Orthodox decision theory is fanatical in the way it treats small probabilities of enormous value, if unbounded utility functions are allowed. Some have suggested a fix, Nicolausian discounting, according to which outcomes with small enough probabilities should be ignored when making decisions. However, there are lotteries involving only small-probability outcomes, none of which should intuitively be ignored. So the Nicolausian discounter needs a procedure for distinguishing the problematic cases of small-probability outcomes from the unproblematic ones. In this paper, I present (...) a dilemma for Nicolausian discounting: the view must be coupled either with a procedure that delivers fanatical verdicts of its own, as bad as those of orthodox decision theory, or with one that entails intransitive cyclic preferences. (shrink)

The Handbook of Formal Argumentation is a community effort aimed at providing a comprehensive and up-to-date view of the state of the art and current trends in the lively research field of formal argumentation. The first volume of the Handbook is organised into five parts, containing nineteen chapters in all, each written by leading experts in the field. The first part provides a general and historical perspective on the field. The second part gives a comprehensive coverage of the argumentation formalisms (...) available in the literature at various levels of abstraction. The third part is devoted to cover some of the many dialogical aspects of argumentation, while the fourth one deals with algorithmic, computational and implementation issues. Finally, the fifth part provides some deeper analyses on the previously introduced topics. The Handbook of Formal Argumentation is an open-ended initiative of which the present volume is the first outcome. Further volumes are planned to cover topics not included in the present one and the initiative is conceived to grow by the support and feeding it receives from the community members. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel argumentation framework to support Issue-Based Information System style debates on design alternatives, by providing an automatic quantitative evaluation of the positions put forward. It also identifies several formal properties of the proposed quantitative argumentation framework and compares it with existing non-numerical abstract argumentation formalisms. Finally, the paper describes the integration of the proposed approach within the design Visual Understanding Environment software tool along with three case studies in engineering design. The case studies show the potential (...) for a competitive advantage of the proposed approach with respect to state-of-the-art engineering design methods. (shrink)

Creating an integrated design space can be successful only if researchers agree on how to define and measure a certain phenomenon of interest. Adversarial collaborations and mathematical modeling can aid in reaching the necessary level of agreement when researchers depart from different theoretical perspectives.

En la actualidad el pensamiento de Maquiavelo ha estado ligado a una praxis política que se juzga como mala desde el punto de vista ético. El secretario florentino, alejándose de la tradición estoica que marcó la filosofía política de la antigüedad y gran parte del medioevo, separa la política de la moral planteando un realismo político que evalúa los actos como eficientes o ineficientes, útiles o inútiles, fructíferos o infructíferos, tomando distancia de aquella calificación de bueno o malo. Sin embargo, (...) este simple acto, que no es más que la teorización y la explicitación de algo que se ha hecho desde siempre en la historia política, le valió ser tildado de hereje o que incluso su apellido se transformase en un término que hasta el día de hoy tiene una carga negativa en términos morales. Este artículo se adentra en aquellas interpretaciones, elementos históricos, teológicos y filosóficos del pensamiento de Maquiavelo, que con o sin intención, llevaron a que el secretario florentino fuera entendido como un pensador que hace apología de las malas praxis, acercándolo incluso a ideas heréticas. Palabras clave_: _Maquiavelo– Antimaquiavelismo - Realismo político – Herejía. (shrink)

This paper aims at comparing and relating belief revision and argumentation as approaches to model reasoning processes. Referring to some prominent literature references in both fields, we will discuss their (implicit or explicit) assumptions on the modeled processes and hence commonalities and differences in the forms of reasoning they are suitable to deal with. The intended contribution is on one hand assessing the (not fully explored yet) relationships between two lively research fields in the broad area of defeasible reasoning and (...) on the other hand pointing out open issues and potential directions for future research. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars’ denunciation of the Myth of the Given was meant to clarify, against empiricism, that perceptual episodes alone are insufficient to ground and justify perceptual knowledge. Sellars showed that in order to accomplish such epistemic tasks, more resources and capacities, such as those involved in using concepts, are needed. Perceptual knowledge belongs to the space of reasons and not to an independent realm of experience. Dan Hutto and Eric Myin have recently presented the Hard Problem of Content as an (...) ensemble of reasons against naturalistic accounts of content. In a nutshell, it states that covariance relations—even though they are naturalistically acceptable explanatory resources—do not constitute content. The authors exploit this move in order to promote their preferred radical enactivist and anti-representationalist option, according to which, basic minds—the lower stratum of cognition—do not involve content. Although it is controversial to argue that the Hard Problem of Content effectively dismisses naturalistic theories of representation, a central aspect of it—the idea that information as covariance does not suffice to explain content—finds support among the defenders of classical cognitive representationalism, such as Marcin Miłkowski. This support—together with the acknowledgment this remark about covariance is a point already made by Sellars in his criticism of the Myth of the Given—has a number of interesting implications. Not only is it of interest for the debates about representationalism in cognitive science, where it can be understood as an anticipatory move, but it also offers some clues and insights for reconsidering some issues along Sellarsian lines—a conflation between two concepts of representation that is often assumed in cognitive science, a distinction between two types of relevant normativities, and a reconsideration of the naturalism involved in such explanations. (shrink)

Reciprocal libertarianism is a version of left-wing libertarianism that combines self-ownership with an egalitarian distribution of resources according to reciprocity. In this paper, I show that reciprocal libertarianism is a coherent and appealing view. I discuss how reciprocal libertarians can handle conflicts between self-ownership and reciprocity, and I show that reciprocal libertarianism can be realised in a framework of individual ownership of external resources or in a socialist scheme of common ownership (libertarian socialism). I also compare reciprocal libertarianism with left-libertarian (...) approaches: I argue that a reciprocity-sensitive version of left-libertarianism (reciprocal left-libertarianism) is coherent and morally superior to traditional left-libertarianism, on grounds of incorporating a distinctively solidaristic and recognition-oriented aspect of equality. The policy implications of reciprocal libertarianism will differ depending on which rights people can have over external resources, but all reciprocal libertarian views acknowledge the existence of social rights that people have as co-operators. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relations between the concepts of moral harm and moral responsibility, arguing for a circularity between the two. On this basis the conceptual soundness of descriptivism, on which consequentialist and non-consequentialist arguments are often grounded, is questioned. In the last section a certain version of ascriptivism is defended: The circularity is relevant in order to understand how a restricted version of ascriptivism may in fact be well founded.

As François Lambert experimented with religious identity in his passage from the Franciscan Observance to Lutheran Reform, he presents a valuable witness to the processes of identity formation and self-understanding in a period of religious turmoil that was still open to many different solutions. From 1522 to 1530 his choices led him from Avignon to Genève, Lausanne, Bern, Zurich, Basel, Wittenberg, Metz, Strasbourg, Marburg, in a life marked by projects of reform and moments of fear, illusions and delusions, success and (...) failure. Lambert wrote a type of autobiography of this itinerary, which is traceable from his first work composed in Wittenberg until the very last letter that he wrote a few days.. (shrink)

Forty years ago, speaking of Peter of John Olivi’s commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of John, Raoul Manselli affirmed that these texts prove that Olivi had “a vast knowledge of the exegetes who preceded him, a vivid perception of the role of the Bible within the contemporary life of the Church, and, last but not least, a vivid understanding of the complex significance and value of being Franciscan.”1 Undoubtedly, this judgment can also be extended to the (...) Lectura super Lucam, which Fortunato Iozzelli edited in 2010, thereby becoming the first of Olivi’s Gospel commentaries to be available in a modern edition.2 Iozzelli’s critical edition offers scholars a precious opportunity to better understand... (shrink)

How should we choose on behalf of people with different attitudes to risk? Simon Blessenohl has recently argued that this question poses a dilemma: it seems that sometimes we must choose either acts that everyone disprefers or else acts that are sure to turn out worse than some other act. In this article, I offer a complaints-centered account of how to take people’s attitudes to risk into consideration in our decision-making, and then I show that it provides a way out (...) of Blessenohl’s dilemma. (shrink)

Léon Brunschvicg's contribution to philosophical thought in fin-de-siècle France receives full explication in the first English-language study on his work. Arguing that Brunschvicg is crucial to understanding the philosophical schools which took root in 20th-century France, Pietro Terzi locates Brunschvicg alongside his contemporary Henri Bergson, as well as the range of thinkers he taught and influenced, including Lévinas, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, and Sartre. Brunschvicg's deep engagement with debates concerning spiritualism and rationalism, neo-Kantian philosophy, and the role of mathematics in (...) philosophy made him the perfect supervisor for a whole host of nascent philosophical ideas which were forming in the work of his students. Terzi outlines Brunchvicg's defence of neo-Kantian judgement, historical analysis and the inextricability of the natural and humanist sciences to any rigorous system of philosophy, with wide-ranging implications for contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

The paper provides both a description of conspiracy beliefs and an insight into their cultural significance. On one side, it highlights their specific formal features, on the other, and this constitutes its peculiarity in the recent literature on the topic, it considers them within the broader genre of general conceptual beliefs, whose main characteristics are weak methodology and logical structure, strong affective and dispositional constraints, epistemic closure and mauvaise foi, and whose main function is practical and self-representative (not epistemic). The (...) paper also claims that political theory and social sciences had some influence in legitimizing certain ideas and stereotypes that are exacerbated in conspiracy beliefs, while other te(le)ological conceptions, such as finalism and providence, may be an important source of ideas that turn out to be widely spread in contemporary criticism towards those same beliefs. (shrink)

Les premiers Séminaires de Jacques Lacan (1953-1959) offrent une élaboration systématique des notions de l’Imaginaire et du Symbolique, mais font référence de façon seulement sporadique à la notion du Réel. Malgré la rareté des références, la conception du Réel que l’on peut en déduire est précise et cohérente, et confirmée par les séminaires successifs – au moins jusqu’au Séminaire XI (1964). Le Réel est à comprendre comme une matière indéterminée qui, tout en pâtissant du signifiant, lui résiste. Ceci constitue une (...) innovation, de la part de Lacan, par rapport au concept philosophique classique de la matière (du moins tel qu’on le trouve chez Aristote, pour qui la matière n’offre aucune résistance à sa propre mise en forme) et prépare la base pour la théorie de l’objet a en tant que signifiant de la castration du sujet opérée par le langage, telle qu’elle est élaborée à la fin du Séminaire VI (1958-1959) et dans le Séminaire X (1962-1963). (shrink)

The knowledge of truth, in Plato, is an experience that calls for conversion of the soul (μεταστροφή, περιστροφή). The basic feature of this experience consists in some sort of connection, which is constantly at work, between rational arguments and their non-rational conditions, briefly, lógos and páthos. How does this connection show up in Plato? Its crucial importance emerges many times at both narrative (récit) and theoretical level. In the three parts of my contribution, I show how logos-pathos intertwines with Plato's (...) notion of conversion considered as a double-sided phenomenon, as both "process" of moral education and "noetic event". (shrink)

Léon Brunschvicg's contribution to philosophical thought in fin-de-siècle France receives full explication in the first English-language study on his work. Arguing that Brunschvicg is crucial to understanding the philosophical schools which took root in 20th-century France, Pietro Terzi locates Brunschvicg alongside his contemporary Henri Bergson, as well as the range of thinkers he taught and influenced, including Lévinas, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, and Sartre. Brunschvicg's deep engagement with debates concerning spiritualism and rationalism, neo-Kantian philosophy, and the role of mathematics in (...) philosophy made him the perfect supervisor for a whole host of nascent philosophical ideas which were forming in the work of his students. Terzi outlines Brunchvicg's defence of neo-Kantian judgement, historical analysis and the inextricability of the natural and humanist sciences to any rigorous system of philosophy, with wide-ranging implications for contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

Alternative agricultural systems, like organic and local agriculture, are becoming increasingly important in Europe to the detriment of conventional methods. As a matter of fact, sustainable agriculture, which started as a niche sector, has been able to conquer a significant share of the European agro-food market. Institutional promotion along with increasing consumer demand has allowed for the development of different agricultural models, from the farm to the fork, with an increasing focus on the ethical issues associated with the agro-food production (...) system. For instance, the organic agriculture agro-food chain is based on four principles, namely health, ecology, fairness and care with the goal of competing in the global agro-food market while respecting the environment, livestock, producers, and consumers. Within these themes, the seed market represents an extremely complex part of the whole picture. The present paper analyses the historical evolution of the seed sector by identifying the main issues related to sustainable agricultural systems and protection of biodiversity. It follows the identification of different seed markets based on different farm types. The two aspects are then discussed and matched in order to identify the main issues characterizing the sector. A review of possible solutions to those problems, taking into account their ethics, is also provided. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 16, Issue 3, Page 39-51, September 2011.