Long known solely as fascism’s precursor, Joseph de Maistre re-emerges in this volume as a versatile thinker with a colossally diverse posterity whose continuing relevance in Europe is ensured by his theorization of the encounter between tradition and modernity.

Andrea Vestrucci, Sujet moral et Sittlichkeit : la théorie de la morale de Agnès Heller. Une comparaison avec Eric Weil. Thèse soutenue le 28 janvier 2009 à l’Université de Milan. Composition du jury Maria Cristina Bartolomei, Professeur à l'Université de Milan, co-directrice de thèse Michel Crubellier, Professeur à l'Université de Lille 3 Marco Ravera, Professeur à l'Université de Turin Patrice Canivez, Professeur à l'Université de Lille 3, co-directeur de thèse Nathalie Rubel, Sexe et laï..

This paper presents two studies on the development and validation of a ten-item scale of epistemic vice and the relationship between epistemic vice and misinformation and fake news. Epistemic vices have been defined as character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. Examples of epistemic vice are gullibility and indifference to knowledge. It has been hypothesized that epistemically vicious people are especially susceptible to misinformation and conspiracy theories. We conducted one exploratory and one confirmatory observational survey study on (...) Amazon Mechanical Turk among people living in the United States. We show that two psychological traits underlie the range of epistemic vices that we investigated: indifference to truth and rigidity. Indifference manifests itself in a lack of motivation to find the truth. Rigidity manifests itself in being insensitive to evidence. We develop a scale to measure epistemic vice with the subscales indifference and rigidity. The Epistemic Vice Scale is internally consistent; has good convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity; and is strongly associated with the endorsement of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Epistemic vice explains additional variance in the endorsement of misinformation and conspiracy theories over and above demographic and related psychological concepts and shows medium to large effect sizes across outcome measures. We demonstrate that epistemic vice differs from existing psychological constructs, and show that the scale can explain individual differences in dealing with misinformation and conspiracy theories. We conclude that epistemic vice might contribute to “postfactive” ways of thinking. (shrink)

A view that emancipates free will by means of quantum indeterminism is frequently rejected based on arguments pointing out its incompatibility with what we know about quantum physics. However, if one carefully examines what classical physical causal determinism and quantum indeterminism are according to physics, it becomes clear what they really imply–and, especially, what they do not imply–for agent-causation theories. Here, we will make necessary conceptual clarifications on some aspects of physical determinism and indeterminism, review some of the major objections (...) against libertarian conjectures, and show that there is no conceptual incompatibility preventing us from taking a ‘quantum-libertarian’ approach to the problem of free will. In particular, we will illustrate the possible role of self-causation (causa sui) as a potential solution to otherwise apparently incompatible or even paradoxical statements concerning free will and quantum indeterminism. (shrink)

Inspired by the literature on extended/scaffolded mind, a debate concerning the contribution of extra-bodily resources to our (extended) emotions is recently gaining traction. Within this debate, inspired by the literature on cognitive artifacts introduces the notion of “affective artifacts”, indicating those objects that exert persistent effects on our feelings, possibly altering our self. However, by focusing on feelings, this notion neglects other facets of emotional episodes. Following Scarnatino’s tripartition between feeling, appraisal, and motivational theories of emotion, I present three varieties (...) of affective artifacts: Feeling, Evaluative and Motivational Artifacts. (shrink)

Embodiment and embeddedness define an attractive framework to the study of cognition. I discuss whether theory of mind, i.e. the ability to attribute mental states to others to predict and explain their behaviour, fits these two principles. In agreement with available evidence, embodied cognitive processes may underlie the earliest manifestations of social cognitive abilities such as infants’ selective behaviour in spontaneous-response false belief tasks. Instead, late theory-of-mind abilities, such as the capacity to pass the (elicited-response) false belief test at age (...) four, depend on children’s ability to explain people’s reasons to act in conversation with adults. Accordingly, rather than embodied, late theory-of-mind abilities are embedded in an external linguistic practice. (shrink)

Debates on situated affectivity have mainly focused on tools that exert some positive influence on affective experience. Far less attention has been paid to artifacts that interact with the expression of affect, or to those that exert some negative influence. To shed light on that shadowy corner of our affective social lives, I describe the workings of an atypical socio-affective artifact, namely, sunglasses. Drawing on insights from psychology and other social sciences, I construe sunglasses as a social shield that helps (...) us block spontaneous emotional expressions, as well as affecting other social processes that heavily depend on the eye region: gaze direction detection, identity recognition, and the sense of intimacy afforded by eye contact. (shrink)

This essay pushes the history of a scientific discipline, morphology, toward a broader philosophically informed and cross-disciplinarily engaged history of knowledge. It shows that by looking at how knowledge and practices circulated between scientific disciplines (such as biology) and technoscientific ones (like architecture and design) we can better understand how (morphological) knowledge was produced. By doing so, the analysis contributes to the study of the mechanisms of knowledge exchange between the organic and the technical worlds and, more broadly, to the (...) study of the dynamics of knowledge circulation. First, the essay analyzes the engineering studies of organic form conducted by the Austro-Hungarian botanist Raoul Heinrich Francé (1874–1943) and the Scottish polymath D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948). Subsequently, the essay moves to twenty-first-century morphogenesis. It examines the transfer of the notion of morphospace, a paleontological practice of data visualization, into biology-inspired architectural design. The conclusion deals with the broader features of knowledge transfer and circulation. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century morphologists successfully translate and transfer morphogenetic processes from nature into technical artifacts to achieve technical solutions to given problems. In the translation of organic morphogenesis into a technical process, evolution’s intrinsic historical contingency was deliberately left behind. (shrink)

. This paper investigates the mechanisms of knowledge production of twenty-first century robotics-inspired morphology. How robotics influences investigations into the structure, development, and change of organic forms? Which definition of form is presupposed by this new approach to the study of form? I answer these questions by investigating how robots are used to understand and generate new questions about the locomotion of extinct animals in the first case study and in high-performance fishes in the second case study. After having illustrated (...) the landscape of twentieth-century morphology, I will reflect on the definition of form adopted in twenty-first century robotics-inspired morphology as well as on the differences between this approach to the study of form and the so-called nature-inspired disciplines, such as bionics or biomimetics. In the conclusion, I suggest that we are now in a material turn in morphology, characterized by the coexistence of the robotic, the virtual, and the real, which enables an understanding of how the structures and dynamics of shapes change over time. (shrink)

Are concepts stable entities, unchanged from context to context? Or rather are they context-dependent structures, created on the fly? We argue that this does not constitute a genuine dilemma. Our main thesis is that the more a pattern of features is general and shared, the more it qualifies as a concept. Contextualists have not shown that conceptual structures lack a stable, general core, acting as an attractor on idiosyncratic information. What they have done instead is to give a contribution to (...) the comprehension of how conceptual structure organized around such a stable core can produce contextually appropriate representations on demand. (shrink)

Vice epistemology studies the qualities of individuals and collectives that undermine the creation, sharing, and storing of knowledge. There is no settled understanding of which epistemic vices exist at the collective level. Yet understanding which collective epistemic vices exist is important, both to facilitate research on the antecedents and effects of collective epistemic vice, and to advance philosophical discussions such as whether some collective epistemic vices are genuinely collective. I propose an empirical approach to identifying epistemic vices in corporations, analyzing (...) a large dataset of online employee reviews. The approach has parallels to the methodology for identifying the big-five personality traits. It surfaces epistemic vices that are attributed to corporations by its own members and reduces the number of vices to the minimum required to describe differences between corporations. This approach yields a new taxonomy of epistemic vices for corporations. While two vices identified have close correlates in the existing literature, four others have not been identified at all or only in aspects. Two of these vices are ‘genuinely’ collective in the sense that they can only be attributed to collectives. (shrink)

In this contribution, I explore the possibility of characterizing the emergence of time in causal set theory (CST) in terms of the growing block universe (GBU) metaphysics. I show that although GBU seems to be the most intuitive time metaphysics for CST, it leaves us with a number of interpretation problems, independently of which dynamics we choose to favor for the theory —here I shall consider the Classical Sequential Growth and the Covariant model. Discrete general covariance of the CSG dynamics (...) does not allow us to individuate a single history of the universe (defined by a causal history of different causal sets), thereby making the claim that ‘the past exists’ at best problematic. In addition, because the evolution of the universe in CSG dynamics leads to an outward branching causal tree, it becomes impossible to determine a proper ‘line of becoming’, thereby blurring the presentists’ claim that only the present exists. Similarly, the covariant approach runs into the same, if not even more severe problems, since each configuration of the universe would amount to a set of possible causal sets, thereby making the individuation of a single configuration of the universe —and thus the physical interpretation of the theory— implausible. (shrink)

My main purpose here is to provide an account of context selection in utterance understanding in terms of the role played by schemata and goals in top-down processing. The general idea is that information is organized hierarchically, with items iteratively organized in chunks—here called “schemata”—at multiple levels, so that the activation of any items spreads to schemata that are the most accessible due to previous experience. The activation of a schema, in turn, activates its other components, so as to predict (...) a likely context for the original item. Since each input activates its own schemata, conflicting schemata compete with (and inhibit) each other, while multiple activations of a schema raise its likelihood to win the competition. There is therefore a double movement—with bottom-up activation of schemata enabling top-down prediction of other contextual components—triggered by multiple sources. Another claim of the paper is that goals are represented by schemata placed at the highest-levels of the executive hierarchy, in accordance with Fuster’s model of the brain as a hierarchically organized perception action cycle. This account can be considered, in part at least, a development of ideas contained in Relevance Theory, though it may imply that some other claims of the theory are in need of revision. Therefore, a secondary purpose of the paper is a contribution to the analysis of that theory. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine two important issues concerning the agency theory of causality: the charge of anthropomorphism and the relation of simultaneous causation. After a brief outline of the agency theory, sections 2–4 contain the refutation of the three main forms in which the charge of anthropomorphism is to be found in the literature. It will appear that it is necessary to distinguish between the subjective and the objective aspect of the concept of causation. This will (...) lead, in section 5, to contrast two kinds of anthropomorphism, one which has been rightly rejected by modern science and one which is fully compatible with the objective reality of the causal processes. Finally, section 6 will apply the preceding considerations to simultaneous causation. On the one hand, in a basic sense, there can be no simultaneous causal relations. On the other hand, simultaneous causation arises when we consider the natural change by abstracting from the agent and from her/his projects of interven.. (shrink)

The paper addresses the question of the nature and limits of philosophical thought experiments. On the one hand, experimental philosophers are right to claim that we need much more laboratory work in order to have more reliable thought experiments, but on the other hand a naturalism that is too radical is incapable of clarifying the peculiarity of thought experiments in philosophy. Starting from a historico-critical reconstruction of Kant’s concept of the “experiments of pure reason”, this paper outlines an account of (...) thought experiments in philosophy that tries to reconcile the thesis of a principled difference between scientific and philosophical TEs with the position of a methodological naturalism that does not admit any difference in kind between the methods of science and of philosophy. (shrink)

Crutchfield and Redinger argue that consciousness-altering chemical restraints are less “liberty-intrusive” (or as we will sometimes put it, just less “intrusive”) than physical restraints. Physica...

Humans have been using fire for hundreds of millennia, creating an ancestral expansion toward the nocturnal niche. The new adaptive challenges faced at night were recurrent enough to amplify existing psychological variation in our species. Night-time is dangerous and mysterious, so it selects for individuals with higher tendencies for paranoia, risk-taking, and sociability. During night-time, individuals are generally tired and show decreased self-control and increased impulsive behaviors. The lower visibility during night-time favors the partial concealment of identity and opens more (...) opportunities for disinhibition of self-interested behaviors. Indeed, individuals with an evening-oriented chronotype are more paranoid, risk-taking, extraverted, impulsive, promiscuous, and have higher antisocial personality traits. However, under some circumstances, such as respiratory pandemics, the psychobehavioral traits favored by the nocturnal niche might be counter-productive, increasing contagion rates of a disease that can evade the behavioral immune system because its disease cues are often nonexistent or mild. The eveningness epidemiological liability hypothesis presented here suggests that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the evening-oriented psychobehavioral profile can have collectively harmful consequences: there is a clash of core tendencies between the nocturnal chronotype and the recent viral transmission-mitigating safety guidelines and rules. The pandemic safety protocols disrupt much normal social activity, particularly at night when making new social contacts is desired. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is contagious even in presymptomatic and asymptomatic individuals, which enables it to mostly evade our evolved contagious disease avoidance mechanisms. A growing body of research has indirectly shown that individual traits interfering with social distancing and anti-contagion measures are related to those of the nocturnal chronotype. Indeed, some of the social contexts that have been identified as superspreading events occur at night, such as in restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Furthermore, nocturnal environmental conditions favor the survival of the SARS-CoV-2 virus much longer than daytime conditions. We compare the eveningness epidemiological liability hypothesis with other factors related to non-compliance with pandemic safety protocols, namely sex, age, and life history. Although there is not yet a direct link between the nocturnal chronotype and non-compliance with pandemic safety protocols, security measures and future empirical research should take this crucial evolutionary mismatch and adaptive metaproblem into account, and focus on how to avoid nocturnal individuals becoming superspreaders, offering secure alternatives for nocturnal social activities. (shrink)

The paper presents and discusses the Hubble tension with respect to recent results in cosmology. I shall argue that the measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope and TRGB stars calibrations allow us to infer that the estimates of H0 with late universe methods are robust. Building on from robustness analysis, I conclude that the resolution of the tension cannot be expected to come from new systematics, but rather from new physics.

The standard view of classical cognitive science stated that cognition consists in the manipulation of language-like structures according to formal rules. Since cognition is ‘linguistic’ in itself, according to this view language is just a complex communication system and does not influence cognitive processes in any substantial way. This view has been criticized from several perspectives and a new framework (Embodied Cognition) has emerged that considers cognitive processes as non-symbolic and heavily dependent on the dynamical interactions between the cognitive system (...) and its environment. But notwithstanding the successes of the embodied cognitive science in explaining low-level cognitive behaviors, it is still not clear whether and how it can scale up for explaining high-level cognition. In this paper we argue that this can be done by considering the role of language as a cognitive tool: i.e. how language transforms basic cognitive functions in the high-level functions that are characteristic of human cognition. In order to do that, we review some computational models that substantiate this view with respect to categorization and memory. Since these models are based on a very rudimentary form of non-syntactic ‘language’ we argue that the use of language as a cognitive tool might have been an early discovery in hominid evolution, and might have played a substantial role in the evolution of language itself. (shrink)

The paper addresses the question of the nature and limits of philosophical thought experiments. On the one hand, experimental philosophers are right to claim that we need much more laboratory work in order to have more reliable thought experiments, but on the other hand a naturalism that is too radical is incapable of clarifying the peculiarity of thought experiments in philosophy. Starting from a historico-critical reconstruction of Kant’s concept of the “experiments of pure reason”, this paper outlines an account of (...) thought experiments in philosophy that tries to reconcile the thesis of a principled difference between scientific and philosophical TEs with the position of a methodological naturalism that does not admit any difference in kind between the methods of science and of philosophy. (shrink)

La ricerca empirica nelle scienze cognitive può essere di supporto all’indagine filosofica sullo statuto ontologico e epistemologico dei concetti mentali, ed in particolare del concetto di credenza. Da oltre trent’anni gli psicologi utilizzano il test della falsa credenza per valutare la capacità dei bambini di attribuire stati mentali a se stessi e a agli altri. Tuttavia non è stato ancora pienamente compreso né quali requisiti cognitivi siano necessari per passare il test né quale sia il loro sviluppo. In questo articolo (...) analizzo l’impatto della funzione esecutiva e delle abilità linguistiche per la capacità di passare il test della falsa credenza. Suggerisco che tale abilità dipende dall’acquisizione di un nuovo formato rappresentazionale per codificare la falsità degli stati mentali altrui. I dati in nostro possesso non permettono tuttavia di precisare la natura di tale formato. (shrink)

One of the legacies of modern philosophy is to have separated or bifurcated the human from nature. Marco Altamirano offers a critique of the modern concept of nature in order to chart a new trajectory for the philosophy of nature. -/- By examining the history of the concept of nature, Altamirano shows how a spatial and epistemological concept of nature emerged in Descartes, where a subject confronts an object in space and subsequently wonders about her mode of access to (...) that object. He then argues that a time-based concept of nature is necessary in order to reinstall the subject within its eventual ecology. Deploying conceptual resources from Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault, and Leroi- Gourhan (among others), Altamirano shows how the concept of technology harbors an escape route from the spatial and epistemological picture of nature. Ultimately, this book draws the profile of a concept of nature based on time and technology that bypasses the nature-artifice distinction that has mired the philosophy of nature since modern philosophy. (shrink)

The conventional interpretation that Pierre Duhem condemned outright any type of thought experiment in Ernst Mach’s sense should be, at least in large part, rejected. Although Duhem placed particular emphasis on the perils of thought experiments that Mach had overlooked or at least underestimated, he retained the core idea of Mach’s theory, according to which thought experiments cannot break free from the ultimate authority of real-world experiments. This similarity between Duhem’s and Mach’s views about thought experiments is not the only (...) one. Just as there was in Duhem’s criticism of “expériences fictives” a tendency leading him to give voice to one of Mach’s basic empiricist claims, so also there was in Mach’s interpretation of thought experiments a tendency in the direction of Duhem’s conventionalism. If Mach’s and Duhem’s conceptions of thought experiments are compared, there results an importantly similar, although not identical, tension that should properly be taken into account in the more general comparison between Mach and Duhem. (shrink)

In this paper, I delineate the first pages of a philosophical genealogy which outlines the cornerstones of a philosophy of bio-technical forms. In so doing, the essay contributes to the philosophical understanding of some key scientific concepts. In particular, it analyses the philosophical and historical preconditions, the epistemic assumptions, as well as the ontological commitments of the concept of form as used in digital design and in bionics. In the first section, I investigate Ernst Kapp’s philosophy of technical forms. In (...) the second section, I analyse the emergence of biotechnology, today’s bionics, as an independent technical discipline. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Austro-Hungarian botanist Raoul Heinrich Francé (1874–1943) founded this discipline with the aim of imitating the technical solutions chosen by nature. In the conclusion, I draw broader conclusions about the philosophy of bio-technical forms. Particularly, I argue, first, that the role of materiality and form-intrinsic propriety is of central importance in processes of form design. Second, I define morphology as a theory of possible constructions of forms in space and not, as in evolutionary biology, a science of the changes of forms in time. This characterises what I have called the ontological turn in form-design disciplines: nature operates technically to conceive new forms. (shrink)

Many approaches to quantum gravity -the theory that should account for quantum and gravitational phenomena under the same theoretical umbrella- seem to point at some form of spacetime emergence, i.e., the fact that spacetime is not a fundamental entity of our physical world. This tenet has sparked many philosophical discussions: from the so-called empirical incoherence problem to different accounts of emergence and mechanisms thereof. In this contribution, I focus on the partial order relation of causal set theory and argue that (...) causation can be characterized as an a-temporal constraint over the kinematic space defined by the theory. The relation constrains the growth of a new element/event with respect to the other elements/events of a given set. Therefrom, the flow of time emerges from the collection of the possible growths of the given set, where each possibility is characterized by a classical probability assigned by the dynamics of the theory. (shrink)

In considering what it means to lead organizations effectively and ethically, the literature comprising spirituality at work and spiritual leadership theory has become highly influential, especially in the USA. It has also attracted significant criticism. While in this paper, we endorse this critique, we argue that the strand of literature which purportedly takes a Christian standpoint within the wider SAW school of thought, largely misconstrues and misapplies the teaching of its founder, Jesus. As a result, in dismissing the claims and (...) application of SAW and SLT, there is a real risk that we lose the vital contribution of Christian thought, not least some of the timeless counter-cultural wisdom of Jesus which, we contend, offers a vital foundation to the practice of ethical leadership and business ethics in organizations. In proposing a way forward, two thorny issues which face all leaders are addressed: dealing with ego and closing the gap between what we say and what we do. The more we understand about the dynamics of human nature, the more we learn about the profundity of Jesus’ teachings. We then propose a number of ways in which Jesus-centred ethical leadership can be practised. Each is radical and each implies risk: both the personal risk of inner renewal arising from repentance as a doorway to personal integrity, as well as the risk of opposing unethical practices and promoting the excellence of core practices in the workplace. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the variety and richness of the taxonomical practices between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. During these decades, zoologists and paleontologists came up with different quantitative practices in order to classify their data in line with the new biological principles introduced by Charles Darwin. Specifically, I will investigate Florentino Ameghino’s mathematization of mammalian dentition and the quantitative practices and visualizations of several German-speaking paleontologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. In (...) so doing, this paper will call attention to the visual and quantitative language of early twentieth-century systematics. My analysis will therefore contribute to a prehistory of the statistical frame of mind in biology, a study which has yet to be written in full. Second, my work highlights the productive intertwinement between biological practices and philosophical frameworks at the turn of the nineteenth century. Deeply rooted in Kantian bio-philosophy, several biologists sought to find rules in order to apply ordering principles to chaotic taxonomic information. This implies the necessity to investigate the neglected role of Kantian and Romantic bio-philosophy in the unfolding of twentieth-century biology. (shrink)

The paper considers the absorber theory of radiation by (Wheeler and Feynman 1945) and (Wheeler and Feynman 1949) and advances the idea that the theory is grounded on the philosophical intuition of overall processes. Such intuition consists of having to consider advanced and retarded radiation as well as the interaction between absorbers and emitter. I discuss the discrepancy between microdynamic time-symmetry and the asymmetry of the experimental evidences. In doing so, I consider (Price, 1991)'s reformulation of the theory and argue (...) that it overlooks the philosophical intuition. I then compare the overall process idea with some accounts of holism and ultimately suggest that it also played an important role in Feynman's later works. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the variety and richness of the taxonomical practices between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. During these decades, zoologists and paleontologists came up with different quantitative practices in order to classify their data in line with the new biological principles introduced by Charles Darwin. Specifically, I will investigate Florentino Ameghino’s mathematization of mammalian dentition and the quantitative practices and visualizations of several German-speaking paleontologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. In (...) so doing, this paper will call attention to the visual and quantitative language of early twentieth-century systematics. My analysis will therefore contribute to a prehistory of the statistical frame of mind in biology, a study which has yet to be written in full. Second, my work highlights the productive intertwinement between biological practices and philosophical frameworks at the turn of the nineteenth century. Deeply rooted in Kantian bio-philosophy, several biologists sought to find rules in order to apply ordering principles to chaotic taxonomic information. This implies the necessity to investigate the neglected role of Kantian and Romantic bio-philosophy in the unfolding of twentieth-century biology. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Kristin Mickelson argues that Alfred Mele’s Zygote Argument, a popular argument for the claim that the truth of determinism would preclude free action or moral responsibility, is not valid. This sort of objection is meant to generalize to various manipulation arguments. According to Mickelson, the only way to make such arguments valid is to supplement them with an argument that is an inference to the best explanation. In this paper, I argue that there are two other (...) ways in which the proponent of such manipulation arguments can modify their argument, neither of which requires an inference to the best explanation. I then briefly consider and respond to a worry with one of these proposed solutions. (shrink)

Since cognitive neuroscience aims at giving an integrated account of mind and brain, its ontology should include both neural and cognitive entities and specify their relations. According to what we call the standard ontological framework of cognitive neuroscience, the aim of cognitive neuroscience should be to establish one-to-one mappings between neural and cognitive entities. Where such entities do not yet closely align, this can be achieved by reforming the cognitive ontology, the neural ontology, or both. In order to assess the (...) limits and the possibilities of the SOFCN, we will examine a paradigmatic case study: the concept of Broca’s area, which indicates an alleged mapping between the left inferofrontal gyrus and the production of language. We review evidence showing that such a mapping does not hold, thus calling into question either the status of Broca’s area or the validity of the SOFCN. We then propose some strategies for addressing the issue and suggest that it may be solved within the SOFCN by adopting both of the following strategies: first, more accurately defining the relevant neural structures and second, switching the focus of neural ontology from structures to events, individuated by a where conjoint with a how. (shrink)

: According to a traditional view, inferences are personal-level entities pertaining to the domain of reasons, and therefore they cannot be accounted for in causal terms – specifically, as mere associations. I intend to argue that this is at the very least a drastic simplification, for two reasons. First, the word “association” is polysemous, so we should specify in which of its possible senses an inference is not a mere association. Second, personal-level inferences based on formal rules are only the (...) extreme end of a complex developmental trajectory. As the last decades of research in the field have shown, we should refrain from identifying the entire domain of reasoning with that final stage, which is in fact mostly contingent upon extensive logical training. In this paper, I try to disentangle some major stages in the development of full-fledged inferences, and then to show that all of them – till the final one – can be considered associative in appropriate senses of the word. Keywords: Reasoning; Association; Consciousness; Inference; Development Un approccio associativo alle inferenze: l’evoluzione verso il prototipo Riassunto: Secondo una concezione tradizionale, le inferenze sono entità collocate al livello della persona e appartenenti al dominio delle ragioni, e pertanto non è possibile ridurle a un resoconto causale – più specificamente, a mere associazioni. Intendo sostenere che questa è quanto meno una drastica semplificazione, per due ragioni. Primo, la parola “associazione” è polisemica, quindi dovremmo precisare in quale senso un’inferenza non è una mera associazione. Secondo, inferenze al livello della persona e basate su regole formali sono solo il punto estremo di una complessa traiettoria di sviluppo. Come gli ultimi decenni di ricerca in questo campo hanno mostrato, dovremmo evitare di identificare l’intero dominio del ragionamento con questo stadio finale, che di fatto dipende da un esteso addestramento logico. In questo articolo, provo a discriminare alcuni stadi essenziali nello sviluppo delle inferenze in senso pieno, e quindi a mostrare che ciascuno di essi – incluso quello finale – possono essere considerati associativi in qualche opportuno senso della parola. Parole chiave: Ragionamento; Associazione; Coscienza; Inferenza; Sviluppo. (shrink)

The age at which children acquire the concept of belief is a subject of debate. Many scholars claim that children master beliefs when they are able to pass the false belief test, around their fourth year of life. However, recent experiments show that children implicitly attribute beliefs even earlier. The dispute does not only concern the empirical issue of discovering children’s early cognitive abilities. It also depends on the kind of capacities that we associate to the very concept. I claim (...) that concept possession must be understood in terms of the gradual development of the abilities that underlie the concept in question. I also claim that the last step to possess the concept of belief requires children to understand how beliefs and desires are used in everyday explanations of people’s actions. Thus, I suggest that understanding folk psychology as an explanatory theory is what children lack when they fail the false belief test. (shrink)

Experimental balance is usually understood as the control for the value of the conditions, other than the one under study, which are liable to affect the result of a test. We discuss three different approaches to balance. ‘Millean balance’ requires identifying and equalizing ex ante the value of these conditions in order to conduct solid causal inferences. ‘Fisherian balance’ measures ex post the influence of uncontrolled conditions through the analysis of variance. In ‘efficiency balance’ the value of the antecedent conditions (...) is decided ex ante according to the efficiency they yield in the estimation of the treatment outcome. Against some old arguments by Worrall, we show that in both Fisherian and efficiency balance there are good reasons to randomize the allocation of treatments, in particular when there is no agreement among experimenters as to the antecedent conditions to be controlled for. (shrink)