Causal reasoning and game-theoretic reasoning are fundamental topics in artificial intelligence, among many other disciplines: this paper is concerned with their intersection. Despite their importance, a formal framework that supports both these forms of reasoning has, until now, been lacking. We offer a solution in the form of (structural) causal games, which can be seen as extending Pearl's causal hierarchy to the game-theoretic domain, or as extending Koller and Milch's multi-agent influence diagrams to the causal domain. We then consider three (...) key questions: i) How can the (causal) dependencies in games - either between variables, or between strategies - be modelled in a uniform, principled manner? ii) How may causal queries be computed in causal games, and what assumptions does this require? iii) How do causal games compare to existing formalisms? To address question i), we introduce mechanised games, which encode dependencies between agents' decision rules and the distributions governing the game. In response to question ii), we present definitions of predictions, interventions, and counterfactuals, and discuss the assumptions required for each. Regarding question iii), we describe correspondences between causal games and other formalisms, and explain how causal games can be used to answer queries that other causal or game-theoretic models do not support. Finally, we highlight possible applications of causal games, aided by an extensive open-source Python library. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Thomas Szanto develops an account of hatred, according to which the target of this attitude, paradigmatically, is a representative of a group or a class. On this account, hatred overgeneralises its target, has a blurred affective focus, is co-constituted by an outgroup/ingroup distinction, and is accompanied by a commitment for the subject to stick to the hostile attitude. While this description captures an important form of hatred, this paper claims that it does not do justice to (...) the paradigmatic cases of this attitude. The paper puts forward a “singularist” view of hatred, the core idea of which is that, in its simpler form, hatred is to aversively target the other qua this individual person, where the adverb “aversively” expresses the subject’s desire for the target to be annihilated. The conclusion develops some general considerations on the distinction between paradigmatic and marginal instances of an attitude by highlighting its importance for the study of affective phenomena. (shrink)

Gauss’s quadratic reciprocity theorem is among the most important results in the history of number theory. It’s also among the most mysterious: since its discovery in the late 18th century, mathematicians have regarded reciprocity as a deeply surprising fact in need of explanation. Intriguingly, though, there’s little agreement on how the theorem is best explained. Two quite different kinds of proof are most often praised as explanatory: an elementary argument that gives the theorem an intuitive geometric interpretation, due to Gauss (...) and Eisenstein, and a sophisticated proof using algebraic number theory, due to Hilbert. Philosophers have yet to look carefully at such explanatory disagreements in mathematics. I do so here. According to the view I defend, there are two important explanatory virtues—depth and transparency—which different proofs (and other potential explanations) possess to different degrees. Although not mutually exclusive in principle, the packages of features associated with the two stand in some tension with one another, so that very deep explanations are rarely transparent, and vice versa. After developing the theory of depth and transparency and applying it to the case of quadratic reciprocity, I draw some morals about the nature of mathematical explanation. (shrink)

The Aristotelian view of universals, according to which each universal generically depends for its existence on its instantiations, has recently come under attack by a series of ground-theoretic arguments. The last such arguments, presented by Raven, promises to offer several significant improvements over its predecessors, such as avoiding commitment to the transitivity of ground and offering new reasons for the metaphysical priority of universals over their instantiations. In this paper, we argue that Raven's argument does not effectively avoid said commitment (...) and that Raven's new reasons fail. Moreover, we present a novel ground-theoretic interpretation of the Aristotelian view, referred to as strong immanence, and introduce a new argument against the Aristotelian view, intended to sidestep any commitment to the transitivity of ground. (shrink)

In a recent paper Berto introduces a semantic system for a logic of imagination, intended as positive conceivability, and aboutness of imaginative acts. This system crucially adopts elements of both the semantics of conditionals and the semantics of analytical implications in order to account for the central logical traits of the notion of truth in an act of imagination based on an explicit input. The main problem left unsolved is to put forward a complete set of axioms for the proposed (...) system. In the present paper I offer a solution to this problem by providing a complete axiomatization of a generalization of the original semantics. The difficulty in proving completeness lies in the fact that the modalities that capture the notion of truth in an act of imagination are neither standard nor minimal, so that the construction of the canonical model and the proof of the truth lemma are to be substantially modified. (shrink)

ABSTRACT ‘We’ is said in many ways. This paper investigates Kurt Stavenhagen’s neglected account of different kinds of ‘we’, which is maintained to be one of the most sophisticated within classical phenomenology. The paper starts by elaborating on the phenomenological distinction between mass, society, and community by claiming that individuals partake in episodes of experiential sharing only within communities. Stavenhagen conceptualizes experiential sharing as a meshing of conscious experiences infused by a feeling of us-ness. The remainder of the paper focuses (...) on Stavenhagen’s distinction of various senses of us: when individual share preferences, have mutual respect, or emotionally evaluate the world according to a cultural tradition, they elicit a sense of us of different kind and, thus, form communities of different kind. Within phenomenology, Stavenhagen should be credited with the merit of having unearthed the aggregative, we-generating force of preferences, of respect, and of (certain) emotions. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an emerging explanatory framework about ageing and care. In particular, I focus on how, in contrast to most classical accounts of ageing, biomedicine today construes the ageing process as a modifiable trajectory. This framing turns ageing from a stage of inexorable decline into the focus of preventive strategies, harnessing the functional plasticity of the ageing organism. I illustrate this shift by focusing on studies of the demographic dynamics in human population, observations of ageing as an (...) intraspecifically heterogenous phenotype, and the experimental manipulation of longevity, in both model organisms and humans. I suggest that such an explanatory framework about ageing creates the epistemological conditions for the rise of a peculiar form of prevention that does not aim to address a specific condition. Rather it seeks to stall the age-related accumulation of molecular damage and functional deficits, boosting individual resilience against age-related decline. I call this preventive paradigm “ground-state prevention.” While new, ground-state prevention bears conceptual resemblance to forms of medical wisdom prominent in classic Galenic medicine, as well as in the Renaissance period. (shrink)

Until recently, an almost perfect parallelism seemed to hold between theories of identity through time and across possible worlds,as every account in the temporal case(endurantism,perdurantism, exdurantism) was mirrored by a twin account in the modal case (trans-world identity, identity-via-parts, identity-via-counterparts). Nevertheless, in the recent literature, this parallelism has been broken because of the implementation in the debate of the relation of location. In particular, endurantism has been subject to a more in-depth analysis, and different versions of it, corresponding to different (...) ways an entity can be located in time, emerged. In this article, we provide a precise map of the conceptions at stake, complete the debate by introducing a version of endurantism not yet considered in the debate — we call transcendentism — and show that it allows us to provide an effective interpretation of the relation of trans-world identity and an intuitive solution in the temporal case. (shrink)

Translated from the 1989 Italian edition, Ferrara (sociology, U. of Rome) intertwines an exploration of the ethical and social thought of 17th-century French philosopher Rousseau, with an analysis of contemporary culture through those ...

Measurement is widely applied because its results are assumed to be more reliable than opinions and guesses, but this reliability is sometimes justified in a stereotyped way. After a critical analysis of such stereotypes, a structural characterization of measurement is proposed, as partly empirical and partly theoretical process, by showing that it is in fact the structure of the process that guarantees the reliability of its results. On this basis the role and the structure of background knowledge in measurement and (...) the justification of the conditions of object-relatedness ("objectivity") and subject-independence ("intersubjectivity") of measurement are specifically discussed. (shrink)

This text is an integrated and comprehensive account of theories of justice and judgement in contemporary political and moral philosophy. It offers a critical examination of judgement and normative validity in the recent works of Rawls, Habermas, Ackerman, Michaleman, and Dworkin. Ferrara demonstrates how the understanding of justice and normative validity, since the linguistic turn in philosophy, is defined in terms of reflective judgement. This demonstration comprises of an historical overview of the judgement model in contemporary political philosophy that focuses (...) on Rawls on ` justice as fairness' and Habermas on the discourse theory of law and the public sphere. The discussion then examines situated judgement; the work of Ackerman on the function of the constitution; and Michaelman on deliberative democracy. Justice and Judgement concludes with an exhaustive and exacting discussion of universalism and contemporary liberalism; and the judgement view of justice. The key themes of this examination are the good; equal respect; and reflexive judgement. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to introduce a system of dynamic deontic logic in which the main problems related to the de finition of deontic concepts, especially those emerging from a standard analysis of permission in terms of possibility of doing an action without incurring in a violation of the law, are solved. The basic idea is to introduce two crucial distinctions allowing us to differentiate (i) what is ideal with respect to a given code, which fixes the types (...) of action that are abstractly prescribed, and what is ideal with respect to the specific situation in which the agent acts, and (ii) the transitions associated with actions and the results of actions, which can obtain even without the action being performed. (shrink)

Il saggio si propone di approfondire due tendenze tipiche della musica contemporanea: la prima è il Minimalismo, movimento rappresentato da musicisti come La Monte Young, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, la seconda è la rave music (come la techno), caratteristica della popular culture nell’era postmoderna. Attraverso il pensiero di Adorno, e a partire dalla sua analisi dialettica del dualismo Schönberg-Stravinskij, il saggio propone una comprensione filosofica di concetti come “ripetizione” e “trascendenza”; l’assenza dello “sviluppo” in gran parte della produzione musicale (...) degli ultimi decenni, nella popular music quanto nella musica colta, dimostra una dispersione del soggetto e dell’individuo, smarrito all’interno di un “eterno ritorno” della struttura ritmica che può essere ricompreso nei termini di un “eterno ritorno dell’identico” e non nei termini di un “eterno ritorno della possibilità”; in quest’ottica, a venire sacrificata è anche la dimensione della trascendenza, che non a caso viene ricercata spesso nell’esotismo dei culti orientali o nel consumo di sostanze stupefacenti. L’insistenza nel Minimalismo della ripetizione come unica ed estrema categoria di riferimento e norma estetica, produrrà infatti nel corso degli ultimi anni una dicotomia apparentemente contraddittoria, ma che invece esprime la medesima matrice logica: da un lato l’invasamento edonistico del beat elettronico della musica dance elettronica, dall’altro la proposta commerciale della produzione industriale della musica pop. Non è un caso che proprio il Minimalismo sia sfociato in entrambe queste due tendenze, mostrandosi come la cifra comune originaria, traducendosi nella musica rave o nella musica rock. (shrink)

Robert Kane’s libertarian theory of freedom is frequently attacked in the free will literature by the “luck objection”. Alfred Mele’s articulation of the objection is a very influential formulation as it captures the spirit of Kane’s critics and their complaint with Kane’s view. Mele argues that without a contrastive explanation that highlights aspects of the agent their free choices are reducible to luck. I argue that the lack of a contrastive explanation does not establish that there is no explanation for (...) self-forming actions. Building on the explanation that Kane offers in his rebuttal, I claim that there are neglected dimensions to Kane’s view that, when put together, mitigate the force of the objection. These elements are value experiments, teleological intelligibility and liberium arbitrium voluntatis. I claim that through adopting a narrative view of the self, we can place value experiments in a broader teleological framework that allows us to see self-forming choices are not just a matter of luck. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this study to shed light on the importance of social media hosted content related to socially-motivated discussions. Moving from the field of communication for development, the research leverages social media as a powerful tool for collecting and analyse peer-to-peer communication towards the conceptualization of eVoices of Unheard. The deep understanding of these conversation can generate recommendations for organizations and governments designing and providing interventions fostering local socio-economic development.Design/methodology/approachThe study presents a large-scale analysis of social media interactions on (...) the topic “#favela” to generate insights into a social network structure, narrative contents and meaning generated.FindingsStructurally, the analysed networks are comparable with those presented in current academic literature; automatic text analysis confirmed the promise of the inner value of communication for development opening the floor to conceptualization of the “eVoices of unheard”, which is the collective and conscious use of social media to mediate community discussions about tangible and intangible issues related to socio-economic development.Originality/valueFramed within the rise of interactive communication for development this research show that social media an support the notion of voice proposed by Couldry moving from process towards value thereby understanding intangible issues related with socio-economic development. (shrink)

Political Representation: A Historical and Conceptual investigation into Its Polysemy The aim of this study is to value the complexity of theoretical formulations that different traditions and authors have provided on the problem of political representation. This is achieved by relying on a text that has pioneered this kind of investigation: Hasso Hofmann s Repräsentation: Studien zur Wort- und Begriffsgeschichte von der Antike bis ins 19. Jahrhundert. Hofmann s book, originally published in German in 1974, has not received due attention (...) in the contemporary debate on representation and is scarcely known in the non-German academic environment. However, its unique methodological and conceptual outlook on representation has much to contribute to the current debate on this topic. Hofmann s main objective is to draw a history and theory of representation that values the polysemy of the Latin word repraesentatio from Antiquity until the 19th century. To achieve this goal, Hofmann analyses the diverse meanings that have been attached to the word representation throughout its history, from its inception in the Latin world onwards. To prove the relevance of this approach for the contemporary debate, I apply Hofmann s semantic-conceptual map of representation to the study of political representation in such diverse authors as Marsilius of Padua, Carl Schmitt, Thomas Hobbes, Ernst Kantorowicz as well as contemporary authors such as Bernard Manin, Nadia Urbinati, Frank Ankersmit, John Dryzek and others. In so doing, I show that the answer to the question: what makes representation a political notion? is far from univocal. Moreover, I argue that Hofmann s interpretive lens provides an alternative approach to what is still considered the classical study of political representation in the Anglophone world: Hanna Pitkin s The Concept of Representation. By critically comparing Pitkin and Hofmann s approaches to the problem of political representation, my aim is to demonstrate that Pitkin s normative perspective should be revised. Pitkin argues, first, that it is possible to pinpoint a general meaning of the concept of representation as making present again and, second, that there is a general concept of political representation that is identified with substantive acting for and in which all aesthetic meanings of representation are excluded. In contrast to this approach, Hofmann stresses the polysemyc character of representation, and the impossibility of narrowing down a general meaning of the concept. Drawing on Hofmann, one can argue that the semantic richness of political representation is just as broad as that of the word representation itself and that what makes representation political varies from epoch to epoch, from author to author. As a result, the common way to look at political representation nowadays, i.e. as democratic representation, is far from the only one but constitutes, rather, just one of the numerous ways to look at this concept over time. Using Hofmann s perspective for the study of political representation also helps us show that the aesthetic meanings of representation are always and intrinsically bound up with political representation in all the authors who have theorized this concept. In contrast to Pitkin, one could argue that any meaningful concept of political representation must also include the aesthetic and symbolic meanings of representation. Accordingly, it is impossible to think of political representation without accounting for its symbolic dimension as Darstellung. (shrink)

Riassunto: La geomanzia, una disciplina divinatoria importata dal mondo arabo, prosperò nel medioevo latino. Di fronte a tale popolarità traduttori e autori di trattati geomantici, filosofi, teologi e letterati si interrogarono sulla sua validità, sulle sue implicazioni filosofiche e sulla visione del mondo che essa presupponeva. Il presente contributo esamina questo dibattito. In particolare, si ricostruisce lo statuto epistemologico della geomanzia nei suoi rapporti con l’astrologia. Il problema della scientificità della geomanzia viene discusso anche nel contesto dell’azione della causalità celeste (...) sul mondo sublunare. Sono esaminati i ruoli del geomante e dell’interrogante ed è analizzato il concetto di intentio, che rimanda ad un’analisi psicologica peculiare della geomanzia. Caratterizza la geomanzia anche una dimensione rituale fatta di prescrizioni preliminari e di invocazioni da rivolgere alla divinità. Quanto detto impedisce di ridurre la geomanzia ad una semplice tecnica divinatoria; essa appare piuttosto una forma di sapienza rivelata solo al geomante esperto e moralmente degno, che attinge così la conoscenza di eventi futuri e cose nascoste. Da questa breve ricostruzione emerge l’articolata natura della geomanzia, contraddistinta, nella sua originaria versione araba, da una marcata impronta religiosa e da uno stretto, benché ambiguo, nesso con la profezia Islamica.: Geomancy, a divinatory discipline imported from the Arab world, flourished in the Latin Middle Ages. In the attempt to explain the popularity of geomancy, translators and authors of geomantic writings, philosophers, theologians, and other scholars addressed such issues as its validity, its philosophical implications, and the worldview it presupposed. This paper explores this debate, delineating the epistemological status of geomancy in relation to astrology. The problem of the scientificity of geomacy will be discussed with regard to the celestial influences on the sublunary world. In addition, the different roles played by both the geomancer and the consultant are examined. Attention will be paid to the concept of intentio, which implies a psychological analysis peculiar to geomancy. Geomancy is also characterized by ritual elements such as both preliminary prescriptions and invocations of God, meaning that it is not an ordinary divinatory technique, but a form of wisdom revealed only to experienced and upright geomancers, who can thus obtain knowledge of future events and hidden things. From this analysis emerges the complex nature of geomancy, whose original Arabic version had a prominent religious character and a close, albeit ambiguous, link with Islamic prophecy. (shrink)

This article examines recent theories of democratic citizenship as well as the institutional separation of religion and politics in light of shortcomings with the traditional secularization thesis. Due to the fact that juridical norms and forms of consciousness develop at a more rapid pace than religious ones, received accounts of both democratic equality and toleration need to be reconceptualized. Questions concerning the legitimacy and neutrality of religious reasoning in democratic politics, as pursued in the work of Rawls and Habermas, also (...) need to be informed by further reflection on the confessional context and other empirical features of post-secular societies. Comparing the politics of same-sex marriage in Canada and Italy helps to illustrate this point. (shrink)

I defend the ethical fittingness theory (EFT), the thesis that whenever it is legitimate ethically to evaluate a representational artwork for the perspective it embodies, such evaluation systematically bears on the work's artistic value. EFT is a form of radical moralism, claiming that the systematic relationship between the selected type of ethical evaluation and artistic evaluation always obtains, for works of any kind. The argument for EFT spells out the implications of ethically judging an artwork for its perspective, where such (...) an ethical evaluation is understood as an assessment of how well the work's ethical perspective fits extra-fictional reality—how appropriate, correct, or true the perspective is. The argument shows that the ethical legitimacy of judging a work for its perspective ipso facto proves the judgment's art-critical relevance. Hence, the argument effectively amounts to a reductio ad absurdum of theories that admit the legitimacy of ethically judging artworks this way, but deny or qualify the judgment's relevance to artistic merit. Since EFT is stated conditionally, the argument need not indicate how often artworks are subject to this type of ethical evaluation. Nonetheless, I make a case for the relevance of EFT to actual art criticism and contemporary philosophical debate. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish between linguistic and non-linguistic presuppositions. I also propose that we should be interested in conversational presuppositions, which could also be called speaker-meant presuppositions or speaker's presuppositions. I also distinguish between potential and actual presuppositions. I propose that, in some cases, presuppositions can be conversationally implicated and cancellation is possible. I specify what the hard cases are and I try to explain them through ontological considerations. I try to reduce the hard cases through (a) the notion (...) that all actual presuppositions are speaker-meant; (b) the distinction between ontological and linguistic presuppositions; and (c) the uncontroversial notion that even ontological presuppositions are susceptible to semantic under-determination that has to be tackled though pragmatic intrusion. Pragmatic intrusion for presuppositional cases, however, cannot really amount to completing or expanding or in any case computing an explicature in an ordinary sense, as explicatures have to do with truth-conditions and aim to create propositionally complete forms that are truth-evaluable, unlike propositional fragments or schemata that are usually expressed in sentences (; , 2012). They are processes similar to explicatures, but since presuppositions are only pre-conditions for an utterance's being true or false (; Macagno; 2016; ; ), we cannot say that these processes are completely like those of explicatures. Nevertheless, they are pragmatically-motivated, even if hard to cancel. (See on lack of cancellability or on entrenched meanings.) This more or less brings my approach in line with contextualism (even if I accept semantic invariantism, along the lines of or (Invariantism is also shared by , in a form that is compatible with her contextualism.)). (shrink)

This paper is an example of how contextual information interacts with the interpretation of noun phrases (NPs) in discourse. When we encounter an NP escorted by the definite article or a proper name, the expectation is triggered that the speaker is referring to some referent x that the hearer can normally identify. Strawson and Russell have agreed that a referent must be associated with a definite description so that the assertion containing it can be said to be true. In the (...) case where a description does not refer to anything, the assertion is considered by Russell to be false, while Strawson says that the issue of truth or falsity does not arise. In this paper, we examine a case in which contextual information interacts with the interpretation of NPs in discourse and the hearer is not expected to identify a referent when hearing a proper name. In this case, the issue of truth or falsity does not arise, because the hearer does not identify the referent. In fact, s/he does not intend for the discourse to about a referent at all. These situations are primarily represented by sentences uttered during the course of a grammar lecture, in which the lecturer is explaining a rule of language and does not focus on external reality. The hearers are aware of this focus and do not process the NP (in general a proper name) to identify a specific referent. This discourse is of three types, which will be discussed at the end of this paper. -/- Keywords: reference; pragmeme; presupposition; fictional discourse; exemplification acts. (shrink)

With the publication of Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (1981) and of his essays “A Reply to my Critics” (1982), “Diskursethik — Notizen zu einem Bugründungsprogramm” (1983), “Moralbewusstsein und kommunikatives Handeln” (1983), and “Über Moralität und Sitdichkeit — Was macht eine Lebensform ‘rational’?” (1984), Habermas has considerably developed and systematized his views on ethics. Up to Communication and the Evolution of Society (1979), ethics had been of interest to Habermas mainly insofar as certain concepts related to it — such as the (...) ideal speech situation, communicative action, presuppositions of argumentation, etc. — were crucial for the purpose of grounding a universalistic point of view in philosophy and in social theory. (shrink)

Together with the volume “Inquiries in philosophical pragmatics: Theoretical developments,” this book collects selected contributions to the conference Pragmasophia II held in Lisbon in 2018. The eleven essays of this volume focus on how a linguistic structure or expression manifests a pragmatic phenomenon, and are ordered considering their relationship with the specificity of the context. The first three papers, devoted to the topics of prototype-based generalizations, scalar implicatures, and temporal ordering, propose new insights into pragmatic phenomena considering linguistic behavior independent (...) of the social activity in which it is placed. In the last papers, the analytical and empirical goal becomes predominant. Here, the theoretical advances are considered as instruments for analyzing specific texts, such as marketplace interactions, courtroom speech, schizophrenic discourse, narratives of literary texts for children or deception in movies. In between, three papers devoted to emotive or loaded words bridge the passage from more theoretical to more empirical and context-oriented works. (shrink)

Together with the volume “Inquiries in philosophical pragmatics: Linguistic and theoretical issues,” this book collects selected contributions to the conference Pragmasophia II held in Lisbon in 2018. This first volume intends to contribute to the dialogue between philosophers and linguists, trying to broaden the boundaries of this discipline defined by the crucial notions of context and verbal action. To this purpose, the contributions are collected in an order that reflects the core and the frontiers of pragmatics, the former constituted by (...) the classical and more philosophical topics as quantifiers, semantic intentions and semantics, and common knowledge, and the latter exploring areas such as the relationship between pragmatics and other fields, such as argumentation and discourse analysis. Between these two poles of theoretical developments, we can find new theoretical challenges to some basic pragmatic problems, such as pure indexicals, deferred reference, polysemy, explicatures and indirect reports. (shrink)

The logic of justification provides an in-depth analysis of the epistemic states of an agent. This paper aims at solving some of the problems to which the common interpretation of the operators of justification logic is subject by providing a framework in which a crucial distinction between potential and explicit justifiers is exploited. The paper is subdivided into three sections. The first section offers an introduction to a basic system LJ of justification logic and to the problems concerning its interpretation. (...) In the second section, three new systems of justification logic are introduced and characterised with respect to an appropriate semantics. The final section shows why the highlighted problems do not afflict the new systems and how it is possible to interpret LJ in the new framework. (shrink)

In the global world, momentous migratory tides have produced hyper-pluralism on the domestic scale, bringing citizens with radically different conceptions of life, justice and the good to coexist side by side. Conjectural arguments about the acceptance of pluralism, the next best to public reason when shared premises are too thin, may not succeed in convincing all constituencies. What resources, then, can liberal democracy mobilize? The multivariate democratic polity is the original answer to this question, based on an interpretation of Rawls (...) which revisits Political Liberalism in the light of The Law of Peoples . The unscrutinized assumption is highlighted, often read into Rawls’s Political Liberalism , that a polity moves homogeneously and all of a piece from religious conflict to modus vivendi, constitutional consensus and finally to overlapping consensus. Drawing on The Law of Peoples , a different picture can be obtained. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide an intuitive semantics for systems of justification logic which allows us to cope with the distinction between implicit and explicit justifiers. The paper is subdivided into three sections. In the first one, the distinction between implicit and explicit justifiers is presented and connected with a proof-theoretic distinction between two ways of interpreting sequences of sentences; that is, as sequences of axioms in a certain set and as sequences proofs constructed from that set (...) of axioms. In the second section, a basic system of justification logic for implicit and explicit justifiers is analyzed and some significant facts about it are proved. In the final section, an adequate semantics is proposed, and the system is proved to be sound and complete whit respect to it. (shrink)

An appropriate characterization of property types is an important topic for measurement science. On the basis of a set-theoretic model of evaluation and measurement processes, the paper introduces the operative concept of property evaluation type, and discusses how property types are related to, and in fact can be derived from, property evaluation types, by finally analyzing the consequences of these distinctions for the concepts of ‘property’ used in the International Vocabulary of Metrology – Basic and General Concepts and Associated Terms (...) (VIM3). (shrink)

A truthmaker solution to the Gettier problems is based on the idea that knowledge can be defined as justified true belief provided that the source of one’s justification is suitably connected with what makes the believed proposition true. Different developments of this basic intuition have been recently criticized on the basis of a series of arguments aiming at showing that no truthmaker theory can allow us to solve Gettier problems, since the very idea underlying such solution is ineffective. In this (...) paper, I discuss the criticism to the truthmaker solution I consider most promising and show how it can be successfully addressed. (shrink)

This paper aims at developing a logical theory of perspectival epistemic attitudes. After presenting a standard framework for modeling acceptance, where the epistemic space of an agent coincides with a unique epistemic cell, more complex systems are introduced, which are characterized by the existence of many connected epistemic cells, and different possible attitudes towards a proposition, both positive and negative, are discussed. In doing that, we also propose some interesting ways in which the systems can be interpreted on well known (...) epistemological standpoints. (shrink)

In this paper I will accept Georg Bertram’s criticism against what he calls the “autonomist paradigm” in philosophy of art and I will follow his theoretical suggestion: a coherent, informed, and accomplished philosophy of art should consider not only the specific nature of art, but also its value for the human practices and as one of the human practices. However, I will show the connection between human practices and art in a different, although related, way. Instead of beginning from a (...) reflection focused on art, I will rather move from the human practices, showing that “art” may be a particular way to look at and to develop human practices. I shall argue that the theoretical link between human practices and art can be provided by the notion of improvisation. Improvisation is not only a particular artistic technique. Rather, improvisation can be more generally understood as the paradigm of art, in the interesting sense, defended by Bertram, of incorporating and showing in a genetic way, on the one hand, the autonomous art specificity and, on the other hand, the value of art, that is, the link between human practices and art as a specific human practice. In this sense, art both derives from and is a particular way to improvise the human practices, i.e. to develop them in ways that can be valuable. Accordingly, improvisation as a specific artistic procedure will be understood as that kind of artistic production in which the human practice underlying art comes, as it were, to the fore. (shrink)

The debate on human rights is one of the themes that Ricoeur discusses, in Oneself as Another, while examining the practical wisdom and the dialectic that characterizes it between “the requirement of universality” and “the recognition of contextual limitations”. This shows, above all, his awareness both of the difficulty and the importance of justifying the protection of fundamental freedoms and capacities, in particular considering the accusations of eurocentrism that this struggle has received. He was convinced that one cannot remain indifferent (...) to the “cry of the victims”: the constitutive vulnerability of human beings requires a defence which must cross the political borders. However, the concept of “humanity” in this context remains problematic, especially in a hermeneutical framework. In order to find a clearer foundation for this thesis, we will look for fruitful elements in a dialogue with Martha Nussbaum’s theory of “capabilities” and in Ricoeur’s early phenomenology of the will. (shrink)

Is there a circular relationship between trust and ethics? Is it possible to alter their relationship, changing the perception that social actors have of them? How has trust changed in the transition from modernity to post-modernity and how does it change in times of crisis? Starting from the epistemological assumption that progress in the social sciences is determined by the change in the theoretical horizon produced by “a reformulation of metaphysical assumptions” [1] and combining this path with the relational perspective, (...) according to which “not the facts, but the relationship between the facts is what requires analysis” [2], we will examine definitions, meanings, functions and relationships between trust and ethics. Following the theoretical logical method, we will understand that trust and ethical behaviour are particular forms of gift [3] that co-own each other. As such, they are ambivalent in nature and their circle can also produce dysfunctional outcomes that depend on the ability of social systems to modify collective perceptions through forms of communication, in the awareness that distrust constitutes an ineliminable and, paradoxically, preparatory element for the restoration of the trust circle. The relational circle between gift, trust, collective ethics and personal morality does not end with distrust, but changes in a contingent way, determining perverse effects: correct behaviour could produce, unintentionally, a disaster; incorrect actions could generate unforeseen positive effects.The perverse effects cannot be defined as exceptional - as is believed in the theory of rational choice - but recurrent because daily practices are marked by an intuitive, emotional and moralistic trust circle that prevails over logical reasoning, as ascertained by both relational theory and behavioural economics. Functionalist paradigms cannot engineer and optimise the performance of trust. [1] See J. Alexander's strong programme in S. Segre, Le teorie sociologiche contemporanee, Carocci, Rome, 2019, p. 12. It is not enough to observe reality, it is necessary to interpret it, taking into account theories and traditions whose foundations have a metaphysical character. [2] F. Ferrarotti, La sociologia come analisi critica della società, in R. Cipriani, Nuovo Manuale di Sociologia, Maggioli, Sant’Arcangelo di Romagna, 2018 p. 24. [3] The classical meaning in M. Mauss, Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques, 1ª ed. 1925, revisited by G. Satta, L’ambiguità del dono. Note su dono, violenza e potere nell’ Essai di Mauss, in V. Rasini, Aggressività. Un’indagine polifonica, Mimesis, Milano 2011. (shrink)

Este artigo analisa alguns aspectos da moral cartesiana. Num primeiro momento, investiga-se como a expressão moral provisória é equivocada e como a moral do Discurso é retomada na Correspondência. Num segundo momento, é interessante a compreensão da nova significação que Descartes fornece ao termo paixões. Enfim, mostra-se como a moral se insere, paulatinamente, na filosofia de Descartes.

Structural models of systems of causal connections have become a common tool in the analysis of the concept of causation. In the present paper I offer a general argument to show that one of the most powerful definitions of the concept of actual cause, provided within the structural models framework, is not sufficient to grant a full account of our intuitive judgements about actual causation, so that we are still waiting for a comprehensive definition. This is done not simply by (...) focusing on a set of case studies, but by arguing that our intuitions about two different kinds of causal patterns, i.e., overdetermination and counterdetermination, cannot be addressed using that definition. (shrink)

The concept of knowledge can be modelled in epistemic modal logic and, if modelled by using a standard modal operator, it is subject to the problem of logical omniscience. The classical solution to this problem is to distinguish between implicit and explicit knowledge and to construe the knowledge operator as capturing the concept of implicit knowledge. In addition, since a proposition is said to be implicitly known just in case it is derivable from the set of propositions that are explicitly (...) known by using a certain set of logical rules, the concept of implicit knowledge is definable on the basis of the concept of explicit knowledge. In any case, both implicit and explicit knowledge are typically characterized as factive, i.e. such that it is always the case that what is known is also true. The aim of the present paper is twofold: first, we will develop a dynamic system of explicit intersubjective knowledge that allows us to introduce the operator of implicit knowledge by definition; secondly, we will show that it is not possible to hold together the following two theses: (1) the concept of implicit knowledge is definable along the lines indicated above and (2) the concept of implicit knowledge is factive. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Alexander argues that relaxing the requirement that sound knowers know their own soundness might provide a solution to Fitch’s paradox and introduces a suitable axiomatic system where the paradox is avoided. In this paper an analysis of this solution is proposed according to which the effective move for solving the paradox depends on the axiomatic treatment of the ontic modality rather than the limitations imposed on the epistemic one. It is then shown that, once the ontic (...) modality is standardly introduced, the paradox still follows and, in addition, some puzzling consequences arise. (shrink)