The "myside bias'' in evaluating arguments is an empirically well-confirmed phenomenon that consists of overweighting arguments that endorse one's beliefs or attack alternative beliefs while underweighting arguments that attack one's beliefs or defend alternative beliefs. This paper makes two contributions: First, it proposes a probabilistic model that adequately captures three salient features of myside bias in argument evaluation. Second, it provides a Bayesian justification of this model, thus showing that myside bias has a rational Bayesian explanation under certain conditions.

This article examines Wittgenstein’s criticism of Moore’s use of “know”, as he developed it in On Certainty. Arguing against much of the literature, the author claims that, by Wittgenstein’s own lights, Moore was not talking nonsense. He does so by showing, first, that the standard reading is based on the idea that hinge propositions are non-epistemic, and second, that Wittgenstein’s alleged adoption of the non-epistemic view is not adequately supported by the textual evidence. The author argues that claims to the (...) contrary depend on an undue conflation, on the part of interpreters, of Wittgenstein’s treatment of psychological avowals in Philosophical Investigations and his discussion of hinge propositions in On Certainty. Moreover, a closer look at Wittgenstein’s objections to Moore shows that Wittgenstein himself repeatedly charged Moore with a similar confusion between the status of psychological statements and the status of his common-sense truisms. (shrink)

Frege and Peano started in 1896 a debate where they contrasted the respective conceptions on the theory and practice of mathematical definitions. Which was (if any) the influence of the Frege-Peano debate on the conceptions by the two authors on the theme of defining in mathematics and which was the role played by this debate in the broader context of their scientific interaction?

Questo contributo tratta della perifrasi ‘εἶναι + participio’ in greco omerico all’interfaccia fra morfosintassi e semantica. I dati sono analizzati con riferimento al quadro teorico elaborato da Nardi e Romagno (2022), che considerano la perifrasi con εἶναι in greco antico come una categoria prototipica: secondo questa prospettiva, la categoria sovraordinata ‘εἶναι + participio’ include due manifestazioni formalmente diverse ma funzionalmente equivalenti, un costrutto con una copula espressa, cioè una perifrasi vera e propria, e un costrutto senza copula espressa, cioè un (...) participio predicativo (fondamentalmente, un participio che funziona come una forma finita). Questa indagine mira a valutare se si possano individuare fattori che determinano o soggiacciono all’uso di queste costruzioni participiali in greco omerico. L’analisi dei dati raccolti nei poemi omerici mostra che le costruzioni participiali codificano la funzione specifica di significare lo stato, inerente o acquisito, del soggetto del predicato, costituendo pertanto un’alternativa (più o meno libera) al perfetto originario (cfr. Romagno 2005). (shrink)

The model of self-referential truth presented in this paper, named Revision-theoretic supervaluation, aims to incorporate the philosophical insights of Gupta and Belnap’s Revision Theory of Truth into the formal framework of Kripkean fixed-point semantics. In Kripke-style theories the final set of grounded true sentences can be reached from below along a strictly increasing sequence of sets of grounded true sentences: in this sense, each stage of the construction can be viewed as an improvement on the previous ones. I want to (...) do something similar replacing the Kripkean sets of grounded true sentences with revision-theoretic sets of stable true sentences. This can be done by defining a monotone operator through a variant of van Fraassen’s supervaluation scheme which is simply based on ω-length iterations of the Tarskian operator. Clearly, all virtues of Kripke-style theories are preserved, and we can also prove that the resulting set of “grounded” true sentences shares some nice features with the sets of stable true sentences which are provided by the usual ways of formalising revision. What is expected is that a clearer philosophical content could be associated to this way of doing revision; hopefully, a content directly linked with the insights underlying finite revision processes. (shrink)

The my-side bias is a well-documented cognitive bias in the evaluation of arguments, in which reasoners in a discussion tend to overvalue arguments that confirm their prior beliefs, while undervaluing arguments that attack their prior beliefs. The first part of this paper develops and justifies a Bayesian model of myside bias at the level of individual reasoning. In the second part, this Bayesian model is implemented in an agent-based model of group discussion among myside-biased agents. The agent-based model is then (...) used to perform a number of experiments with the objective to study whether the myside bias hinders or enhances the ability of groups to collectively track the truth, that is, to reach the correct answer to a given binary issue. An analysis of the results suggests the following: First, whether the truth-tracking ability of groups is helped or hindered by myside bias crucially depends on how the strength of myside bias is differentially distributed across subgroups of discussants holding different beliefs. Second, small groups are more likely to track the truth than larger groups, suggesting that increasing group size has a detrimental effect on collective truth-tracking through discussion. (shrink)

Human attention is limited in its capacity and duration. In language, this is manifested in many ways, but more conspicuously in the strategies by which information is distributed in utterances, that is, their information structures. We contend that the pragmatic categories of Topic and Presupposition precisely meet the necessity to modulate attentional resources on sentence contents, and they do this by “directing” certain contents to automatic and others to controlled processing mechanisms. We discuss experimental findings suggesting that presupposed or topicalized (...) information correlates with automatic processing, and we suggest that this association grounded for the emergence of topic and presupposition units in human communication. We also put forth the processing automaticity induced by these units as the rationale behind their persuasiveness in some specific contexts of language use. (shrink)

The classical theory of definitions bans so-called circular definitions, namely, definitions of a unary predicate P, based on stipulations of the form $$Px =_{\mathsf {Df}} \phi,$$where ϕ is a formula of a fixed first-order language and the definiendumP occurs into the definiensϕ. In their seminal book The Revision Theory of Truth, Gupta and Belnap claim that “General theories of definitions are possible within which circular definitions [...] make logical and semantic sense” [p. IX]. In order to sustain their claim, they (...) develop in this book one general theory of definitions based on revision sequences, namely, ordinal-length iterations of the operator which is induced by the definition of the predicate. Gupta-Belnap’s approach to circular definitions has been criticised, among others, by D. Martin and V. McGee. Their criticisms point to the logical complexity of revision sequences, to their relations with ordinary mathematical practice, and to their merits relative to alternative approaches. I will present an alternative general theory of definitions, based on a combination of supervaluation and ω-length revision, which aims to address some criticisms raised against revision sequences, while preserving the philosophical and mathematical core of revision. (shrink)

Robots are being extensively used for the purpose of discovering and testing empirical hypotheses about biological sensorimotor mechanisms. We examine here methodological problems that have to be addressed in order to design and perform “good” experiments with these machine models. These problems notably concern the mapping of biological mechanism descriptions into robotic mechanism descriptions; the distinction between theoretically unconstrained “implementation details” and robotic features that carry a modeling weight; the role of preliminary calibration experiments; the monitoring of experimental environments for (...) disturbing factors that affect both modeling features and theoretically unconstrained implementation details of robots. Various assumptions that are gradually introduced in the process of setting up and performing these robotic experiments become integral parts of the background hypotheses that are needed to bring experimental observations to bear on biological mechanism descriptions. (shrink)

Revision sequences were introduced in 1982 by Herzberger and Gupta as a mathematical tool in formalising their respective theories of truth. Since then, revision has developed in a method of analysis of theoretical concepts with several applications in other areas of logic and philosophy. Revision sequences are usually formalised as ordinal-length sequences of objects of some sort. A common idea of revision process is shared by all revision theories but specific proposals can differ in the so-called limit rule, namely the (...) way they handle the limit stages of the process. The limit rules proposed by Herzberger and by Belnap show different mathematical properties, called periodicity and reflexivity, respectively. In this paper we isolate a notion of cofinally dependent limit rule, encompassing both Herzberger’s and Belnap’s ones, to study periodicity and reflexivity in a common framework and to contrast them both from a philosophical and from a mathematical point of view. We establish the equivalence of weak versions of these properties with the revision-theoretic notion of recurring hypothesis and draw from this fact some observations about the problem of choosing the “right” limit rule when performing a revision-theoretic analysis. (shrink)

The increasing knowledge intensity of jobs, typical of a knowledge economy, highlights the role of firms as integrators of know-how and skills. As economic activity becomes mainly intellectual and requires the integration of specific and idiosyncratic skills, firms need to allocate skills to tasks and traditional hierarchical control results increasingly ineffective. In this work, we explore under what circumstances networks of agents, which bear specific skills, may self-organize in order to complete tasks. We use a computer simulation approach and investigate (...) how local interaction of agents, endowed with skills and individual decision-making rules, may produce aggregate network structure able to perform tasks. To design algorithms that mimic individual decision-making, we borrow from computer science literature and, in particular, from studies addressing protocols that produce cooperation in Peer-to-Peer networks. We found that self-organization depends on the structural features of, formal or informal, organizational networks embedding both professionals, holding skills, and project managers, holding access to jobs. (shrink)

O artigo visa mostrar como Eric Weil (1904-1977) recompreendeu a famosa tese do “fim da história”, elaborada por Alexandre Kojève (1902-1968) desde os anos de 1930, propondo uma nova versão de caráter essencialmente “kantiano pós-hegeliano”: um elemento teórico fundamental do inter histórico- filosófico weiliano, que emergiria claramente dos estudos específicos sobre Kant aos quais Weil se dedicou de modo pontual a partir da década de 1960. Veremos, portanto, como as reviravoltas “práticas” de tal recompreensão tenham de fato indicado a estrada (...) para a constituição de uma nova filosofia política, eminentemente crítica e antidogmática. (shrink)

Parmi les différents types d’implicite, les implicatures portent sur le niveau du contenu, les présuppositions et les topicalisations sur le niveau de la responsabilité, en provoquant ce que Givón appelle la unchallengeability d’une information, c’est-à-dire la difficulté pour le destinataire d’y appliquer un “défi” cognitif qui puisse aboutir au doute sur sa vérité. Cette fonction des implicites se trouve de façon massive dans les textes persuasifs. L’article vise à quantifier l’implicitation du contenu et de la responsabilité dans quelques textes de (...) propagande politique et commerciale, au moyen d’un système d’indices d’implicitation assignés aux dites catégories. On propose ce procédé comme un exemple du rôle que l’analyse linguistique peut jouer pour l’amélioration des conditions de transparence et de garantie dans la pratique de la communication commerciale, et dans les processus où se forme le consentement démocratique. (shrink)

Aristotle and Eudemus report a Speusippean argument to the effect that defining anything requires knowing everything. Scholars have failed to make sense of this argument. This paper argues that the main preoccupations to which the Puzzle is meant to respond are: (i) to ensure the co-extensiveness of the definition with the definiendum; (ii) to rule out a particular definitional mistake—underdivision. The implications of the Puzzle for Speusippus’ conception of knowledge are further explored.

In this contribution I aim at developing some critical considerations about the possibility of establishing a dialogue between Husserlian phenomenology and embodied cognitive science to which both partners can participate with equal dignity, apart from any concession to radical forms of naturalism. Phenomenology and cognitive science are different theoretical enterprises, each of which relies autonomously on its own methods and categorial apparatus. This does not prevent of course that both disciplines can influence each other by exerting some kind of constraints. (...) Phenomenology alone cannot provide a full explanation of our conscious experiences as regards their sub-personal mechanisms and needs therefore to be integrated in a unitary framework which allows for its communication with the empirical sciences of mind, without any need to distort phenomenology’s transcendental features. On the other side, cognitive science should seriously take into account phenomenological and eidetic descriptions of first-person experience and avoid superimposing on it its own ontological and methodological assumptions. In the first part of the paper, I try first of all to highlight how Husserl’s phenomenology amounts to a theory of experience which keeps itself equidistant from both extremes of scientism and idealism and then to illustrate the necessity of downplaying Husserl’s transcendental philosophy through a critical assessment on its attitude toward natural sciences and by highlighting at the same time its right to conduct its inquiries autonomously. In the second part I explore the mediating role of psychological phenomenology in allowing a mutual exchange between phenomenology and embodied cognitive sciences, as far as it falls on the side of naturalistic attitude. In the third part I proceed to a critical evaluation of the encounter between embodied phenomenology and embodied cognitive sciences by underlining some ontological and methodological shortcomings in which some of their representatives incur. In the fourth part, I argue for a mild naturalization of phenomenology by confronting it with some forms of non-reductionist naturalism (e.g. liberal and enactive naturalism) for the purpose of safeguarding its fundamental tenets. In the fifth and final part I discuss the topic of lived body and embodiment as the turning point which allows for the mutual transition from the transcendental to the empirical level. To this aim, I try to focus on the intrinsic belongingness of lived body to the essential features of transcendental subject to the extent that it plays a major role in disclosing an oriented worldly space through its kinaesthetic powers. (shrink)

We examine the relationship between scientific knowledge and the legal system with a focus on the exclusion of expert testimony from trial as ruled by the Daubert standard in the US.We introduce a simple framework to understand and assess the role of judges as “gatekeepers”, monitoring the admission of science in the courtroom. We show how judges face a crucial choice, namely, whether to limit Daubert assessment to the abstract reliability of the methods used by the expert witness or also (...) to check whether the application of those methods was correct. Undesirable outcomes result from both choices, thereby giving rise to the “gatekeeper’s dilemma.” We illustrate the dilemma by analyzing in some detail two well-known cases of Daubert challenges to economic experts. Finally, we present reasons for the absence of straightforward solutions to the dilemma and for its likely endurance. (shrink)

In their theoretical and experimental reflections on the capacities and behaviours of living systems, neuroscientists often formulate generalizations about the behaviour of neural circuits. These generalizations are highly idealized, as they omit reference to the myriads of conditions that could perturb the behaviour of the modelled system in real-world settings. This article analyses an experimental investigation of the behaviour of place cells in the rat hippocampus, in which highly idealized generalizations were tested by comparing predictions flowing from them with real-world (...) experimental results. The aim of the article is to identify under what conditions even single prediction failures regarding the behaviour of single cells sufficed to reject highly idealized generalizations, and under what conditions prima facie counter-examples were deemed to be irrelevant to the testing of highly idealized generalizations. The results of this analysis may contribute to understanding how idealized models are tested experimentally in neuroscience and used to make reliable predictions concerning living systems in real-world settings. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of the ontology of occurrent happiness. The main claim is that occurrent happiness is a state that obtains in virtue of the occurrence of conscious episodes that are intentionally directed at the object of happiness. This account draws on Wittgenstein’s remarks about emotions and builds on recent developments in the ontology of mind.

In so-called ethorobotics and robot-supported social cognitive neurosciences, robots are used as scientific tools to study animal behavior and cognition. Building on previous epistemological analyses of biorobotics, in this article it is argued that these two research fields, widely differing from one another in the kinds of robots involved and in the research questions addressed, share a common methodology, which significantly differs from the “synthetic method” that, until recently, dominated biorobotics. The methodological novelty of this strategy, the research opportunities that (...) it opens, and the theoretical and technological challenges that it gives rise to, will be discussed with reference to the peculiarities of the two research fields. Some broad methodological issues related to the generalization of results concerning robot-animal interaction to theoretical conclusions on animal-animal interaction will be identified and discussed. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the intrinsically technical nature of visual perception and pictorial performance through their common anchorage in the corporeity that brings them into existence. As with any other artistic technique, painting reveals itself to be the natural extension of a technological attitude already rooted in the sensorimotor devices of the body in action; painting is led to inhabit a world that is of the same nature as corporeal agents, because the objects that populate it (...) share with it the ontological element of the “flesh”. Through Merleau-Ponty’s analyses of Cezanne’s pictorial works, I demonstrate that the main purpose of painting is, analogically with the descriptive analyses made possible by the phenomenological reduction, to render intersubjectively evident the hidden work of vision before its sedimentation in an accomplished perceptual scene. As the experiments of contemporary neuroscience also demonstrate, perception is by and large a reconstructive process of “image-making” rather than an allegedly accurate reproduction of the spectacle of the world. Painting, on the other hand, both in terms of creation and for the observer, employs the same sensorimotor resources as instruments. (shrink)

We study, in an abstract and general framework, formal representations of dependence and groundedness which occur in semantic theories of truth. Our goals are: (a) to relate the different ways in which groundedness is defined according to the way dependence is represented; and (b) to represent different notions of dependence as instances of a suitable generalisation of the mathematical notion of functional dependence.

In Hannes Leitgeb’s article What truth depends on the author provides a formally correct and materially adequate truth definition for the set of all grounded sentences, defined as the least fixed point of a monotone operator of semantic dependence. In this paper we will focus on the mathematical aspects of Leitgeb’s notions of dependence, grounding and truth, recasting Leitgeb’s construction in a functional setting in which we establish some new facts about these notions.

This note makes a new argument for van Lennep's conjecture di at Ovid, Heroides 7.21 against the manuscript reading te.

The most complete edition yet published of Wittgenstein’s1929 lecture includes a never-before published first draft andmakes fresh claims for its significance in Wittgenstein’soeuvre. The first available print publication of all known drafts ofWittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics Includes a previously unrecognized first draft of the lectureand new transcriptions of all drafts Transcriptions preserve the philosopher’s emendationsthus showing the development of the ideas in the lecture Proposes a different draft as the version read by Wittgensteinin his 1929 lecture Includes introductory essays on (...) the origins of the material andon its meaning, content, and importance. (shrink)

Bionic technologies connecting biological nervous systems to computer or robotic devices for therapeutic purposes have been recently claimed to provide novel experimental tools for the investigation of biological mechanisms. This claim is examined here by means of a methodological analysis of bionics-supported experimental inquiries on adaptive sensory-motor behaviours. Two broad classes of bionic systems (regarded here as hybrid simulations of the target biological system) are identified, which differ from each other according to whether a component of the biological target system (...) is replaced by an artificial component, or else a component of an artificial system is replaced by a biological component. The role of these hybrid systems in the modelling of adaptive sensory-motor biological behaviours is discussed with reference to bionics-supported experiments on the mechanisms of body stabilization in lampreys. Methodological problems emerging from these case studies often arise in computer-based and biorobotic simulations of biological behaviours too. Accordingly, the present analysis contributes to identifying a more general regulative methodological framework for the machine-based modelling of biological systems. (shrink)

This poem is evidence of a fifty-year long artistic partnership whose origins are to be found in the texts that the great Genoese poet devoted to the first Ugo Nespolo’s exhibition (1966).

Revision sequences are a kind of transfinite sequences which were introduced by Herzberger and Gupta in 1982 as the main mathematical tool for developing their respective revision theories of truth. We generalise revision sequences to the notion of cofinally invariant sequences, showing that several known facts about Herzberger’s and Gupta’s theories also hold for this more abstract kind of sequences and providing new and more informative proofs of the old results.

La democrazia vive dello scambio tra opinioni in un contesto di libertà e pluralismo. Quando però nel dibattito pubblico comincia a farsi strada l’idea che le opinioni possano prescindere dai più elementari dati di realtà e possano essere supportate da “verità alternative” prive di ogni riscontro fattuale, viene meno ogni denominatore comune a tutti i discorsi sociali. Come ha sottolineato Hannah Arendt, la libertà di opinione scade a mera illusione se non viene garantita l’informazione obiettiva e i fatti non sono (...) più alla base delle opinioni. Le verità fattuali rendono possibile la discussione politica proprio perché ricordano agli esseri umani che esiste un limite invalicabile alla discussione, quello costituito da evidenze che non è possibile sconfessare né respingere. Anche se le procedure della persuasione politica non si prestano ad alcuna forma di validazione cognitiva, ciò non impedisce ad Arendt di riconoscere la necessità di un orientamento “veritativo” anche rispetto a quanto accade nella vita politica. Parole chiave: Opinione, post-verità, democrazia, mondo comune, populismo. (shrink)

What can interactive robots offer to the study of social behaviour? Philosophical reflections about the use of robotic models in animal research have focused so far on methods involving robots which do not interact with the target system. Yet, leading researchers have claimed that interactive robots may constitute powerful experimental tools to study collective behaviour. Can they live up to these epistemic expectations? This question is addressed here by focusing on a particular experimental methodology involving interactive robots which has been (...) often adopted in animal research. This methodology is shown to differ from other robot-supported methods for the study of animal behaviour analysed in the philosophical literature, chiefly including the synthetic method. It is also discussed whether biomimicry and acceptability are necessary for an interactive robot to be sensibly used in animal research according to this method. (shrink)

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to explore the construct validity and diagnostic properties of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test in non-demented patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.MaterialsA total of 61 consecutive patients and 50 healthy controls were administered the 36-item RMET. Additionally, patients underwent a comprehensive assessment of social cognition via the Story-Based Empathy Task, which encompasses three subtests targeting Causal Inference, Emotion Attribution, and Intention Attribution, as well as global cognitive [the Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioral ALS (...) Screen ] and behavioral screening [the Frontal Behavioral Inventory ; the Dimensional Apathy Scale ; the Beck Depression Inventory ; and the State and Trait Anxiety Inventory-Y]. The construct validity of the RMET was tested by regressing it within a stepwise model that encompassed as predictors the abovementioned cognitive and behavioral measures, covarying for demographic and motor confounders. Receiver-operating characteristics analyses allowed exploring intrinsic and post-test properties of the RMET both in discriminating patients from HCs and in identifying patients with a defective SET-EA performance.ResultsThe RMET was solely predicted by the SET-EA and SET-IA. RMET scores showed high accuracy both in discriminating patients from HCs and in identifying patients with a defective SET-EA score, with adequate-to-optimal both intrinsic and post-test properties.DiscussionThe RMET is a convergently and divergently valid measure of affective social cognition in non-demented ALS patients, also featuring optimal intrinsic and post-test diagnostic properties in both case-control and case-finding scenarios. (shrink)