Can we explain why some propositions are necessary? Blackburn (Fact, science, and value. Blackwell, Oxford, 1987) has presented a dilemma aimed at showing that the necessity of a proposition cannot be explained either in the case where the explanans is another necessary proposition (necessity horn) or in the case where the explanans is a contingent proposition (contingency horn). Blackburn’s dilemma is intended to show that necessary truth is an explanatorily irreducible kind of truth: there is nothing that explains why propositions (...) are necessary, nothing that makes necessary necessary truths. In this paper, I criticize the contingency horn of Blackburn’s dilemma. On the one hand, I show that the official reconstruction of the horn uses a principle that is incompatible with the notion of explanation plausibly needed to explain why propositions are necessary; on the other, I show that a simpler formulation of the horn, which does not make use of such a controversial principle, makes essential use of principles that are incompatible with the idea that possibilities can have explanatory roles. I then defend the view that possibilities can have explanatory roles, and that the explanatory role of possibilities is best represented, within possible worlds, as the existence of trans-world relations of explanation. (shrink)

Conflicts between our best philosophical theories (BPTs) and our common beliefs are widespread. For example, if eliminativism is our BPT, then our BPT conflicts with common beliefs about the existence of middle-sized composite artifacts. “Compatibilism” is the name usually given to a theoretical attitude, according to which, in the case of a conflict between BPT and a common belief P, we should try to find a reconciliation. The two major variants of compatibilism are “semantic compatibilism” (SC) and “cognitive compatibilism” (CC). (...) According to SC, to be reconciled with BPT is the “real” version of the content of our ordinary assertions; according to CC, to be reconciled with BPT is the mental state we are “really” in while thinking P. In this paper, we present a new kind of compatibilism, epistemic compatibilism (EC). According to EC, to be reconciled with BPT is the explanation of why we believe that P. After presenting EC, we will argue that it fares better than SC and CC for at least two related reasons: EC does not rely on any form of what we call semantic or cognitive “recarving”; thus, EC avoids some sceptical problems that aect the other two versions of compatibilism. (shrink)

According to many actualist theories of modality, possible worlds should be identified with maximal and consistent sets of actually existing propositions called "world-stories". A set of propositions is said to be maximal if and only if for every (actually existing) proposition P , either P or its negation belongs to the set. In my talk, I will claim that this conception of maximality is problematic in case what has to be represented by a world-story is the possible non existence of (...) an actual individual. A representation of the possible non existence of an actual individual is either a representation that "encodes" the explicit information that the individual does not exist or a representation that does not contain any information about the individual in question. The former case corresponds to a world-story A that contains a proposition according to which a certain actually existing object, say O, does not exist, the latter case to a world-story B that simply does not contain any proposition about O. I will claim, however, that the first way is not good for the actualist (had A been the true world-story, something directly about a possible individual would have been true) while the second conflicts with the standard notion of maximality given above. In order to fix this problem, I will first propose to characterize the notion of "actual object that would have existed, had a certain set of propositions been true". I will then recursively define an alternative conception of maximality ("local maximality") that can be applied to world-stories aiming to represent, in an actualist acceptable way, the possible non-existence of an actual object. (shrink)

According to Williamson, our knowledge of metaphysical necessities and possibilities is just a “special case” of our knowledge of counterfactual conditionals. This subsumption of modal under counterfactual thinking mainly serves a methodological role: to sign the end of “philosophical exceptionalism” in modal epistemology, namely the view that our knowledge of metaphysical modalities is obtained by means of a special, dedicated, possibly a priori, capacity. In this paper, I show that a counterfactual approach to modal epistemology is structurally similar to more (...) traditional “conceivability-based” approaches. On this basis, I then show that the counterfactual approach suffers some of the same problems and I conclude that it is still based on a quite exceptional capacity to determine the truth of modal metaphysical claims. Given that, for Williamson, the epistemology of thought experiments should also be subsumed under the counterfactual approach, the problem I raise in this paper has consequences for his approach to thought experiments. (shrink)

In this article, I show that (i) from what I call a “Kripkean” account of the relations between conceivability and metaphysical necessities, (ii) an apparently plausible principle relating conceivability and epistemic modality, and (iii) the duality of epistemic modalities, one can show the utterly anti-Kripkean result that every metaphysical necessity is an epistemic necessity. My aim is to present and diagnose the problem and evaluate the costs of some possible Kripkean reactions. In particular, I will evaluate the consequences and theoretical (...) costs of rejecting the main ingredients of the argument, namely that we cannot genuinely conceive the negations of metaphysical necessities, that there is no postulated relation between conceivability and epistemic possibility (actually, between unconceivability and epistemic impossibility), and that epistemic possibility and necessity are not dualities. (shrink)

The notion of validity for modal languages could be defined in two slightly different ways. The first is the original definition given by S. Kripke, for which a formula φ of a modal language L is valid if and only if it is true in every actual world of every interpretation of L. The second is the definition that has become standard in most textbook presentations of modal logic, for which a formula φ of L is valid if and only (...) if it is true in every world in every interpretation of L. For simple modal languages, “Kripkean validity” and “Textbook validity” are extensionally equivalent. According to E. Zalta, however, Textbook validity is an “incorrect” definition of validity, because: (i) it is not in full compliance with Tarski’s notion of truth; (ii) in expressively richer languages, enriched by the actuality operator, some obviously true formulas count as valid only if the Kripkean notion is used. The purpose of this paper is to show that (i) and (ii) are not good reasons to favor Kripkean valid- ity over Textbook validity. On the one hand, I will claim that the difference between the two should rather be seen as the result of two different conceptions on how a modal logic should be built from a non-modal basis; on the other, I will show the advantages, for the question at issue, of seeing the actuality operator as belonging to the family of two-dimensional operators. (shrink)

Aaccording to D. K. lewis (1973), would-couterfactuals and might-counterfactuals are duals. from this, it follows that the negation of a would-counterfactual is equiv- alent to the corresponding “might-not”-counterfactual and that the negation of a might-counterfactual is equivalent to the corresponding “would-not”- counterfactual. there are cases, however, where we seem to be entitled to accept the would- counterfactual and we are also equally entitled to accept the corresponding might-not-counterfactual and cases where we seem to be entitled to accept the might-counterfactual without (...) being equally entitled to reject the corresponding would-not-counterfactual. In this paper, I will show that a distinction between two types of rejections for counterfactuals (p-rejection and s-rejection) and the recognition that might-not-counterfactuals may play the role of p-rejections (by an application to counterfactuals of the lewisian approach to conversational scores) could explain why the problematic cases should not be seen as cases where the duality of would- and might-counterfactuals fails. (shrink)

In this paper, I claim that two ways of defining validity for modal languages (“real-world” and “general” validity), corresponding to distinction between a correct and an incorrect way of defining modal valid- ity, correspond instead to two substantive ways of conceiving modal truth. At the same time, I claim that the major logical manifestation of the real- world/general validity distinction in modal propositional languages with the actuality operator should not be taken seriously, but simply as a by-product of the way (...) in which the semantics of such an operator is usually given. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson in his article "Necessary Existents" presents a proof of the claim that everything necessarily exists using just three seemingly uncontroversial principles relating the notions of proposition with those of truth and existence. The argument, however, may be easily blocked once the distinction, introduced by R. M. Adams, between the notions of a proposition being true in a world and of (or at) a world is introduced. In this paper I defend the plausibility of the notion of a proposition's (...) being true of a world by rejecting two criticisms of it raised by Williamson; in the final section, I present a conception of propositions, according to which they are equivalence classes of mental representations, for which at least one of the principles comes out as false. (shrink)

Aim of this paper is to present and evaluate linguistic ersatzism, an actualist metaphysics of modality according to which possible worlds are maximal and consistent sets of sentences. In the first section, I make some general considerations about reductive theories of modality and the relation between modality and possible worlds, in the second I present a specific version of linguistic ersatzism and in the last section I present what I take to be the major problem for this kind of theories, (...) namely that of finding a suitable surrogate for the possibilist’s notion of a merely possible object. (shrink)

The entailment connective is introduced by Priest (2006b). It aims to capture, in a dialetheically acceptable way, the informal notion of logical consequence. This connective does not “fall foul” of Curry’s Paradox by invalidating an inference rule called “Absorption” (or “Contraction”) and the classical logical theorem called “Assertion”. In this paper we show that the semantics of entailment, given by Priest in terms of possible worlds, is inadequate. In particular, we will argue that Priest’s counterexamples to Absorption and Assertion use (...) in the metalanguage a dialetheically unacceptable principle. Furthermore, we show that the rejection of Assertion undermines Priest’s claim that the entailment connective expresses the notion of logical consequence. (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)

The idea of social injustice is pivotal to much contemporary moral and political philosophy. Starting from a comprehensive and engaging account of the idea of social injustice, this book covers a whole range of issues, including distributive justice, exploitation, torture, moral motivations, democratic theory, voting behavior, and market socialism.

Background The 2020-2021 coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is just the latest epidemic event that requires us to rethink and change our understanding of health. Health should no longer be conceived only in relation to human beings, but in unitary terms, as a dimension that connects humans, animals, plants, and the environment (holistic view, One Health). In general, alterations occurring in this articulated chain of life trigger a domino effect. Methodology In this paper, we review the One Health paradigm in the light (...) of the Covid-19 pandemic and distinguish two approaches within it that might be dubbed the Prudent one and the Radical one. Each approach is structured in three levels – epistemological, medical, and ethical. Results In this way, we show how we humans can better address the pandemic today and how, in the future, we can treat the whole living system better, by renouncing our anthropocentric perspective on health. Conclusion We hold that the Prudent approach can be very helpful, and we discuss the medical and ethical issues related to it. We also consider the Radical view and the epistemological turn it requires compared to the Prudent one. (shrink)

A new class of visuomotor neuron has been recently discovered in the monkey’s premotor cortex: mirror neurons. These neurons respond both when a particular action is performed by the recorded monkey and when the same action, performed by another individual, is observed. Mirror neurons appear to form a cortical system matching observation and execution of goal-related motor actions. Experimental evidence suggests that a similar matching system also exists in humans. What might be the functional role of this matching system? One (...) possible function is to enable an organism to detect certain mental states of observed conspecifics. This function might be part of, or a precursor to, a more general mind-reading ability. Two different accounts of mind-reading have been suggested. According to “theory theory‘, mental states are represented as inferred posits of a naive theory. According to “simulation theory‘, other people’s mental states are represented by adopting their perspective: by tracking or matching their states with resonant states of one’s own. The activity of mirror neurons, and the fact that observers undergo motor facilitation in the same muscular groups as those utilized by target agents, are findings that accord well with simulation theory but would not be predicted by theory theory. (shrink)

This article rejects the received view that Post-Truth is a new, unprecedented political phenomenon. By showing that Truth and Post-Truth share the same genesis, this article will submit the idea of a Consensus Theory of Post-Truth. Part 1 looks at the difference between Post-Truth, lies and bullshit. Part 2 suggests reasons behind the current preoccupation with Post-Truth. Part 3 focuses on Habermas’s influential consensus theory of truth to suggest that truth and Post-Truth have more in common than is generally assumed. (...) Part 4 puts forward the Consensus Theory of Post-Truth. Part 5 suggests three ways to emasculate the potentially destructive effect of Post-Truth on democratic society. (shrink)

The current debate on why colonialism is wrong overlooks what is arguably the most discernible aspect of this particular historical injustice: its exreme violence. Through a critical analysis of the recent contributions by Lea Ypi, Margaret Moore and Laura Valentini, this article argues that the violence inflicted on the victims and survivors of colonialism reveals far more about the nature of this historical injustice than generally assumed. It is the arbitrary nature of the power relations between colonizers and the colonized (...) which is at the heart of the injustice of colonization, and violence was the way arbitrariness and domination was cemented. The example of colonialism in the Caribbean during the 16th and 17th centuries is used to expose the full extent of this historical injustice. (shrink)

PurposeStarting from the end‐to‐end principle, a founding element of the internet's technical architecture, the paper aims to discuss its extension and effects at the social level. It shows how the internet moves power from governments and private entities to individual citizens, restructuring our societies and creating a new global stakeholder class – individual users of the internet. It connects the advent of this stakeholder class with a traditional principle of internet governance, “rough consensus”. It discusses advantages and risks of this (...) change, suggesting that this shift of power might be beneficial to solve deadlocks in the governance of global phenomena and to ensure that solutions pursue the global public interest. Finally, it discusses how this social evolution can be protected from opposing forces, countering the opinion that the freedom of the internet is intrinsic and not needing regulatory supports.Design/methodology/approachThe paper builds upon observation of case studies, such as the struggle between the industry and users over peer‐to‐peer music downloads, and upon the author's first‐hand experience in global internet governance processes.FindingsThe paper formalizes a social expression of the end‐to‐end principle and demonstrates the need for such principle to be recognized and protected by regulation, to preserve the social model described in the paper and its benefits.Originality/valueThe paper explores the connections between the technical, economic and social architectures of the global network, providing support for understanding the political dynamics of the internet and other global phenomena, and for designing effective governance processes to address them. (shrink)

This study aimed at investigating depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms among healthcare workers and examine the role of expressive flexibility and context sensitivity as key components of resilience in understanding reported symptoms. We hypothesized a significant and different contribution of resilience components in explaining depression, anxiety, and stress. A total sample of 218 Italian healthcare workers participated in this study through an online survey during the lockdown, consequently to the COVID-19. The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 was used to measure depression, (...) anxiety, and stress; the Flexible Regulation of Emotional Expression scale was used to measure the ability to enhance and suppress emotional expression; the Context Sensitivity Index was used to measure the ability to accurately perceive contextual cues and determine cue absence. Demographic and work-related data were also collected. DASS-21 cut-off scores were used to verify the mental status among the respondents. Correlational analyses examined relationships between DASS-21, FREE, and CSI, followed by three regression analyses with depression, anxiety, and stress as dependent variables, controlling for age, gender, and work experience. Enhancement and suppression abilities, cue presence, and cue absence served as independent variables. The results showed a prevalence of moderate to extremely severe symptoms of 8% for depression, 9.8% for anxiety, and 8.9% for stress. Results of correlational analysis highlighted that enhance ability was inversely associated with depression and stress. Suppression ability was inversely associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The ability to perceive contextual cues was inversely associated with depression and anxiety. The regression analysis showed that the ability to enhance emotional expression was statistically significant to explain depression among healthcare workers. In predicting anxiety, age, and the ability to accurately perceive contextual cues and determine cue absence made substantial contributions as predictors. In the last regression model, age, work experience, and the ability to suppress emotional expression were significant predictors of stress. This study’s findings can help understand the specific contributions of enhancement and suppression abilities and sensitivity to stressor context cues in predicting depression, anxiety, and stress among healthcare workers. Psychological interventions to prevent burnout should consider these relationships. (shrink)

Concepts are the elementary units of reason and linguistic meaning. They are conventional and relatively stable. As such, they must somehow be the result of neural activity in the brain. The questions are: Where? and How? A common philosophical position is that all concepts—even concepts about action and perception—are symbolic and abstract, and therefore must be implemented outside the brain’s sensory-motor system. We will argue against this position using (1) neuroscientific evidence; (2) results from neural computation; and (3) results about (...) the nature of concepts from cognitive linguistics. We will propose that the sensory-motor system has the right kind of structure to characterise both sensory-motor and more abstract concepts. Central to this picture are the neural theory of language and the theory of cogs, according to which, brain structures in the sensory-motor regions are exploited to characterise the so-called “abstract” concepts that constitute the meanings of grammatical constructions and general inference patterns. (shrink)

In this article we provide a unifying neural hypothesis on how individuals understand the actions and emotions of others. Our main claim is that the fundamental mechanism at the basis of the experiential understanding of others' actions is the activation of the mirror neuron system. A similar mechanism, but involving the activation of viscero-motor centers, underlies the experiential understanding of the emotions of others.

abstract Much of the literature on torture in recent years takes the position of denouncing the barbarity of torture, while allowing for exceptions to this veto in extreme circumstances. The ticking‐bomb argument, where a terrorist is tortured in order to extract information of a primed bomb located in a civilian area, is often invoked as one of those extreme circumstances where torture becomes justified. As the War on Terrorism intensifies, the ticking‐bomb argument has become the dominant line of reasoning used (...) by both academics and policy advisers to justify a legalized, state‐sponsored program of torture. This paper argues for the unconditional refutation of any attempt to justify torture, without exceptions. We argue against the consequentialist reasoning of the ticking‐bomb argument not from a deontological position, but on consequentialist grounds. Empirical evidence suggests that the institutionalization of torture practices creates serious problems. Torture interrogation fails to fulfil its initial purpose as a low‐cost life saver, while its long‐term potential is the devastation of democratic institutions. (shrink)

My initial scope will be limited: starting from a neurobiological standpoint, I will analyse how actions are possibly represented and understood. The main aim of my arguments will be to show that, far from being exclusively dependent upon mentalistic/linguistic abilities, the capacity for understanding others as intentional agents is deeply grounded in the relational nature of action. Action is relational, and the relation holds both between the agent and the object target of the action , as between the agent of (...) the action and his/her observer . Agency constitutes a key issue for the understanding of intersubjectivity and for explaining how individuals can interpret their social world. This account of intersubjectivity, founded on the empirical findings of neuroscientific investigation, will be discussed and put in relation with a classical tenet of phenomenology: empathy. I will provide an 'enlarged' account of empathy that will be defined by means of a new conceptual tool: the shared manifold of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

The principle of non-maleficence, primum non nocere, has deep roots in the history of moral philosophy, being endorsed by John Stuart Mill, W. D. Ross, H. L. A. Hart, Karl Popper and Bernard Gert. And yet, this principle is virtually absent from current debates on social justice. This article suggests that non-maleficence is more than a moral principle; it is also a principle of social justice. Part I looks at the origins of non-maleficence as a principle of ethics, and medical (...) ethics in particular. Part II introduces the idea of non-maleficence as a principle of social justice. Parts III and IV define the principle of justice as non-maleficence in terms of its scope and coherence, while Part V argues that the motivation of not doing harm makes this principle an alternative to two well-established paradigms in the literature on social justice: justice as mutual advantage (David Gauthier) and justice as impartiality (Brian Barry). (shrink)

Preyer and Krausse’s Sociology on Next Society proposes a new perspective on interpreting the global society of the future. In these Notes, the author discusses some of the key points of the volume. The paradigm shift in the sciences is often introduced by the creation of a new language, a new view of the relationship between words and things. The question is whether this semantic and epistemological feature also characterizes the approach proposed by Preyer and Krausse. The sociology of the (...) Next Society – observes the author – is in fact the latest attempt to get rid of the sociology of social systems based on the analogy between society and living organism. This attempt has been underway for at least 50 years and this volume constitutes the final result. In reality, it is a question of freeing sociology from the hegemony of the socio-biological sciences. And it is not an easy task. The author asks whether this attempt has been successful and what the results are in terms of interpreting the new form of the world. On the one hand, the sociology of the Next society places itself in the sphere of the new theories on the world but, on the other, it still adopts a traditional model. In fact, it aims at overcoming the “society of individuals”, typical of the modern-bourgeois western society, with a society based on the membership of social, professional, etc. orders. The ordering of society should be based on the “membership order”. The authors themselves qualify the next society as a neo-feudal society. How prolific is its approach is still an open question. The numerous researches promoted and directly conducted by the authors are an attempt to give an empirical basis to their proposal. Compared to other theories of global society, the sociology of the next society shows its vitality in placing itself at the level of the “global” analysis of the world. Its limits, perhaps, are in not seeing that there are different “projects” or “forms of globality” competing with each other. Each civilization has a claim to universality and a project of hegemony over the world that could be better understood through an approach based on the concept and paradigm of social conflict, both within societies and between societies and civilizations. (shrink)

Simulation theories of social cognition abound in the literature, but it is often unclear what simulation means and how it works. The discovery of mirror neurons, responding both to action execution and observation, suggested an embodied approach to mental simulation. Over the last years this approach has been hotly debated and alternative accounts have been proposed. We discuss these accounts and argue that they fail to capture the uniqueness of embodied simulation (ES). ES theory provides a unitary account of basic (...) social cognition, demonstrating that people e their own mental states or processes represented with a bodily format in functionally attributing them to others. (shrink)