Philosophers have debated at length the epistemological status of scientific thought experiments. I contend that the literature on this topic still lacks a common conceptual framework, a lacuna that produces radical disagreement among the participants in this debate. To remedy this problem, I suggest focusing on the distinction between the internal and the external validity of an experiment, which is also crucial for thought experiments. I then develop an account of both kinds of validity in the context of thought experiments. (...) I show that we can naturally conceptualise internal validity in terms of games of make-believe. Then, I argue that external validity is best defined as accurate representation of a target system. Finally, I turn back to the current debate on thought experiments and show that my diarchic account provides a general framework that can be shared by the competing philosophical views, as well as a fruitful guide for their reconciliation. (shrink)

In this paper we advance a new solution to Quinn’s puzzle of the self-torturer. The solution falls directly out of an application of the principle of instrumental reasoning to what we call “vague projects”, i.e., projects whose completion does not occur at any particular or definite point or moment. The resulting treatment of the puzzle extends our understanding of instrumental rationality to projects and ends that cannot be accommodated by orthodox theories of rational choice.

Kant’s views on the relation between freedom and moral law seem to undergo a major, unannounced shift. In the third section of the Groundwork, Kant seems to be using the fact that we must act under the idea of freedom as a foundation for the moral law. However, in the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant claims that our awareness of our freedom depends on our awareness of the moral law. I argue that the apparent conflict between the two texts depends (...) on a reading of the opening paragraphs of Groundwork III, and on an interpretation of Kant’s claim that we “act under the idea of freedom”, that is implausible on textual and on philosophical grounds. I then present an alternative interpretation of what Kant means by “acting under the idea of freedom” and of the opening paragraphs of Groundwork III. I argue that the only substantive conclusion of these paragraphs is that no theoretical proof of freedom is necessary. Moreover I argue that although these paragraphs raise concerns about the validity of the moral law, these concerns and Kant’s answers to them, do not give rise to any significant conflict with his views in the Critique of Practical Reason. (shrink)

Most contemporary action theorists accept – or at least find plausible – a belief condition on intention and a knowledge condition on intentional action. The belief condition says that I can only intend to ɸ if I believe that I will ɸ or am ɸ-ing, and the knowledge condition says that I am only intentionally ɸ-ing if I know that I am ɸ-ing. The belief condition in intention and the knowledge condition in action go hand in hand. After all, if (...) intending implies belief, and if ɸ-ing intentionally implies intending to ɸ, then in ɸ-ing, I intend to be ɸ-ing, and, by the belief condition, I believe that I am ɸ-ing, and if this belief is justified, and we are not in a Gettier situation, etc., then, I will also satisfy the knowledge condition. Moreover, the claim that when intentions properly result in action, the corresponding belief constitutes knowledge is a relatively safe assumption, at least as an assumption about what it is generally the case. (shrink)

An effective method to increase the number of potential cadaveric organ donors is to make people donors by default with the option to opt out. This non-coercive public policy tool to influence people’s choices is often justified on the basis of the as-judged-by-themselves principle: people are nudged into choosing what they themselves truly want. We review three often hypothesized reasons for why defaults work and argue that the as-judged-by-themselves principle may hold only in two of these cases. We specify further (...) conditions for when the principle can hold in these cases and show that whether those conditions are met is often unclear. We recommend ways to expand nationwide surveys to identify the actual reasons for why defaults work and discuss mandated choice policy as a viable solution to many arising conundrums. (shrink)

A New Italian translation of Principia Ethica coming almost 60 years after the 1964 translation by Gianni Vattimo with Nicola Abbagnano’s preface. The new edition makes room for the English text alongside the Italian translation; it includes the 1922 Preface, a bibliography of Moore’s ethical writings with critical literature, a chronology of Moore’s life and works, and an Index. The Introduction by Sergio Cremaschi reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions from which Moore’s Principia Ethica originated. It stresses (...) the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of incompatible lines of argument than a consistent work. It compares PE with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different and more plausible way, which manages to answer decisive objections. It ends with the suggestion that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more multi-faceted phenomenon than the received view would make us believe and the analytic tradition's wheat, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, has to be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused, and besides mutually incompatible, legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. (shrink)

Deontological theories face difficulties in accounting for situations involving risk; the most natural ways of extending deontological principles to such situations have unpalatable consequences. In extending ethical principles to decision under risk, theorists often assume the risk must be incorporated into the theory by means of a function from the product of probability assignments to certain values. Deontologists should reject this assumption; essentially different actions are available to the agent when she cannot know that a certain act is in her (...) power, so we cannot simply understand her choice situation as a “risk-weighted” version of choice under certainty. (shrink)

Inquiry, Volume 57, Issue 3, Page 384-411, June 2014.

The aim of this chapter is to understand more precisely what kind of irrationality involved in procrastination. The chapter argues that in order to understand the irrationality of procrastination one needs to understand the possibility and the nature of what I call “top-down independent” policies and long-term actions. A policy or long-term action) is top-down independent if it is possible to act irrationally relative to the adoption of the policy without ever engaging in a momentary action that is per se (...) irrational. involved in procrastination one needs to It argues that procrastination is one of the corresponding vices of an overlooked virtue; namely, “practical judgment.” On this account, procrastination turns out to be a failure of instrumental rationality that can be so characterized without assuming the correctness of any further norms of practical rationality. Thus this account of procrastination also constitutes an important objection to Christine Korsgaard’s claim that a purely instrumental conception of rationality is incoherent. (shrink)

For non-analytic ethical naturalists, externalism about moral motivation is an attractive option: it allows naturalists to embrace a Humean theory of motivation while holding that moral properties are real, natural properties. However, Michael Smith has mounted an important objection to this view. Smith observes that virtuous agents must have non-derivative motivation to pursue specific ends that they believe to be morally right; he then argues that this externalist view ascribes to the virtuous agent only a direct de dicto desire to (...) do what is morally right, but not a direct motivation to be kind, help those in need, et. I first clarify this “fetishism objection”; I then show how the non-analytical naturalist can provide an understanding of virtuous motivation that is immune to this objection. (shrink)

● Sergio Cremaschi, The non-existing Island. The chapter discusses how the cleavage between the Continental and the Anglo-American philosophies originated, the (self-)images of both philosophical worlds, the converging rediscoveries from the Seventies, and recent ecumenic or anti-ecumenic strategies. I argue that pragmatism provides an important counter-instance to the familiar self-images and the fashionable ecumenic or anti-ecumenic strategies. The conclusions are: (i) the only place where Continental philosophy exists (as Euro-Communism one decade ago) is America; (ii) less obviously, also analytic (...) philosophy does not exist, or does no more exist as a current or a paradigm; what does exist is, on the one hand, philosophy of language and, on the other, philosophy of mind, that is, two disciplines; (iii) the dissolution of analytic philosophy as a school has been highly fruitful, precisely in so far as it has left room for disciplines and research programmes; (iv) what is left, of the Anglo-American/Continental cleavage is primarily differences in styles, depending partly on intellectual traditions, partly owing to sociology, history, institutional frameworks; these differences should not be blurred by rash ecumenism; besides, theoretical differences are alive as ever, but within both camps; finally, there is indeed a lag (not a difference) in the appropriation of intellectual techniques by most schools of 'Continental' philosophy, and this should be overcome through appropriation of what the best 'analytic' philosophers have produced. ● Michael Strauss, Language and sense-perception: an aspect of analytic philosophy. To test an assertion about one fact by comparing it with perceived reality seems quite unproblematic. But the very possibility of such a procedure is incompatible with the intellectualistic basis of logical positivism and atomism (as it is for example to be found in Russell's Analysis of Mind). According to the intellectualistic approach pure sensation is meaningless. Sensation receives its meaning and order from the intellect through interpretation, which is performed with the help of linguistic tools, i.e. words and sentences. Before being interpreted, sensation is not a picture or a representation, it is neither true nor false, neither an illusion nor knowledge; it does not tell us anything; it is a lifeless and order-less matter. But how can a thought (or a proposition) be compared with such a lifeless matter? This difficulty confronts the intellectualist, if on the one hand he admits the necessity of comparing thought with sense-perception, and on the other hand presupposes that we possess only intellectual and no immediate perceptual understanding of what we see and hear. In this paper I give a critical exposition of three attempts, made by Russell, Neurath and Wittgenstein, to solve this problem. The first attempt adheres to strict conventionalism, the second tends to naturalism and the third leads to an amended, very moderate version of conventionalism. This amended conventionalism looks at sense impressions as being a peculiar language, which includes primary symbols, i.e. symbols not founded on convention and not being in need of interpretation. ● Ernst Tugendhat, Phenomenology and language analysis. The paper, first published in German in 1970, by which Tugendhat gave a start to the German rediscovery of analytic philosophy. The author stages a confrontation between phenomenology and language analysis. He argues that language analysis does not differ from phenomenology as far as the topics dealt with are concerned; instead, both currents are quite different in method. The author argues that language-analytic philosophy does not simply lay out of the mainstream of transcendental philosophy, but that instead it challenges this tradition on the very level of foundations. The author criticizes the linguistic-analytic approach centred on the subject as well as any object-centred approach, while proposing inter-subjective understanding through language as the new universal framework. This is, when construed in so general terms, the same program of hermeneutics, though in a more basic version. ● Jürgen Habermas, Language game, intention and meaning. On a few suggestions by Sellars and Wittgenstein. The paper, first published in German in 1975, in which Habermas announces his own linguistic turn through a discovery of speech acts. In this essay the author wants to work out a categorical framework for a communicative theory of society; he takes Wittgenstein's concept of language game as a Leitfade and, besides, he takes advantage also of Wilfried Sellars's quasi-transcendental account of the genesis of intentionality. His goal is to single out the problems connected with a theory of consciousness oriented in a logical-linguistic sense. ● Zvie Bar-On, Isomorphism of speech acts and intentional states. This essay presents the problem of the formal relationship between speech acts and intentional states as an essential part of the perennial philosophical question of the relation between language and thought. I attempt to show how this problem had been dealt with by two prominent philosophers of different camps in our century, Edmund Husserl and John Searle. Both of them wrote extensively about the theory of intentionality. I point out an interesting, as it were unintended, continuity of their work on that theory. Searle started where Husserl left off 80 years earlier. Their meeting point could be used as the first clue in our search. They both adopted in effect the same distinction between two basic aspects of the intentional experience: its content or matter, and its quality or mode. Husserl did not yet have the concept of a speech act as contradistinguished from an intentional state. The working hypothesis, however, which he suggested, could be used as a second clue for the further elaboration of the theory. The relationship of the two levels, the mental and the linguistic, which remained for Husserl in the background only, became the cornerstone of Searle' s inquiry. He employed the speech act as the model and analysed the intentional experience by means of the conceptual apparatus of his own theory of speech acts. This procedure enabled him to mark out a number of parallelisms and correlations between the two levels. This procedure explains the phenomenon of the partial isomorphism of speech acts and intentional states. ● Roberta de Monticelli, Ontology. A dialogue among the linguistic philosopher, the naturalist, and the phenomenological philosopher. This paper proposes a comparison between two main ways of conceiving the role and scope of that fundamental part of philosophy (or of "first" philosophy) which is traditionally called "ontology". One way, originated within the analytic tradition, consists of two main streams, namely philosophy of language and (contemporary) philosophy of mind, the former yielding "reduced ontology" and the latter "neo-Aristotelian ontology". The other way of conceiving ontology is exemplified by "phenomenological ontology" (more precisely, the Husserlian, not the Heideggerian version). Ontology as a theory of reference ("reduced" ontology, or ontology as depending on semantics) is presented and justified on the basis of some classical thesis of traditional philosophy of language (from Frege to Quine). "Reduced ontology" is shown to be identifiable with one level of a traditional, Aristotelian ontology, namely the one which corresponds to one of the four "senses of being" listed in Aristotle's Metaphysics: "being" as "being true". This identification is justified on the basis of Franz Brentano's "rules for translation" of the Aristotelian table of judgements in terms of (positive and negative) existential judgments such as are easily translatable into sentences of first order predicate logic. The second part of the paper is concerned with "neo-Aristotelian ontology", i.e. with naturalism and physicalism as the main ontological options underlying most of contemporary discussion in the philosophy of mind. The qualification of such options as "neo-Aristotelian" is justified; the relationships between "neo-Aristotelian ontology" and "reduced ontology" are discussed. In the third part the fundamental tenet of "phenomenological ontology" is identified by the thesis that a logical theory of existence and being does capture a sense of "existing" and "being" which, even though not the basic one, is grounded in the basic one. An attempt is done of further clarifying this "more basic" sense of "being". An argument making use of this supposedly "more basic" sense is advanced in favour of a "phenomenological ontology". ● Kuno Lorenz, Analytic Roots in Dialogic Constructivism. Both in the Vienna Circle ad in Russell's early philosophy the division of knowledge into two kinds (or two levels), perceptual and conceptual, plays a vital role. Constructivism in philosophy, in trying to provide a pragmatic foundation - a knowing-how - to perceptual as well as conceptual competences, discovered that this is dependent on semiotic tools. Therefore, the "principle of method" had to be amended by the "principle of dialogue". Analytic philosophy being an heir of classical empiricism, conceptually grasping the "given", and constructive philosophy being an heir of classical rationalism, perceptually providing the "constructed", merge into dialogical constructivism, a contemporary development of ideas derived especially from the works of Charles S. Peirce (his pragmatic maxim as a means of giving meaning to signs) and of Ludwig Wittgenstein (his language games as tools of comparison for understanding ways of life). 7. Albrecht Wellmer, "Autonomy of meaning" and "principle of charity" from the viewpoint of the pragmatics of language. In this essay I present an interpretation of the principle of the autonomy of meaning and of the principle of charity, the two main principles of Davidson's semantic view of truth, showing how both principles may fit in a perspective dictated by the pragmatics of language. I argue that (I) the principle of the autonomy of meaning may be thoroughly reformulated in terms of the pragmatics of language, (ii) the principle of charity needs a supplement in terms of pragmatics of language in order to become really enlightening as a principle of interpretation. Besides, I argue that: (i) on the one hand, the fundamental thesis of Habermas on the pragmatic theory of meaning ("we understand a speech act when we know what makes it admissible") is correlated with the seemingly intentionalist thesis according to which we understand a speech act when we know what a speaker means; (ii) on the other hand, to say that the meaning competence of a competent speaker is basically a competence about a potential of reasons (or also of possible justifications) which is inherently connected with the meaning of statements, or with their use in utterances. ● Rüdiger Bubner, The convergence of analytic and hermeneutic philosophy This paper argues that the analytic philosophy does not exist, at least as understood by its original programs. Differences in the analytic camp have always been bigger than they were believed to be. Now these differences are coming to the fore thanks to a process of dissolution of dogmatism. Philosophical analysis is led by its own inner logic towards questions that may be fairly qualified as hermeneutic. Recent developments in analytic philosophy, e.g. Davidson, seem to indicate a growing convergence of themes between philosophical analysis and hermeneutics; thus, the familiar opposition of Anglo-Saxon and Continental philosophy might soon belong to history. The fact of an ongoing appropriation of analytical techniques by present-day German philosophers may provide a basis for a powerful argument for the unity of philosophizing, beyond its strained images privileging one technique of thinking and rejecting the remainder. Actual philosophical practice should take the dialogue between the two camps more seriously; in fact, the processes described so far are no danger to philosophical work. They may be a danger for parochial approaches to philosophizing; indeed, contrary to what happens in the natural sciences, Thomas Kuhn's "normal science" developing within the framework of one fixed paradigm is not typical for philosophical thinking. And in philosophy innovating revolutions are symptoms more of vitality than of crisis. ● Karl-Otto Apel, The impact of analytic philosophy on my intellectual biography. In my paper I try to reconstruct the history of my Auseinandersetzung mit - as I called it - "language-analytical" philosophy (including even Peircean semiotics) since the late Fifties. The heuristics of my study was predetermined by two main motives of my beginnings: the hermeneutic turn of phenomenology and the transformation of "transcendental philosophy" in the light of the "language a priori". Thus, I took issue with the early and the later Wittgenstein, logical positivism, and post-Wittgensteinian and post-empiricist philosophy of science (i.e. G.H. von Wright and the renewal of the "explanation vs understanding controversy" as well as the debate between Th. Kuhn and Popper/Lakatos); besides, with speech act theory and the debate about "transcendental arguments" since Strawson. The "pragmatic turn", started already by C.L. Morris and the later Carnap, led me to study also the relationship between Wittgensteinian "use" theory of meaning and of truth. This resulted on my side in something like a program of "transcendental semiotics", i.e. "transcendental pragmatics" and "transcendental hermeneutics". ● Ben-Ami Scharfstein, A doubt on both their houses: the blindness to non-western philosophies. The burden of my criticism is that contemporary European philosophers of all kinds have continued to think as if there were no true philosophy but that of the West. For the most part, the existentialists have been oblivious of their Eastern congeners; the hermeneuticians have yet to stretch their horizons beyond the most familiar ones; and the analysts remain unaware of the analyses and linguistic sensitivities of the ancient non-European philosophers. Briefly, ignorance still blinds almost all contemporary Western philosophers to the rich, variegated philosophical traditions outside of their familiar orbit. Both Continental and Anglo-Americans have lost the breadth of view that once characterized such thinkers as Herder and the Humboldts. The blindness that has resulted is not simply that of individual Western philosophers but of our whole, still parochial philosophical culture. (shrink)

This is the first Italian translation of Bentham’s “Deontology”. The translation goes with a rather extended apparatus meant to provide the reader with some information on Bentham’s ethical theory's own context. Some room is made for so-called forerunners of Utilitarianism, from the consequentialist-voluntarist theology of Leibniz, Malebranche, John Gay, Thomas Brown and William Paley to Locke and Hartley's incompatible associationist theories. After the theoretical context, also the real-world context is documented, from Bentham’s campaigns against the oppression of women and cruelty (...) to animals to his projects of political reform. Another section illustrates the ideas of Bentham's followers as well as the objections raised by nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics of utilitarianism. -/- Table of contents I. BEFORE THE TEXT 1. Bentham’s legacy 2. Bentham the Reformer 3. Bentham and the enlightenment project of a reformed morality 4. The principle of utility 5. Deontology or private morality 6. Utilitarianism as «eudemonologism» -/- II. TEXT Deontology I. Deontology: theoretical II. Deontology: practical III. -/- III. CO-TEXT 1. Biography 2. The reform of legislation 3. The Philosophic Radicals between the French revolution and the Industrial revolution -/- IV. CONTEXT 1. Forerunners of Utilitarianism 2. Psychological associationism 3. The oppression of women 4. Cruelty against animals 5. Parsimony and industry in Hogarth’s prints 6. Followers 6.1. John Stuart Mill 6.2. Henry Sidgwick 7. Critics 7.1. Romantic, conservative, and Christian critics 7.2. Socialist critics 8. Consequences: neo-utilitarianism 9. Consequences: critics of utilitarianism 9.1. Deontological critics 9.2. Perfectionists critics 9.3. Sceptical critics 10. Bentham’s legacy for contemporary ethics, by Bikhu Parekh Bibliography Lexicon Index of names and concepts -/- READER'S GUIDE . (shrink)

Incommensurability is often introduced with the small improvement argument. Options A and B are shown to be incommensurable when it is neither the case that A is preferred to (or better than) B nor that B is preferred to (or better than) A, but a slightly improved version of A (A+) is still not preferred to B. Since A+ is preferred to A, but not to B, we must also conclude that it is also true that A and B are (...) not indifferent (or equally good). Such incommensurable options seem incompatible with orthodox decision theory (and various forms of value theory) but options that obey the pattern described by this argument seem ubiquitous: my choice between lemon tarts and eclairs at my favourite pastry shop might exhibit this pattern, but so could my choice between jobs or careers. In trying to accommodate incommensurable options within various frameworks, philosophers have argued that we must preserve certain central features of the phenomenon. Among them is the supposed “hardness” of at least some incommensurable options: even if perhaps one would need to be a rather anxious gourmet to describe the choice between lemon tarts and eclairs as hard, the choice among careers could potentially be agonizing. However, it is not clear in which way choices among incommensurable options are “hard,” nor how and whether such hardness poses problems for the various accounts of incommensurable choices. To complicate matters, the deontic verdicts for choices between incommensurable options seem to be relatively straightforward: one appealing view is that in such circumstances I am rationally permitted to choose any option that is not worse than another option. This paper aims to provide a sharper formulation of at least a version of the hardness problem, to argue that various theories of incommensurability fail to account for the hardness of some incommensurable choices, and to propose that the theory of instrumental rationality I develop in Rational Powers in Action, aided by a Kantian insight, promises to provide an adequate explanation of the hardness of choice among incommensurable options. (shrink)

A précis of Sergio Tenenbaum's Rational Powers in Action (Oxford 2021).

A response to review essays by Chrisoula Andreou, John Brunero, Matthias Haase, Erasmus Mayr, and Sarah Paul on Sergio Tenenbaum's _Rational Powers in Action_.

-/- Did the US president who signed the order to use the atomic bomb stain his hands with blood or just ink? Are there cases in which a war is just? In such cases, is any war justifiable? Is ending the life of a terminally ill person different from murder? Do we need to agree on the definition of the embryo as a 'person' to know whether any action on the embryo is prohibited? Is the prohibition of contraception justified even (...) if it is perfectly legitimate to plan births? Anscombe, taking up Wittgenstein, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, elaborates a theory of action that places "intention" at the centre, an alternative to the conception of action dominant since Descartes. On this basis, he conducts an indictment against the superficiality of modern moral philosophy, lumping together the Oxford philosophers, utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. And finally, she puts her virtue ethics to work on problems of applied ethics: in the field of public ethics, the just war; in the field of bioethics, questions of the end of life and the beginning of life. This book, edited by Sergio Cremaschi, brings together Anscombe's contributions on ethical issues, allowing for the first time a comprehensive overview of this decisive figure's contribution to twentieth-century philosophy. (shrink)

I argue that (i) even though Adam Smith’s four stages theory has been criticized with good reasons as both vitiated by undue generalization from modern Europe to the first stage and made bottom-heavy by assumptions of modern episteme, yet, in his writings an alternative view emerges where the savage is not just crushed under the weight of want and isolation but is endowed with imagination and sympathy; (ii) his picture of the fourth stage is, far from a triumphal apology of (...) Capitalism, a tragic diagnosis of an inner tension between ambition and greed and their unintended beneficial effects; (iii) the tensions in the picture are not just a report of tensions out there, but also depend on Smith’s pre-comprehension of the phenomena he tries to account for; (iv) and yet, the tragic character of this picture is to be credited to his integrity; I summarize peculiarities of Smith’s peculiar outlook, post-empiricism, as well as its potentialities (sect 2). I then reconstruct his view of development of language and science, suggesting that his theory of association of ideas and imagination provides a consistent account of both science and lore, yielding a comparatively less ethnocentric evaluation of the savage mind (sect. 3). I reconstruct his virtually twofold reconstruction of subsistence in the rude and early state, arguing that he tends to ascribe inability to evolve to want and isolation and describes his own view of evolution as a necessary path but also that in several passages imagination and sympathy do play a role also for the savage (sect. 4). I compare Smith’s view of the first stage with his diagnosis of commercial society arguing that his reconstruction is burdened by eighteenth-century ideology as well as by modern episteme and I conclude with an ambivalent appraisal of Smith’s comparison between the polished man and the savage. -/- . (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References.

The unresolved dilemma of Marxian theory is whether the overall social constellation may legitimately be called 'mode of production' because mono-causal economic explanations are acceptable or whether there is instead a more complex causality at the level of the 'ökonomische Gesellschaftsformation', i.e. the social constellation as a whole.

Robert Adams argues that often our moral commitment outstrips what we are epistemically entitled to believe; in these cases, the virtuous agent doxastic states are instances of “moral faith”. I argue against Adams’ views on the need for moral faith; at least in some cases, our moral “intuitions” provide us with certain moral knowledge. The appearance that there can be no certainty here is the result of dubious views about second-order or indirect doubts. Nonetheless, discussing the phenomena that lead Adams (...) to postulate moral faith brings to light the nature of the epistemic warrant underlying various kinds of moral commitments. (shrink)

Recent research on algebraic models of _quasi-Nelson logic_ has brought new attention to a number of classes of algebras which result from enriching (subreducts of) Heyting algebras with a special modal operator, known in the literature as a _nucleus_. Among these various algebraic structures, for which we employ the umbrella term _intuitionistic modal algebras_, some have been studied since at least the 1970s, usually within the framework of topology and sheaf theory. Others may seem more exotic, for their primitive operations (...) arise from algebraic terms of the intuitionistic modal language which have not been previously considered. We shall for instance investigate the variety of _weak implicative semilattices_, whose members are (non-necessarily distributive) meet semilattices endowed with a nucleus and an implication operation which is not a relative pseudo-complement but satisfies the postulates of Celani and Jansana’s strict implication. For each of these new classes of algebras we establish a representation and a topological duality which generalize the known ones for Heyting algebras enriched with a nucleus. (shrink)

It seems rather intuitive that if I can save either one stranger or five strangers, I must save the five. However, Kantian (and other non-consequentialist) views have a difficult time explaining why this is the case, as they seem committed to what Parfit calls “innumeracy”: roughly, the view that the values of lives (or the reasons to save them) don’t get greater (or stronger) in proportion to the number of lives saved. This chapter first shows that in various cases, it (...) is permissible to save fewer lives, contrary to what is implied by “numerate” views. Then it argues that in the cases in which it is intuitive that we must save the greater number, Kantians (and other deontologists) can not only deliver this verdict but also explain why it is correct, without presupposing that the value of our action depends on “adding up” the values of the lives saved. (shrink)

This paper proposes an application of Enrique Dussel’s ethics of liberation to an issue of crucial importance to US minorities: the debate on affirmative action. Over the past fifty years, this debate has been framed in terms of the opposition between advocates of affirmative action who claim that it is needed in order to achieve the integration and participation of traditionally oppressed groups to society without which there is no equality of rights, and critics who argue that affirmative action violates (...) equality by enforcing a double standard that undermines the ideal of a color-blind society. In this paper, I show how the basic principles of Dussel’s ethical theory (which are best expounded in his book Ethics of Liberation) allow us to address what I take to be the main demands of both advocates and critics of affirmative action in a satisfactory way. (shrink)

Gabriel Tarde, along with Durkheim and others, set the foundations for what is today a common-sense statement in social science: crime is a social phenomenon. However, the questions about what social is and what kind of social phenomenon crime is remain alive. Tarde’s writings have answers for both of these capital and interdependent problems and serve to renew our view of them. The aim of this article is to reconstruct Tarde’s definition of crime in terms of genus and specific difference, (...) exploring his criminology as a case of his general sociology. This procedure shows that Tarde succeeded in creating a comprehensive theory of crime and criminals founded not only on his most well-known concept, imitation, but also on his equally important concepts of invention, opposition, social logic and social teleology. For Tarde, crime is a complex phenomenon related to criminal inventions, criminal propagations, the production of penal laws, the execution of controls and punishments, and the collective reactions to all these. (shrink)

A reconstruction of the notion of Market in the history of economic ethics and economic theory.

Definiciones de epistemología hay muchas, al igual que clases y estilos. Sin embargo, más allá de esta diversidad, es necesario contar con una definición básica que guíe nuestra comprensión del tema. Dos serán las preguntas que nos ayuden a ello en este artículo: a) ¿qué es la epistemología? y b) ¿para qué le sirve al científico?

This article explores the relationships between crime, collective responses to it, and the social production of so-called great criminals. It argues that crime, especially sexual and violent crime, produces significant imbalances in individuals habitually subject to instrumental actions, identitarian thinking and positive law. These imbalances are emotional as well as cognitive and, under certain conditions of communication, can generate states of multitude, that is, collective states linked to an intense affectivity and to the prevalence of mythic or symbolic thinking. These (...) states reach their limits and become condensed in the mytho-historical figure of the great criminal. In this sense, great criminals are a function of such multitudinous states: points of imputation that concentrate and catalyze the affective imagination unleashed by collective effervescence. (shrink)

A short discussion of the origin of the notion of mode of subsistence in the eighteenth-century discussion and particularly in the Scottish Enlightenment and its legacy n the Marxist theory of modes of production or social economic formations.

In this article culture is understood as the ensemble of systems of classification, assessment, and interaction that establishes a basic community of values in a given social field. We will argue that this is made possible through the institution of fundamental prohibitions understood as mythical points of closure that set the last frontiers of that community by designating what crime is. Exploring these theses, we will see that criminal transgression may be thought of as the actualization of a rigorous otherness. (...) This otherness, however, is nothing but the culture itself in its extreme vectors, its contradictions, and residues. From there we will differentiate three types of crimes: paroxysmal, archaic, and impossible. And we will conclude that the criminal question it is not a ‘social problem’ among others. Rather, it is a fundamental crossroad where the very constitution of any culture is at stake. It is the question of the beginning and end of the societal order and its subjects. (shrink)

A short reconstruction of the origin and evolution of Islamic moral doctrines and their re-interpretation by Arabic philosophers.

En este trabajo sostengo que la concepción mecanicista no captura la relevancia explicativa de la ley de polarización dinámica de Cajal. La relevancia explicativa de la ley se fundamenta en su rol como principio de diseño neuronal. Como tal, la ley nos brinda acceso epistémico a intervenciones ideales, conceptualmente posibles, sobre la localización de los diversos componentes de los centros nerviosos, y nos permiten evaluar el impacto de esas intervenciones sobre las condiciones de viabilidad del organismo.

Recent popularity of the relationship of 'ethics' and 'economics' is at once revealing and misleading. It marks the withering away of a dogmatic confidence in a self-regulating and water-proof economic 'sphere'. It is also a muddled way of treating a number of interrelated but different issues: the interrelations between moralities (as historically given institutions) and markets (as partially self-regulating socially institutionalized mechanisms), the relationship between ethics and economic theory, and finally issues of distributive justice.

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

By reconstructing the eighteenth-century movement of the Italian Enlightenment, I show that Italy’s political fragmentation notwithstanding, there was a constant circulation of ideas, whether on philosophical, ethical, political, religious, social, economic or scientific questions—among different groups in various states. This exchange was made possible by the shared language of its leading illuministi— Cesare Beccaria, Ludovico Antonio Muratori, Francesco Maria Zanotti, Antonio Genovesi, Mario Pagano, Pietro Verri, Marco Antonio Vogli, and Giammaria Ortes—and resulted in four common traits. First, the absence of (...) a radical trend, such as the French materialist-atheist trend and British Deism, or religious reformation. Second, the rejection of inhumane laws and institutions, capital punishment, torture, war and slavery. Third, the idea of public happiness as the goal of good government and legislation. And fourth, the conception of the economy as a constellation where social capital, consisting of education, morality, and civility, plays a decisive role. I conclude that the Italian Enlightenment, not unlike the Scottish Enlightenment, was both cosmopolitan and local, which allowed its leading writers to develop a keen awareness of the complexity of society alongside a degree of prudence regarding the possibility and desirability of its modernization. (shrink)

A short reconstruction of the analytic-synthetic method, a key idea in Medieval and Early Modern Logic.

Este texto presenta, y en cierta medida analiza, ambigüedades existentes en textos de lógica y filosofía de la lógica (como la interpretación de los llamados principios, postulados, leyes o verdades lógicas, la coexistencia de la tesis de que toda relación presupone la existencia de al menos dos relata y la de que una cosa puede relacionarse consigo misma, o la llamada "paradoja del mentiroso") bajo el supuesto de que, dado que la lógica no es anterior a la semántica, un análisis (...) semántico puede mostrar no solo que tal polisemia sugiere que ni la disciplina ni las teorías lógicas son tan rigurosas como se ha afirmado, sino también que varias afirmaciones de esas disciplinas carecen de sentido. (shrink)

Microalgae in the wild often form consortia with other species promoting their own health and resource foraging opportunities. The recent application of microalgae cultivation and deployment in commercial photobioreactors (PBR) so far has focussed on single species of algae, resulting in multi-species consortia being largely unexplored. Reviewing the current status of PBR ecological habitat, this article argues in favor of further investigation into algal communication with conspecifics and interspecifics, including other strains of microalgae and bacteria. These mutualistic species form the (...) ‘phycosphere’: the micro-environment surrounding microalgal cells, potentiating the production of certain metabolites through biochemical interaction with cohabitating microorganisms. A better understanding of the phycosphere could lead to novel PBR configurations, capable of incorporating algal-microbial consortia, potentially proving more effective than single-species algal systems. (shrink)

Este trabajo presenta y analiza dos posturas acerca de las representaciones y clasificaciones científicas que Ian Hacking en ¿La construcción social de qué? denomina realismo o estructurismo inherente y nominalismo. La primera sostiene que las divisiones del conocimiento científico expresan o reflejan divisiones estructurales de la realidad a la que se refieren, en tanto que la segunda considera que toda división o estructura atribuida por la ciencia a la realidad se encuentra sólo en las representaciones mismas. Se sostiene que tal (...) criterio clasificatorio resulta pertinente y fructífero para las discusiones actuales acerca de la naturaleza del conocimiento científico, que pone de relieve diversas cuestiones profundas e intensamente debatidas a lo largo de la historia de la filosofía, y que el empleo del término “nominalismo” –a pesar de su polisemia y de ser poco utilizado actualmente en la filosofía de la cienciaes acertado por cuanto la discusión es en gran medida semántica, ya que se basa en dos concepciones contrapuestas acerca de la naturaleza del lenguaje humano. (shrink)

Recently, Piccinini and Craver have stated three theses concerning the relations between functional analysis and mechanistic explanation in cognitive sciences: No Distinctness: functional analysis and mechanistic explanation are explanations of the same kind; Integration: functional analysis is a kind of mechanistic explanation; and Subordination: functional analyses are unsatisfactory sketches of mechanisms. In this paper, I argue, first, that functional analysis and mechanistic explanations are sub-kinds of explanation by scientific (idealized) models. From that point of view, we must take into account (...) the tradeoff between the representational/explanatory goals of generality and precision that govern the practice of model-building. In some modeling scenarios, it is rational to maximize explanatory generality at the expense of mechanistic precision. This tradeoff allows me to put forward a problem for the mechanist position. If mechanistic modeling endorses generality as a valuable goal, then Subordination should be rejected. If mechanists reject generality as a goal, then Integration is false. I suggest that mechanists should accept that functional analysis can offer acceptable explanations of cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

This book posits that a singular paradigm in social theory can be discovered by reconstructing the conceptual grammar of Gabriel Tarde’s micro-sociology and by understanding the ways in which Gilles Deleuze’s micro-politics and Michel Foucault’s micro-physics have engaged with it. This is articulated in the infinite social multiplicity-invention-imitation-opposition-open system. Guided by infinitist ontology and an epistemology of infinitesimal difference, this paradigm offers a micro-socio-logic capable of producing new ways of understanding social life and its vicissitudes. In the field of social (...) theory, this can be called the infinitesimal revolution. (shrink)

Naturalist theories of representation have been attacked on the grounds of being too liberal on the minimal conditions for intentionality: they treat several states that are not representational as genuine representations. Behind this attack lies the problem of demarcation: what are the minimal conditions for intentionality that a state should satisfy to be genuinely representational? What are the limits of intentionality? This paper develops a dual proposal to solve this problem. First, I defend the explanatory role criterion in order to (...) assess proposals of minimal conditions for intentionality. I start by proposing the success pattern condition: a state represents a given external feature provided that there is a success pattern present in the behavioural output, and the system uses this state as a proxy for the presence of this external feature. However, this condition is not sufficient for minimal intentionality – there are both intentional and non-intentional success patterns. Another minimal condition is, hence, required to draw this distinction. I propose the constancy mechanism condition: a state is representational provided that the system employs a constancy mechanism in its production. The success pattern and constancy mechanism conditions jointly constitute the dual proposal for minimal intentionality. I argue that this proposal is explanatorily justified and, so, properly demarcates the limits of intentionality. (shrink)

Preface -/- 1. 'Anima' and 'res cogitans'. The Cartesian idea of nature and mind as a residual concept. The first chapter discusses the genesis of the concept of mind in Cartesian Philosophy; the claim is advanced that 'res cogitans' is a residual concept, defined on the basis of a previous definition of matter as 'res extensa'. As a consequence, a contradictory ontology of the mind is Descartes's poisoned bequest to the following tradition of 'scientific' psychology. -/- 2. The Mathematical method (...) in the theory of the mind and the passions. The second chapter discusses the first ambitious attempt in this direction, namely Spinoza's theory of the mind and the passions in Ethics II and III; the topics treated are Spinoza's program of a mathematical science of the mind and his transformation of the genre 'treatise of the passions' into a would-be mathematical science of the motions of the soul. -/- 3. The definition of affections and the impossibility of reducing inadequate to adequate ideas. The third chapter discusses a tension in Spinoza project of a theory of the passions, namely a need to reduce concepts to pure mathematical definitions and the opposite need to keep inadequate imaginative definitions of the phenomena under scrutiny, namely the passions, in order to avoid a radical reduction of the subject-matter to the only truly existing reality (the world order in itself) that would leave the theory without any subject-matter at all. -/- 4. 'Conatus', 'potentia', 'vis'. Concepts of force in the theory of passions and the impossibility of eliminating occult qualities. The fourth chapter discusses the troubles arising in the original project deriving from difficulties in the treatment of dynamic concepts, such as the notion of conatus, which were an unavoidable consequence of Cartesian assumptions. -/- 5. Overview and discussion. Chapter five tries to draw a general discussion, focusing on the tension between the Cartesian assumptions and the actual practice in the new post-Galilean sciences, including attempts at giving birth to psychology or science of man. -/- Appendices I. The mind-body problem in Spinoza. II. Concepts of force in Newton and Spinoza. III. Materialist readings of Newton and Spinoza. IV. On the opposition of materialism and spiritualism and Geisteswissenschaften and natural science. V. Conatus, the idea of liberation and social theory in Spinoza. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the framework for the compositional relations of properties in the sciences, or "realization relations", offered by Ken Aizawa and Carl Gillett (A&G) in a series of papers, and in particular on the analysis of "multiple realizations" they build upon it. I argue that A&G's analysis of multiple realization requires an account of levels and I try to show, then, that the A&G framework is not successful under any of the extant accounts of levels. There is consequently (...) a real concern tha thte A&G framework for realization may not be viable. (shrink)

This paper focuses on order-preserving logics defined from varieties of distributive lattices with negation, and in particular on the problem of whether these can be axiomatized by means Hilbert-style calculi that are finite. On the negative side, we provide a syntactic condition on the equational presentation of a variety that entails failure of finite axiomatizability for the corresponding logic. An application of this result is that the logic of all distributive lattices with negation is not finitely axiomatizable; we likewise establish (...) that the order-preserving logic of the variety of all Ockham algebras is also not finitely axiomatizable. On the positive side, we show that an arbitrary subvariety of semi-De Morgan algebras is axiomatized by a finite number of equations if and only if the corresponding order-preserving logic is axiomatized by a finite Hilbert-style calculus. This equivalence also holds for every subvariety of a Berman variety of Ockham algebras. We obtain, as a corollary, a new proof that the implication-free fragment of intuitionistic logic is finitely axiomatizable, as well as a new corresponding Hilbert-style calculus. Our proofs are constructive in that they allow us to effectively convert an equational presentation of a variety of algebras into a Hilbert-style calculus for the corresponding order-preserving logic, and vice versa. We also consider the assertional logics associated to the above-mentioned varieties, showing in particular that the assertional logics of finitely axiomatizable subvarieties of semi-De Morgan algebras are finitely axiomatizable as well. (shrink)

This article tries to establish the scopes and limits of the main interpretations on Newton during the 20th century, highlighting on the one hand the textual evidence at disposal, and on the other hand the philosophical and epistemological currents that defines the main features of those interpretations. It will be shown that the rejection of positivism is not sufficient condition for establishing an adequate interpretation and, together with the strengthening of the research from Newton’s manuscript, it is necessary a wider, (...) and more detailed model that those established by some of the most outstanding scholars like Alexandre Koyré, I. Bernard Cohen, Betty Dobbs, and Richard Westfall. (shrink)