This volume articulates and develops new research questions and original insights regarding the philosophical dialogue between Hegel’s philosophy, his heritage, and contemporary phenomenology, including, among others, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Ricoeur. The collection discusses methodological questions concerning the relevance of Hegel’s philosophy for contemporary phenomenology, addressing core issues revolving around the key concepts of history, being, science, subjectivity, and dialectic. The volume fills a gap in historiography, expanding the knowledge of the impact of Hegel's philosophy on contemporary philosophy and raising (...) new questions on the transformation of transcendental philosophy in post-Kantian philosophy. The contributions gathered in this volume shed new light on issues related to the problem of scientific method in philosophy, on the philosophy of history, as well as on the dimension of subjectivity. By providing critical insights into Hegel’s philosophy and contemporary phenomenology, the book opens up new research perspectives recommended to philosophers and scholars of different traditions, especially classical German philosophy, phenomenology, and history of Western philosophy. (shrink)

During the last century, most philosophers of science have tried to expunge teleological explanations from the fields of epistemology. They took for granted that the Darwinian concepts of natural selection and evolution effectively dispense us with any presence of goal-directedness in nature: based on an anti-metaphysical attitude, they hold purposes and goals to be of religious and spiritual nature, thereby obstacles to any effective comprehension of biological processes. Accordingly, teleological categories have been abandoned in many ways in favor of mechanical (...) causes and non-teleological processes: since Darwin demonstrated that no teleology is required in order to explain the natural world, causal explanations became the only tools to investigate natural processes. (shrink)

The history of the encounters between pragmatism and phenomenology is long, fruitful, yet also tormented. From the time of the 19th century American phenomenology of Josiah Royce up to the arrival of Husserl’s phenomenology in North America, pragmatism was always one of the leading American philosophical movements that actively contributed to the re-elaboration of the issues and strategies of phenomenology in order to make them comply and adjust to the new context. This was possible, in the f...

In this article, I will explore the enactive approach to science and the pragmatic motifs that guide it. In particular, in the first half of the article, I will discuss to what extent enactivism can be seen as a philosophy of nature, and by comparing it with Sellars’s interpretation of the conflict between the manifest and the scientific image of humans in the world, I will focus on the view of nature that enactivism defends. In the second part, I will (...) compare the enactive approach with Dewey’s conception of the organism-environment interaction by focusing on the underlying similarities between their views of evolution and their way of seeing science as the most sophisticated expression of an organism’s sense-making. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the primacy that, following Sellars, Robert Brandom ascribes to the intersubjective and discursive space of reasons over all other processes in which the human mind is involved. I will compare Brandom’s perspective with that of the situated approach to the study of mind. At first, my aim is to show that the origin of intentionality has to be found in the sphere of sentience and the living body. Second, by comparing the enactivist account of language (...) that derives from the naturalization of Husserl’s phenomenology with the neo-pragmatist approach to the linguistic turn, I argue for a heuristic primacy owing to the linguistic practice of giving and asking for reasons. This allows me to reflect with a meta-philosophical approach on to what extent two families of views such as pragmatism and phenomenology, with their different variants, interact in the attempt to blend things together, i.e., nature and culture; mind and world; and what happens inside the human body and what happens outside it. (shrink)

Riassunto: Il 12 e il 13 gennaio 2017 si è svolto a Pisa un seminario di studi su La filosofia di Massimo Barale. Di seguito si presenta un resoconto degli interventi tenuti in quell’occasione dagli ultimi allievi di Massimo Barale e da alcuni degli studenti che hanno seguito i suoi ultimi corsi. Gli interventi abbracciano gran parte degli interessi e degli studi di Massimo Barale, dalla critica al metodo adottato da Kant nella Critica della ragion pura alla valorizzazione della prospettiva (...) della Critica del Giudizio condotta sulla scia dell’influenza di Eric Weil, dalla sua originale interpretazione delle prospettive dell’idealismo tedesco e della fenomenologia di Husserl e di Sartre sino al suo confronto con le filosofie della mente, per concludersi con una discussione dei limiti e delle potenzialità della rivalutazione di Barale del punto di vista trascendentale in filosofia. Parole chiave: Massimo Barale; Filosofia trascendentale; Idealismo tedesco; Fenomenologia; Filosofia della mente Massimo Barale’s Philosophy: In the following article, I will provide an account of the conference on The Philosophy of Massimo Barale, held in Pisa 12-13 January 2017. Younger scholars who had studied with Professor Barale or attended his last classes discussed Barale’s work and ideas. Some of them analyzed Barale’s criticism of Kant’s method in Critique of Pure Reason and his appreciation – in line with Eric Weil – for the perspective of the Critique of Judgement. Other scholars explored Barale’s interpretations of Classical German Philosophy and Phenomenology. One talk dealt with Barale’s discussion of the perspective of philosophy of mind and the last three talks focused on the limits and the potential of Barale’s revaluation of a transcendental point of view in philosophy. Keywords: Massimo Barale; Transcendental Philosophy; German Idealism; Phenomenology; Philosophy of Mind. (shrink)

In the present article, I will address the question of whether Paul Valéry’s thought can somehow contribute to the recent debate concerning the philosophy of literature. Firstly, I will focus on the idea according to which philosophy can be meant not only as a literary genre but also as an art of thinking. This allows Valéry to state that the poet, too, has a philosophy insofar as he or she is able to think abstractly by practicing his or her own (...) mind. Secondly, following some remarks of Derrida and Rorty, I will discuss Valéry’s idea according to which the philosopher is a philosopher to the extent that he or she forgets that philosophy has to be written. This will lead me to distinguish the peculiar aesthetics of the philosopher as writer from that of the poet. (shrink)

This collection offers the first systematic, comparative analysis of Wilfrid Sellars's Pittsburgh school of thought and Husserlian phenomenology. Beginning with an introduction to contemporary philosophical debates about the mind and pragmatism, the essays examine and clarify the discursive divide between analytic and Continental philosophy.

Perché il terrorismo è oggi così diffuso e potente? Perché è riuscito a organizzarsi in forme così capillari ed efficaci al punto da essere considerato una minaccia per il mondo intero? Più in profondità: che cos’è esattamente il terrorismo? Qual è la sua "filosofia", quali le sue radici culturali e le sue motivazioni politiche? È possibile sconfiggerlo? O dobbiamo invece accettare di convivere con il terrorismo e considerare la sicurezza e la pace nel mondo come aspettative illusorie di retori, profeti (...) e visionari? Si tratta di questioni cruciali per capire il mondo in cui viviamo. E tuttavia non c’è alcuna possibilità di dare risposte definitive e condivise a questi interrogativi, anzitutto perché manca un consenso sulla nozione stessa di terrorismo. (shrink)

Perché il terrorismo è oggi così diffuso e potente? Perché è riuscito a organizzarsi in forme così capillari ed efficaci al punto da essere considerato una minaccia per il mondo intero? Più in profondità: che cos’è esattamente il terrorismo? Qual è la sua "filosofia", quali le sue radici culturali e le sue motivazioni politiche? È possibile sconfiggerlo? O dobbiamo invece accettare di convivere con il terrorismo e considerare la sicurezza e la pace nel mondo come aspettative illusorie di retori, profeti (...) e visionari? Si tratta di questioni cruciali per capire il mondo in cui viviamo. E tuttavia non c’è alcuna possibilità di dare risposte definitive e condivise a questi interrogativi, anzitutto perché manca un consenso sulla nozione stessa di terrorismo. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Wilfrid Sellars and Phenomenology: Intersections, Encounters, Oppositions ed. by Daniele De Santis and Danilo MancaHeath WilliamsDE SANTIS, Daniele and Danilo Manca, editors. Wilfrid Sellars and Phenomenology: Intersections, Encounters, Oppositions. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2023. xiv + 272 pp. Cloth, $95.00This is an eminently readable and engaging collection of essays. There is much more here than merely comparing and contrasting two disparate thinkers. There are important (...) contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, thought about the relation between science and culture, and the future of phenomenology and pragmatism. It has what one wants from a collection of edited papers: very few contributions that are obscure or tangential, with nearly every one addressing a broadly relevant philosophical topic.The two major motifs running through the various works in this edited book are epistemologically orientated questions on the myth of the given, and metaphysically orientated questions arising from the contrasting scientific and manifest images. As Landfredi states, these "are two main theoretical dimensions in which phenomenology and Sellars's approach critically confront each other."To the metaphysical motifs firstly. Husserl's thoughts on the relation between the scientific and manifest image is outlined in his Crisis of the European Sciences and Sellars's in Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man. In contemporary metaphysics, the competition between the manifest and scientific image has been heightened thanks to the aggressive scientific realism of works like Ladyman and Ross's Everything Must Go, coupled as it is with a dismissal of our commonsense perceptual and cognitive capacities.Both Lanfredi and Manca take a conciliatory approach, aiming to minimize incompatibility between Husserl's manifest and Sellars's scientific images. Manca's attentive and judicious reading makes apparent the origins of the metaphysical commitments of both thinkers. The former accepts the power of the scientific method of mathematization but warns that its ontology remains forever incomplete until the lifeworld is considered. The latter's scientific realism ultimately affords science the final say on what exists. The difference between them comes down to whether the emergent properties of a system are ultimately reducible to parts and the arrangement between them. Sellars thinks they are, while for Husserl "the parts are not juxtaposed from without but integrated with each other in such a way that they become able to generate new [End Page 546] properties." A thematically related analysis is found in the contribution of De Santis, who argues that Simons's adaptation of Husserlian mereology fails to provide a solution on how to build complex particulars out of basic ones.Hopp's article connects our two domains of critical encounter as he suggests that you can get from a phenomenological epistemology to a metaphysical reification of items in manifest image, because fulfilled perceptual knowledge claims presuppose the existence of that which is perceived. He thinks there are resources within Husserl not only to defend this position but to use it to critique many of the claims that undergird Sellars's prosecution of the myth. Hopp ends by asking what current experimental evidence the scientific realist has to rule out the existence of macrosized phenomenologically given objects. One might refer to the above-mentioned work by Ladyman and Ross by way of reply.Epistemological themes include the claim that aspects of phenomenology can be imported or modified to forge a coherent account of perceptual knowledge that (a) affords perception a role in epistemology and (b) explains the concomitant, vexing relation between the space of reasons of causes while (c) avoiding the myth of the given.Two authors who demonstrate close parallel between Husserl and Sellars are Nunziante and Rump. Nunziante shows that one of Sellars's attempts at (a) comes via his account of "perceptual takings," which is influenced by, and homologous to, Husserl's account of the passive synthesis of prepredicative perception in Experience and Judgement, as handed to Sellars by Farber. These prove to be essential stepping stones in Sellars's thinking about how the perceptual realm marries to the intellectual one.Rump shows that Sellars's attempt to solve the regress problem for coherentism in order to solve (a) stumbles on the problem of how causal, nonconceptual, noncategorial, and nonpropositionally structured protoperceptual experiences furnish... (shrink)

Nietzsche est mort et c'est à nous à le faire vivre. Cet usage du texte n'est pas un retour à ce que Deleuze professait superbement : pour ce dernier, faire un enfant dans le dos (de Kant, de Bergson, voire de Nietzsche, même si Deleuze affirmait qu'avec ce dernier c'était l'inverse), c'était à la fois utiliser l'auteur pour lui faire dire ce qu'il n'avait explicitement pas dit, mais qui pouvait présenter un intérêt spéculatif, et, en même temps, dissimuler cet écart. (...) De fait, Deleuze disait "nous" ou "on", amalgamant ainsi sous le même pronom le commenté et le commentateur. Danilo Bilate, au contraire, revendique l'écart et le souligne tout au long de sa démonstration, rappelant ainsi sans cesse au lecteur que, s'il veut faire un enfant à Nietzsche, et si l'on nous permet de filer scabreusement la métaphore, c'est par-devant! Du même coup, là où Deleuze méprisait ouvertement toute philologie (jusqu'à ne pas même préciser les traductions utilisées), Danilo Bilate accorde à la terminologie nietzschéenne la plus grande attention. On interroge les textes pour ce qu'ils disent – car ils disent tout de même quelque chose par eux-mêmes si on veut bien les écouter. L'enfant qu'il s'agit de faire à Nietzsche en les écoutant est une éthique. Bertrand Binoche. (shrink)

This paper aims to institute that the folk song Pamulinawen is essentially a work of art descriptive of Ilokano cultural self-understanding. Specifically, it wants to elucidate that Pamulinanen, per se, is capable of self-assertion; it can usher itself to engage in a dialogue with the Ilokano beholder, and through the mediation of a common pagsasao, it embodies the individual and/or Nakem, the Ilokano collective identity. More than a popular song of courtship among the Ilokanos, the song Pamulinawen then attempts to (...) increase knowledge about Ilokano kananakem so that it serves not only as a piece of Ilokano cultural entertainment but as a medium to express “Ilokano-ness". Through the qualitative methodology, this study mainly employs maiyannatup a panagripirip, a hermeneutical approach to appropriately philosophize on the Ilokano metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology. This approach consists of, among others, palpaliiw and the “Agcaoilon PAR”. (shrink)

This paper is about the alethic aspect of epistemic rationality. The most common approaches to this aspect are either normative (what a reasoner ought to/may believe?) or evaluative (how rational is a reasoner?), where the evaluative approaches are usually comparative (one reasoner is assessed compared to another). These approaches often present problems with blindspots. For example, ought a reasoner to believe a currently true blindspot? Is she permitted to? Consequently, these approaches often fail in describing a situation of alethic maximality, (...) where a reasoner fulfills all the alethic norms and could be used as a standard of rationality (as they are, in fact, used in some of these approaches). I propose a function α, which accepts a set of beliefs as inputand returns a numeric alethic value. Then I use this function to define a notion of alethic maximality that is satisfiable by finite reasoners (reasoners with cognitive limitations) and does not present problems with blindspots. Function α may also be used in alethic norms and evaluation methods (comparative and non-comparative) that may be applied to finite reasoners and do not present problems with blindspots. A result of this investigation isthat the project of providing purely alethic norms is defective. The use of function α also sheds light on important epistemological issues, such as the lottery and the preface paradoxes, and the principles of clutter avoidance and reflection. (shrink)

Since Aristotle there are two main approaches in the explanation of begging the question (petitio): a dialectical mistake (an improper move in an argumentative dialogue) and an epistemic mistake. According to the latter begging the question is committed when the premises of an argument cannot be known independently of knowing the conclusion of the argument. Dialectical approaches use the notion of a commitment (acceptance, standpoint) and rules of dialogue as their basis. I propose a hybrid model, inspired by Jackson: the (...) rationale for introducing commitments and rules is epistemic. (shrink)

Napoleon Bonaparte is a veritable “case” for Nietzsche: he does not reduce Napoleon to a single image, but he rather builds up an ambiguous image of Napoleon for years without trying to define a final result. This ongoing construction is due to Nietzsche’s deep admiration for Napoleon that, however great it may be, does not avoid a certain distancing. Defined as the synthesis of Unmensch and Übermensch, Nietzsche regards Napoleon as an extraordinary human being because of his immorality when he (...) exercised power. It is precisely this extraordinary nature that makes Napoleon a model for understanding the concept of the Übermensch. (shrink)

All reasoners described in the most widespread models of a rational reasoner exhibit logical omniscience, which is impossible for finite reasoners (real reasoners). The most common strategy for dealing with the problem of logical omniscience is to interpret the models using a notion of beliefs different from explicit beliefs. For example, the models could be interpreted as describing the beliefs that the reasoner would hold if the reasoner were able reason indefinitely (stable beliefs). Then the models would describe maximum rationality, (...) which a finite reasoner can only approach in the limit of a reasoning sequence. This strategy has important consequences for epistemology. If a finite reasoner can only approach maximum rationality in the limit of a reasoning sequence, then the efficiency of reasoning is epistemically (and not only pragmatically) relevant. In this paper, I present an argument to this conclusion and discuss its consequences, as, for example, the vindication of the principle 'no rationality through brute-force'. (shrink)

I propose the notion of ‘epistemic sanity’, a property of parsimony between the holding of true but not false beliefs and the consideration of our cognitive limitations. Where ‘alethic value’ is the epistemic value of holding true but not false beliefs, the ‘alethic potential’ of an agent is the amount of extra alethic value that she is expected to achieve, given her current environment, beliefs, and reasoning skills. Epistemic sanity would be related to the holding of (true or false) beliefs (...) that increase the agent's alethic potential (relevant beliefs) but not of beliefs that decrease it (this is related to cognitive parsimony). Suspension of judgment, forgetting, and clutter avoidance are the main contributors to an agent's epistemic sanity, where this paper focuses on suspension. I argue that rational suspension favors the holding of true and relevant beliefs, which is not the case for the extremes of opinionation (no suspension) and skepticism (general suspension). In the absence of evidence, opinionated agents are often forced to rely on principles such as the principle of indifference, but suspension dominates indifference in terms of alethic value in some conditions. A rational agent would only find it beneficial to adopt skepticism if she considers herself to be an anti-expert about her entire agenda, but then ‘flipping’ beliefs maximizes expected alethic value in relation to skepticism. The study of epistemic sanity results in an ‘impure’ veritism, which can deal with some limitations of veritism (e.g., explaining the existence of false but relevant beliefs). (shrink)

The article aims to revisit the relationship between inequality and education, a theme that accompanies education in modern societies. Despite access to data on inequality in society and education, as well as many analyzes of the origins and trends that provoke real social apartheids one has the impression that the metaphor of the labyrinth, common in Latin American literature, applies to education. The article is divided in two parts. The first seeks to situate the theme of inequality as a problem (...) of education and for education, with a brief reference to classic works and the identification of some pedagogical places that can serve to perpetuate inequality or resist it. The second part, based on thoughts from the beginning of the second half of the last century, revolves around the question of whether we are facing yet another unfinished revolution in Latin America. Two themes are discussed: updating the notion of awareness and the pedagogical nuances of concepts such as liberation, social exclusion and coloniality. In the conclusion, Paulo Freire’s centrality is emphasized to understand the relationship between inequality and education, and to create untested feasibilities in education and through education to promote a less unequal and more just society. Keywords: Inequality. Democracy. Awareness. Liberation. coloniality. (shrink)

The debate on compatibility of fate with human responsibility lasted for five hundred years of the Stoic school and it is still with us in terms of contemporary discussions of the compatibility of determinism and free will. Chrysippus was confronted with the standard objection: It would be unjust to punish criminals “if human beings do not do evils voluntarily but are dragged by fate.” Chrysippus uses the famous illustration of the cylinder and cone, which cannot start moving without being pushed. (...) However, when this has happened, from then on the cylinder rolls and the cone spins by their own nature. I explore the cylinder analogy and its modern relevance from the perspective of thought experiments. I argue that it helps us isolate the main causal factor (the locus of responsibility and agency) and insulate this factor from the rest of the causal history and causal background. The cylinder/cone analogy is a compatibilistic tool, a kind of “mental distillation” in which we separate in imagination those aspects (causal factors) which are relevant for moral responsibility from those which are not. I suggest, somehow anachronistically, but in line both with contemporary compatibilism and Chrysippian views on causal structure of agency that the actions of an agent are “fated” from the theoretical point of view, but they are up to her from the practical point of view. (shrink)

Making a history of the principle of inertia, as of any other principle or concept, is a complex but still possible operation. In this work it has been chosen to make a back story which seemed the most natural way for a reconstruction. On the way back, it has been decided to stop at the 6th century CE with the contribution of Ioannes Philoponus. The principle he stated, although very different from the modern one, is certainly associated with it. Going (...) back in time it is still possible and of course one could proceed to the origins of the homo sapiens who perhaps posed the problem of why a club thrown with his hand could go so far from him. But the similarities that one can find with the modern principle are very vague, too perhaps. Without going so far one could see an embryonic idea of the principle of inertia in the atomistic theory of Democritus in the 5th century BCE. The motion of atoms whirling with no apparent reason can suggest the idea that a body can also move with no reason. But the transition from the atom, a metaphysical being, to the body, an empirical being, is far from immediate. (shrink)

This book shows that at the beginning of modern thought the revival of ancient skepticism challenged the powers of the intellect in making knowledge possible, opening the way to the consideration of language as an alternative to mental representation, thus leading to an early linguistic turn.

A obra aborda dois específicos temas - a ética e a utopia em sua relação com a educação. Os textos aqui apresentados sinalizam temas novos a serem explorados e outros nem tão novos a serem revisitados para que possa haver novos avanços, para além de Paulo Freire.

Il libro scava nel profondo dell' umanitā per mostrare la pericolositā della paura, i notevoli rischi e le sofferenze che la paura individuale e la paura collettiva comportano, senza dimenticare il rapporto fra potere e paura.

How to accommodate the possibility of lucky true beliefs in necessary (or armchair) truths within contemporary modal epistemology? According to safety accounts luck consists in the modal proximity of a false belief, but a belief in a true mathematical proposition could not easily be false because a proposition believed could never be false. According to Miščević modal stability of a true belief under small changes in the world is not enough, stability under small changes in the cognizer should also (and (...) primarily) be considered. I argue for a more traditional modal reliabilism based on the critical question: how easy is it for a belief to be false, given the way it was formed? A belief (a priori or a posteriori) is then agent-lucky when based on a specific method which might easily lead to a false belief in the target proposition. Miščević suggests a unifying approach in terms of virtue epistemology. It seems to me that this approach, if successful, will undermine the project that he started with: formulate an anti-luck condition in the frame of a modal theory of luck. (shrink)

The causal and simulation theories are often presented as very distinct views about declarative memory, their major difference lying on the causal condition. The causal theory states that remembering involves an accurate representation causally connected to an earlier experience. In the simulation theory, remembering involves an accurate representation generated by a reliable memory process. I investigate how to construe detailed versions of these theories that correctly classify memory errors as misremembering or confabulation. Neither causalists nor simulationists have paid attention to (...) memory-conjunction errors, which is unfortunate because both theories have problems with these cases. The source of the difficulty is the background assumption that an act of remembering has one target. I fix these theories for those cases. The resulting versions are closely related when implemented using tools of information theory, differing only on how memory transmits information about the past. The implementation provides us with insights about the distinction between confabulatory and non-confabulatory memory, where memory-conjunction errors have a privileged position. (shrink)

Fihteova teorija drzave, koja cini integralni deo njegove prakticke filozofije, izgradjena je na kljucnim postavkama njegove metafizike. Stoga, osvetljavanje ovog problema u Fihteovoj poznoj filozofiji treba da podseti s jedne strane na jedan reprezentativan metafizicki projekat drzave velike spekulativne snage, a s druge strane na jedan nacin misljenja o drzavi koji se danas smatra anahronim, nenaucnim, prevazidjenim, te stoga vrednim da bude pominjan kao "negativan primer". Iako pomenute kvalifikacije ne treba sasvim odbaciti ili ih pak, unapred dovesti u pitanje, ipak (...) vracanje Fihteovoj poznoj metafizici drzave ne moze ni u nasem vremenu biti filozofski neproduktivno. Ono danas moze biti od sustinske pomoci svakome ko jos nije pregazen pohodom scjentisticke politologije, svakome ciji je saznajni interes jos uvek dovoljno otvoren za izrazito filozofsko razmatranje drzave, svakome ko zeli da filozofski obogati ili izostri pogled na drzavu. Iako je Fihteova teorija drzave jedinstvena i koherentna, ona je, narocito u svojoj poslednjoj fazi dozivela znacajan preobrazaj. Taj preobrazaj je bio toliko vidljiv da se drzava i u terminoloskom smislu pomera u pozadinu. U Fihteovoj poznoj filozofiji kljucna rec nije vise drzava, vec "carstvo slobode". O drzavi se sada govori, takoreci, intencionalno, svagda s pogledom na to carstvo, na mogucnost i izglede njegovog uspostavljanja. Bez obzira sto je ovaj terminoloski i saznajni primat carstva slobode potisnuo drzavu u drugi plan, on joj, ipak, nije porekao svaki znacaj. Naprotiv. Na putu ka carstvu slobode drzava za Fihtea predstavlja vaznu tacku razvoja preko koje se mora proci. Bas u toj njenoj prolaznosti lezi njena nezaobilaznost. (shrink)