The EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) defines four risk categories for AI systems: unacceptable, high, limited, and minimal. However, it lacks a clear methodology for the assessment of these risks in concrete situations. Risks are broadly categorized based on the application areas of AI systems and ambiguous risk factors. This paper suggests a methodology for assessing AI risk magnitudes, focusing on the construction of real-world risk scenarios. To this scope, we propose to integrate the AIA with a framework developed by (...) the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and related literature. This approach enables a nuanced analysis of AI risk by exploring the interplay between (a) risk determinants, (b) individual drivers of determinants, and (c) multiple risk types. We further refine the proposed methodology by applying a proportionality test to balance the competing values involved in AI risk assessment. Finally, we present three uses of this approach under the AIA: to implement the Regulation, to assess the significance of risks, and to develop internal risk management systems for AI deployers. (shrink)

Accountability is a cornerstone of the governance of artificial intelligence (AI). However, it is often defined too imprecisely because its multifaceted nature and the sociotechnical structure of AI systems imply a variety of values, practices, and measures to which accountability in AI can refer. We address this lack of clarity by defining accountability in terms of answerability, identifying three conditions of possibility (authority recognition, interrogation, and limitation of power), and an architecture of seven features (context, range, agent, forum, standards, process, (...) and implications). We analyse this architecture through four accountability goals (compliance, report, oversight, and enforcement). We argue that these goals are often complementary and that policy-makers emphasise or prioritise some over others depending on the proactive or reactive use of accountability and the missions of AI governance. (shrink)

The advent of Generative AI, particularly through Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and its successors, marks a paradigm shift in the AI landscape. Advanced LLMs exhibit multimodality, handling diverse data formats, thereby broadening their application scope. However, the complexity and emergent autonomy of these models introduce challenges in predictability and legal compliance. This paper analyses the legal and regulatory implications of Generative AI and LLMs in the European Union context, focusing on liability, privacy, intellectual property, and cybersecurity. It examines (...) the adequacy of the existing and proposed EU legislation, including the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA), in addressing the challenges posed by Generative AI in general and LLMs in particular. The paper identifies potential gaps and shortcomings in the EU legislative framework and proposes recommendations to ensure the safe and compliant deployment of generative models. (shrink)

The article argues that AI can enhance the measurement and implementation of democratic processes within political parties, known as Intra-Party Democracy (IPD). It identifies the limitations of traditional methods for measuring IPD, which often rely on formal parameters, self-reported data, and tools like surveys. Such limitations lead to the collection of partial data, rare updates, and significant demands on resources. To address these issues, the article suggests that specific data management and Machine Learning (ML) techniques, such as natural language processing (...) and sentiment analysis, can improve the measurement (ML about) and practice (ML for) of IPD. The article concludes by considering some of the principal risks of ML for IPD, including concerns over data privacy, the potential for manipulation, and the dangers of overreliance on technology. (shrink)

The EU proposal for the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) defines four risk categories: unacceptable, high, limited, and minimal. However, as these categories statically depend on broad fields of application of AI, the risk magnitude may be wrongly estimated, and the AIA may not be enforced effectively. This problem is particularly challenging when it comes to regulating general-purpose AI (GPAI), which has versatile and often unpredictable applications. Recent amendments to the compromise text, though introducing context-specific assessments, remain insufficient. To address this, (...) we propose applying the risk categories to specific AI scenarios, rather than solely to fields of application, using a risk assessment model that integrates the AIA with the risk approach arising from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and related literature. This model enables the estimation of the magnitude of AI risk by considering the interaction between (a) risk determinants, (b) individual drivers of determinants, and (c) multiple risk types. We use large language models (LLMs) as an example. (shrink)

Regulation is nothing without enforcement. This particularly holds for the dynamic field of emerging technologies. Hence, this article has two ambitions. First, it explains how the EU´s new Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) will be implemented and enforced by various institutional bodies, thus clarifying the governance framework of the AIA. Second, it proposes a normative model of governance, providing recommendations to ensure uniform and coordinated execution of the AIA and the fulfilment of the legislation. Taken together, the article explores how the (...) AIA may be implemented by national and EU institutional bodies, encompassing longstanding bodies, such as the European Commission, and those newly established under the AIA, such as the AI Office. It investigates their roles across supranational and national levels, emphasizing how EU regulations influence institutional structures and operations. These regulations may not only directly dictate the structural design of institutions but also indirectly request administrative capacities needed to enforce the AIA. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall set out the pros and cons of assigning legal personhood on artificial intelligence systems under civil law. More specifically, I will provide arguments supporting a functionalist justification for conferring personhood on AIs, and I will try to identify what content this legal status might have from a regulatory perspective. Being a person in law implies the entitlement to one or more legal positions. I will mainly focus on liability as it is one of the main (...) grounds for the attribution of legal personhood, like for collective legal entities. A better distribution of responsibilities resulting from unpredictably illegal and/or harmful behaviour may be one of the main reasons to justify the attribution of personhood also for AI systems. This means an efficient allocation of the risks and social costs associated with the use of AIs, ensuring the protection of victims, incentives for production, and technological innovation. However, the paper also considers other legal positions triggered by personhood in addition to responsibility: specific competencies and powers such as, for example, financial autonomy, the ability to hold property, make contracts, sue. (shrink)

International regulation of autonomous weapon systems (AWS) is increasingly conceived as an exercise in risk management. This requires a shared approach for assessing the risks of AWS. This paper presents a structured approach to risk assessment and regulation for AWS, adapting a qualitative framework inspired by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It examines the interactions among key risk factors—determinants, drivers, and types—to evaluate the risk magnitude of AWS and establish risk tolerance thresholds through a risk matrix informed by (...) background knowledge of event likelihood and severity. Further, it proposes a methodology to assess community risk appetite, emphasizing that such assessments and resulting tolerance levels should be determined through deliberation in a multistakeholder forum. The paper highlights the complexities of applying risk-based regulations to AWS internationally, particularly the challenge of defining a global community for risk assessment and regulatory legitimization. (shrink)

Cancel culture is a form of societal self-defense that becomes prominent particularly during periods of substantial moral upheaval. It can lead to the polarization of incompatible viewpoints if it is indiscriminately demonized. In this brief editorial letter, I consider framing cancel culture as an essentially contested concept (ECC), according to the theory of Walter B. Gallie, with the aim of establishing a groundwork for a more productive discourse on it. In particular, I propose that intermediate agreements and principles of reasonableness (...) can help refocus the debate on cancel culture towards democratic discourse, without blanket justification for every instance. In this context, asserting that cancel culture is an ECC does not dismiss the potential of achieving consensus on its shared core meaning or societal role. Like other similar ECCs, such as democracy or rule of law, it highlights the importance of contestations in shaping our collective understanding of the concept. (shrink)

Regulation by design (RBD) is a growing research field that explores, develops, and criticises the regulative function of design. In this article, we provide a qualitative thematic synthesis of the existing literature. The aim is to explore and analyse RBD’s core features, practices, limitations, and related governance implications. To fulfil this aim, we examine the extant literature on RBD in the context of digital technologies. We start by identifying and structuring the core features of RBD, namely the goals, regulators, regulatees, (...) methods, and technologies. Building on that structure, we distinguish among three types of RBD practices: compliance by design, value creation by design, and optimisation by design. We then explore the challenges and limitations of RBD practices, which stem from risks associated with compliance by design, contextual limitations, or methodological uncertainty. Finally, we examine the governance implications of RBD and outline possible future directions of the research field and its practices. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide an analysis of the concept of legal personality and discuss whether personality may be conferred on artificial intelligence systems (AIs). Legal personality will be presented as a doctrinal category that holds together bundles of rights and obligations; as a result, we first frame it as a node of inferential links between factual preconditions and legal effects. However, this inferentialist reading does not account for the ‘background reasons’ of legal personality, i.e., it does not explain why (...) we cluster different situations under this doctrinal category and how extra-legal information is integrated into it. We argue that one way to account for this background is to adopt a neoinstitutional perspective and to update the ontology of legal concepts with a further layer, the meta-institutional one. We finally argue that meta-institutional concepts can also support us in finding an equilibrium around the legal-policy choices that are involved in including (or not including) AIs among legal persons. (shrink)

One might suppose that Everettian quantum mechanics (EQM) is inhospitable to metaphysial indeterminacy (MI), given that, as A. Wilson (2020) puts it, "the central idea of EQM is to replace indeterminacy with multiplicity" (77). But as Wilson goes on to suggest, the popular decoherence-based understanding of EQM (henceforth: DEQM) appears to admit of indeterminacy in both world number and world nature, where the latter indeterminacy---our focus here---is plausibly metaphysical. After a brief presentation of DEQM (S1), we bolster the case for (...) there being MI in world nature in DEQM (S2). The remainder of the paper is devoted to a comparative assessment of the two main approaches to MI for purposes of accommodating this MI---namely, a metaphysical supervaluationist approach (as per Barnes and Williams 2011) and a determinable-based approach (as per Wilson 2013 and Calosi and Wilson 2018 and 2021). We briefly describe each approach (S3), then offer arguments in favour of a determinable-based approach to world nature MI in DEQM (S4). (shrink)

This volume is the first systematic and thorough attempt to investigate the relation and the possible applications of mereology to contemporary science. It gathers contributions from leading scholars in the field and covers a wide range of scientific theories and practices such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, computer science and engineering. Throughout the volume, a variety of foundational issues are investigated both from the formal and the empirical point of view. The first section looks at the topic as it applies (...) to physics. The section addresses questions of persistence and composition within quantum and relativistic physics and concludes by scrutinizing the possibility to capture continuity of motion as described by our best physical theories within gunky space times. The second part tackles mathematics and shows how to provide a foundation for point-free geometry of space switching to fuzzy-logic. The relation between mereological sums and set-theoretic suprema is investigated and issues about different mereological perspectives such as classical and natural Mereology are thoroughly discussed. The third section in the volume looks at natural science. Several questions from biology, medicine and chemistry are investigated. From the perspective of biology, there is an attempt to provide axioms for inferring statements about part hood between two biological entities from statements about their spatial relation. From the perspective of chemistry, it is argued that classical mereological frameworks are not adequate to capture the practices of chemistry in that they consider neither temporal nor modal parameters. The final part introduces computer science and engineering. A new formal mereological framework in which an indeterminate relation of part hood is taken as a primitive notion is constructed and then applied to a wide variety of disciplines from robotics to knowledge engineering. A formal framework for discrete mereotopology and its applications is developed and finally, the importance of mereology for the relatively new science of domain engineering is also discussed. (shrink)

This paper provides the first thorough assessment of a physics-based answer, the Bound State Answer, to the Special Composition Question. According to the BSA some objects compose something if they are in a common bound state. The reasons to endorse such an answer, in particular, motivations coming from empirical adequacy and conservativeness, precision, simplicity, and parsimony, are critically addressed. I then go on to compare the BSA to other moderate answers to the SCQ and consider whether objections raised against such (...) answers can be raised against the BSA as well. I finally relate the discussion with mereological pluralism. (shrink)

Multilocation – the notion of an object being at two places – is a central notion in metaphysics. According to a widespread view, multilocation is problematic but metaphysically possible. In effect, it has been claimed that in a quantum world, multilocation is not simply possible but actual. This article provides a new argument against the latter claim: there is no quantum multilocation.

The paper studies the relation between systems of modal logic and systems of consequential implication, a non-material form of implication satisfying "Aristotle's Thesis" (p does not imply not p) and "Weak Boethius' Thesis" (if p implies q, then p does not imply not q). Definitions are given of consequential implication in terms of modal operators and of modal operators in terms of consequential implication. The modal equivalent of "Strong Boethius' Thesis" (that p implies q implies that p does not imply (...) not q) is identified. (shrink)

In a well-known course he gave in 1904-1905, Edmund Husserl developed a ‘threefold’ notion of image revolving around the notion of depiction [Abbildung]. More specifically, the phenomenological description allows a seeing-in to emerge as an essential characteristic of the image consciousness, in which an image object assumes the role of a representant [Repräsentant] in order to allow us to see the image subject in the image itself. Nevertheless, our paper – focusing particularly on what might be called the depictive art (...) par excellence, that is the portrait – aims to show that it would be erroneous to read the Husserlian notion of image exclusively on the basis of this earlier course: things seem to change significantly when Husserl develops a different notion of phantasy, and artistic images, in particular, are not to be thought of as resembling something else, but rather as expressive images producing their own model. (shrink)

The paper introduces a contingential language extended with a propositional constant τ axiomatized in a system named KΔτ , which receives a semantical analysis via relational models. A definition of the necessity operator in terms of Δ and τ allows proving (i) that KΔτ is equivalent to a modal system named K□τ (ii) that both KΔτ and K□τ are tableau-decidable and complete with respect to the defined relational semantics (iii) that the modal τ -free fragment of KΔτ is exactly the (...) deontic system KD. In §4 it is proved that the modal τ -free fragment of a system KΔτw weaker than KΔτ is exactly the minimal normal system K. (shrink)

The first section of the paper establishes the minimal properties of so-called consequential implication and shows that they are satisfied by at least two different operators of decreasing strength and \). Only the former has been analyzed in recent literature, so the paper focuses essentially on the latter. Both operators may be axiomatized in systems which are shown to be translatable into standard systems of normal modal logic. The central result of the paper is that the minimal consequential system for (...) \, CI\, is definitionally equivalent to the deontic system KD and is intertranslatable with the minimal consequential system for \, CI. The main drawback ot the weaker operator \ is that it lacks unrestricted contraposition, but the final section of the paper argues that \ has some properties which make it a valuable alternative to \, turning out especially plausible as a basis for the definition of operators representing synthetic conditionals. (shrink)

There is an interesting puzzle about the interaction between mereology, topology, and dependence. It is not only interesting in and on itself, but also reveals subtleties about the aforementioned interaction that have gone unnoticed. The puzzle has it that the following plausible claims are jointly inconsistent: wholes depend on their parts; boundaries are parts; boundaries depend on the whole they are part of. In the paper, I first argue that claims – are not as a matter of fact inconsitent insofar (...) as further assumptions are needed to get the puzzle off the ground. I consider several such assumptions, somemore plausible than others. Though I do not take any definite stance as to whether the plusibility of the assumptions considered trump that of claims –, I set forth a suggestion to replace with something similar yet interestingly different. (shrink)

There are famously two main metaphysics of persistence, namely three and four-dimensionalism. Both yield a particular solution to the so called puzzle of change. I argue that typical three-dimensionalist solutions to the puzzle face insurmountable difficulties even in the simplest relativistic setting, that of Minkowski spacetime.

By drawing on Husserl’s manuscripts on Phantasy, Image Consciousness and Memory, this paper aims to shed light on some of the primary concepts defining his notion of image—such as “belief,” “presentification” and perzeptive Phantasie—and endeavours to show how such concepts could be profitably developed for the sake of a phenomenological description of film image. More in particular, these analyses aim to give a phenomenological account of the distinction between positing film images, presupposing a claim to reality—for example the ones we (...) experience in a documentary attitude—and quasi-positing film images involved in artistic creation. The latter, despite their photographic relation to reality, are capable of giving rise to filmic “image-worlds” having intersubjective existence. (shrink)

The first part of the paper aims at showing that the notion of an Aristotelian square may be seen as a special case of a variety of different more general notions: the one of a subAristotelian square, the one of a semiAristotelian square, the one of an Aristotelian cube, which is a construction made up of six semiAristotelian squares, two of which are Aristotelian. Furthermore, if the standard Aristotelian square is seen as a special ordered 4-tuple of formulas, there are (...) 4-tuples describing rotations of the original square which are non-standard Aristotelian squares. The second part of the paper focuses on the notion of a composition of squares. After a discussion of possible alternative definitions, a privileged notion of composition of squares is identified, thus opening the road to introducing and discussing the wider notion of composition of cubes. (shrink)

The paper aims at developing the idea that the standard operator of noncontingency, usually symbolized by Δ, is a special case of a more general operator of dyadic noncontingency Δ(−, −). Such a notion may be modally defined in different ways. The one examined in the paper is __Δ__(B, A) = df ◊B ∧ (A ⥽ B ∨ A ⥽ ¬B), where ⥽ stands for strict implication. The operator of dyadic contingency __∇__(B, A) is defined as the negation of __Δ__(B, (...) A). Possibility (◊A) may be then defined as __Δ__(A, A), necessity (□A) as __∇__(¬A, ¬A) and standard monadic noncontingency (__Δ__A) as __Δ__( \({\textsf{T}}\), A). In the second section it is proved that the deontic system KD is translationally equivalent to an axiomatic system of dyadic noncontingency named KDΔ 2, and that the minimal system KΔ of monadic contingency is a fragment of KDΔ 2. The last section suggests lines for further inquiries. (shrink)

The extended evolutionary synthesis intends to offer a new framework for understanding evolution based mainly on empirical and theoretical findings of current studies, including heredity and evolutionary developmental biology. In this essay, we present and develop the following objections about the terminology associated with the EES literature: despite using the term "extension," EES protagonists claim new evolutionary processes, reformulate conceptual networks, and modify central assumptions of the evolutionary synthesis. Therefore, the difference between ES and EES should not be described in (...) terms of a set-subset relationship ; despite using the term "synthesis," the EES leads, at least in the short term, to a pluralism of approaches in evolutionary biology. Thus, we argue that the EES should not be described as a synthesis, but as a broad and plural interpretative framework encompassing different approaches. These objections are not directed to the proposed changes, but to the interpretation of these changes as a mere expansion of the previous evolutionary framework, as well as to the interpretation of the EES as a synthesis. Based on these objections, we seek to present some explanations for the use of the term "extended synthesis" among its protagonists. (shrink)

It is natural to ask under what conditions negating a conditional is equivalent to negating its consequent. Given a bivalent background logic, this is equivalent to asking about the conjunction of Conditional Excluded Middle (CEM, opposite conditionals are not both false) and Weak Boethius' Thesis (WBT, opposite conditionals are not both true). In the system CI.0 of consequential implication, which is intertranslatable with the modal logic KT, WBT is a theorem, so it is natural to ask which instances of CEM (...) are derivable. We also investigate the systems CIw and CI of consequential implication, corresponding to the modal logics K and KD respectively, with occasional remarks about stronger systems. While unrestricted CEM produces modal collapse in all these systems, CEM restricted to contingent formulas yields the Alt2 axiom (semantically, each world can see at most two worlds), which corresponds to the symmetry of consequential implication. It is proved that in all the main systems considered, a given instance of CEM is derivable if and only if the result of replacing consequential implication by the material biconditional in one or other of its disjuncts is provable. Several related results are also proved. The methods of the paper are those of propositional modal logic as applied to a special sort of conditional. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to outline a treatment of cotenability inspired by a perspective which had strong roots in ancient logic since Chrysippus and was partially recovered in the XX Century by E. Nelson and the exponents of so-called connexive logic. Consequential implication is a modal reinterpretation of connexive implication which permits a simple reconstruction of Aristotle's square of conditionals, in which proper place is given not only to ordinary cotenability between A and B, represented by ¬, but (...) to its “secondary” variant ¬ . After showing that logics of strict implication, of Stalnaker-Lewis conditionals and of relevant implication do not satisfy the intuitive properties required for cotenability , it is proved that such conditions are satisfied by consequential cotenability and by its secondary variant . The notions of strong cotenability and of bilateral cotenability are then introduced: the latter stands to standard cotenabilty as contingency stands to possibility, and in Section 9 it is shown to be a useful tool in the reconstruction of Boethius' theory of adjuncta. (shrink)

Nos termos rousseaunianos, a questão fundamental sobre o que de vemos fazer coletivamente (ou seja, o problema da decisão coletiva) se traduz como a questão sobre como podemos conhecer a vontade geral. Só podemos responder adequadamente a essa questão, porém, se prestarmos atenção a uma duplicidade importante no conceito de vontade geral. Rousseau usa a mesma expressão para se referir a duas coisas diferentes: às próprias decisões coletivas, consubstanciadas nas leis (a vg-decisão), e ao padrão do bem comum, em certo (...) sentido anterior e independente das decisões coletivas, servindo como referência para elas (a vg-padrão). A questão genérica sobre como podemos vir a conhecer a vontade geral, portanto, deve ser desdobrada em duas: Como podemos vir a conhecer a vg-decisão? e Como podemos vir a conhecer a vg-padrão? Este artigo pretende identificar os elementos centrais da resposta de Rousseau a essas duas questões, elementos esses que permitem discutir sobre o sentido da concepção rousseauniana de democracia. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper it is proved that there exists a one–one mapping between a minimal contingential logic extended with a suitable axiom for a propositional constant τ, named KΔτw, and a logic of necessity ${K\square \tau{w}}$ whose language contains ${\square}$ and τ. The form of the proposed translation aims at giving a solution to a problem which was left open in a preceding paper. It is then shown that the presence of τ in the language of (...) KΔτw allows for the definition, in terms of the non-contingency operator Δ, not only of ${\square}$ but of a second necessity operator O. It is observed that this fact opens the road to an investigation of the τ-free multimodal fragments of KΔτw. (shrink)

I give two new uniqueness results for the standard relation of simultaneity in the context of metrical time oriented Minkowski spacetime. These results improve on the classic ones due to Malament and Hogarth, for they adopt only minimal uncontroversial assumptions. I conclude addressing whether these results should be taken to definitely refute the general epistemological thesis of conventionalism.

. It is shown that the properties of so-called consequential implication allow to construct more than one aristotelian square relating implicative sentences of the consequential kind. As a result, if an aristotelian cube is an object consisting of two distinct aristotelian squares and four distinct “semiaristotelian” squares sharing corner edges, it is shown that there is a plurality of such cubes, which may also result from the composition of cubes of lower complexity.

Multilocation – the notion of an object being 18756735_00000147_text.pdfat two places – is a central notion in metaphysics. According to a widespread view, multilocation is problematic but metaphysically possible. In effect, it has been claimed that in a quantum world, multilocation is not simply possible but actual. This article provides a new argument against the latter claim: there is no quantum multilocation.

Super-substantivalism (of the type we’ll consider) roughly comprises two core tenets: (1) the physical properties which we attribute to matter (e.g. charge or mass) can be attributed to spacetime directly, with no need for matter as an extraneous carrier “on top of” spacetime; (2) spacetime is more fundamental than (ontologically prior to) matter. In the present paper, we revisit a recent argument in favour of super-substantivalism, based on General Relativity. A critique is offered that highlights the difference between (various accounts (...) of) fundamentality and (various forms of) ontological dependence. This affords a metaphysically more perspicuous view of what super-substantivalism’s tenets actually assert, and how it may be defended. We tentatively propose a re-formulation of the original argument that not only seems to apply to all classical physics, but also chimes with a standard interpretation of spacetime theories in the philosophy of physics. (shrink)

En este trabajo nos proponemos acercarnos a la noción del conocimiento simbólico en la obra de Gottfried Leibniz, rastreándola en diversos textos de su autoría en que se encuentra diseminada. Comenzamos con la importante distinción entre idea y concepto, que separa el planteo de nuestro autor de las formulaciones de otros como Descartes, Malebranche y Spinoza. Seguimos con la clasificación de los tipos de conceptos que el filósofo de Leipzig lleva acabo, en la que divide a los conceptos simbólicos de (...) los intuitivos. Abordamos después las ventajas epistemológicas que presenta el pensamiento simbólico frente al pensamiento verbal, analizando sus funciones cognitivas y su rol en diferentes tipos de sistemas semióticos. Continuamos asentando el simbolismo epistemológico dentro de una teoría general de la representación, que sostiene cierto isomorfismo entre las esferas del lenguaje, el pensamiento y la realidad. Finalmente, fundamentamos ontológicamente esta analogía representativa estructural en la noción leibniziana de expresión y la vinculamos con el perspectivismo monadológico, poniendo de relieve su cercanía con algunos planteos fenomenológicos y hermenéuticos de nuestros días. (shrink)

Different realistic attitudes towards wavefunctions and quantum states are as old as quantum theory itself. Recently Pusey, Barret and Rudolph on the one hand, and Auletta and Tarozzi on the other, have proposed new interesting arguments in favor of a broad realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics that can be considered the modern heir to some views held by the fathers of quantum theory. In this paper we give a new and detailed presentation of such arguments, propose a new taxonomy of (...) different realistic positions in the foundations of quantum mechanics and assess the scope, within this new taxonomy, of these realistic arguments. (shrink)

It is notoriously difficult to define Metaphysics1, its content, its method, its language, its scope. Thus I will not even try an attempt here. I will rest content to point out some widely held characterizations. A long and highly influential tradition maintains that Metaphysics is the study of being qua being. It is concerned with what there is, what kind of things are the things that there are, what properties do they have, how they are related. In this sense Metaphysics (...) deals with the more general features of reality, the most fundamental categories of being. Call this tradition General Metaphysics. (shrink)

The basis of the paper is a logic of analytical consequential implication, CI.0, which is known to be equivalent to the well-known modal system KT thanks to the definition A → B = df A ⥽ B ∧ Ξ (Α, Β), Ξ (Α, Β) being a symbol for what is called here Equimodality Property: (□A ≡ □B) ∧ (◊A ≡ ◊B). Extending CI.0 (=KT) with axioms and rules for the so-called circumstantial operator symbolized by *, one obtains a system CI.0*Eq (...) in whose language one can define an operator ↠ suitable to formalize context-dependent conditionals (so to counterfactual conditionals) via the definition (Def ↠) A ↠ B = df *A ⥽ B ∧ Ξ (Α, Β).. The central problem of the paper is to identify inside CI.0*Eq + Def ↠ a set of axioms yielding the fragment consisting of all and only theorems in which only truth-functional operators and the two operators → and ↠ occur. This system, here called CI.0, is introduced in §3. In view of the intended purpose, it is introduced a complete and tableau-decidable system KTw, which is an extension of KT with axioms for the so-called quasi-variables w(A), w(B)… Three translation functions among the three languages used in the paper are then introduced. The first, Tr, maps every wff of form *A into wffs of form w(A) ∧ A and translates theorems of CI.0*Eq into theorems of KTw. The second, t°, translates theorems of CI.0 into theorems of CI.0*Eq by applying Def↠. A third one, t, translates theorems of CI.0 into theorems of KTw. As a consequence, it follows that t°A = TrtA. In §4 it is proved that CI.0 is complete w.r.t. the class of CI.0-models of form where f is a selection function and R an access relation. It is then proved (i) that CI.0 models may be converted into KTw-models; (ii) that the truth-value of a proposition in a world of a CI.0-model is preserved in the same world of the derived KTw-model; (iii) that A is a CI.0-thesis iff its translation tA is KTw-thesis. It follows that, if A is not a CI.0-thesis, tA is not a KTw-thesis, so also that TrtA is not a CI.0*Eq-thesis. Since t°A = TrtA and t°A is a function built on Def↠, this proves that every t°-translation of a CI.0-wff that is a CI.0*Eq-theorem is a CI.0-theorem. Since the converse proposition is proved in §2, their conjunction establishes the desired result. In the final section, it is proved that CI.0 is tableau-decidable, that ↠ is not a trivial operator and that ↠ enjoys the positive and negative properties required in §1 for context-dependent conditionals. Some final remarks suggest that studying the relations between CI.0 and systems of classical conditional logic may be a promising line of investigation. (shrink)

In questo lavoro si presenta un nuovo esperimento mentale che solleva un particolare problema per quello che possiamo chiamare “fisicalismo minimale” in filosofia della mente. In particolare si argomenta che il fisicalismo minimale o i) non è in grado di fornirne un resoconto adeguato dell’esperimento mentale presentato, o ii) viene costretto a fornire un resoconto che è fortemente in contrasto con la nostra immagine scientifica del mondo. Il problema sollevato è un particolare esempio di quelli che Chalmers (1996) definisce hard (...) problems in filosofia della mente. Questa è la struttura del lavoro. Nella sezione 2. si presenta l’esperimento mentale, che chiameremo di Shem-Shaun1. Nella sezione 3. illustriamo il nostro argomento principale contro il fisicalismo minimale a partire dall’esperimento mentale della sezione precedente. Nella sezione conclusiva si discutono diversi modi di controbattere all’argomento principale e le sue conseguenze per il fisicalismo. (shrink)

Joaquín Blest Gana construyó a través del podio de la crítica literaria, una voz hombre heterosexual, en la que el pensamiento y el cuerpo llegan a la esfera pública utilizando la moral y la estética para instaurar su discurso en el plano de emancipación ilustrada impulsada por la generación de 1842. Desde la Revista de Santiago en un primer momento y el periódico La Semana, para un segundo, Joaquín Blest Gana estableció un discurso crítico que traspasó el ámbito de la (...) apreciación estética de la literatura, para defender una moralidad masculina en el uso del espacio público letrado. (shrink)