The philosopher has always been engrossed with the notion of death. Schopenhauer understood this and elevated the idea to the rank of the Muses:“Death is the true inspiring genius and the musagete of philosophy. This is why Socrates defined it as θανἑτoν μɛλέτη” (Plato, Phaedra, 81a).This notion has been presented to us by turns in its various aspects, at times as a metaphysical concept, at other times as an ethnological or religious reality.

Nel mio articolo propongo una lettura dei §§ 79-84 della Critica del Giudizio, parte della sezione Metodologia del Giudizio teleologico. Dapprima mi interrogo sul significato di una Methodenlehre del Giudizio teleologico, che rintraccio in un’attività metariflessiva del Giudizio; procedo poi ad una lettura analitica del testo nelle sue varie articolazioni, nella quale passo in rassegna le questioni attinenti alla specificità dello statuto epistemologico della teleologia, alla possibile convivenza tra finalismo e meccanicismo nella scienza della natura, all’origine della vita, allo scopo (...) ultimo della natura e allo scopo finale della creazione; approdo, infine, ad un’interpretazione per cui l’intera teleologia rationis humanae, che si estende dalla teleologia naturale alla teleologia morale passando per l’antropologia e per la filosofia della storia, viene in questa sezione riarticolata intorno ad un nuovo fulcro concettuale di livello trascendentale, che può garantire l’effettivo collegamento tra queste diverse parti della filosofia proprio perché esso non si esercita in forma di dominio legislativo, ma in forma di riflessione sul molteplice empirico e sulla causalità teleologica propria dell’uomo. (shrink)

The first part of this paper aims to highlight the analogies between Schutz’s vision of the natural attitude and Wittgenstein’s vision of a phenomenon that concerns the same problematic field, i.e. certainty, the belief of common sense that is free of all doubt, that the world “out there” is as it appears, absolutely real. These certainties form the basis, the foundation of language games and therefore of knowledge in general and in its entirety. This foundation is unfounded and yet indispensable. (...) The second part of the paper examines an important topic analysed by Wittgenstein, related to the aforementioned problem: the language transposition of pre-predicative, pre-reflective and non-propositional certainties, the cornerstones of which are “hinge propositions”, whose hybrid nature can be identified in the shift from empirical propositions to grammatical rules. (shrink)

The article deals with some implications of radical uncertainty for participatory democracy, and more precisely for Participatory Technology Assessment. Two main forms of PTA are discussed. One is aimed at involving lay citizens and highlighting public opinion. The other is addressed to stakeholder groups and organisations, not only in terms of interest mediation but also of inclusion of their insight into a problem. Radical uncertainty makes 'intractable' many environmental and technological issues and brings into question traditional and new approaches to (...) policymaking. Its consequences are explored from the viewpoint of new science, deliberative democracy, and network governance. Radical uncertainty calls for a rethinking of the aims of public deliberation, and a reinterpretation of the divide between opinion- and position-oriented PTA. To look for a public opinion, understood as a shared principled view, can prove misleading, as can thinking of stakeholder participatory arrangements in the usual way. When facts and values overlap, and are deeply controversial, the only opportunity for mutual understanding may be to look for practical, 'local' answers, based on different positional insights. Moreover, radical uncertainty also affects interest determination and pursuit, and may enhance the opportunity of joint, inclusive, non-strategic issue definition and solution-devising. This vision of public deliberation is consistent with the idea of network governance. However, fragmentation can affect the effectiveness and legitimacy of participatory policies. Trying to handle fragmentation from the top, as many suggest, is unlikely to be successful. A more promising endeavour is to foster deliberative settings which, although positioned at the level of 'local' and often contingent networks and commonalities, are open to include 'Otherness' – other contexts, other problem definitions, other concerns. (shrink)

Simple assumptions represent a decisive reason to prefer one theory to another in everyday scientific praxis. But this praxis has little philosophical justification, since there exist many notions of simplicity, and those that can be defined precisely strongly depend on the language in which the theory is formulated. The language dependence is a natural feature—to some extent—but it is also believed to be a fatal problem, because, according to a common general argument, the simplicity of a theory is always trivial (...) in a suitably chosen language. But, this trivialization argument is typically either applied to toy-models of scientific theories or applied with little regard for the empirical content of the theory. This paper shows that the trivialization argument fails, when one considers realistic theories and requires their empirical content to be preserved . In fact, the concepts that enable a very simple formulation, are not necessarily measurable, in general. Moreover, the inspection of a theory describing a chaotic billiard shows that precisely those concepts that naturally make the theory extremely simple are provably not measurable. This suggests that—whenever a theory possesses sufficiently complex consequences—the constraint of measurability prevents too simple formulations in any language. This explains why the scientists often regard their assessments of simplicity as largely unambiguous. In order to reveal a cultural bias in the scientists’ assessment, one should explicitly identify different characterizations of simplicity of the assumptions that lead to different theory selections. General arguments are not sufficient. (shrink)

The point of view advocated, in the last ten years, by quantum probability about the foundations of quantum mechanics, is based on the investigation of the mathematical consequences of a deep and elementary idea developed by the founding fathers of quantum mechanics and accepted nowadays as a truism by most physicists, namely: one should be careful when applying the rules derived from the experience of macroscopic physics to experiments which are mutually incompatible in the sense of quantum mechanics.

In this paper, I argue that Sellars’s conceptualist reading of Kant, though less radical than more contemporary approaches (e. g., Brandom, McDowell), relies on a controversial account of the relations between the givenness of intuitions, the productive imagination and the power of judgment. I will discuss: 1) how Sellars reconsidered Kant’s account of intuition; and 2) the kind of conceptualism he argues for. I will raise two main claims. First, Sellars’s conceptualist reading of intuition overlooks the role of space and (...) time as givenness conditions. Second, Sellars’s account of the productive imagination disregards the complementary significance of the power of judgment in a priori synthesis, the role of which is to grant synthetic unity. My aim is to reconstruct a consistent dialogue between Sellars and Kant by discussing Sellars’s reading of a priori synthesis and comparing his views to Kant’s original aims. (shrink)

The distinction between open and closed class items represents a fundamental bifurcation in the mental lexicon. It proved useful to express certain basic generalisations in linguistics and in the study of language acquisition and language pathology. The distinction is too rough tough: it must be refined by paying attention to the computational properties of the two classes and their division of labor in the generation of complex expressions. It will be shown how the distinction is expressed within current linguistic models (...) of the principles and parameters / minimalist type. (shrink)

Luigi Giussani, a high school religion teacher throughout the 1950s and 1960s, grounded his teachings in the vast body of experience to be found in Christianity's two-thousand-year history. He told his students, “I'm not here to make you adopt the ideas I will give you as your own, but to teach you a method for judging the things I will say.” Throughout his life, education was one of Giussani's primary intellectual interests. He believed that effective education required an adequate (...) background in the Christian tradition, presented within a lived experience that underscored the capacity of the faith to answer universal questions. What he proposed was a process that allowed one to sift through tradition, critically examining it and comparing it against the ultimate criteria for judgment: the desires of the heart. In Giussani's view, the primary concern was to “educate the human heart as God made it.” In The Risk of Education he states that fear leads students to associate this process of criticism with negativity or doubt. Yet, without an education in criticism, students cannot develop conviction. At a time when young people are abandoning the church and questioning the value of faith, Giussani's method of judging and verifying Christianity as an experience seems a necessary intervention. In The Risk of Education he argues that, ultimately, education and the Christian message reveal themselves through human freedom. (shrink)

Gli emarginati diventano protagonisti di una storia alternativa all'epica cavalleresca e aristocratica.

La piega critica del realismo filosofico di Tommaso rivela una realtà inaferrabile dischiudendo al soggetto nuove possibilità conoscitive, che ci restituiscono un Tommaso un po' meno tomista.

Una proposta di lettura ";trascendentalista"; del ";De ente"; di Tommaso d'Aquino. Il venir meno dei presupposti per fondare un rapporto forte tra discorso e realtà.

The relentless exploitation of the earth's resources and technologys boundless growth are a matter of urgent concern. When did this race towards the limitless begin? The Greeks, who shaped the basis of Western thinking, lived in mortal fear of humanity's hidden hunger for the infinite and referred to it as hubris, the one true sin in their moral code. Whoever desired or possessed too much was implacably punished by nemesis, yet the Greeks themselves were to pioneer an unprecedented level of (...) ambition that began to reverse that tabu. If it is true that no culture can truly repudiate its origins, and that gods who are no longer potent can vanish but still leave behind a body of myth which coninues to live and assert itself in modernized garb, then our concern with the limits of growth reflects something more than an awareness of new technological problems - it also brings to light a psychic wound a a feeling of guilt which are infinitely more ancient. (shrink)

1. Critica de capire e altri scritti. 2. Scritti kantiani. 3. L'analitica trascendentale. 4. Il problema della scienza e il giudizio storico.

A chemical substance is instantiated in the material world by a number of quantities of such substance, placed in different locations. A change of location implies a change in the net of relationships entertained by the QCS with the region wherein it is found. This fact entails changes of the ontological status of the CS, as this is not fully determined by the inherent features of the CS and includes a relevant relational contribution. In order to demonstrate this thesis, we (...) have chosen to analyse the status of quantities of a same CS that are synchronically located in different spacetime regions: a synthetic lab, a lab where the QCS is turned into a material, an industrial plant, the market where the QCS gets a price and a dump waste where the QCS is discarded, respectively: Chemical substance Open image in new window material Open image in new window product Open image in new window goods Open image in new window wasteThe use of first-order predicate logic, mereology and locative logic allows carrying out a regimentation process that highlights the ontological commitments implied by the formal expressions through which each element of the aforementioned series can be described. The presence of relational properties discloses the systemic nature of the CS instantiated within a spacetime region. The implications of such an aspect are discussed. (shrink)