Financial and prosocial biases in favor of attractive adults have been documented in the labor market, in social transactions in everyday life, and in studies involving experimental economic games. According to the taste-based discrimination model developed by economists, attractiveness-related financial and prosocial biases are the result of preferences or prejudices similar to those displayed toward members of a particular sex, racial, ethnic, or religious group. Other explanations proposed by economists and social psychologists maintain that attractiveness is a marker of personality, (...) intelligence, trustworthiness, professional competence, or productivity. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that attractive adults are favored because they are preferred sexual partners. Evidence that stereotypes about attractive people are causally related to financial or prosocial biases toward them is weak or nonexistent. Consistent with evolutionary explanations, biases in favor of attractive women appear to be more consistent or stronger than those in favor of attractive men, and biases are more consistently reported in interactions between opposite-sex than same-sex individuals. Evolutionary explanations also account for increased prosocial behavior in situations in which attractive individuals are simply bystanders. Finally, evolutionary explanations are consistent with the psychological, physiological, and behavioral changes that occur when individuals are exposed to potential mates, which facilitate the expression of courtship behavior and increase the probability of occurrence of mating. Therefore, multiple lines of evidence suggest that mating motives play a more important role in driving financial and prosocial biases toward attractive adults than previously recognized. (shrink)

In our response, we review and address the comments on our target article made in the 25 commentaries. First, we review and discuss the commentaries that recognized the value of our approach, accepted the main premises and conclusions of our target article, and suggested further avenues for research on attractiveness-related biases. We then respond to commentators who either misinterpreted some parts of our target article or made statements with which we disagree. These commentaries provided us with an opportunity to clarify (...) some aspects of our target article, for example, the fact that we address both the functional significance of attractiveness-related biases and their underlying mechanisms. We provide a rebuttal to two commentaries, in which we are accused of poor scholarship. We conclude our response by addressing two commentaries that discussed the societal implications of the occurrence of attractiveness-related biases in the labor market by briefly discussing the relationship between scientific research and social policy. (shrink)

This study investigated sex differences in interest in infants among children, adolescents, young adults, and older individuals. Interest in infants was assessed with responses to images depicting animal and human infants versus adults, and with verbal responses to questionnaires. Clear sex differences, irrespective of age, emerged in all visual and verbal tests, with females being more interested in infants than males. Male interest in infants remained fairly stable across the four age groups, whereas female interest in infants was highest in (...) childhood and adolescence and declined thereafter, particularly for the responses to visual stimuli. The observed developmental changes in female interest in infants are consistent with the hypothesis that they represent a biological adaptation for parenting. (shrink)

Most putative cases of teaching in nonhuman animals involve parent-offspring interactions. The interpretation of these cases, particularly with regard to the cognitive processes involved, is controversial. Qualitative and quantitative observations made in nonhuman primates suggest that, in some species, mothers encourage their infants’ independent locomotion and that encouragement can be considered a form of instruction. In macaques, experience in raising previous offspring accounts in part for variability between mothers in propensity to encourage infant motor skills. Parsimony suggests that the cognitive (...) mechanisms underlying maternal encouragement of infant locomotion in primates as well as some other putative cases of animal teaching may involve first-order intentionality (i.e., goal-directed behavior) and not higher cognitive processes such as attribution of knowledge/ignorance or perspective-taking. Encouragement of infant independent locomotion early in life may have benefits to mothers later on, in terms of reduction of costs of infant carrying, earlier infant weaning, and increased probability of reproduction in the mating season. The elementary forms of teaching observed in nonhuman primates may have played an important role in the origin and evolution of human culture. (shrink)

Sex differences in aggressive behavior are probably adaptive but the costs and benefits of risky aggression to women and men may be different from those suggested in Campbell's target article. Moreover, sex differences are more likely to reflect differences in the costs of aggression to females and males rather than differences in its benefits.

Colic may allow infants to obtain additional investment from their parents. The lack of clear fitness costs of colic and of differences in condition between colicky and non-colicky infants is inconsistent with the hypotheses that colic is an honest signal of need or vigor. These and other characteristics of colic, however, are consistent with the hypothesis that colic is a manipulative signal.

Research with nonhuman primates can make important contributions to life history models of human attachment and reproductive strategies, such as: including parental responsiveness into female reproductive strategies, testing the assumption that adult attachment is a reproductive adaptation, assessing genetic and environmental effects on attachment and reproduction, and investigating the mechanisms through which early stress results in accelerated reproductive maturation.

The use of anecdotes is not a viable research strategy to study animal culture. Social learning processes can often be documented with careful quantitative analyses of observational data. Unfortunately, suggestions that killer whales engage in teaching are entirely based on subjective interpretations of qualitative observations. Thus, of teaching in killer whales cannot be used to argue for the occurrence of culture in marine mammals.

Recent evidence suggests that the ratio of the lengths of the second and fourth fingers (2D:4D) may reflect degree of prenatal androgen exposure in humans. In the present study, we tested the hypotheses that 2D:4D would be associated with ratings of men’s attractiveness and with levels of behavioral displays during social interactions with potential mates. Our results confirm that male 2D:4D was significantly negatively correlated with women’s ratings of men’s physical attractiveness and levels of courtship-like behavior during a brief conversation. (...) These findings provide novel evidence for the organizational effects of hormones on human male attractiveness and social behavior. (shrink)

Homology can provide strong evidence against exapted learning mechanism (ELM) explanations for psychological and behavioral traits. Homologous traits are constructed by commonly inherited developmental mechanisms. As such, demonstration of homology for a trait argues for its construction by an inherited rather than an exapted developmental process. We conclude that comparative evidence can play an important evidentiary role within evolutionary psychology.

Recent epistemology has witnessed a substantial opposition between two competing approaches to capturing the notion of non-accidentality in the analysis of knowledge: the explanationist and the modalist. According to the latest advocates of the former, S knows that p if and only if S believes that p because p is true. According to champions of the latter, S knows that p if and only if S's belief that p is true in a relevant set of possible worlds. Because Bogardus and (...) Perrin's explanationism promises to deliver a plausible analysis of knowledge without any need for modal notions, it is an elegant proposal with prima facie appeal. However, such version of explanationism ultimately does not live up to its promises: in this paper, I raise some objections to their explanationist analysis of knowledge while showing that modalism is in much better shape than they think. In particular, I argue that their explanationist condition generates the wrong results in Gettier cases and fake-barn cases. I also offer and defend a novel version of modalism: I introduce a refined safety condition which is shown to successfully handle the same Gettier cases that beset Bogardus and Perrin's version of explanationism. The paper concludes with a reassessment of the explanationist's initial ambition to provide an analysis of knowledge without modal notions. The upshot will be that even if the prospects for such analysis remain dim, our money should be on the modalist, not the explanationist. (shrink)

The paper seeks to contribute to the discussion of Hume's theory of personal identity, by examining a conflict regarding the vivacity of the self in his writings about sympathy. Although the mechanism of sympathy supposes that self is the liveliest perception of thought, when we consider sympathy through the perspective of the ‘desire of company’, we find that self lacks vivacity and, without alterity, it would be in reality nothing. Our objective is to present the conflict and show that, far (...) from being a contradiction in Hume's thinking, it is consistent with how the philosopher conceives personal identity as a product of imagination, that is, a perception that, like any other, exists within the flow of perceptions. (shrink)

The notion of individualised evidence holds the key to solve the puzzle of statistical evidence, but there’s still no consensus on how exactly to define it. To make progress on the problem, epistemologists have proposed various accounts of individualised evidence in terms of causal or modal anti-luck conditions on knowledge like appropriate causation, sensitivity and safety. In this paper, I show that each of these fails as satisfactory anti-luck condition, and that such failure lends abductive support to the following conclusion: (...) once the familiar anti-luck intuition on knowledge is extended to individualised evidence, no single causal or modal anti-luck condition on knowledge can succeed as the right anti-luck condition on individualised evidence. This conclusion casts serious doubts on the fruitfulness of the move from anti-luck conditions on knowledge to anti-luck conditions on individualised evidence. I expand on these doubts and point out further aspects where epistemology and the law come apart: epistemic anti- luck conditions on knowledge do not adequately characterise the legal notion of individualised evidence. (shrink)

This paper illustrates cognitive modeling constructs designed to make learning by instruction more robust, including (1) flexible grounding of language to execution, (2) inference of implicit instruction knowledge, and (3) interactive clarification of instructions during both learning and execution.

We explore a notion of pseudofinite dimension, introduced by Hrushovski and Wagner, on an infinite ultraproduct of finite structures. Certain conditions on pseudofinite dimension are identified that guarantee simplicity or supersimplicity of the underlying theory, and that a drop in pseudofinite dimension is equivalent to forking. Under a suitable assumption, a measure-theoretic condition is shown to be equivalent to local stability. Many examples are explored, including vector spaces over finite fields viewed as 2-sorted finite structures, and homocyclic groups. Connections are (...) made to products of sets in finite groups, in particular to word maps, and a generalization of Tao's Algebraic Regularity Lemma is noted. (shrink)

Recent experimental epistemology has devoted increasing attention to folk attributions of epistemic justification. Empirical studies have tested whether lay people ascribe epistemic justification in specific lottery-style vignettes (Friedman and Turri 2014, Turri and Friedman 2015, Ebert et al. 2018) and also to more ordinary beliefs (Nolte et al. 2021). In this paper, I highlight three crucial but hitherto uncritically accepted assumptions of these studies, and I argue that they are untenable. Central to my criticism is the observation that epistemic justification (...) is a philosophical term of art mostly foreign to lay people: as such, it is not suitable for direct empirical testing without being previously introduced. This point reveals a folk conceptual gap between the subject matter of these experimental studies and the conceptual repertoire we can reasonably expect lay people to possess. I elaborate on this worry, and I end on a cautiously optimistic note: after suggesting better strategies to survey folk attributions of epistemic justification, I conclude that the challenge raised by the folk conceptual gap remains difficult but can in principle be addressed. (shrink)

Moral intuitions are generally understood as automatic strong responses to moral facts. In this paper, I offer a metacognitive account according to which the strength of moral intuitions denotes the level of confidence of a subject. Confidence is a metacognitive appraisal of the fluency with which a subject processes information from a morally salient stimulus. I show that this account is supported by some empirical evidence, explains the main features of moral intuition and is preferable to emotional or quasi-perceptual views (...) of moral intuition. (shrink)

In recent years, the epistemic reliability of moral intuitions has been undermined by substantial empirical data reporting the influence of cognitive biases. This paper discusses and elaborates upon a promising strategy in response to the reliability challenge to moral intuitions. The considered argument appeals to the fact that moral intuitions are experienced with different levels of strength and agents accept only strong intuitions, not vulnerable to bias under realistic circumstances. This essay aims to reconstruct this defense from the reliability challenge (...) in its most promising form and to evaluate the plausibility of the argument in light of the available empirical evidence. What emerges from the discussion is that the vindication of moral intuitions fundamentally depends on two distinct premises: first, the hypothesis that agents accept moral intuitions proportionally to their level of confidence, and second, the hypothesis that intuitive confidence is epistemically reliable. While there is consistent evidence for the first hypothesis, there is still no conclusive evidence for the second. (shrink)

​This contributed volume gives access to semiotic researches adopting a quantitative stance. European semiotics is traditionally based on immanent methodologies: meaning is seen as an autonomous dimension of human existence, whose laws can be investigated via purely qualitative analytical and reflexive analysis. Today, researches crossing disciplinary boundaries reveal the limitations of such an homogeneous practice. In particular, two families of quantitative research strategies can be identified. On the one hand, researchers wish to naturalize meaning, by making semiotic results interact with (...) those coming from Neurophysiological and psychological sciences. On the other hand, statistical and computational tools are adopted to work on linguistic and multimedia corpora. The book acts to put the two approaches into dialogue. (shrink)

"Sólo sé que no sé nada. Pienso, luego existo. Todo lo sólido se desvanece en el aire. Dios ha muerto. Por medio de frases como esas, disparadores que estimulan el pensamiento, Darío Sztajnszrajber se propone sacar a la filosofía de los formatos que la hacen excluyente. Al hacerlo nos lleva a una conversación alucinada y alucinante con once ideas clásicas, tan pequeñas como para caber en un tuit y a la vez tan interminables como las búsquedas existenciales.Incómodo y complejo como (...) su materia misma, este libro inclasificable--es ensayo filosófico, y es también novela--consagra a su autor como un explorador impertinente. Sztajnszrajber puede explicar y a la vez contradecir a filósofos como Aristóteles, Descartes, Marx, Nietzsche o Foucault e invitarnos a perdernos en la riqueza de sus ideas. Su historia comienza con un hombre que escapa y, al descender a un subte porteño, se encuentra azarosamente con un crimen del poder. Entre las huellas reconocibles de una república precaria, la trama mezcla la sangre y el amor, la historia y la esperanza, la represión estatal y la resistencia ciudadana.En Filosofía en 11 frases, su primer libro con Paidós, Sztajnszrajber lleva la filosofía a los lectores que quieren pensar sin ser subestimados. Y los desafía, socráticamente, con una convicción: todos podemos hacer filosofía aunque no lo sepamos."--. (shrink)

Nel caso di riedizione di opera ormai classica, normalmente le ragioni che hanno spinto l’autore a riproporne o rivederne l’impianto sono proposte nella nuova prefazione o in introduzione: non è facile, invece, imbattersi – anche all’interno del corpo del testo vero e proprio - nella esplicita confessione del travaglio teorico all’origine del ripensamento, della rielaborazione e della revi­sione delle proprie posizioni interpretative. È quello che accade affrontando la lettura della recente t...

Beccaria’s penal philosophy hinges on the doctrinal paradigm of liberty through law. Inconceivable in the absence of laws and unattainable in the presence of arbitrary powers, liberty is profiled as the legal situation of the person who may act, within the sphere of what is not forbidden and not bound, without suffering illicit interference from private individuals or organs of the state. Thus, the form of law becomes an essential matter in the construction of the political space suitable for free (...) living. In the analysis proposed in this article, the notion of “political liberty”–which Beccaria takes from Montesquieu–is declined in relation to the legal order, criminal law and the social contract. (shrink)

Tracciare una via verso Parmenide è quanto esplicitamente si propone la ri­cerca di Atwood Wilkinson: più esattamente un tentativo di « ascoltare di nuovo la sapienza dei nostri primi testi filosofici » (p. 7). Quella del poeta-filosofo di Elea, infatti, è opera della quale troppo spesso le letture metafisiche e analitiche di­menticano la peculiare collocazione tra la cultura orale della antica tradizione poetica e la allora relativamente recente pratica della scrittura: da quella tradi­zione...

Despite the substantial appeal of the safety condition, Kelp (J Philos Res 34:21–31, 2009; Am Philos Q 53:27–37; Good Thinking. A Knowledge First Virtue Epistemology, Routledge, London, 2018) has raised a difficult challenge for safety-theoretic accounts of knowledge. By combining Gettier-style fake barn cases with epistemic Frankfurt cases, he concludes that no formulation of safety can be strong enough to predict ignorance in the former and weak enough to accommodate knowledge in the latter. In this note, my contribution is two-fold. (...) Firstly, I take up Kelp’s challenge and I show that, once properly understood, safety successfully rises to it. Secondly, I draw a more general lesson on the safety condition: a satisfactory solution to Kelp’s challenge calls for a revision of the standard formulation of safety, which must be indexed to both methods and environments. My conclusion will be that an environment-relative version of safety not only meets Kelp’s challenge, but it also advances our understanding of the safety condition on knowledge. (shrink)

Besides its use in basic research, the DNA:RNA hybridization technique has helped the development of genetic engineering: it is instrumental in the isolation of specific genes that can be inserted into foreign cells, thus modifying their genetic information. Plants, animals, and microorganisms can now be altered to yield improved crops, pest-resistant plants, and a cheaper source of important proteins or drugs. The social relevance of genetic engineering received official sanction in 1980 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that genetically modified (...) organisms can be patented. In this article I have tried to describe the discovery of the DNA:RNA hybridization technique as the successful outcome of years of intelligent and patient research in many laboratories, of inductive and deductive processes in the minds of many biologists. The synthesis that led to the final result and to the early development of the technique was made possible by the coming together of two brilliant scientists, Sol Spiegelman and Benjamin Hall. (shrink)

_Riassunto_: Diversi studi hanno posto in risalto le affinità tra la filosofia critica di Wittgenstein e la psicoanalisi di Lacan. Questo lavoro passa in rassegna alcuni aspetti comuni ai due autori, delineando una prospettiva d’incontro teoretica e concettuale. Un punto d’incontro tra questi due pensatori comprende la fondamentale attenzione per il linguaggio e un atteggiamento critico verso la concettualizzazione classica della soggettività. Questo saggio tenta di sviluppare teoreticamente questi punti di contatto introducendo il concetto di soggettività senza interiorità, un soggetto (...) senza psicologia. In effetti, l’affidamento di Wittgenstein sulla grammatica e il ricorso di Lacan al significante portano allo stesso risultato: considerare il linguaggio in sé come matrice della soggettività. Da questa prospettiva la fondazione della soggettività non risiede più in una certa supposta sostanza metafisica bensì in una esteriorità radicale, nei giochi linguistici. _Parole chiave_: Wittgenstein; Lacan; Inconscio; Linguaggio; Grammatica _A subjectivity without interiority: Wittgenstein with Lacan_ _Abstract_: Several studies highlight affinities between Wittgenstein’s critical philosophy and Lacan’s psychoanalysis. The following article revisits certain points of both authors, proposing a theoretical and conceptual encounter between them. Indeed, the common ground between these two thinkers includes a fundamental focus on language and a critical approach to classic conceptualisation of subjectivity. This contribution attempts to theoretically developing this encounter by introducing the concept of subjectivity without interiority, a subject without psychology. In fact, Wittgenstein’s reliance on grammar and Lacan’s use of the signifier yield the same result: pointing to language itself as the matrix of subjectivity. From this perspective, the foundation of subjectivity no longer resides in some supposed metaphysical substance, but rather in a radical exteriority, in linguistic games. _Keywords_: Wittgenstein; Lacan; Unconscious; Language; Grammar. (shrink)

Dario Martinelli’s compact and enjoyable treatise on zoömusicology, _Of Birds, Whales and Other Musicians_ introduces musicologists, biologists, social scientists, and philosophers to a new theoretical model for studying how animal behavioral patterns relate to sound communication. Organized by musical trait rather than animal species, and drawing upon the work of such esteemed philosophers as Umberto Eco, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Thomas Sebeok, Martinelli’s analyses redefine the boundaries surrounding music and help readers—scholars and amateurs alike—to appreciate the relationship between animals (...) and musicological exchanges. (shrink)

National, European, and international institutions should implement social policies to help the persons with disabilities. Strategic sectors include education, training, and work, with the equal protection of the laws. In addition, this essay is focused on another crucial “sector" that is part of the primary law, which include tourism along with public transportation and non-discrimination. In conclusion, legislators, and public institutions, as well as transport companies must comply the principles of accessibility, equality, and social justice for the social inclusion of (...) persons with disabilities. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has put a strain on the health system, as well as the social, economic, and cultural ones at the Global level. After the pandemic, the risk is that the process of inclusion of persons with disabilities is grinding to a halt. But the chance is to find new ideas. This paper will define a brief but significant framework of principles that should be taken into consideration in order to support strategies of inclusion of people with disabilities in (...) the fields of health care and cultural life, especially through the research. (shrink)

La teoría del conocimiento en Tomás de Aquino es uno de los temas más controversiales de los últimos años entre los medievalistas debido a la interpretación de las teorías escolásticas en base a los modelos cognitivos contemporáneos. En estos debates, la noción de semejanza ocupa un lugar central, a pesar de que su estatus como una relación no es lo suficientemente tratado. En el presente trabajo abordo el problema del conocimiento en Tomás de Aquino como un término del orden de (...) los relativos. Primero presento el modo en el cual el autor incluye el conocimiento dentro de esta categoría como una relación «asimétrica» exponiendo los criterios que distinguen a este tipo de relativos y argumentando de qué modo el conocimiento cumple con ellos. Luego destaco la importancia del término «semejanza» en la gnoseología de Tomás y lo analizo desde el punto de vista de la relación, señalando diversos problemas y ambigüedades que se desprenden de la presentación de Tomás de Aquino. (shrink)

Podcasts have been described as “a cinema for the ears” and this application of a visual rhetoric to describe an audio-only experience results in an attempt to define what is still a relatively new medium. I argue that it is possible to consider something cinematic without the presence of moving images. Assertions in favour of the cinematic nature of podcasts often employ the visual imagination of listeners evoked by heightened audio characteristics that a particular podcast may possess. By focusing on (...) film-centred podcasts specifically, which, in terms of content and form, are implicitly and often explicitly concerned with properties of the cinematic, I argue for a more conceptual analysis of the idea of a visual form of audio. While many film-oriented podcasts provide a supplementary celebration of cinema culture rather than manifesting a unique cinematic experience of their own, there are examples of film-centred podcasts that attempt to actualise what I will call an “audio-cinematic” experience, deploying the creative potential of the podcast to manifest an experiential aura that evokes a cinematic imagination. I analyse the sonic dimensions of audio-cinematic podcasts including my work with Neil Fox on The Cinematologists Podcast. (shrink)

We present computational modeling results based on a self‐paced reading study investigating number attraction effects in Eastern Armenian. We implement three novel computational models of agreement attraction in a Bayesian framework and compare their predictive fit to the data using k‐fold cross‐validation. We find that our data are better accounted for by an encoding‐based model of agreement attraction, compared to a retrieval‐based model. A novel methodological contribution of our study is the use of comprehension questions with open‐ended responses, so that (...) both misinterpretation of the number feature of the subject phrase and misassignment of the thematic subject role of the verb can be investigated at the same time. We find evidence for both types of misinterpretation in our study, sometimes in the same trial. However, the specific error patterns in our data are not fully consistent with any previously proposed model. (shrink)

Dual-process theories of the mind emphasize how reasoning is an interplay between intuitive and reflective thinking. This paper aims to understand how the two types of processing interact in the moral domain. According to a ‘default-interventionist’ model of moral reasoning intuition and reflection are conflicting cognitions: intuitive thinking would elicit heuristic and deontological responses, whereas reflection would favour utilitarian judgements. However, the evidence for the default interventionist view is inconclusive and challenged by a growing amount of counterevidence in recent years. (...) The recent empirical findings favour an interdependent rather than conflicting view of the two types of information processing in the moral domain. In this view, which I call dual-process reflective equilibrium, intuition and reflection cooperate in moral reasoning to reach a reflective goal, which is supposedly normative justification. In sum, on the one hand, the scope of moral intuitions extends to selecting relevant information and calling for reflection whenever a problem presents conflicting aspects; on the other hand, the purpose of moral reflection is to rationalize pre-reflective intuitions to provide articulated and accessible reasons. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of American history among adolescent Mexican Americans at the eight-grade level in a mid-west town's middle school. This qualitative study shows that multiple contexts influenced the process of teaching and learning history between and among a white teacher and adolescent Mexican Americans at Atkinson Middle School. Those overlapping contexts (the context of the education of minority language students, the context of social studies education, and the school's culture) created a unique (...) totality responsible for shaping the experiences of learning American history by Mexican-American students. These experiences were detrimental for the appreciation by Mexican-American students of American history's potential meanings and significance. (shrink)

Children’s math self-concepts—their beliefs about themselves and math—are important for teachers, parents, and students, because they are linked to academic motivation, choices, and outcomes. There have been several attempts at improving math achievement based on the training of math skills. Here we took a complementary approach and conducted an intervention study to boost children’s math self-concepts. Our primary objective was to assess the feasibility of whether a novel multicomponent intervention—one that combines explicit and implicit approaches to help children form more (...) positive beliefs linking themselves and math—can be administered in an authentic school setting. The intervention was conducted in Spain, a country in which math achievement is below the average of other OECD countries. We tested third grade students (N= 180;Mage= 8.79 years; 96 girls), using treatment and comparison groups and pre- and posttest assessments. A novelty of this study is that we used both implicit and explicit measures of children’s math self-concepts. For a subsample of students, we also obtained an assessment of year-end math achievement. Math self-concepts in the treatment and comparison groups did not significantly differ at pretest. Students in the treatment group demonstrated a significant increase in math self-concepts from pretest to posttest; students in the comparison group did not. In the treatment group, implicit math self-concepts at posttest were associated with higher year-end math achievement, assessed approximately 3 months after the completion of the intervention. Taken together, the results suggest that math self-concepts are malleable and that social–cognitive interventions can boost children’s beliefs about themselves and math. Based on the favorable results of this feasibility study, it is appropriate to formally test this novel multicomponent approach for improving math self-concepts using randomized controlled trial (RCT) design. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop and motivate a novel formulation of the safety condition in terms of etiological proper function. After testing this condition against the most pressing objections to safety-theoretic accounts of knowledge in the literature, my conclusion will be the following: once safety is suitably understood in terms of etiological proper function, it stands a better chance as the right anti-Gettier condition on knowledge.

In "My Own Life," Hume writes:1 During my retreat in France, first at Reims, but chiefly at La Fleche, in Anjou, I composed my Treatise of Human Nature. After passing three years very agreeably in that country, I came over to London in 1737. In the end of 1738, I published my Treatise, and immediately went down to my mother and my brother, who lived at his country house, and was employing himself very judiciously and successfully in the improvement of (...) his fortune. It is thus "chiefly" at La Flèche that Hume wrote one of the masterpieces of early modern philosophy. Hume's stay in France extended from July 1734 to August 1737. He spent a few weeks in Paris in the summer of 1734, hosted by Chevalier... (shrink)

El objeto de este artículo consiste en señalar las relaciones entre el método, la física y la metafísica cartesianas. Puede afirmarse que a partir de la idea básica de como debe ser la ciencia, Descartes concibe su física y fija el mecanicismo como la condición de toda explicación y de toda inteligibilidad; de estos se siguen las consecuencias metafísicas concernientes a la distinción del cuerpo y del alma y los temas finales de su unión que tanta claridad aportan sobre los (...) sentimientos y la moral. (shrink)

Since the meaning of the design in the XIX Century, “applied art” , till today's Designart, through the artidesign , the boundary among art and design has been often unsettled. During the 50’s, Max Bill has defined “hairdresser” the designer who focuses on the shape rather than the function. Nowadays, we are surrounded by more and more products with high symbolic level designed to state their aesthetic configuration. Nothing against the communicative value of the product. However, what happens when it (...) affects the usability? (shrink)

Jacques Lafitte occupies an odd place in the philosophy of technology. He was a French engineer who made a significant and conceptually innovative contribution to this field, yet his influence has been elusive and largely ignored until relatively recently. Many of Lafitte’s ideas find echoes in the work of later philosophers, yet, notably in the case of Simondon, apparently without any direct line of influence. Lafitte placed the machine at the centre of his thinking about technology and articulated various layers (...) of analysis around it; for example, he considered machines in the broader context of an artificial world or “mechanosphere”, which encompassed certain aspects of philosophical anthropology. In this work we seek to reconstruct Lafitte’s ideas and briefly trace some of their later impact. We identify three dimensions in Lafitte’s analysis: epistemological, ontological and anthropological. We argue that the most remarkable fact about Lafitte’s thought is the way it inaugurates, and anticipates, the approach of later currents, not just in the “French tradition”, who also made an effort to integrate machine theory into broader philosophical, anthropological and political aspects, in terms that echo Lafitte’s. In particular, we will focus on Gilbert Simondon and cybernetics. (shrink)