Climate change is today one of the greatest risks to peace and security, but arguably remains at the margins of policy action amid the loss of trust in multilateral institutions. The impacts of climate change are already felt by local communities in regions on the frontline. While communities have exercised agency to generate local impact and promote trust, the overwhelming impact of climate change necessitates effective state responses, and regional and global cooperation. Global cooperation, in turn, needs to better address (...) the challenges to peace and security faced by regions most exposed to the impacts of climate change. Southeast Asia is already experiencing direct climate change impacts from changes in temperature, precipitation, sea-level rise, ocean warming, and more frequent and intense extreme weather events. The subsequent indirect climate change impacts on food and water security, and changes in natural resource exploitation and migration patterns, affect the lives and livelihoods of people and communities across the highly diverse region and threaten its peace and security. In Southeast Asia, the cross-cutting impacts of climate change on peace and security can be analysed through the framework of comprehensive security. Comprehensive security is the organising concept of security in the region, integrated and widely reflected in the security lexicon in the ASEAN region and beyond. Unlike the conventional notion of security, which is narrowly defined to mean defending state borders from military attack, comprehensive security is a much broader conceptualisation of security that “[goes] beyond (but does not exclude) the military threats to embrace the political, economic and socio-cultural dimensions.". (shrink)

Climate change is today one of the greatest risks to peace and security, but arguably remains at the margins of policy action amid the loss of trust in multilateral institutions. The impacts of climate change are already felt by local communities in regions on the frontline. While communities have exercised agency to generate local impact and promote trust, the overwhelming impact of climate change necessitates effective state responses, and regional and global cooperation.2 Global cooperation, in turn, needs to better address (...) the challenges to peace and security faced by regions most exposed to the impacts of climate change. Southeast Asia is already experiencing direct climate change impacts from changes in temperature, precipitation, sea-level rise, ocean warming, and more frequent and intense extreme weather events. The subsequent indirect climate change impacts on food and water security, and changes in natural resource exploitation and migration patterns, affect the lives and livelihoods of people and communities across the highly diverse region and threaten its peace and security. (shrink)

Quand on se penche sur l’héritage philosophique de Turing, deux risques se posent. Le premier, c’est de le réduire à son test célèbre (Turing 1950). Ce qui a toutefois le mérite de la clarté. N’importe qui peut reconnaître la contribution en question et la situer dans le débat important sur la philosophie de l’intelligence artificielle. Le second risque est de le diluer dans un récit universel, faisant des idées deTuring les graines de tout ce que nous faisons et savons aujourd’hui. (...) Ceci a l’avantage de reconnaître la grandeur de ce génie. Cependant, dans un cas comme dans l’autre, nous allons probablement moins identifier les contributions conceptuelles deTuring qui nous ont aidés à forger un discours philosophique contemporain et qui méritent d’être approfondies et développées. Pour éviter ces deux risques, je me concentrerai dans les pages suivantes sur trois leçons philosophiques spécifiques, qui me semblent particulièrement significatives pour l’émergence de la philosophie de l’information et ses développements. Je ne propose pas ici une analyse philologique ni savante,mais un exercice minimaliste, herméneutique. Façon de faire écho àla démarche deTuring et de rendre hommage àson génie extraordinaire :ses interprètes n’ont pas fini de tirer parti de son héritage intellectuel. Je souhaite qu’un jourTuring devienne aussi important que Frege dans notre canon philosophique. (shrink)

Nel contributo, partendo da una prospettiva teoretica, ci si prefigge di analizzare i rapporti fra la filosofia indiana di Śaṃkara (il massimo filosofo del Vedānta, vissuto nell’VIII sec. d. C.) e il pensiero di Bergson. Da un simile punto di vista diviene infatti possibile una riflessione critica e interpretativa sui testi dei due autori, utile a chiarire alcuni problemi ermeneutici del pensiero śaṃkariano. Reciprocamente, la conoscenza del pensiero di Śaṃkara permette di illuminare e chiarire aspetti problematici della filosofia bergsoniana, in (...) particolare il rapporto fra materia e memoria e l’autentico significato di élan vital. Il saggio utilizza il concetto di advaita (non-dualità) - uno degli elementi chiave della filosofia vedantica – verso un superamento del dualismo materia/spirito, così come è stato affrontato anche dal filosofo francese nel xx secolo. Per svolgere questa interpretazione si approfondiscono poi i concetti di coscienza nei due filosofi, e la nozione di brahman-ātman intesa come trascendentale “non kantiano”, nella logica di smarcamento dalla prospettiva kantiana che era l’obiettivo dichiarato fin dai primi sviluppi della filosofia bergsoniana, contenuti nell’opera del 1889, Saggio sui dati immediati della coscienza. (shrink)

Paolo Barbò da Soncino conosciuto anche come il „Soncinas" (Soncinate) fu un domenicano italiano, filosofo e teologo tomista. Visse durante il periodo del rinascimento italiano nel XV secolo tra Bologna e Milano, morto a Cremona nel 1495. La suo apiù importante opera è proprio il commento alla Metafisica di Aristotele (Acutissimae quaestiones metaphysicales, 1 ed. Venezia 1498) che rappresenta una particolare sintesi del commentatore arabo Averrè, Tommaso d'Aquino, Erveo Natale († 1323) e Giovanni Capreolo († 1444). L'opera filosofica del (...) Soncinate era spesso discusso tra il XVI e XVII secolo. Il libro offre la prima biografia scientifica dell'autore in italiano, e l'edizione critica del suo commento al IV libro della Metafica di Aristotele in latino. -/- Paolo Barbò da Soncino called "Soncinas" was an Italian Dominican, Thomist philosopher and theologian. His life and work fall within the ambit of Italian Renaissance Thomism of the fifteenth century, between Bologna and Milano, died in 1495 in Cremona. His principal work, the exposition of Aristotle's Metaphysics, (Acutissimae quaestiones metaphysicales 1 ed. Venice 1498) proceeds from a particular synthesis of the Arabic commentator Averroes, Thomas Aquinas, Hervaeus Natalis (d. 1323), and John Capreolus (d. 1444). Soncinas' work and position were frequently discussed from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. This study offers the first scientific biography, description and analysis of the method, sources and doctrine of Soncinas, in particular the critical Latin edition of the 4th book of his Acutissimae Quaestiones Metaphysicales (the exposition of Aristotle's Metaphysics). (shrink)

At the very beginning of On Interpretation (I, 1, 16a3-14) Aristotle distinguishes four levels and discusses their relationships. From this text, we can infer the following: 1. There are four levels: writing, speaking, mental experience and external world. Since writing and speaking can truly be taken as belonging to the same realm, we can reduce Aristotle’s distinction to three realms: language, thought and external world. 2. The realm of language, in both levels of writing and speaking, is different for different (...) people but both of the other realms of thought and external world are the same for them. By this Aristotle must mean that though people of different languages have different writings and speaking words, the things that are in the world and their affections on people’s thought are the same. 3. The relations both between language and thought and in language itself is symbolization: ‘Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words.’ 4. The relation between external world and thought is similarity: ‘Those things of which our mental experiences are similarities (παθἠματα τῆς ψυχῆς ... ὁμοιώματα).’ (ΟΙ., 16a7) In de Anima (16a8-9; II, 5, 418a4-5; II, 4, 429a10-11; 429a13-16; 429a23) Aristotle describes thoughts as ‘likenesses of objects.’ Paolo Crivelli says that in these addresses Aristotle believe that ‘a thought is of an object just if it is a likeness of it’ and ‘to be a likeness of an object is to be the result of a process of likening of which that object is a cause.’ This, Crivelli believes, is indeed the basis of the sameness of the objects of thoughts: they are results of the same processes of likening by the same objects. 5. There is a correspondence between nouns and verbs on the one hand and objects of thought without co-positing and positing away on the other hand: ‘Nouns themselves and verbs are like objects of thought (νοἠματι) without co-positing and positing away.’ (OI, I, 1, 16a13-14) A. Relationship between external world and thought The following can be inferred from Aristotle’s works about the relationship between thought and external world: 1. ‘The soul is in a way all existing things; for existing things are either sensible or thinkable, and knowledge is in a way what is knowable, and sensation is in a way what is sensible.’ (So., Γ, 8, 431b21-23) In fact, ‘within the soul the faculties of knowledge and sensation are potentially these objects, the one what is knowable, the other what is sensible.’ (So., Γ, 8, 431b26-27) 2. It is the form of the external objects that are in thought (So., Γ, 8, 431b26-29) and the objects of thought are in the sensible forms, viz. both the abstract objects and all the states and affections of sensible things (ἐν τοῖς εἴδεσι τοῖς αἰσθητοῖς τὰ νοητὰ ἐστι, τά τε ἐν ἀφαιρέσει λεγόμενα, καὶ ὃσα τῶν αἰσθητῶν ἓξις καὶ πάθη). (So., Γ, 8, 432a3-6) 3. While external objects are perishable, objects of thought seem to be eternal. (PrA., A, 33, 47b21-22) B. Relationship between language and the external world 1. There is a correspondence between the external world and the true statements about them: ‘If it is true to say that a thing is white, it must necessarily be white; if the reverse proposition is true, it will of necessity not be white.’ (OI, I, 9, 18a39-b5) 2. While external objects ‘does seem in some way the cause of’ the truth or falsity of lingual statements, ‘the true statement is in no way the cause of the actual thing’s existence.’ (Cat., 12, 14b18-22; cf. OI, I, 9, 18b36-19a6) Thus, the external objects reciprocate as to implication of existence with the corresponding true statement about them and thus are prior to them.’ (Cat., 12, 14b11-23) 3. The opposition between an affirmation and negation corresponds to an opposition in the external world between the objects underlying those statements. (Cat., 10, 12b6-15) 4. The correspondence of the whole structure of the external world and language for Aristotle is so that in analyzing the language he shows himself as analyzing the external world. It is in fact a very crucial and controversial dispute whether Aristotle’s philosophy in its very decisive parts is theorizing about language or about external world. In most of his important theories, he begins with discussing language. In fact, language is where he enters the discussion and, in many cases, where he finishes it. In these cases, he either does not discuss external world at all or only derives some principles or conclusions about it. In some other cases he begins from language but ends in external world. a) Daniel W. Graham thinks that language is Aristotle’s ‘model of the world.’ He refers to ‘subjecthood’ as what formally characterizes primary substance and explains how it bases reality in Aristotle: while to be an absolute subject is equal to be fully real, to be a predicate of a subject is equal to be real. ‘Language is not merely a tool to get around in the world; it reveals the structure of the world … the deep structure of language is isomorphic with the world… In this word, logic can reveal connections between elements because language and the world have a form in common. He lists Trendelenburg (1846, 11-13), Gillespie (1925) and (Ackrill (1963, 78-81) as those who have the same idea. b) Emphasizing on the force of τί in Aristotle’s statement when he says that assertions affirm something (τί) of something (τί) makes Peter Simpson (p. 85) to stress, in his interpretation of Jacob’s theory, on the ontological aspect of Aristotle’s philosophy. Jacob says that in his theory of predication, Aristotle focuses on ‘things’ and not words or concepts and predication is a relationship between extralinguistic entities rather than merely linguistic ones; something extralinguistic and ontological. c) Quoting Ackrill ((1963, 73): ‘the categories classify things, not words’) and Kahn ((1978, 248): ‘Aristotle never regards predication as a grammatical or linguistic relation of word to word, nor does he ever speak of subject and predicate as concepts united in judgment’), Fabio Morales says that Aristotle is not classifying predication in Categories but the attributes or properties these stand for.’ d) Graham thinks that the theory of synonymity-homonimity is not purely linguistic, since it is things rather than words that have these properties. (shrink)

The Louvre Museum is the largest of the world's art museums by its exhibition surface. These represent the Western art of the Middle Ages in 1848, those of the ancient civilizations that preceded and influenced it (Oriental, Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan and Roman), and the arts of early Christians and Islam. At the origin of the Louvre existed a castle, built by King Philip Augustus in 1190, and occupying the southwest quarter of the current Cour Carrée. In 1594, Henri IV decided (...) to unite the palace of the Louvre with the palace of the Tuileries built by Catherine de Medicis. The Cour Carrée was built by the architects Lemercier and then Le Vau, under the reign of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. The Department of Paintings currently has about 7,500 paintings (of which 3,400 are exposed), covering a period that goes from the Middle Ages to 1848 (date of the beginning of the Second Republic). By including the deposits, the collection is, with 12,660 works, the largest collection of ancient paintings in the world. With rare exceptions, the works after 1848 were transferred to the Musée d'Orsay when it was created in 1986. CONTENTS: Louvre Museum - Variety of exhibited works - The Royal Palace - The collections - - Eastern antiquities - - Arts of Islam - - Egyptian Antiquities - - Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities - - Paintings - - - French school - - - Northern Schools (Flanders, Netherlands, Germany) - - - Italian School - - - Other schools Painting - Definitions - Painting genres - - The landscape - - Still life Paintings - FRANCOIS BOUCHER - - Vulcan presenting arms to Venus for Aeneas - RAPHAEL - - Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione - RUBENS - - Helena Fourment with children - LOUIS DAVID - - Madame Récamier - REMBRANDT - - Portrait of Heindrickje Stoffels - VELAZQUEZ - - Portrait of the Infanta Margarita - SIMONE MEMMI - - Jesus Christ walking on Calvary - JAN STEEN - - The Bad Company - HANS HOLBEIN - - Erasmus - CORREGGIO - - Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine - LANCRET - - Conversation - JAN VAN DER MEER (VERMEER) - - The Lacemaker - VAN DYCK - - Charles I at the Hunt - FRANÇOIS CLOUET - - Elisabeth of Austria (1554-1592), Wife of Charles IX and Queen of France (1570 - 1574) - DELACROIX - - The Barque of Dante - EL GRECO - - Saint Louis, King of France, and a page - REMBRANDT - - Pilgrims at Emmaus (The Supper at Emmaus) - GERARD DAVID - - Marriage at Cana - RAPHAEL - - Portrait of Dona Isabel de Requesens, Vice-Queen of Naples - RUBENS - - La Kermesse (The Village Fête, or Noce de village) - FRANS HALS - - The Gypsy Girl - DECAMPS - - The Sonneurs - HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER - - Anne of Cleves - P. PRUD’HON - - Psyche transported to Heaven - PHILIPPE DE CHAMPAIGNE - - Portrait of Richelieu - LANCRET - - The Autumn - L. DAVID - - Madame Seriziat - COROT - - Recollection of Mortefontaine - LEONARDO DA VINCI - - La belle ferronnière - CORREGGIO - - Venus and Cupid with a Satyr - WATTEAU - - Pilgrimage to Cythera (The Embarkation for Cythera) - NICOLAS POUSSIN - - The Inspiration of the Poet - PRUD’HON - - The Empress Josephine (1763-1814) - FRAGONARD - - The Bathers - H. RIGAUD - - Louis XIV (1638–1715) - TERBURG - - The Concert - LEOPOLD ROBERT - - The Pilgrimage to the Madonna of the Arch - LARGILLIERE - - Family Portrait - MANTEGNA - - Parnassus - MEMLING - - The Virgin and Child between St James and St Dominic - FRAGONARD - - The Music Lesson - JEAN VAN EYCK - - The Virgin of chancellor Rolin - PAOLO VERONESE - - Susannah and the Elders - FRANÇOIS BOUCHER - - Diana leaving her bath - GÉRICAULT - - The Raft of the Medusa - MURILLO - - Assumption of the Virgin - CLAUDE GELLEE (LORRAIN) - - Ulysses returning Chryseis to her father (Marine, setting sun) - INGRES - - Madame Riviere - E. MURILLO - - The Young Beggar - GREUZE - - The Broken Pitcher - PIETER DE HOOCH - - Card players in an opulent interior - POUSSIN - - Et in Arcadia ego - QUENTIN MATSYS - - The moneylender and his wife - ANDREA SOLARIO - - Madonna with the Green Cushion - TITIEN - - Woman with a Mirror - DAVID TENIERS (the Younger) - - The Works of Mercy - LEONARDO DA VINCI - - Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) - Armand Dayot . (shrink)

Abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming the agricultural sector, enhancing both productivity and sustainability. This paper delves into the impact of AI technologies on agriculture, emphasizing their application in precision farming, predictive analytics, and automation. AI-driven tools facilitate more efficient crop and resource management, leading to higher yields and a reduced environmental footprint. The paper explores key AI technologies, such as machine learning algorithms for crop monitoring, robotics for automated planting and harvesting, and data analytics for optimizing resource use. Additionally, (...) it discusses challenges like data privacy, barriers to technology adoption, and the ethical implications of AI in farming. Integrating AI into agricultural practices holds the promise of greater efficiency and sustainability, paving the way for future innovations. (shrink)

The period from 1900 to 1935 was particularly fruitful and important for the development of logic and logical metatheory. This survey is organized along eight "itineraries" concentrating on historically and conceptually linked strands in this development. Itinerary I deals with the evolution of conceptions of axiomatics. Itinerary II centers on the logical work of Bertrand Russell. Itinerary III presents the development of set theory from Zermelo onward. Itinerary IV discusses the contributions of the algebra of logic tradition, in particular, Löwenheim (...) and Skolem. Itinerary V surveys the work in logic connected to the Hilbert school, and itinerary V deals specifically with consistency proofs and metamathematics, including the incompleteness theorems. Itinerary VII traces the development of intuitionistic and many-valued logics. Itinerary VIII surveys the development of semantical notions from the early work on axiomatics up to Tarski's work on truth. (shrink)

Scepticism about ought simpliciter is the view that there is no such thing as what one ought simpliciter to do. Instead, practical deliberation is governed by a plurality of normative standpoints, each authoritative from their own perspective but none authoritative simpliciter. This paper aims to resist such scepticism. After setting out the challenge in general terms, I argue that scepticism can be resisted by rejecting a key assumption in the sceptic’s argument. This is the assumption that standpoint-relative ought judgments bring (...) with them a commitment to act in accordance with those judgments. Instead, I propose an alternative account of our normative concepts according to which only ought simpliciter judgments commit one to acting in accordance with those judgments. In addition to answering the sceptical challenge, the proposal offers an independently motivated account of what makes a concept normatively authoritative. (shrink)

The literature on indicative conditionals contains two appealing views. The first is the selectional view: on this view, conditionals operate by selecting a single possibility, which is used to evaluate the consequent. The second is the informational view: on this view, conditionals don’t express propositions, but rather impose constraints on information states of speakers. Both views are supported by strong arguments, but they are incompatible on their standard formulations. Hence it appears that we have to choose between mutually exclusive options. (...) But the options are not exclusive. This paper develops a theory of the semantics and assertability of conditionals that is both selectional and informational. The theory vindicates the signature inferences of both selectional and informational theories, including so-called Conditionals Excluded Middle and principles about the interplay between conditionals and ‘might’. It also predicts some interesting and puzzling facts about the assertion of conditionals. (shrink)

This is the first chapter to our edited collection of essays on the nature and ethics of blame. In this chapter we introduce the reader to contemporary discussions about blame and its relationship to other issues (e.g. free will and moral responsibility), and we situate the essays in this volume with respect to those discussions.

O objetivo central deste estudo é fazer ressaltar as características dos conceitos de animismo, magia e feitiçaria a partir das perspectivas de Sigmund Freud e Bronislaw Malinowski. Em um primeiro momento, analisaremos o animismo. Em seguida, uma vez que as observações etnográficas de Malinowski divergem daquelas de Freud, examinaremos a magia e a feitiçaria com a finalidade de verificar não somente as divergências, mas também as convergências e as aproximações possíveis que existem entres estes dois pensadores e os próprios conceitos (...) entre si. Por fim, mostraremos o que está no centro dessas análises e quais são as razões que fundamentam esses métodos e as resistências que eles podem suscitar. (shrink)

Suppose that, yesterday at noon, Maria considered flipping a fair coin, but didn't. What probability do you assign to "If Maria had flipped the coin, the coin would have landed heads"? Now suppose that, contrary to fact, Maria did indeed flip the coin. In that counterfactual scenario, what is the probability of "The coin will land tails"? The two questions sound strikingly similar. I argue that they sound similar because they are equivalent. The chance of a counterfactual "If A, would (...) C" equals the chance of C, in the counterfactual scenario that A (and a similar principle holds for credence). This principle does better than similar principles that have been defended (like Skyrms' Thesis), avoids triviality, and gives us important clues for a semantics for counterfactuals. (shrink)

This paper motivates taking seriously the possibility that brains are basically protean: that they make use of neural structures in inventive, on-the-fly improvisations to suit circumstance and context. Accordingly, we should not always expect cognition to divide into functionally stable neural parts and pieces. We begin by reviewing recent work in cognitive ontology that highlights the inadequacy of traditional neuroscientific approaches when it comes to divining the function and structure of cognition. Cathy J. Price and Karl J. Friston, and Colin (...) Klein identify the limitations of relying on forward and reverse inferences to cast light on the relation between cognitive functions and neural structures. There is reason to prefer Klein’s approach to that of Price and Friston’s. But Klein’s approach is neurocentric - it assumes that we ought to look solely at neural contexts to fix cognitive ontology. Using recent work on mindreading as a case study, we motivate adopting a radically different approach to cognitive ontology. Promoting the Protean Brain Hypothesis, we posit the possibility that we may need to look beyond the brain when deciding which functions are being performed in acts of cognition and in understanding how the brain contributes to such acts by adapting to circumstance. (shrink)

This study reflects on Harold Kincaid and Jule Zahle’s view that there is no necessary association between methodological individualism and agent-based models because the analysis of social phenomena in terms of the latter cannot always be regarded as an implementation of the former. Their view remains in contention with the standpoint of several philosophers of science and social scientists, including Chen and Di Iorio. Kincaid and Zahle’s main argument against such a standpoint is that agent-based simulation is compatible with holistic (...) explanations that are at odds with methodological individualism. The following study argues that Kincaid and Zahle’s conclusion remains untenable since it stems from inaccurate historical assumptions concerning the tradition of methodological individualism and the way the individualism-holism debate is understood within this tradition. (shrink)

Some modal expressions in language—for example, "can" and "able'"—describe what is possible in light of someone's abilities. Ability modals are obviously related to other modalities in language, such as epistemic or deontic modality, but also give rise to anomalies that make them unique. This paper develops a general theory of ability modals that is broadly compatible with standard modal semantics, while predicting their peculiar behavior. The central idea is that ability modals include reference to a notion of dependence. At the (...) level of truth conditions, "S is able to A" simply says that there is a circumstantially accessible world where S As. On top of this, a not-at-issue element requires that whether S As depends, in part, on intrinsic features of S. Differently from most analyses, this account divorces ability modals from a notion of agency. (shrink)

Suppose that you're certain that a certain sentence, e.g. "Frida is tall", lacks a determinate truth value. What cognitive attitude should you take towards it—reject it, suspend judgment, or what else? We show that, by adopting a seemingly plausible principle connecting credence in A and Determinately A, we can prove a very implausible answer to this question: i.e., all indeterminate claims should be assigned credence zero. The result is striking similar to so-called triviality results in the literature on modals and (...) conditionals. (shrink)

Richard Rorty’s conception of literature has been criticised more than acclaimed. While Rorty certainly has impacted literary studies, a comprehensive account of his understanding of literature is still lacking. Moreover, while literature is seen as significant to his later work, the philosophical role this plays in Rortyan thought is underexamined and underappreciated. This paper aims to provide an account of the role of literature and the “literary” in Rorty’s philosophy and the functions he assigns to literature and poetry – in (...) a broad and narrow sense – in democratic cultures. Beginning with an account of Rorty’s conceptions of metaphor and “unfamiliar” language, it draws on this to explain Rorty’s parallel view of literature in the “narrower sense” as playing the same role in culture as metaphors do in language. “Stimulating” literature unsettles settled selves and beliefs and expands human imagination. Using Rorty’s readings of Lolita and 1984 as examples, it shows that to him, literature not only plays a part in increasing empathy and solidarity but has a distinct therapeutic epistemological task: it helps individuals and societies adopt a more pluralist, ironist, post-metaphysical outlook. Both are important democratic functions. For these reasons, Rorty recommends that we work to realise a “literary” culture that rejects any ontologically inflected distinctions between kinds of texts, where philosophy becomes comparative “literary” criticism, and we see literature in the “narrower sense” as equally necessary material for making selves, communities and just institutions as any philosophical or political treatise. (shrink)

Shaun Nichols has recently argued that while the folk notion of free will is associated with error, a question still remains whether the concept of free will should be eliminated or preserved. He maintains that like other eliminativist arguments in philosophy, arguments that free will is an illusion seem to depend on substantive assumptions about reference. According to free will eliminativists, people have deeply mistaken beliefs about free will and this entails that free will does not exist. However, an alternative (...) reaction is that free will does exist, we just have some deeply mistaken beliefs about it. According to Nichols, all such debates boil down to whether or not the erroneous folk term in question successfully refers or not. Since Nichols adopts the view that reference is systematically ambiguous, he maintains that in some contexts it’s appropriate to take a restrictivist view about whether a term embedded in a false theory refers, while in other contexts it’s appropriate to take a liberal view about whether a token of the very same term refers. This, according to Nichols, affords the possibility of saying that the sentence “free will exists” is false in some contexts and true in others. In this paper I argue that even if we grant Nichols his pluralistic approach to reference, there is still good reason to prefer eliminativism to preservationism with regard to free will. My argument focuses on one important difference between the concept of “free will” and other theoretical terms embedded in false theories—i.e., the role that the phenomenology of free agency plays in reference fixing. (shrink)

Reading or hearing about Theodor Adorno's ideas always results in quibbles. He strikes many as a naïve philosopher because of his reversal of concept and object; some see him as an anarchist because of his relentless critique of rationality; while to others he simply does not make sense, and especially a critique of society based on negative dialectics simply does not make sense to many! These points, however, are precisely some of the key elements of his thought; without a deeper (...) apprehension of these main themes, it would be impossible to arrive at a level-headed appraisal of his philosophy. (shrink)

On an influential line of thinking tracing back to Ramsey, conditionals are closely linked to the attitude of supposition. When applied to counterfactuals, this view suggests a subjunctive version of the so-called Ramsey test: the probability of a counterfactual If A, would B ought to be equivalent to the probability of B, under the subjunctive supposition that A. I present a collapse result for any view that endorses the subjunctive version of the Ramsey test. Starting from plausible assumptions, the result (...) shows that one’s rational credence in a would-counterfactual and in the corresponding might-counterfactual have to be identical. (shrink)

Can taxation and the redistribution of wealth through the welfare state be conceived as a modern system of circulation of the gift? But once such a gift is institutionalized, regulated and sanctioned through legal mechanisms, does it not risk being perverted or corrupted, and/or not leaving room for genuinely altruistic motives? What is more: if the market’s utilitarian logic can corrupt or ‘crowd out’ altruistic feelings or motivations, what makes us think that the welfare state cannot also be a source (...) of corruption? To explain the standard answers to the abovementioned questions as well as their implications I will first re-examine two opposing positions assumed here as paradigmatic examples of other similar positions: on the one hand, Titmuss’s work and the never-ending debate about it; on the other, Godbout’s position, in-so-far as it shows how Titmuss’s arguments can easily be turned upside down. I will then introduce and reinterpret Einaudi’s “critical point” theory as a more complex and richer anthropological explanation of the problems and answers considered herein. Through the analysis of these paradigmatic positions I will develop two interrelated arguments. 1) The way these problems are posed as well as the standard answers to them are: a) subject to fallacies: the dichotomy fallacy and the fallacy of composition; b) too reductive and simplistic: we should at least try to clarify what kind of ‘gift’ or ‘corruption’ we are thinking about, and who or what the ‘giver’, the ‘corrupter’, the ‘receiver’ and/or the ‘corrupted’ party are. 2) The answers to these problems cannot be found by merely following a theoretical approach, nor can they be merely based on empirical evidence; instead, they need to take into account the forever troublesome, ambiguous and unpredictable matter of human freedom. (shrink)

Free will skepticism maintains that what we do, and the way we are, is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the basic desert sense—the sense that would make us truly deserving of praise and blame. In recent years, a number of contemporary philosophers have advanced and defended versions of free will skepticism, including Derk Pereboom (2001, 2014), Galen Strawson (2010), Neil Levy (2011), Bruce Waller (2011, (...) 2015), and myself (Caruso 2012, 2013, forthcoming). Critics, however, often complain that adopting such views would have dire consequences for ourselves, society, morality, meaning, and the law. They fear, for instance, that relinquishing belief in free will and basic desert moral responsibility would leave us unable to adequately deal with criminal behavior, increase anti-social conduct, and undermine meaning in life. -/- In response, free will skeptics argue that life without free will and basic desert moral responsibility would not be as destructive as many people believe (see, e.g., Pereboom 2001, 2014; Waller 2011, 2015; Caruso 2016, forthcoming). According to optimistic skeptics, prospects of finding meaning in life or of sustaining good interpersonal relationships, for instance, would not be threatened. And although retributivism and severe punishment, such as the death penalty, would be ruled out, incapacitation and rehabilitation programs would still be justified (see Pereboom 2001, 2013, 2014; Levy 2012; Caruso 2016; Pereboom and Caruso, forthcoming). In this paper, I attempt to extend this general optimism about the practical implications of free will skepticism to the question of creativity. -/- In Section I, I spell out the question of creativity and explain why it’s relevant to the problem of free will. In Section II, I identify three different conceptions of creativity and explain the practical concerns critics have with free will skepticism. In Section III, I distinguish between three different conceptions of moral responsibility and argue that at least two of them are consistent with free will skepticism. I further contend that forward-looking accounts of moral responsibility, which are perfectly consistent with free will skepticism, can justify calling agents to account for immoral behavior as well as providing encouragement for creative activities since these are important for moral and creative formation and development. I conclude in Section IV by arguing that relinquishing belief in free will and basic desert would not mean the death of creativity or our sense of achievement since important and realistic conceptions of both remain in place. (shrink)

William Whewell raised a series of objections concerning John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of science which suggested that Mill’s views were not properly informed by the history of science or by adequate reflection on scientific practices. The aim of this paper is to revisit and evaluate this incisive Whewellian criticism of Mill’s views by assessing Mill’s account of Michael Faraday’s discovery of electrical induction. The historical evidence demonstrates that Mill’s reconstruction is an inadequate reconstruction of this historical episode and the scientific (...) practices Faraday employed. But a study of Faraday’s research also raises some questions about Whewell’s characterization of this discovery. Thus, this example provides an opportunity to reconsider the debate between Whewell and Mill concerning the role of the sciences in the development of an adequate philosophy of scientific methodology.Keywords: Inductivism; Experiment; Theory; Methodology; Electromagnetism. (shrink)

This paper examines the integration and unification of the philosophy and psychology of well-being. For the most part, these disciplines investigate well-being without reference to each other. In recent years, however, with the maturing of each discipline, there have been a growing number of calls to integrate the two. While such calls are welcome, what it means to integrate well-being philosophy and psychology can vary greatly depending on one’s theoretical and practical ends. The aim of this paper is to provide (...) a novel conceptual framework for thinking about integrating well-being philosophy and psychology that systematically categorizes different kinds of integration projects. We divide existing attempts in the literature into three broad categories according to the perspective from which the integration takes place: (1) top-down meta-theoretical unification; (2) psychological integration within philosophy; and (3) philosophical integration within psychology. These categories are then broken down into various further subcategories. Our aim in providing this framework is both to facilitate the assessment and comparison of existing integration attempts and to provide a roadmap for future integration attempts. For each category, we discuss one or two representative examples of the approaches. By doing so, we hope to generate interest in the wide variety of existing integration projects, as well as to generate discussion concerning the benefits and pitfalls of different approaches. (shrink)

The Plant Ontology (PO) (http://www.plantontology.org) (Jaiswal et al., 2005; Avraham et al., 2008) was designed to facilitate cross-database querying and to foster consistent use of plant-specific terminology in annotation. As new data are generated from the ever-expanding list of plant genome projects, the need for a consistent, cross-taxon vocabulary has grown. To meet this need, the PO is being expanded to represent all plants. This is the first ontology designed to encompass anatomical structures as well as growth and developmental stages (...) across such a broad taxonomic range. While other ontologies such as the Gene Ontology (GO) (The Gene Ontology Consortium, 2010) or Cell Type Ontology (CL) (Bard et al., 2005) cover all living organisms, they are confined to structures at the cellular level and below. The diversity of growth forms and life histories within plants presents a challenge, but also provides unique opportunities to study developmental and evolutionary homology across organisms. (shrink)

This paper will argue that there is no such thing as introspective access to judgments and decisions. I t won't challenge the existence of introspective access to perceptual and imagistic states, nor to emotional feelings and bodily sensations. On the contrary, the model presented in Section 2 presumes such access. Hence introspection is here divided into two categories: introspection of propositional attitude events, on the one hand, and introspection of broadly perceptual events, on the other. I shall assume that the (...) latter exists while arguing that the fonner doesn't . Section I makes some preliminary points and distinctions, and outlines the scope of the argument. Section 2 presents and motivates the general model of introspection that predicts a divided result. Section 3 provides independent evidence for the conclusion that judgments and decisions aren't introspectable. Section 4 then replies to a number of objections to the argument, the most important of which is made from the perspective of so-called "dual systems theories" of belief formation and decision making, The upshot is a limited form of eliminativism about introspection, in respect of at least two core categories of propositional attitude. (shrink)

We develop a conceptually clear, intuitive, and feasible decision procedure for testing satisfiability in the full multi\-agent epistemic logic \CMAELCD\ with operators for common and distributed knowledge for all coalitions of agents mentioned in the language. To that end, we introduce Hintikka structures for \CMAELCD\ and prove that satisfiability in such structures is equivalent to satisfiability in standard models. Using that result, we design an incremental tableau-building procedure that eventually constructs a satisfying Hintikka structure for every satisfiable input set of (...) formulae of \CMAELCD\ and closes for every unsatisfiable input set of formulae. (shrink)

In the sentence “Tom sits,” the name distinguishes Tom from anyone else, whereas the predicate assimilates Tom, Theaetetus, and anyone else to whom the predicate applies. The name marks out its bearer and the predicate groups together what it applies to. On that ground, his name is used to trace back Tom, and the predi- cate is used to describe and classify what it applies to. In both cases, the semantic link is a direct link between expressions and particulars. Here, (...) I will explore the workings of predicative names along the direction just hinted at. The analysis of predication has been less central to philosophical investigation than that of referen- tial expressions. Some problems have concerned the unity of the sentence—what makes us understand “The baby cries” as a sentence rather than a list of words? Other problems have been what a predicate was taken to stand for, properties and relations, and the understanding of either at the ontological level. If a predicate refers to a property or a relation, yet predication, which is central to our understand- ing of predicates, applies it to one or more particulars. On the background hinted at, these problems might be differently viewed. (shrink)

The publication of Guido Calabresi’s book “The Future of Law and Economics” has drawn a substantial amount of attention among law and economics scholars. We thought that the best way to devote special attention to this book was to devote a Special issue to it. This article situates Calabresi’s book among other reflections on the future of the discipline, introduces and explains the reasons behind this Special issue and discuss the organization and content of it. -/- We emphasize how Calabresi’s (...) historical-conceptual standpoint allows him to isolate the stakes of different future developments around the question of how could further appreciation of legal institutions that defy the standard economic assumptions help the field develop theoretically. Overall, the contributors all shared Calabresi’s attempt to restore the balance between Law and Economics and the need to better account for the “whole unanalysed experience of human race”, often neglected by the Economic Analysis of Law approach. Most disagreements are about the ‘how’. In any case, the search for the Law and Economics ‘not (yet) taken’ or for other “Law and … ” approaches is always open to the Future. (shrink)

Interview with professor Robert D Rupert.

This introduction explains the reasons behind this Special issue and discuss the organization and content of it. The difficulty of a genuine dialogue and understanding between economics, law and humanities, seems to be due not only to the fragmentation of reflections on man, but to a real ‘conflict of anthropologies’. What kind of conceptions of man and human values are presupposed by and / or privileged by economics, law, economic approaches to law and social sciences? How and when do these (...) conceptions come into conflict within and between disciplines? How do these conceptions of man and his values influence the conceptions of economics, law and institutions, and vice versa, how do these last conceptions influence the former? What are the normative, regulatory and practical implications of assuming an anthropological and / or axiological perspective instead of another? This Special issue aims at exploring the possibility of finding a common ground for discussion between economics, law and humanities, through the analysis and comparison of both the conceptions of man, human action and values assumed by economics, law and humanities, and their normative implications. The contributions to this Special issue and its organization are outlined at the end of this introduction. (shrink)

For several years the authors have been working in Detroit with grassroots coalitions resisting Emergency Management. In this essay, we focus on how community groups in Detroit and Flint advanced common struggles for clean, safe, affordable water as a human right, particularly during the period of 2014 to 2016. We explore how, through a series of direct interventions – including public meetings and international gatherings, independent journalism and social media, community-based research projects, and citizen-led policy initiatives – these groups contributed (...) to challenging neoliberal governance, to undermining the legitimacy of state officials and their policies, and to shifting public consciousness around the human right to water. (shrink)

The paper aims to address the following two questions: what kind of discourse is that which attempt to found or defend the autonomy or the boundaries of a discipline? Why do such discourses tend to turn into normative, dogmatic-excommunicating discourses between disciplines, schools or scholars? I will argue that an adequate answer may be found if we conceive disciplines as dogmatics, where such discourses often take the form of a discourse on the foundation of a discipline, a foundation in the (...) name of which the scholar speaks and with which he/she entertains an identity relationship. To this purpose I will re-examine the methodological discourses of (and debates between) Pareto, Croce and Einaudi on the demarcation issue between philosophy, economics and value-judgments as highly instructive to understand such issues. (shrink)

In this essay I intend to analyze the issue of good government in the works of Adam Smith, the importance of which seems to have not received due attention. The reconstruction is driven by three hermeneutical hypotheses concerning the role played by the idea of good government in the development of Smith's speculation: 1) the «good government» has a synthetic character, holding together the different aspects – moral, legal, economic and political – of his reflection; 2) it emerges against the (...) backdrop of the first acquisitions of the Theory of Moral Sentiments about the ‘mediating’ role of the middle class, and especially during the reflection that goes from the Lectures on Jurisprudence to the Wealth of Nations, and then feeds back into the subsequent rewritings of the Theory; 3) From the moment the «good government» appears, it becomes a descriptive and prescriptive idea of the social order. In the conclusions I will show how these hermeneutical hypotheses might have implications in the history of political, legal and economic thought. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes the relationship between methodological individualism (MI) and reductionism. While the latter term is mainly used in reference to MI with a negative meaning, i.e. as a synonym of a naively atomistic and non-structural approach, it is also, though rarely, used to couch MI in terms of a non-atomistic micro-foundationalism that is compatible with systemic explanations (e.g. Elster). This chapter investigates the legitimacy of the pejorative use of the term reductionism with respect to MI. Three points are developed. (...) First, the chapter argues that two different kinds of interpretation of MI in terms of naively atomistic reductionism can be distinguished: one in terms of psychological reductionism and the other in terms of semantic reductionism, the latter of which has a nominalist and an anti-nominalist variant. Second, the chapter explains why the different interpretations of MI in terms of naively atomistic reductionism are unfounded. Third, the chapter analyzes and criticizes the view that MI must be replaced by a new anti-reductionist approach understood as a middle ground between holism and MI. (shrink)

Large Language Models (LLMs) are generative AI systems capable of producing original texts based on inputs about topic and style provided in the form of prompts or questions. The introduction of the outputs of these systems into human discursive practices poses unprecedented moral and political questions. The article articulates an analysis of the moral status of these systems and their interactions with human interlocutors based on the Habermasian theory of communicative action. The analysis explores, among other things, Habermas's inquiries into (...) the analogy between human minds and computers, and into the status of atypical participants in the linguistic community such as genetically modified subjects and animals. Major conclusions are the LLMs seem to qualify as authors that originally participate in discursive practices but do display only a structurally derivative form of communicative competence and fail to meet the status of communicative agents. In this sense, while the contribution of AI writing systems in public discourse and deliberation can support the process of mutual understanding within the community of speakers, the human actors involved in the development, use, and diffusion of these systems share a collective responsibility for the disclosure of AI authorship and verification and adjudication of validity claims. (shrink)

The paper examines Posterior Analytics II 11, 94a20-36 and makes three points. (1) The confusing formula ‘given what things, is it necessary for this to be’ [τίνων ὄντων ἀνάγκη τοῦτ᾿ εἶναι] at a21-22 introduces material cause, not syllogistic necessity. (2) When biological material necessitation is the only causal factor, Aristotle is reluctant to formalize it in syllogistic terms, and this helps to explain why, in II 11, he turns to geometry in order to illustrate a kind of material cause that (...) can be expressed as the middle term of an explanatory syllogism. (3) If geometrical proof is viewed as a complex construction built on simpler constructions, it can in effect be described as a case of purely material constitution. (shrink)

Inspired by the early Wittgenstein’s concept of nonsense (meaning that which lies beyond the limits of language), we define two different, yet complementary, types of nonsense: formal nonsense and pragmatic nonsense. The simpler notion of formal nonsense is initially defined within Tarski’s semantic theory of truth; the notion of pragmatic nonsense, by its turn, is formulated within the context of the theory of pragmatic truth, also known as quasi-truth, as formalized by da Costa and his collaborators. While an expression will (...) be considered formally nonsensical if the formal criteria required for the assignment of any truth-value (whether true, false, pragmatically true, or pragmatically false) to such sentence are not met, a (well-formed) formula will be considered pragmatically nonsensical if the pragmatic criteria (inscribed within the context of scientific practice) required for the assignment of any truth-value to such sentence are not met. Thus, in the context of the theory of pragmatic truth, any (well-formed) formula of a formal language interpreted on a simple pragmatic structure will be considered pragmatically nonsensical if the set of primary sentences of such structure is not well-built, that is, if it does not include the relevant observational data and/or theoretical results, or if it does include sentences that are inconsistent with such data. (shrink)

Many recent theories of epistemic discourse exploit an informational notion of consequence, i.e. a notion that defines entailment as preservation of support by an information state. This paper investigates how informational consequence fits with probabilistic reasoning. I raise two problems. First, all informational inferences that are not also classical inferences are, intuitively, probabilistically invalid. Second, all these inferences can be exploited, in a systematic way, to generate triviality results. The informational theorist is left with two options, both of them radical: (...) they can either deny that epistemic modal claims have probability at all, or they can move to a nonstandard probability theory. (shrink)

Recent developments in generalized probability theory have renewed a debate about whether regularity (i.e., the constraint that only logical contradictions get assigned probability 0) should be a necessary feature of both chances and credences. Crucial to this debate, however, are some mathematical facts regarding the interplay between the existence of regular generalized probability measures and various cardinality assumptions. We improve on several known results in the literature regarding the existence of regular generalized probability measures. In particular, we give necessary and (...) sufficient conditions for the existence of regular generalized probability measures defined on the whole powerset of any sample space. (shrink)

It is well known that there are, at least, two sorts of cases where one should not prefer a direct inference based on a narrower reference class, in particular: cases where the narrower reference class is gerrymandered, and cases where one lacks an evidential basis for forming a precise-valued frequency judgment for the narrower reference class. I here propose (1) that the preceding exceptions exhaust the circumstances where one should not prefer direct inference based on a narrower reference class, and (...) (2) that minimal frequency information for a narrower (non-gerrymandered) reference class is sufficient to yield the defeat of a direct inference for a broader reference class. By the application of a method for inferring relatively informative expected frequencies, I argue that the latter claim does not result in an overly incredulous approach to direct inference. The method introduced here permits one to infer a relatively informative expected frequency for a reference class R', given frequency information for a superset of R' and/or frequency information for a sample drawn from R'. (shrink)

This paper develops an information-sensitive theory of the semantics and probability of conditionals and statements involving epistemic modals. The theory validates a number of principles linking probability and modality, including the principle that the probability of a conditional If A, then C equals the probability of C, updated with A. The theory avoids so-called triviality results, which are standardly taken to show that principles of this sort cannot be validated. To achieve this, we deny that rational agents update their credences (...) via conditionalization. We offer a new rule of update, Hyperconditionalization, which agrees with Conditionalization whenever nonmodal statements are at stake but differs for modal and conditional sentences. (shrink)

Empathy is essential in story comprehension as it requires understanding of the emotions and intentions of the characters. We evaluated the sensitivity of an emotional perspective-taking task using Aesop’s Fables in relation to empathy. Participants (N = 301) were presented with 15 short fables and were asked to rate the intensity of the emotions they would feel (anger, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, joy, trust, and anticipation) by adopting the perspective of one of the characters (offender, victim) or the observer’s perspective. (...) A data-driven approach revealed that participants’ responses were aligned with the characters’ intentions, suggesting successful emotional perspective-taking. Participants sympathized with the victim rather than the offender, demonstrating affective sharing processes. Further, participants with higher empathy scores exhibited stronger negative emotions from the victim’s perspective, independently of their level of distress. Our task was not influenced by gender effects. We suggest that the Aesop’s Fables task could provide an indirect instrument to study empathy. (shrink)