be literal it must afford an unmediated contact with the (...) object that constitutes it. I test the idea that forgetting affords literal experiences of mnemonic absences by considering different views of absence perception and I evaluate whether the objections raised against Farennikova’s approach also apply to my exploratory idea. I show that, while the idea resists the objections that an advocate of a cognitive approach to mnemonic absences may raise, the same does not apply to those elaborated by advocates of a metacognitive approach. Even if conceiving of occurrent states of forgetting as literal experiences of mnemonic absences sounds appealing, this idea is misleading. Therefore, I suggest conceiving of occurrent states of forgetting as states with metacognitive features, which track the absence of episodic memories from awareness in an affectively mediated way. (shrink)

Who is Pulcinella? What does his laughter have to say about the "end of time" and the end of life of Giandomenico Tiepolo? How can the end of a life make anyone laugh like Carnival’s popular mask does? This article tries to answer such questions. By unfolding the tools that come from the realm of Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy – notably the notion of "recapitulation of time" in its relation to comedy – we will trace a path which links Michail Bachtin’s (...) theories on the carnivalesque culture together with a recognition in the aesthetics of "character". In this encounter, the consistency of Pulcinella-King Carnival’s form of life will appear in the light of an “escape route”: it winks at a kind of general and anonymous beatitude, which pairs with the experience of the destitution of time. (shrink)