Rudolf Pannwitz è una delle più complesse, ma spesso sottovalutate figure intellettuali dell'area germanofona, autore linguisticamente sapido di una bibliografia enorme e poliedrica, il quale ha raccolto in vita la stima di personalità tra le più importanti del panorama culturale europeo. Né si può trascurare una biografia contrastata, sofferta, eccentrica, che solo nella sua ultima fase consentirà una sistemazione matura del pensiero. Questo volume ricostruisce compiutamente per la prima volta la dottrina filosofica pannwitziana; quella filosofia che per autodichiarazione risulta essere (...) la categoria cui appartiene ciò che di più importante la sua persona ha espresso. La formulazione definitiva coincide col grande dittico della maturità - costituito dalle opere Der Aufbau der Natur e Das Werk des Menschen - che introduce la distinzione fondamentale tra mondo disponibile e mondo prodotto. Ma Pannwitz è anche un grande europeo. Particolare attenzione è allora riservata alla sua filosofia politica, il cui carattere profetico è in alcuni passaggi sorprendente, e che prospetta soluzioni che anticipano in modo appassionato e vibrante i capisaldi del dibattito a venire. In prima traduzione italiana con originale tedesco a fronte viene proposto in appendice il testo Aufgaben Europas, una relazione pubblica tenuta da Pannwitz nel 1955. (shrink)

Within the author’s long-term project of updating John Rawls’s paradigm of “political liberalism” to a historical context different from the original one, this paper focuses on how political liberalism can help us understand populism and help liberal democracy survive the populist upsurge. In the first section, political liberalism is argued to be of help in directing our attention to three constitutive aspects of all sorts of populism: the conflation of “the people” with the electorate and the electorate with the nation, (...) the attribution of constituent power to the electorate, and a penchant for so-called “justified intolerance.” In the second section, enfeebled democracies and postliberal democracies are discussed as two distinctly dangerous outcomes of populist contagion. Finally, in the third section the containment of populism is argued to require targeting the socioeconomic factors undergirding the populist upsurge and the jettisoni... (shrink)

This study on the contemporary relevance of Rousseau’s ethical and social thought, the “ethic of authenticity,” responds to the tensions of modern morality and rivals the answers generated by the more mainstream tradition of the “ethic of autonomy.”.

In this paper, I try to expatiate on the poetic function of language on the basis of considerations by Jakobson and Waugh. I try to bring in the consideration that pragmatics plays an important role in elucidating the poetic function of language. Contextualism allows us to interpret a poem: referents must be fixed or need not be fixed due to the requirements of the discourse; citations are brought in through pragmatic ways; polyphony is achieved by taking into account the context (...) of previous analyses of a poetic text; the vicinity of a certain word, or concept or line is likely to affect the interpretation of a certain expression; the poetic text can take different forms, from graffiti to discourse at the market place, to discourse between lovers. All these forms of poetic text would not exist if the notion of poetry did not include the idea of semantic/pragmatic compression which is matched, in interpretation, by expansions. (shrink)

Explicatures are not cancellable. Theoretical considerations.

To be an Aristotelian about universals is to hold that universals depend for their existence on their exemplifiers. An argument against Aristotelianism about universals has recently been put forward by Costa to the effect that a contradiction follows from assuming a certain formulation of Aristotelianism together with some highly plausible principles governing the notions employed in that formulation. In this paper, we provide different ways of articulating the Aristotelian position which, while being related with some of the main contributions in (...) the current Aristotelian tradition, do not fall prey to the argument. (shrink)

Relationship between default semantics and modularity of mind (in particular mind reading through the principle of Relevance).

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)

Cristina Lafont’s Democracy Without Shortcuts enriches the discussion of deliberative democracy with new insights. After discussing her three objections against Waldron’s denunciation of judicial review as antidemocratic, the main flaw of Waldron’s thesis is argued to remain out of focus. The constitution is understood by him as owned by the living citizens, in a pattern of serial sovereignty that raises three problems: the ‘wanton republic’; the under-individuation of the polity; generational inequality. The answer to Lafont’s question ‘Can We Own the (...) Constitution?’ is then argued to be that only ‘we the people’, including past, present and future ‘free and equal’ generations, own the constitution. The living citizens are the segment of ‘the people’ endowed with agency, have a voice, can modify the inherited political scheme, but cannot legitimately disfigure it, under penalty of destroying the regulatory function of the constitution. (shrink)

In the last few decades the role played by models and modeling activities has become a central topic in the scientific enterprise. In particular, it has been highlighted both that the development of models constitutes a crucial step for understanding the world and that the developed models operate as mediators between theories and the world. Such perspective is exploited here to cope with the issue as to whether error-based and uncertainty-based modeling of measurement are incompatible, and thus alternative with one (...) another, as sometimes claimed nowadays. The crucial problem is whether assuming this standpoint implies definitely renouncing to maintain a role for truth and the related concepts, particularly accuracy, in measurement. It is argued here that the well known objections against true values in measurement, which would lead to refuse the concept of accuracy as non-operational, or to maintain it as only qualitative, derive from a not clear distinction between three distinct processes: the metrological characterization of measuring systems, their calibration, and finally measurement. Under the hypotheses that (1) the concept of true value is related to the model of a measurement process, (2) the concept of uncertainty is related to the connection between such model and the world, and (3) accuracy is a property of measuring systems (and not of measurement results) and uncertainty is a property of measurement results (and not of measuring systems), not only the compatibility but actually the conjoint need of error-based and uncertainty-based modeling emerges. (shrink)

The ongoing pandemic of COVID-19 has forced governments to impose a lockdown, and many people have suddenly found themselves having to reduce their social relations drastically. Given the exceptional nature of similar situations, only a few studies have investigated the negative psychological effects of forced social isolation and how they can be mitigated in a real context. In the present study, we investigated whether the amount of digital communication technology use for virtual meetings during the lockdown promoted the perception of (...) social support, which in itself mitigated the psychological effects of the lockdown in Italy. Data were collected in March 2020, during the lockdown imposed to reduce the COVID-19 spread. The results indicated that the amount of digital technology use reduced feelings of loneliness, anger/irritability, and boredom and increased belongingness via the perception of social support. The present study supported the positive role of digital technologies in maintaining meaningful social relationships even during an extreme situation such as a lockdown. Implications such as the need to reduce the digital divide and possible consequences of the ongoing pandemic are discussed. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is methodological. It offers a comprehensive mapping of the theoretical positions on the ethical criticism of art, correcting omissions and inadequacies in the conceptual framework adopted in the current debate. Three principles are recommended as general guidelines: ethical amenability, basic value pluralism, and relativity to ethical dimension. Hence a taxonomy distinguishing between different versions of autonomism, moralism, and immoralism is established, by reference to criteria that are different from what emerging in the current literature. The (...) mapping is then proved capable of (1) locating the various theories that have been proposed so far and clarifying such theories’ real commitments, (2) having the correct relationship with actual art making and art criticism practices, and (3) showing the real weight of the alleged counter-example to a moralist position of a work that succeeds artistically because of its immorality. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore Bach’s idea (Bach, 2000) that null appositives, intended as expanded qua-clauses, can resolve the puzzles of belief reports. These puzzles are crucial in understanding the semantics and pragmatics of belief reports and are presented in a section. I propose that Bach’s strategy is not only a way of dealing with puzzles, but also an ideal way of dealing with belief reports. I argue that even simple unproblematic cases of belief reports are cases of pragmatic intrusion, (...) involving null appositives, or to use the words of Bach, ‘qua-clauses’. The main difference between my pragmatic approach and the one by Salmon (1986) is that this author uses the notion of conversational implicature, whereas I use the notion of pragmatic intrusion and explicature. From my point of view, statements such as ‘‘John believes that Cicero is clever’’ and ‘‘John believes that Tully is clever’’ have got distinct truth-values. In other words, I claim that belief reports in the default case illuminate the hearer on the mental life of the believer, that includes specific modes of presentation of the referents talked about. Furthermore, while in the other pragmatic approaches, it is mysterious how a mode of presentation is assumed to be the main filter of the believer’s mental life, here I provide an explanatory account in terms of relevance, cognitive effects, and processing efforts. The most important part of the paper is devoted to showing that null appositives are required, in the case of belief reports, to explain certain anaphoric effects, which would otherwise be mysterious. My examples show that null appositives are not necessitated at logical form, but only at the level of the explicature, in line with the standard assumptions by Carston and Recanati on pragmatic intrusion. I develop a potentially useful analysis of belief reports by exploiting syntactic and semantic considerations on presuppositional clitics in Romance. (shrink)

In the present paper we propose a system of propositional logic for reasoning about justification, truthmaking, and the connection between justifiers and truthmakers. The logic of justification and truthmaking is developed according to the fundamental ideas introduced by Artemov. Justifiers and truthmakers are treated in a similar way, exploiting the intuition that justifiers provide epistemic grounds for propositions to be considered true, while truthmakers provide ontological grounds for propositions to be true. This system of logic is then applied both for (...) interpreting the notorious definition of knowledge as justified true belief and for advancing a new solution to Gettier counterexamples to this standard definition. (shrink)

Reflexive pluralism is here put forward as the conception that is most reasonable for supporters of political liberalism to hold at a period when the reasons justifying acceptance of political and religious pluralism seem inadequate.

Analysis of Barack Obama's rhetorical strategies.

Explicatures are not cancellable. Theoretical considerations.

'de se' attitudes and pragmatic intrusion. A critique of Higginbotham (2003).

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)

In this chapter I deal with indirect reports in terms of language games. I try to make connections between the theory of language games and the theory of indirect reports, in the light of the issue of clues and cues. Indirect reports are based on an interplay of voices. The voice of the reporter must allow hearers to ‘reconstruct’ the voice of the reported speaker. Ideally, it must be possible to separate the reporter’s voice from that of the reported speaker. (...) When we analyze the language game of indirect reporting, we ideally want to establish which parts belong to the primary voice and which parts belong to the reporter’s voice. In this paper I apply considerations on language games by Dascal et al. and I explore the dialectics between abstract pragmatics principles and considerations about situated uses that are sensitive to cues and clues. (shrink)

Measurement results are stated in terms of sentences ascribing measured values, as obtained via measurement processes, to measurands, as defined by measuring agents. Since both the definition of the measurands and the characterization of the processes depend on models constructed on the basis of relevant theories, the issue arises of the theory dependence of the truth of those sentences. This paper aims at assessing the question by introducing suitable distinctions about the sense and reference of the terms used to refer (...) to individual and general quantities, in a framework where measurement is construed as an agent-dependent, model-based, purpose-driven activity. (shrink)

This volume addresses the intriguing issue of indirect reports from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributors include philosophers, theoretical linguists, socio-pragmaticians, and cognitive scientists. The book is divided into four sections following the provenance of the authors. Combining the voices from leading and emerging authors in the field, it offers a detailed picture of indirect reports in the world’s languages and their significance for theoretical linguistics. Building on the previous book on indirect reports in this series, this volume adds an empirical (...) and cross-linguistic approach that covers an impressive range of languages, such as Cantonese, Japanese, Hebrew, Persian, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, Armenian, Italian, English, Hungarian, German, Rumanian, and Basque. (shrink)

The purpose of the present paper is to provide a way of understanding systems of logic of essence by introducing a new semantic framework for them. Three central results are achieved: first, the now standard Fitting semantics for the propositional logic of evidence is adapted in order to provide a new, simplified semantics for the propositional logic of essence; secondly, we show how it is possible to construe the concept of necessary truth explicitly by using the concept of essential truth; (...) finally, Fitting semantics is adapted in order to present a simplified semantics for the quantified logic of essence. (shrink)

In 2020, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, academics and scientists began to question the triage criteria for allocating insufficient healthcare resources, trying to ethically justify the answer to the question, Who should receive medical care first? In this article, I will argue that even if we apply triage criteria, we won't be able to avoid the violation of human dignity or of the right to life and to health care. I will then suggest that, maybe, the real ethical (...) triage dilemma lies not in the question, Who should receive medical care first? but in the question, How are we to decide who should receive medical care first? (shrink)

Against the tradition, which has considered measurement able to produce pure data on physical systems, the unavoidable role played by the modeling activity in measurement is increasingly acknowledged, particularly with respect to the evaluation of measurement uncertainty. This paper characterizes measurement as a knowledge-based process and proposes a framework to understand the function of models in measurement and to systematically analyze their influence in the production of measurement results and their interpretation. To this aim, a general model of measurement is (...) sketched, which gives the context to highlight the unavoidable, although sometimes implicit, presence of models in measurement and, finally, to propose some remarks on the relations between models and measurement uncertainty, complementarily classified as due to the idealization implied in the models and their realization in the experimental setup. (shrink)

This article addresses the issue of future cosmopolitanism, building on a minimal reconstruction of what cosmopolitanism has been in the past. It will elucidate the notion of ‘political’ cosmopolitanism in its relation to a certain methodological option which is designated by the shorthand term ‘judgment’. Cosmopolitanism is not a new idea but a new version of it is constituted by ‘political’ cosmopolitanism, bound up with a judgmentbased, as opposed to principle-based, understanding of normativity.

The investigation of how humans perceive and respond to emotional signals conveyed by the human body has been for a long time secondary compared with the investigation of facial expressions and emotional scenes recognition. The aims of this behavioral study were to assess the ability to process emotional body postures and to test whether motor response is mainly driven by the emotional content of the picture or if it is influenced by motor resonance. Emotional body postures and scenes (IAPS) divided (...) into three clusters (fear, happiness, and neutral) were shown to 25 healthy subjects (13 males, mean age ± SD: 22.3 ± 1.8 years) in a three-alternative forced choice task. Subjects were asked to recognize the emotional content of the pictures by pressing one of three keys as fast as possible in order to estimate response times (RTs). The rating of valence and arousal was also performed. We found shorter RTs for fearful body postures as compared with happy and neutral postures. In contrast, no differences across emotional categories were found for the IAPS stimuli. Analysis on valence and arousal and the subsequent item analysis showed an excellent reliability of the two sets of images used in the experiment. Our results show that fearful body postures are rapidly recognized and processed, probably thanks to the automatic activation of a series of central nervous system structures orchestrating the defensive threat reactions, strengthening and supporting previous neurophysiological and behavioral findings in body language processing. (shrink)

Mereological atomism is the thesis that everything is ultimately composed of atomic parts, i.e., parts without proper parts. Typically, this thesis is characterized by an axiom stating that everything has atomic parts. The present paper argues that the success of this standard characterization depends on how the notions of sum and composition are defined. In particular, we put forward a novel definition of mereological sum that: (i) is not equivalent to existing definitions in the literature, if no strong decomposition principle (...) is assumed; (ii) can be used to argue that the standard characterization of atomism fails, because having atomic parts is not sufficient to be a sum of atoms; and (iii) provides a purely mereological distinction between structured and unstructured wholes, contributing to the ongoing debate on this crucial topic. (shrink)

Il saggio prende in esame due punti della teorizzazione di Harry Frankfurt in merito alla moral agency. Il primo č la corretta concettualizzazione del momento della ‘decisione' all'interno della catena deliberativa. Vengono esaminati tre passaggi critici: a) la base normativa a cui la decisione risponde; b) la teoria della ‘unificazione della persona' attraverso la decisione e c) la distinzione fra ‘scelta' e ‘decisione'. Il secondo punto č l'ambiguitÀ insita nel concetto di ‘doveri d'amore' proposto da Frankfurt. A questo proposito vengono (...) esaminate: a) la distinzione fra amore "attivo" e "passivo" e b) la mancata tematizzazione della "legittimitÀ dell'amore", ovvero del rapporto fra l'amore in quanto relazione sociale e i quadri interpretativi della cultura entro cui si sviluppa. (shrink)

This article discusses Jürgen Habermas’s latest book Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie from the specific angle of what the section on Rawls indicates about the overall philosophical project pursued by Habermas. This tiny element within the imposing architecture reveals a structural problem that affects Habermas’s program for a detranscendentalization of reason. After a general premise, Habermas’s appraisal of Rawls’s work is reconstructed and critically examined. Then, in the guise of a Rawlsian rejoinder, a problematic understanding of pluralism is shown to (...) undergird Habermas’s overlooking of the ground-breaking potential of the normativity of ‘the reasonable’ and ‘the most reasonable’. Finally, this neglect is argued to be indicative of a deeper lacuna: namely, a missing confrontation with Wittgenstein’s rival path to a postmetaphysical, intersubjective, detranscentendalized reason. That lacuna, finally, invites a closer scrutiny of the overall genealogical picture and its central opposition between two pathways to the postmetaphysicization of reason. (shrink)