Online research in philosophy

We argue that, in the case of research biobanks, there is a need to replace the currently used informed consent with trusted consent. Accordingly, we introduce a proposal for the structure of the latter. Further, we discuss some of the issues that can be addressed effectively through our proposal. In particular, we illustrate: i) which research should be authorized by donors; ii) how to regulate access to information; iii) the fundamental role played by a Third Party Authority in assuring compliance (...) with the reciprocal expectations and obligations of donors and scientists. Finally, we briefly analyse two issues that might represent important elements of a ‘new alliance’ between researchers and donors to which the trusted consent could pave the way: i) the correlations between needs and rights of the two parties, and ii) possible economic transactions. (shrink)

A review of Daniel Salvatore Schiffer´s Le dandysme, dernier éclat d’héroïsme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2010, 302 pp. ISBN 978-2-13-058227-4).

La diffusione del libro nel Medioevo potrebbe essere riletta alla luce di una metafora attuale sebbene non scevra di aspetti dialettici: quella della “rete”. All’ubicazione spazio-temporale del libro nei monasteri medievali, contraddistinta da fisicità e permanenza, si sotituisce oggi un formato digitale e virtuale, che porta ad una sorta di decontestualizzazione e alla continuità del flusso di informazioni, contribuendo alla diffusione capillare del sapere. L’ottica di universalità e globalità accomuna tuttavia entrambe le epoche. Alcuni concetti-chiave dell’informatica potrebbero infatti declinarsi in (...) ambito medievale: Server-Client per la raccolta, la conservazione e la trasmissione delle conoscenze da parte dei monasteri, quali centri del sapere in Europa, agli uomini di cultura; Firewall, per alludere alla necessità di tutelare i manoscritti, mediante la copiatura e la diffusione dei codici; Community, ad indicare non solo la comunità religiosa o monastica in senso stretto, bensì l’apertura ad una costruzione del sapere mediante un’azione partecipativa. I problemi dell’autenticità delle fonti, dell’acriticità delle informazioni e la pratica delle citazioni trovano un precedente significativo nelle Sententiae di Pietro Lombardo: una sorta di “biblioteca virtuale” grazie alla collezione di passi dalla Sacra Scrittura e da fonti latine e greche, paragonabile a un moderno modello enciclopedico di sapere. The diffusion of the book in the Middle Ages could be critically read through a modern metaphor: the “net”. The space-temporal coordinates of the book shift from being physical and permanent in the Medieval monasteries, to being de-contextualized and continue in the flow of information of digital and virtual format. However the universal and global perspective is common to the contemporary and the Medieval periods. In fact some key-words of computer science could be applied to the Medieval context: Server-Client, for the collection, the preservation and the transmission of knowledge from monasteries, as cultural centers in Medieval Europe, to men of culture; Firewall, for the necessary protection of manuscripts, through copying and diffusing codes; Community, referred not only to the monastic and religious groups, but also to an open sharing of the building of knowledge. Problems like the authenticity of the sources, the lack of criticality in the reception of data, and the practice of quotations are well represented in Peter Lombard’s Sententiae: this work can be compared to a modern encyclopedia thanks to the collection of passages from the Holy Scripture and from Latin and Greek sources, as well as a “virtual library”. (shrink)

Elaborating on the notions that humans possess different modalities of decision-making and that these are often influenced by moral considerations, we conducted an experimental investigation of the Trolley Problem. We presented the participants with two standard scenarios (‹lever’ and ‹stranger’) either in the usual or in reversed order. We observe that responses to the lever scenario, which result from (moral) reasoning, are affected by our manipulation; whereas responses to the stranger scenario, triggered by moral emotions, are unaffected. Furthermore, when asked (...) to express general moral opinions on the themes of the Trolley Problem, about half of the participants reveal some inconsistency with the responses they had previously given. (shrink)

A well-known proof by Alonzo Church, first published in 1963 by Frederic Fitch, purports to show that all truths are knowable only if all truths are known. This is the Paradox of Knowability. If we take it, quite plausibly, that we are not omniscient, the proof appears to undermine metaphysical doctrines committed to the knowability of truth, such as semantic anti-realism. Since its rediscovery by Hart and McGinn ( 1976), many solutions to the paradox have been offered. In this article, (...) we present a new proof to the effect that not all truths are knowable, which rests on different assumptions from those of the original argument published by Fitch. We highlight the general form of the knowability paradoxes, and argue that anti-realists who favour either an hierarchical or an intuitionistic approach to the Paradox of Knowability are confronted with a dilemma: they must either give up anti-realism or opt for a highly controversial interpretation of the principle that every truth is knowable. (shrink)

Sensorimotor representations are essential for building up and maintaining corporeal awareness, i.e. the ability to perceive, know and evaluate one's own body as well as the bodies of others. The notion of embodied cognition implies that abstract forms of conceptual knowledge may be ultimately instantiated in such sensorimotor representations. In this sense, conceptual thinking should evoke, via mental simulation, some underlying sensorimotor events. In this review we discuss studies on the relation between embodiment and corporeal awareness. We approach the question (...) by issuing challenges from both ends. First, we ask whether bodily representations themselves can be disembodied or disconnected from underlying sensorimotor events. Second, we ask whether any concept, no matter how abstract, can actually be embodied in this way. The strong view of embodied cognition requires a negative answer to the first question, and an affirmative answer to the second. We also focus on the surprising range of cognitive processes that can be explained by linking them to corporeal awareness, such as aesthetic appreciation, and object constancy following brain damage. We conclude that (a) somatomotor simulation may help to understand the external world and the society of other individuals, but (b) some non-somatic forms of simulation may be required to explain how abstract knowledge contributes to understanding others' states. In this sense, the classic divide between sensorimotor and conceptual domains must remain in some form. (shrink)

My intention is not to get into specific, detailed historical observation about the ways that led the term ‘democracy’ to take on its current meaning, in science as much as in politics, but rather to establish a comparison between the models that political science proposes and interprets as important for the existence of democracy and those that science illustrates as indicators of scientific knowledge constructed in a democratic form. The debate about the contemporary meaning of democracy has generated an extraordinary (...) diversification of models of democracy: from technocratic conceptions of government to conceptions of social life that include widespread political participation. And it is exactly for this reason that the assumption of a specific point of view on the question we are dealing with inevitably brings with it the choice of a model suitable to describe democratic form as a form of politics without further explanation, that is, as a political system with which science measures itself as a cultural category. In this sense, we can consider the passage from the concept of democracy to that of politics and generally of science to be a peaceful one, since politics has been appointed with that set of behaviours and democratic practices (including science) that political culture demands for the social benefit. This demand can be met only on condition that structural obstacles are removed and new cultural and epistemological mediators are introduced. (shrink)

We present a reference model for finding (prima facie) evidence of discrimination in datasets of historical decision records in socially sensitive tasks, including access to credit, mortgage, insurance, labor market and other benefits. We formalize the process of direct and indirect discrimination discovery in a rule-based framework, by modelling protected-by-law groups, such as minorities or disadvantaged segments, and contexts where discrimination occurs. Classification rules, extracted from the historical records, allow for unveiling contexts of unlawful discrimination, where the degree of burden (...) over protected-by-law groups is evaluated by formalizing existing norms and regulations in terms of quantitative measures. The measures are defined as functions of the contingency table of a classification rule, and their statistical significance is assessed, relying on a large body of statistical inference methods for proportions. Key legal concepts and reasonings are then used to drive the analysis on the set of classification rules, with the aim of discovering patterns of discrimination, either direct or indirect. Analyses of affirmative action, favoritism and argumentation against discrimination allegations are also modelled in the proposed framework. Finally, we present an implementation, called LP2DD, of the overall reference model that integrates induction, through data mining classification rule extraction, and deduction, through a computational logic implementation of the analytical tools. The LP2DD system is put at work on the analysis of a dataset of credit decision records. (shrink)

Collins, John Francis In October this year there are to be two events at the Vatican. Beginning on 7 October and going through to 28 October bishops from all over the world are to gather at a Synod on 'New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith.' On 11 October, midway through the Synod, the whole Church will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. The bishops who are to gather this year at the (...) Synod follow in the footsteps of the more than 2000 Bishops who gathered at the Second Vatican Council. John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council, with the following words 'Looked at one way there is the deposit of faith or the truths which are contained in our doctrine which we venerate, looked at another way there is the way by which the same (the deposit of faith) is enunciated both in its meaning and its spirit.' In a recent interview for Salt and Light Television the inaugural head of the Pontifical Council for the promotion of the New Evangelisation Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella noted that what Vatican II did for the Church is still present in our community. Later in the interview the Archbishop stated that the 'New Evangelisation is not a new work, it is a new mentality; a new language, a new enthusiasm for announcing the gospel.' There is continuity between both the spirit and letter of the Archbishop's words recorded in 2012 and the words of John XXIII in opening Vatican II. That is, as a Church, what we are seeking is new ways to announce the meaning and spirit of the deposit of faith, the truths contained in doctrine. What would later be called the new evangelisation permeated Vatican II. (shrink)

In the semantic debate about plurals, pluralism is the view that a plural term denotes some things in the domain of quantification and a plural predicate denotes a plural property, i.e a property that can be instantiated by many things jointly. According to a particular version of this view, untyped pluralism, there is no type distinction between objects and properties. In this article, I argue against untyped pluralism by showing that it is subject to a variant of a Russell-style argument (...) put forth by Timothy Williamson and that it clashes with a plural version of Cantor’s theorem. I conclude that pluralists should postulate a type distinction between objects and properties. (shrink)

AS formas históricas e institucionais do cristianismo em Itália fazem com que a filosofia se deva necessariamente confrontar com ele. Além disso, é também evidente que autores como Nietzsche ou Heidegger têm igualmente uma grande influência na península itálica. O artigo examina os escritos de quatro autores contemporêneos (Emmanuel Severino, Salvatore Natoli, Massimo Cacciari e Vicenzo Vitiello) os quais, uns mais do que outros, se inspiram nos autores alemães antes mencionados para dar um sentido, frequentemente redutor, mas por (...) vezes também respeitoso da fé dos crentes, ao cristianismo de que a cultura italiana não pode fazer abstracção. Estes filósofos, unidos numa comum sensibilidade ao ser humano, estão também particularmente atentos, ainda que de maneiras muito variadas, à provocação do mal. A categoria da 'Kenose', derivada da meditação sobre a diferença ontológica e da contestação de um saber absoluto disponível para a razão religiosa, acompanha a reconstrução filosófica daquilo que, no cristianismo, mais profundamente toca os autores estudados neste artigo; o seu entendimento do cristianismo, contudo, depende muito da percepção nietzscheana do instante. /// The article starts with the assumption that the historical and institutional forms of Christianity in Italy make it unavoidable for philosophy to confront itself with it. It also mentions the great influence that authors like Nietzsche and Heidegger have in the Italian peninsula. The article proceeds to analyze the writings of four contemporary Italian thinkers (Emmanuel Severino, Salvatore Natoli, Massimo Cacciari and Vicenzo Vitiello). All these authors are inspired by the above mentioned German thinkers and aim at making sense, frequently in a reductive manner but also in a mode respectful of the believers' faith, of Christianity, something of which the Italian culture cannot make abstraction. These four Italian philosophers are particularly united in a common sensibility to the human being and attentive, even though in very different manners, to the provocation of evil. For them, the category of 'Kenosis', derived from the meditation on the ontological difference and the protest against an absolute knowledge available to the religious reason, goes together with the philosophical reconstruction of what in Christianity most touches them. The article also shows, finally, that for these authors the understanding of Christianity depends to a great extent of the impact of nietzschean thought. (shrink)

La question du mal est abondamment discutée dans la philosophie contemporaine, signe de Vinquiétude qui habite notre culture. L'histoire du XXème siècle a certainement aidé à prendre conscience des possibilités qui appartiennent à la raison humaine, mais elle a ègalement révélé que cette même raison ne constituepas un instrument qui, de soi, pro-duit le bien de l'humanité. La première section de l'article présente des textes de Thomas d'Aquin et de Salvatore Natoli, qui cherchent l'un et à l'autre comment bien (...) faire avec le mal. Dans la seconde section, qui lit des pages de Jean Nabert, d'Emmanuel Lévinas et de Paul Ricoeur, le mal se montre injustifiable et donc inutilisable; la conscience y fait l'expé-rience d'une transcendance éthique irréductible. La troisième section commente enfin l'ex-pression biblique "Mysterium" iniquitatis en assumant ce que la contemplation de la Croix du Sauveur enseigne du mal. /// A questão do mal encontra-se amplamente discutida no âmbito da filosofia contemporânea, sinal evidente da profunda inquietude que perpassa a nossa cultura. A história do século XX contribuiu enormemente para nos ajudar a tomar consciência das possibilidades inerentes à razão humana, ainda que ao mesmo tempo tenha também demonstrado não ser a razão um instrumento que, de si, conduza necessariamente ao bem da humanidade. Num primeiro momento, o autor discute sobretudo textos de S. Tomás de Aquino e de Salvatore Natoli, pensadores eminentemente possuídos pela preocupação de lidar bem com o mal Debruça-se depois sobre os contributos de pensadores como Jean Nabert, Emmanuel Levinas e Paul Ricoeur, os quais consideram o mal algo profundamente injustificável e, por isso, também inutilizáva. É neste contexto, aliás, que a consciência experimenta uma transcendência ética irredutível. Por fim, o artigo comenta a expressão bíblica "Mysterium iniquitatis" numa tentativa de assumir aquilo que a contemplação da Cruz de Cristo ensina acerca do mal. (shrink)

In light of the close connection between the ontological hierarchy of set theory and the ideological hierarchy of type theory, Øystein Linnebo and Agustín Rayo have recently offered an argument in favour of the view that the set-theoretic universe is open-ended. In this paper, we argue that, since the connection between the two hierarchies is indeed tight, any philosophical conclusions cut both ways. One should either hold that both the ontological hierarchy and the ideological hierarchy are open-ended, or that neither (...) is. If there is reason to accept the view that the set-theoretic universe is open-ended, that will be because such a view is the most compelling one to adopt on the purely ontological front. (shrink)

This volume juxtaposes philosophical and psychoanalytic speculation with literary and artistic commentary in order to approach a set of questions concerning the human relation to language. The multifold writing of the volume takes the form of a 'triptych' (following the model of works by Francis Bacon) rather than that of a thesis. The central section of the volume contains an extended dialogue on two textual passages from works by Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Lacan. The first part of the volume's triptych (...) focuses on the work of Francis Bacon, taking the motif of crucifixion as a path toward understanding his violent realism. The third part, which juxtaposes a dialogue with a critical essay, concerns the work of Salvatore Puglia. Through Bacon and Puglia, the author seeks another approach to a figural imperative at the limits of language. (shrink)

Relying on Pierre Hadot’s concept of philosophy as spiritual exercise, I examine Nikos Kazantzakis’ magnum opus Askitiki: Salvatores Dei (translated in English as The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises). Specifically, I examine the extent to which Kazantzakis offers a version of spiritual exercise appropriate for neoclassical theism, analogous to St. Ignatius’ version of spiritual exercise in the service of classical theism.