In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:About and Beyond Comorbidity:Does the Crisis of the DSM Bring on a Radical Rethinking of Descriptive Psychopathology?Massimiliano Aragona (bio)Keywordscomorbidity, nosography, phenomenology, philosophy of scienceThe problem of psychiatric comorbidity is part of a series of difficulties of the current diagnostic system which at once were considered as a consequence of the way the system itself is organized (Aragona 2006). It was then believed that a Kuhnian reformulation (...) of the contemporary debate on the problems of the psychiatric diagnosis was very useful because it allowed clarification in a comprehensive picture of the many rivulets of conceptual research in that field.In their comments Zachar (2009) and Banzato (2009) seem to agree with my analysis of psychiatric comorbidity (Aragona 2009a) when it stresses that abnormally high frequencies of co-occurrence are to be explained, in important respects, as a consequence of the way mental disorders are operationalized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM; also showing the importance of conceptual clarification to deal with this sort of only apparently pure factual problems). On the contrary, they are both unconvinced of the appropriateness and/or fruitfulness of the use of the Kuhnian technical terms and theory in this context.It could be said that the major aim of the paper was to let clinicians understand the effect of conceptual decisions on what would otherwise seem as a simple empirical finding (in this case, high levels of comorbidity), and that this result seems to be achieved in any case, thus minimizing the importance of a disagreement about the philosophical terms as a pure terminological dispute. Nevertheless, in my work the Kuhnian model had a significant role in the clarification of this matter and it also suggests to the reader a range of possible consequences that are not trivial (Zachar, for example, says to be skeptical about the possibility of a crisis and also about the possibility that a new paradigm could eliminate what I call the [End Page 29] comorbidity anomaly). As a consequence, some of the Kuhnian concepts that seemed to be at odds in this context have to be considered in detail to justify my analysis and its consequences. For reasons of space, I avoid a point-by-point reply to all the comments and I concentrate my discussion on three main points. First, I discuss the background of Kuhn's definition of terms such as anomaly and paradigm, as well as my own reasons for using them. In doing so the details of the psychiatric items under study that I wanted to highlight through the use of these philosophical concepts should emerge more clearly. Second, I discuss the problem of having distinguished between artifactual and real comorbidity. Third, I reconsider some of these problems, looking for their implications for future psychopathological research.Anomalies and ParadigmsBanzato (2009) stresses that comorbidity cannot be a truly Kuhnian anomaly because it is an anticipated side effect of the initial setup of the DSM, and not some unexpected discovery that violates the paradigm-induced expectation. This is a basically correct account of the most known version of Kuhnian anomalies; that is, the tale of some evident nature's failure to conform to clear paradigm expectations, which immediately forces researchers to recognize its importance as a possible source of crisis. However, as is the case for many other Kuhnian terms, he discussed anomalies in several scripts and there are other possible versions of its meaning. In particular, Kuhn (1977, XVII) highlighted that only in very rare cases are anomalies completely unexpected and come out of blue to announce an imminent crisis that leads to a large revolution. More frequently, scientific revolutions are much more smaller, like the discovery of oxygen, and in these cases the process is so gradual that historians find it difficult to say exactly when a discovery was made and who did it. Even in these much smaller cases the usual prelude to changes of this sort is the awareness of anomaly, but here anomalies are not extraordinary events; rather, they are "countless discrepancies between theory and experiment [that] during the course of his career, every natural scientist again and again notices and passes by" (Kuhn... (shrink)

In this important new book in the IPPP series, a group of leading thinkers in psychiatry, psychology, and philosophy offer alternative perspectives that address both the scientific and clinical aspects of psychiatric validation, emphasizing throughout their philosophical and historical considerations.

In view of the publication of the DSM-V researchers were asked to discuss the theoretical implications of the definition of mental disorders. The reasons for the use, in the DSM-III, of the term disorder instead of disease are considered. The analysis of these reasons clarifies the distinction between the general definition of disorder and its implicit, technical meaning which arises from concrete use in DSM disorders. The characteristics and limits of this technical meaning are discussed and contrasted to alternative definitions, (...) like Wakefield’s harmful/dysfunction analysis. It is shown that Wakefield’s analysis faces internal theoretical problems in addition to practical limits for its acceptance in the DSM-V. In particular, it is shown that: a) the term dysfunction is not purely factual but intrinsically normative/evaluative; b) it is difficult to clarify what dysfunctions are in the psychiatric context (the dysfunctional mechanism involved being unknown in most cases and the use of evolutionary theory being even more problematic); c) the use of conceptual analysis and commonsense intuition to define dysfunctions leaves unsatisfied empiricists; d) it is unlikely that the authors of the DSM-V will accept Wakefield’s suggestion to revise the diagnostic criteria of any single DSM disorder in accordance with his analysis, because this is an excessively extensive change and also because this would probably reduce DSM reliability. In conclusion, it is pointed up in which sense DSM mental disorders have to be conceived as constructs, and that this undermines the realistic search for a clear-cut demarcation criterion between what is disorder and what is not. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemicTellenbach, Hubertus has caused global stress. However, people reacted differently, some with various forms of distress. Although vulnerable groups were more likely to suffer in this situation, heterogeneity was also reported at this level. We revised the concept of vulnerability in medicine and mental health using schizophrenic symptoms as paradigmatic examples. In our view, studying vulnerability to stressful situations, the following points are fundamental: (1) the individual emotional reaction; (2) the personal meaning attributed to the events; (3) the (...) way the person concretely takes position in front of this (distressing and possibly uncanny) experience; and (4) the way and extent to which the person has contributed to the determination and constitution of the stressful situation. Applied to the pandemic situation, we suggest that the reported heterogeneity of reactions depended on the personal way the persons took position in front of the situation they were experiencing. The way they took position depended on the specificities of the situation to be faced but also on their personal way of managing the consequent imbalance of their existential dimensions of anthropological vulnerability. (shrink)

1. Built upon systems of nosology that claimed to be “atheoretical,” modern psychiatry largely relies on descriptive psychopathological models based on the assumption that psychotic symptoms (such...

Traditionally, the key features of the family system of Eating Disorders have been considered those originally outlined by Minuchin in his description of the "psychosomatic" family patterns of interaction. This controlled study tests two of the principal characteristics of Minuchin's model, namely enmeshment and rigidity, operationalised as extreme cohesion and low adaptability. Perceived and desired cohesion and adaptability, measured with the FACES III, were compared between 30 clinical families and 30 non-clinical families. Differences across ED family members were also considered, (...) as well as differences between ED symptomatological subgroups . High cohesion scores were found in ED families, but similar findings were also reported in control families. Cohesion scores were significantly higher in restricting anorectics than in patients with bulimic symptoms. Adaptability was normal in both ED and control families. This study does not support Minuchin's observations on family enmeshment and rigidity. Although high levels of cohesion were found in ED families, the same relational pattern was found in the control families, suggesting that a tendency to a hyper-involvement of family members might be "normal" in some sociocultural contexts. (shrink)

This paper tests the predictions of an epistemological model that considered the DSM psychiatric classification (in the neopositivist and neo-Kraepelinian shape introduced by the DSM-III) as a scientific paradigm in crisis. As predicted, the DSM-5 did not include revolutionary proposals in its basic structure. In particular, the possibility of a dimensional revolution has not occurred and early proposals of etiopathogenic diagnoses were not implemented due to lack of specific knowledge in that field. However, conceiving the DSM-5 as a bridge between (...) the present phenomenally based operational diagnostic criteria and the neuro-cognitively based RDoC criteria introduces an internal tension into the system. It is expected that a liberalization of the research criteria will occur, the DSM operational criteria being only one possible way to select research subjects. (shrink)

2013 sees the centenary of Jaspers' foundation of psychopathology as a science in its own right. The general sense of the General Psychopathology and its specific contribution are discussed. In particular, the lecture focuses on three major contributions: the methodological import (Jaspers perspectivism), the importance to study subjective experiences scientifically (Jaspers' phenomenology), and the concept of understanding. Three psychiatrists with partly different theoretical background discuss with the members of the Roman Circle of Psychopathology questions like: the specific historical and theoretical (...) features of early Twentieth Century culture, science and psychiatry in Germany; Jaspers' relationship with other great thinkers of his time (Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, Kretschmer); the reception of the General Psychopathology in different countries; and the importance and limitations of Jaspers' approach for nowadays psychopathology. (shrink)

It is with real pleasure that I present the first issue of Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences. First, without sounding unusual, I want to start with a thank you to the association for intercultural and interdisciplinary dialogues “Crossing Dialogues”.

Sometimes it happens that the same concept is discussed independently but, at the same time, in different disciplinary fields. The recent dominance of neuroscientific research has reintroduced into the experimental realm the importance of the experimental subject’s self-evaluation to be correlated to detectable changes into brain activity. For example, the experimental subjects are instructed to press a button or move a finger when they perceive or feel something, or they fill questionnaires supposed to measure their experience; all these “data” are (...) then statistically correlated to measures of brain functioning. (shrink)

This paper presents the main contents of Geiger’s 1910 lecture on empathy and focuses on its possible influence on Jaspers’ General Psychopathology. In particular, some key methodological distinctions traced by Jaspers are compared to Geiger’s similar concepts. Geiger’s role in shaping Jaspers’ concept of understanding is still neglected and it is time to recognize it. In particular, Geiger’s distinction between the direct empathy for the other’s expressions at one side, and the ‘reliving after the event’ of the ‘inner correlation of (...) the psyche’ on the other side had a major role in shaping Jaspers’ similar distinction between static and genetic understanding. (shrink)

Introduction: Obesity represents a major public health problem associated with medical and psychological impairment. Obesity is frequently studied with Binge Eating Disorder comorbidity. Less evidence is available for non-BED obesity, in spite of its correlation with psychological impairment and body image disturbance. In this study, we explored psychopathological features, eating behaviors, body image disturbance and self-identity impairment in patients with obesity and a control group. In patients, we also studied the relation between specific eating/body features and psychopathological symptoms. Finally, we (...) explored the latent factorial structure that describes these features. Material and methods: The clinical sample was composed by twenty patients suffering from obesity without BED. The control group included twenty-eight healthy and normal-weight subjects enrolled from the general population. All participants underwent a clinical interview and filled out questionnaires about body image and psychopathological symptoms. Statistics: The Student t test was applied to compare obese patients and healthy controls in all psychological dimensions. In the clinical sample, gender differences were tested through multivariate analyses of variance. Then, correlational analyses explored the relation between specific eating/body features and psychopathological symptoms. Lastly, a principal-components factor analysis was performed to explore the existence of a latent factorial structure emerging from assessment evaluation in obese population. Results: Obese patients reported significantly higher scores than healthy controls in several psychopathological dimensions, i.e. Somatization, Obsessive-Compulsive, Depression, Hostility, Phobic Anxiety, and Psychoticism. Patients also reported higher body uneasiness and self-identity impairment resulting from some scores on Body Uneasiness Test and Identity and Eating Disorders questionnaire. Avoidant behaviours were more frequently reported in men whereas women reported higher body distress/dissatisfaction. In the clinical sample the questionnaires were correlated and a three-factor structure emerged: “Weight and body control”, “Weakness of Self-Identity”, and “Psychopathological distress”. Discussion: The present study found that obese patients might present several disturbances in body image, selfperception and general psychopathological distress. Clinicians should be aware of these issues to improve therapeutic strategy in the treatment of obesity. (shrink)

This broad and insightful book presents current scholarship in important subfields of philosophy of science and addresses an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary readership. It groups carefully selected contributions into the four fields of I) philosophy of physics, II) philosophy of life sciences, III) philosophy of social sciences and values in science, and IV) philosophy of mathematics and formal modeling. Readers will discover research papers by Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Keizo Matsubara, Kian Salimkhani, Andrea Reichenberger, Anne Sophie Meincke, Javier Suárez, Roger Deulofeu, Ludger Jansen, (...) Peter Hucklenbroich, Martin Carrier, Elizaveta Kostrova, Lara Huber, Jens Harbecke, Antonio Piccolomini d'Aragona and Axel Gelfert. This collection fosters dialogue between philosophers of science working in different subfields, and brings readers the finest and latest work across the breadth of the field,illustrating that contemporary philosophy of science has successfully broadened its scope of reflection. It will interest and inspire a wide audience of philosophers as well as scholars of the natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities. The volume shares selected contributions from the prestigious second triennial conference of the German Society for Philosophy of Science/ Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsphilosophie (GWP.2016, March 8, 2016 - March 11, 2016). (shrink)

Dag Prawitz’s theory of grounds proposes a fresh approach to valid inferences. Its main aim is to clarify nature and reasons of their epistemic power. The notion of ground is taken to denote what one is in possession of when in a state of evidence, and valid inferences are described in terms of operations that make us pass from grounds we already have to new grounds. Thanks to a rigorously developed proof-as-chains conception, the ground-theoretic framework permits Prawitz to overcome some (...) conceptual difficulties of his earlier proof-theoretic explanation. Though from different points of view, anyway, the two accounts share an issue of recognizability of relevant operational properties. (shrink)

This article argues that pseudoscience lacks an adequate philosophical analysis. Using conspiracy theories as a case study, it is claimed that such an analysis needs to go beyond a mere epistemological approach. In the first part, it is shown that the existing philosophical literature shares the assumption that conspiracy theories are primarily deficient scientific hypotheses. This claim is contested, because such an approach can only understand what conspiracy theories fail to be, but not what they are and why people tend (...) to endorse them. To develop an alternative, the second part starts from recent sociology of science, applied to conspiracy theories, that claims that both true and false theories are in need of a symmetrical social explanation. However, this opens the path to relativism because it does not allow for a significant distinction between scientific and conspiracy theories. In the third section an alternative analysis of conspiracy theories is offered, which does not abandon this distinction. Moreover, it is claimed that the most important element of conspiracy theories is not their truth value but rather their symbolic structures of meaning. The aim of conspiracy theories, and perhaps of pseudoscience in general, is then not to know facts about the world, but rather to offer a meaningful framework within which to live. (shrink)

This article takes the scientific study of conspiracy theories itself as an object of inquiry. It looks at the three main frameworks to look at conspiracy theories: a psychological, epistemological and a sociological approach. These different approaches exist somewhat separately and often do not get along. The central claim that follows from a genealogy of these research programs is that the conflicts between these different approaches should be understood not merely as disagreements about how the world works, but as a (...) fundamental disagreement about the underlying diagnosis of what is at stake in conspiracy theories. In other words, the conflicts stem in part from political differences, not merely empirical ones. The purpose of this article is to bring these different diagnoses back into dialogue with each other and to point out that despite their differences, they also have something in common: a concern about the state of contemporary democratic institutions. Depending on which project one subscribes to, conspiracy thinking will appear either as the cause or the solution of these democratic concerns. (shrink)

The central claim of this article is that post-truth requires a political and socio-economical perspective, rather than a moral or epistemological one. The article consists of two parts. The first part offers a critical examination of the dominant analyses of post-truth in terms of shifting standards of the origin and the evaluation of facts. Moreover, the claim that postmodernism is the cause of post-truth is examined and refuted. In the second part an alternative perspective is developed, centring around the notion (...) of gatekeepers. Rather than linking post-truth to bullshit and postmodernism, it should be understood as a symptom of a contemporary shift in the gatekeepers of truth and knowledge. Knowledge and truth are always mediated in society through the hands of gatekeeping institutions such as journalism or science. Post-truth is a symptom of a broader transformation of the gatekeeping institutions of our current society. It therefore requires a political philosophy of these institutional shifts and the new risks they involve. (shrink)

This article intends to summarise the content of my book Insurgent Universality: An Alternative Legacy of Modernity and expand the meaning of the term ‘universality’. Universality is not defined in abstract legal terms or by juxtaposition vis-à-vis a common enemy. Instead, I clarify the meaning of a more concrete and open practice of universality through historical examples and theories that I excavate from social practices.

Celebrated as a courtesan and poet, and as a woman of great intelligence and wit, Tullia d'Aragona entered the debate about the morality of love that engaged the best and most famous male intellects of sixteenth-century Italy. First published in Venice in 1547, but never before published in English, Dialogue on the Infinity of Love casts a woman rather than a man as the main disputant on the ethics of love. Sexually liberated and financially independent, Tullia d'Aragona dared (...) to argue that the only moral form of love between woman and man is one that recognizes both the sensual and the spiritual needs of humankind. Declaring sexual drives to be fundamentally irrepressible and blameless, she challenged the Platonic and religious orthodoxy of her time, which condemned all forms of sensual experience, denied the rationality of women, and relegated femininity to the realm of physicality and sin. Human beings, she argued, consist of body and soul, sense and intellect, and honorable love must be based on this real nature. By exposing the intrinsic misogyny of prevailing theories of love, Aragona vindicates all women, proposing a morality of love that restores them to intellectual and sexual parity with men. Through Aragona's sharp reasoning, her sense of irony and humor, and her renowned linguistic skill, a rare picture unfolds of an intelligent and thoughtful woman fighting sixteenth-century stereotypes of women and sexuality. (shrink)

En este trabajo consideramos los discursos políticos y económicos actuales proponiendo el fenómeno start-up como el síntoma de un cambio profundo en la gubernamentalidad neoliberal y un nuevo episodio en la larga historia de las prácticas de organización de la fuerza de trabajo, de su gobierno y movilización. Nos basamos en los textos de Michel Foucault y en la literatura neomanagerial actual para analizar las recientes transformaciones de la racionalidad neoliberal. Con este punto de partida, proponemos que el emprendedor neoliberal (...) del yo, el empresario de sí mismo, tal y como lo concibió Foucault, se está transformando, además, en una especie de inversor de sí mismo administrando permanentemente sus activos personales y buscando constantemente la autoevaluación y la autovalorización en la lógica del rendimiento.In this paper we consider the political and economic discourses hyping the «start-up phenomenon» as the symptom of a deep change in neoliberal governmentality and a new episode in the long history of the practices of workforce government and mobilisation. After pointing out the recent transformations of neoliberal rationality of government, we concentrate on the forms of subjectification implied by what could be defined as the start-up subject: the typically neoliberal entrepreneur of the self is thus transforming into a sort of investor of the self permanently managing his personal assets and incessantly searching for self-evaluation and self-valorisation. (shrink)

Prawitz has recently developed a theory of epistemic grounding that differs in many respects from his earlier semantics of arguments and proofs. An innovative approach to inferences yields a new conception of the intertwinement of the notions of valid inference and proof. We aim at singling out three reasons that may have led Prawitz to the ground-theoretic turn, i.e.: a better order in the explanation of the relation between valid inferences and proofs; a notion of valid inference based on which (...) valid inferences and proofs are recognisable as such; a reconstruction of the deductive activity that makes inferences capable of yielding justification per se. These topics are discussed by Prawitz with reference to a very general and ancient question: why and how correct deduction has the epistemic power to compel us to accept its conclusions, provided its premises are justified? We conclude by remarking that, in spite of some improvements, the ground-theoretic approach shares with the previous one a problem of vacuous validity which, as Prawitz himself points out, blocks in both cases a satisfactory explanation of epistemic compulsion. (shrink)

We define a class of formal systems inspired by Prawitz’s theory of grounds. The latter is a semantics that aims at accounting for epistemic grounding, namely, at explaining why and how deductively valid inferences have the power to epistemically compel to accept the conclusion. Validity is defined in terms of typed objects, called grounds, that reify evidence for given judgments. An inference is valid when a function exists from grounds for the premises to grounds for the conclusion. Grounds are described (...) by formal terms, either directly when the terms are in canonical form, or indirectly when they are in non-canonical form. Non-canonical terms must reduce to canonical form, and two terms may be said to be equal when they converge towards equivalent grounds. In our systems these properties can be proved through rules distinguished according to whether they concern types or logic. Type rules involve type introduction and elimination, equality for application of operational symbols, and re-writing equations for non-canonical terms. The logic amounts to a sort of intuitionistic system in a Gentzen format. To conclude, we show that each system of our class enjoys a normalization property. (shrink)

We outline a class of term-languages for epistemic grounding inspired by Prawitz’s theory of grounds. We show how denotation functions can be defined over these languages, relating terms to proof-objects built up of constructive functions. We discuss certain properties that the languages may enjoy both individually and with respect to their expansions. Finally, we provide a ground-theoretic version of Prawitz’s completeness conjecture, and adapt to our framework a refutation of this conjecture due to Piecha and Schroeder-Heister.

What it means for conspiracy theories to become mainstream In debates about conspiracy theories, it is often claimed that conspiracy thinking is on the rise or has even become mainstream. In this article, I want to explore this claim conceptually, and argue that there are at least three ways to interpret the claim that ‘conspiracy thinking has become mainstream’. First, there is the individual level, where it is a matter of counting heads. Mainstream then means that the majority believes in (...) conspiracy theories. But there are two other levels. There is the institutional level, which is about whether conspiracy theories circulate within social institutions in an acceptable way. Is it acceptable to express conspiracy theories as a politician, scientist or journalist? Mainstream here means that dominant institutions in society view conspiracy thinking as an acceptable form of communication. Finally, there is the cultural level. Here the question is whether conspiracy thinking is a culturally acceptable way of speaking and thinking about society. Is it socially accepted as normal behavior, or is it rather a form of deviant behavior, accompanied by (informal) sanctions or demands for additional justification or proof? Mainstream here means that conspiracy thinking is seen as a normal way of speaking, without being accompanied by strange looks, shunning or the need to justify oneself as a conspiracy thinker. By making this distinction, we can think more clearly about whether conspiracy thinking is actually on the rise, and how we should deal with it. (shrink)

Commonsense ontology often conflicts with the ontology of our best scientific and philosophical theories. However, commonsense ontology, and commonsense belief systems in general, seems to be remarkably efficient and cognitively fundamental. In cases of contrast, it is better to find a way to reconcile commonsense and ”theoretical” ontologies. Given that commonsense ontologies are typically expressed within natural language, a classical procedure of reconciliation is semantical. The strategy is that of individuating the ”ontologically problematic” expressions of natural language and paraphrasing the (...) sentences in which they appear in a (formal) language whose commitments are compatible with those of our best theories. We believe that this strategy of reconciliation, though quite standard, especially in the philosophical literature, is problematic: for a start, it forces us to conclude that the ”real content” of our commonsense expressions and beliefs is different from what it appears. Commonsense ontology becomes just an illusion. We will thus propose an alternative approach: according to our view, a commonsense ontology is reconciled with a theoretical ontology in case it is shown that the explanation of why we believe in the existence of a problematic entity is compatible with our best theories. We will call this kind of reconciliation ”epistemic”. The advantage of an epistemic reconciliation is that commonsense ontology is treated in its own right and could be taken prima facie. Another advantage of the view is that epistemic reconciliation can be analysed through the notion of explaining away: a commonsense ontology is epistemically reconciled with a theoretical ontology if and only if the problematic entities of the commonsense ontology are explained away by ”respectable” entities of the theoretical ontology. In the final part of the paper, we sketch a formal analysis of explaining away. (shrink)

We reconsider the pragmatic interpretation of intuitionistic logic [21] regarded as a logic of assertions and their justi cations and its relations with classical logic. We recall an extension of this approach to a logic dealing with assertions and obligations, related by a notion of causal implication [14, 45]. We focus on the extension to co-intuitionistic logic, seen as a logic of hypotheses [8, 9, 13] and on polarized bi-intuitionistic logic as a logic of assertions and conjectures: looking at the (...) S4 modal translation, we give a de nition of a system AHL of bi-intuitionistic logic that correctly represents the duality between intuitionistic and co-intuitionistic logic, correcting a mistake in previous work [7, 10]. A computational interpretation of cointuitionism as a distributed calculus of coroutines is then used to give an operational interpretation of subtraction.Work on linear co-intuitionism is then recalled, a linear calculus of co-intuitionistic coroutines is de ned and a probabilistic interpretation of linear co-intuitionism is given as in [9]. Also we remark that by extending the language of intuitionistic logic we can express the notion of expectation, an assertion that in all situations the truth of p is possible and that in a logic of expectations the law of double negation holds. Similarly, extending co-intuitionistic logic, we can express the notion of conjecture that p, de ned as a hypothesis that in some situation the truth of p is epistemically necessary. (shrink)

According to the so-called strong variant of Composition as Identity (CAI), the Principle of Indiscernibility of Identicals can be extended to composition, by resorting to broadly Fregean relativizations of cardinality ascriptions. In this paper we analyze various ways in which this relativization could be achieved. According to one broad variety of relativization, cardinality ascriptions are about objects, while concepts occupy an additional argument place. It should be possible to paraphrase the cardinality ascriptions in plural logic and, as a consequence, relative (...) counting requires the relativization either of quantifiers, or of identity, or of the is one of relation. However, some of these relativizations do not deliver the expected results, and others rely on problematic assumptions. In another broad variety of relativization, cardinality ascriptions are about concepts or sets. The most promising development of this approach is prima facie connected with a violation of the so-called Coreferentiality Constraint, according to which an identity statement is true only if its terms have the same referent. Moreover - even provided that the problem with coreferentiality can be fixed - the resulting analysis of cardinality ascriptions meets several difficulties. (shrink)

The article analyzes, at different levels, the relationship between war and borders. The question of the borders may provide an interesting point of view. At stake, in “new wars” is not the path of interstate frontiers but different borders developments. To analyze these dynamics the article emphasizes the useful relationship between two different bibliographies, on one hand the strategic literature about “new wars”, on the other hand the territorial and regional studies analyzing the new form of political, economic and juridical (...) spatiality. The aim is to catch the types of non homogeneous territorialities striated by flux spaciality, scaling and rescaling processes and different regimes of temporality and mobility, at stake in the “new wars”. (shrink)

This paper motivates the idea that social robots should be credited as moral patients, building on an argumentative approach that combines virtue ethics and social recognition theory. Our proposal answers the call for a nuanced ethical evaluation of human-robot interaction that does justice to both the robustness of the social responses solicited in humans by robots and the fact that robots are designed to be used as instruments. On the one hand, we acknowledge that the instrumental nature of robots and (...) their unsophisticated social capabilities prevent any attribution of rights to robots, which are devoid of intrinsic moral dignity and personal status. On the other hand, we argue that another form of moral consideration—not based on rights attribution—can and must be granted to robots. The reason is that relationships with robots offer to the human agents important opportunities to cultivate both vices and virtues, like social interaction with other human beings. Our argument appeals to social recognition to explain why social robots, unlike other technological artifacts, are capable of establishing with their human users quasi-social relationships as pseudo-persons. This recognition dynamic justifies seeing robots as worthy of moral consideration from a virtue ethical standpoint as it predicts the pre-reflective formation of persistent affective dispositions and behavioral habits that are capable of corrupting the human user’s character. We conclude by drawing attention to a potential paradox drawn forth by our analysis and by examining the main conceptual conundrums that our approach has to face. (shrink)

In this short paper we consider Linnebo's thin/thick dichotomy: first, we show that it does not overlap with the very common one between abstract/concrete objects; second, on the basis of some difficulties with the distinction, we propose, as a possible way out, to move from thin/thick objects to thin/thick concepts.

The work of Thomas Kuhn has been very influential in Anglo-American philosophy of science and it is claimed that it has initiated the historical turn. Although this might be the case for English speaking countries, in France an historical approach has always been the rule. This article aims to investigate the similarities and differences between Kuhn and French philosophy of science or ‘French epistemology’. The first part will argue that he is influenced by French epistemologists, but by lesser known authors (...) than often thought. The second part focuses on the reactions of French epistemologists on Kuhn’s work, which were often very critical. It is argued that behind some superficial similarities there are deep disagreements between Kuhn and French epistemology. This is finally shown by a brief comparison with the reaction of more recent French philosophers of science, who distance themselves from French epistemology and are more positive about Kuhn. Based on these diverse appreciations of Kuhn, a typology of the different positions within the philosophy of science is suggested. (shrink)

Are identity criteria grounding principles? A prima facie answer to this question is positive. Specifically, two-level identity criteria can be taken as principles related to issues of identity among objects of a given kind compared with objects of a more basic kind. Moreover, they are grounding metaphysical principles of some objects with regard to others. In the first part of the paper we criticise this prima facie natural reading of identity criteria. This result does not mean that identity criteria could (...) not be taken as grounding principles. In the second part, we propose some basic steps towards a conceptual reading of grounding. Such a way of understanding it goes along with an epistemic reading of identity criteria. (shrink)

Information and communication technologies are widely used in healthcare. However, there is not still a unified taxonomy for them. The lack of understanding of this phenomenon implies theoretical and ethical issues. This paper attempts to find out the basis for a classification, starting from a new perspective: the structural elements are obtained from the etymologies of the lexicon commonly used, that is words like telemedicine, telehealth, telecare and telecure. This will promote a better understanding of communication technologies; at the same (...) time, it will allow to draw some reflection about health, medicine and care, and their semantic and relational nature. (shrink)

In Prawitz’s semantics, the validity of an argument may be defined, either relatively to an atomic base which determines the meaning of the non-logical terminology, or relatively to the whole class of atomic bases, namely as logical validity. In the first case, which may be qualified as local, one has to choose whether validity of arguments is or not monotonic over expansions of bases, while in the second case, which may be qualified as global, one has to choose whether the (...) reduction functions which justify non-primitive inferences are or not base-depending. I claim that these oppositions enjoy some conceptual symmetries, and that these symmetries may be understood as putting restrictions on one’s choice both at the local and at the global level. This produces two different proof-theoretic semantics in line with Prawitz’s tenets. However, I also argue that the symmetries stem from a deeper interaction within Prawitz’s semantics, i.e. non-logical meanings vs interpretation of rules. This interaction is in turn based on some primitive ingredients which, when suitably combined, produce other two Prawitz-compatible readings. The four readings form a diagram where some order relations hold. I finally claim that this diagram is complete, namely that, if we combine the ingredients in ways other than those giving rise to the four readings above, we obtain nothing new, or nothing compatible with general semantic requirements. Thus, symmetries between the local and the global level, and interaction between non-logical meaning and interpretation of rules, produce a complete classification of potential Prawitzian semantics. (shrink)

What place is left for semantic notions? There are three main positions in response to that question: eliminativism, physicalism and semanticalism. This book argues in favour of a version of semanticalism. That version of semanticalism does not make semantic notions mysterious as if they are added from outside the realm of nature, as is the case with the Cartesian conception of mental properties. Semantic properties are treated as emergent properties reference to which serves to play a normative role in the (...) account of the nature of linguistic expressions. The need for positing semantic properties stems from the fact that the best explanation of the nature of linguistic expressions as guides to reality, to inform and to learn about the states of the world, invokes semantic properties. It consists in endowing linguistic expressions with semantic properties that correlate them to things and states of the world. Semantics, then, should be kept distinct from the theory of meaning. We need the theory of meaning for giving an account of linguistic competence in order to explain speakers' linguistic behaviour, but we need semantics in order to explain the nature of the objects produced by the behavioural output of linguistic competence. Consider a speaker who reads the sentence "it will be sunny and warm tomorrow" on the weather forecast page of the newspaper. We do not need to model his understanding as if he knew the semantic properties of the expressions occurring in that sentence. Rather, we need to invoke the semantic properties of that sentence, and of its constituents, in order to explain the social practice of uttering and writing it to inform people about weather conditions. This book argues that liberal naturalists are entitled to endorse the same attitude towards semantic properties as W.V.O. Quine's towards mathematical entities. We ought to accept semantic properties since our best theory of the world makes reference to them. The metaphysical principle of the supervenience of semantic properties over naturalistic properties, though unexplained, is justified to the extent that it too belongs to our best overall theory of the world, which as a whole faces the tribunal of experience. (shrink)