John Searle e Maurizio Ferraris, due tra i più influenti pensatori in ontologia sociale, a dispetto delle radicali differenze tra le loro teorie circa il fondamento del mondo sociale, sono concordi su un punto: gli oggetti sociali sono fortemente dipendenti dai soggetti ma non sono soggettivi. Tuttavia, tale dipendenza non può essere spiegata a fondo attraverso la logica soggetto/oggetto. In questo senso, il presente contributo offre una visione più dinamica, che prende l’avvio dalla specificità del nostro essere-nel-mondo e dalla relazione, (...) complessa e circolare, tra la mente umana e l’ambiente socionaturale. (shrink)

S'intende prendere in esame la comprensiones di Jordan Kunicic dei temi fondamentali della morale. Egli e uno dei teologi moralisti croati piu prestigiosi di questo secolo che ha svolto la sua attivita prima, durante e dopo il Concilio Vaticano II. La morale da lui proposta risale alla lunga tradizione Della teologia morale (neo)scolastica. Questo studio getta una luce sulla visione (neo)tomista della morale, senza la quale non e facile comprendere la discussione attuale della teologia morale. Vengono analizzati il concetto di (...) ordine morale oggettivo e soggettivo: la coscienza e l'atto morale. (shrink)

La sapienza di partire da sè è una via che si sottrae alle molte contrapposizioni che sono iscritte nel simbolico dominante: quella tra soggettivo e oggettivo, tra individuo e comunità e tra locale e generale: apre un'altra strada.

Il problema della «nozione di responsabilità» che Alfred Schütz affronta in So­me Equivocations of the Notion of Responsability emerge sullo sfondo di una dimensione fenomenologica dell’azione morale. L’autore propone di di­stinguere internamente a questa nozione il punto di vista soggettivo e quello oggettivo, mettendo in luce come principi, norme, leggi e doveri morali assu­mano significato differente se riferiti alla coscienza individuale, in cui ven­gono autodeterminati ed elaborati, o se invece imposti dall’esterno. Giudicare ‘da se stessi’ la propria azione (...) risulta così su un piano etico di maggiore rile­van­za rispetto a quello in cui la responsabilità viene etero-determinata come ‘re­sponsabilità di qualcuno verso qualcosa’, quello in cui è soltanto il gruppo o l’au­torità, dall’esterno, a rendere un altro responsabile.The problem of the «notion of responsibility» which Alfred Schütz treats in So­me Equivocations of the Notion of Responsability comes out on the back­ground of a phenomenological size of the moral action. The author sug­gests distinguishing inside to this notion the subjective point of view and that one objective, sheding light upon as principles, rules, laws and moral duties grasp different meaning if ascribed to the individual conscience, in which are self-determined and elaborated, or if instead imposed from the outside. So ‘self-judgment’ on the action turns out on an ethical greater importance plan than that one in which the responsibility is hetero-determined as ‘responsibility of someone towards something’, that in which is only the group or the au­tho­rity, from the outside, to hold another person responsible. (shrink)

Il saggio focalizza quattro significati fondamentali del concetto di seconda natura in Hegel e ne ricostruisce i legami, i nessi interni, le implicazioni per la comprensione dell’intera Geistesphilosophie. Attraverso il concetto di seconda natura, infatti, è possibile evidenziare la connessione tra spirito soggettivo e spirito oggettivo e mostrare che le sfere dello spirito non sono prive di unificazione e provengono da una radice comune. Al termine del saggio emerge che il concetto di seconda natura ha inoltre uno statuto (...) ambivalente: da un lato, esso rende possibile l’idealizzazione della natura e l’innalzamento alla dimensione dello spirito, dall’altro implica una naturalizzazione dello spirito ossia la sua autonegazione. (shrink)

Il pensiero morale al tempo del Rosmini -- I fondamenti teoretici della morale rosminiana -- Disegno generale della morale rosminiana -- La legge morale -- Il bene soggettivo, oggettivo, morale -- Il soggetto della morale -- Errore e peccato -- La coscienza morale -- Morale naturale e morale soprannaturale.

Riassunto: Le “distorsioni” temporali paiono riguardare l’agentività umana in tutte le proprie manifestazioni. Da una prospettiva strutturale, l’azione si manifesta come un intreccio di processi che fondamentalmente comprende la formulazione di un’intenzione, l’esecuzione di un movimento e infine il processamento di un feedback che include gli effetti dell’azione. Lo studio dell’agentività umana ha incontrato molti ostacoli dovuti principalmente alla complessità dei processi mentali che accompagnano azioni specifiche. E tuttavia studi recenti hanno gettato luce sui processi mentali sottostanti l’azione. In questo (...) articolo intendo sostenere che, lungi dall’essere “distorsioni” temporali, le discrepanze tra tempo soggettivo e tempo oggettivo mostrano più profonde modalità soggettive inconsce di costituzione del tempo, che aggirano l’indagine scientifica e puntano direttamente alla costituzione fenomenologica di una rappresentazione del mondo coerente e dotata di significato, che non può essere ulteriormente ridotta mediante il riferimento al tempo oggettivo. Parole chiave: Soggettività; Tempo; Agentività; Distorsioni temporali; Esperienza Temporal Distorsions and Consciousness of Intentional Action: Temporal “distortions” seem to affect human agency in all its manifestations. From a structural point of view, action manifests itself as a plot of processes that essentially include the formulation of an intention, the execution of a motion, and, finally, processing feedback including the effects of the action. The study of human agency has encountered several obstacles which are mainly due to the complexity of mental processes that accompany specific actions. Yet recent studies have shed light on the mental processes underlying action. In my paper I argue that, far from being temporal “distortions”, mismatches between subjective time and objective time indicate deeper unconscious subjective modes of in-forming time, which bypass scientific exploration and point directly to the phenomenological constitution of a consistent and meaningful representation of the world, which cannot be further reduced by referring to clock time. Keywords: Subjectivity; Time; Agency; Temporal Distorsions; Experience. (shrink)

Being and Negativity. The Thinking of the Subjective-Objective in Merleau-Ponty and GrimaldiThe thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty is distinguished at the outset from that of Nicolas Grimaldi as much by their methodological commitments as by the place each one accords to time. Nevertheless, their adoption of a double point of view on the human being – as at the same time consciousness and object – justifies bringing them together. Confronted to its full extent, the problem of the subjective-objective implies the development (...) of a monistic ontology and authorizes the critique that Merleau-Ponty and Grimaldi both address to Sartre and Bergson. In thinking a negativity internal to Being, the two authors come to restore an authentic passivity of mind, inaccessible to the dialectic of being and nothingness. Their philosophical paths diverge conclusively in the solution each brings to this common problem : whereas Merleau-Ponty only sees an apparent contradiction in the duality of points of view, one that is to be lifted by reworking them, Grimaldi’s realism maintains the contradiction at the heart of a substantial unity conceived as time.Essere e negatività. Il pensiero del soggettivo-oggettivo in Merleau-Ponty e GrimaldiIl pensiero di Maurice Merleau-Ponty e di Nicolas Grimaldi si distinguono, ad un primo sguardo, sia per la loro presa di posizione metodologica che per il ruolo che rispettivamente accordano al tempo. Ciononostante, la loro presa in considerazione di un doppio punto di vista sull’uomo – compreso alo stesso tempo come coscienza e come oggetto – giustifica un loro confronto. Affrontato in tutta la sua ampiezza, il problema del soggettivo-oggettivo implica lo sviluppo di un’ontologia monista ed autorizza le critiche che Merleau-Ponty e Grimaldi rivolgono entrambi a Sartre e Bergson. Pensando ad una negatività interna all’Essere, i due autori giungono a restaurare una passività autentica dello spirito, inaccessibile alla dialettica tra essere e niente. In definitiva, le due vie filosofiche considerate in questo saggio divergono rispetto alla soluzione che essi forniscono a questo problema comune : mentre Merleau-Ponty vede nella dualità dei punti di vista una mera contraddizione apparente che si tratta di eliminare riformulandoli, il realismo grimaldiano mantiene la contraddizione inseno ad un’unità sostanziale concepita in termini di tempo. (shrink)

Being and Negativity. The Thinking of the Subjective-Objective in Merleau-Ponty and GrimaldiThe thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty is distinguished at the outset from that of Nicolas Grimaldi as much by their methodological commitments as by the place each one accords to time. Nevertheless, their adoption of a double point of view on the human being – as at the same time consciousness and object – justifies bringing them together. Confronted to its full extent, the problem of the subjective-objective implies the development (...) of a monistic ontology and authorizes the critique that Merleau-Ponty and Grimaldi both address to Sartre and Bergson. In thinking a negativity internal to Being, the two authors come to restore an authentic passivity of mind, inaccessible to the dialectic of being and nothingness. Their philosophical paths diverge conclusively in the solution each brings to this common problem : whereas Merleau-Ponty only sees an apparent contradiction in the duality of points of view, one that is to be lifted by reworking them, Grimaldi’s realism maintains the contradiction at the heart of a substantial unity conceived as time.Essere e negatività. Il pensiero del soggettivo-oggettivo in Merleau-Ponty e GrimaldiIl pensiero di Maurice Merleau-Ponty e di Nicolas Grimaldi si distinguono, ad un primo sguardo, sia per la loro presa di posizione metodologica che per il ruolo che rispettivamente accordano al tempo. Ciononostante, la loro presa in considerazione di un doppio punto di vista sull’uomo – compreso alo stesso tempo come coscienza e come oggetto – giustifica un loro confronto. Affrontato in tutta la sua ampiezza, il problema del soggettivo-oggettivo implica lo sviluppo di un’ontologia monista ed autorizza le critiche che Merleau-Ponty e Grimaldi rivolgono entrambi a Sartre e Bergson. Pensando ad una negatività interna all’Essere, i due autori giungono a restaurare una passività autentica dello spirito, inaccessibile alla dialettica tra essere e niente. In definitiva, le due vie filosofiche considerate in questo saggio divergono rispetto alla soluzione che essi forniscono a questo problema comune : mentre Merleau-Ponty vede nella dualità dei punti di vista una mera contraddizione apparente che si tratta di eliminare riformulandoli, il realismo grimaldiano mantiene la contraddizione inseno ad un’unità sostanziale concepita in termini di tempo. (shrink)

This paper argues for a comprehensive conception of empathy as comprising epistemic, affective, and motivational elements and introduces the ancient Stoic theory of attachment as a model for describing the embodied, emotional response to others that we take to be distinctive of empathy. Our argument entails that in order to provide a suitable conceptual framework for the interdisciplinary study of empathy one must extend the scope of recent “simulationalist” and “enactivist” accounts of empathy in two important respects. First, against the (...) enactivist assumption that human mindreading capacities primarily rely on an immediate, quasi-perceptual understanding of other’s intentional states, we draw on Alfred Schutz’ analysis of social understanding to argue that reflective types of understanding play a distinct, but equally fundamental role in empathic engagements. Second, we insist that empathy also involves an affective response toward the other and their situation. We suggest analyzing this response in terms of the Stoic concepts of attachment, concern, and a fundamental type of prosocial motivation, that can best be described as an “extended partiality.” By way of conclusion, we integrate the above concepts into a comprehensive conceptual framework for the study of empathy and briefly relate them to current debates about empathic perception and prosocial motivation. The result, we argue, is an account that stays neutral with regard to the exact nature of the processes involved in producing empathy and can therefore accommodate discussion across theoretical divides—e.g., those between enactivist, simulationalist, and so-called theory-theorist approaches. (shrink)

This is a general introduction to the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction.

One of the central debates in contemporary metaphysics has been the debate between endurantism and perdurantism about persistence. In this paper I argue that much of this debate has been misconstrued: most of the arguments in the debate crucially rely on theses which are strictly orthogonal to the endurantism/perdurantism debate. To show this, I note that the arguments in the endurantism/perdurantism debate typically take the following form: one presents a challenge that endurantists allegedly have some trouble addressing, and to which (...) perdurantism apparently has a straightforward response. I argue, however, that in each case, there are versions of endurantism that can offer precisely the same response to the challenge, and thus the ability to provide this particular solution does not directly tell in favour of one the two views. In §1, I elaborate two views which will be particularly prominent in the discussion: liberal endurantism and restrictive perdurantism. In §2–6 I discuss in turn the central pro-perdurantism arguments: the argument from anthropocentricism, the argument from vagueness, the argument from recombination, the argument from temporary intrinsics, and the argument from coincidence. In §7–8, I discuss the main pro-endurantism arguments: the arguments from motion, and the argument from permanent coincidence. Finally, in §9, I discuss what conclusion can be drawn from this discussion. (shrink)

Robert Nozick initiated one of the most inspired and inspiring discussions in political philosophy with his 1974 response in Anarchy, State, and Utopia to John Rawls’s 1971 account of distributive justice in A Theory of Justice. These two works have informed an enormous amount of subsequent, especially liberal, discussions of economic justice, where Nozick’s work typically functions as a resource for those defending more right-wing (libertarian) positions, whereas Rawls’s has been used to defend various left-wing stances. Common to these discussions, (...) as found in politics generally (where similar kinds of arguments frequently are used to defend right and the left-wing policies and conclusions) is that they end in rather stubborn stalemates: the right defending minimal states while the left defends more extensive states. Interesting, too, is that both Nozick and Rawls take themselves to be consistent with, inspired by, and furthering Kant’s freedom project in the development of their own theories of justice. In this paper, I start by outlining the structures of these debates with an emphasis on the original disagreements between Nozick and Rawls. I then show how neither theory actually employed Kant’s own theory of justice, but rather drew on or out (presumed) implications of his ethical theory. In the final sections, I argue that if Nozick and Rawls had instead used Kant’s theory of justice and not his ethics, not only would their individual theories have been stronger, but they could have found ways of overcoming the unproductive stalemates that characterize their own as well as subsequent related discussions of economic justice as we currently find them in much scholarly and contemporary political debate. (shrink)

One reason that many of the philosophical debates about free will might seem intractable is that di erent participants in those debates use various terms in ways that not only don't line up, but might even contradict each other. For instance, it is widely accepted to understand libertarianism as\the conjunction of incompatibilism [the thesis that free will is incompatible with the truth of determinism] and the thesis that we have free will" (van Inwagen (1983), 13f; see also Kane (2001), 17; (...) Pereboom (2006), xiv). However, for van Inwagen's later reservations about the use of the term `libertarianism', see van Inwagen (2008), relevant pages). This makes perplexing a number of views that have the name `libertarian compatibilism' (see Vihvelin (2000) and Arvan (2013)) as on the standard use of the terms involved, the name appears to involve a contradiction. Even the meaning and usage of the term `free will' is itself contested. Manuel Vargas writes that \`free will' is a term of both ordinary and technical discourse" (Vargas (2013), 325). However, it is not clear if the ordinary use of the term always tracks the technical use. But in an in uential paper on \How to Think about About the Problem of Free Will," Peter van Inwagen claims that \the phrase `free will' . . . hardly exists except as a philosophical term of art. Its non- philosophical uses are pretty much con ned to the phrase `of his/her own free will' which means `uncoerced"' (van Inwagen (2008), 320 footnote 1). To many of us, a look at the philosophical and literatures of the past millennium suggest a use that need not be a technical notion, even if it is often used in a technical way. No matter how this debate about the `ordinary use' of the phrase turns out, recognizing that `free will' gets used in di erent ways and being careful in such usage is important in order to avoid what Chalmers has called `merely verbal disputes' (Chalmers (2011)). For this reason, we want to be very clear in how we understand and de ne free will. There seem to be at least two di erent fundamental notions of what free will is in the contemporary literature. The rst of these, which seems to have garnered the most attention in the last century, works under the assumption that for a person to rightly be said to have free will, she must have the ability 1 to do otherwise than what she does, in fact, do. Under this view I could be said to have freely chosen to drive to work only if I also could have freely chosen, for example, to bike to work or to skip work altogether. This approach to free will is referred to as a `leeway-based approach' (cite my book) or an `alternative- possiblities approach' (see Sartorio (2016).) In contrast, a smaller percentage of the extant literature focuses primarily on the issues of `source,' `ultimacy,' and `origination'. This second approach doesn't focus immediately on the presence or absence of alternative possibilities. On this approach, I freely choose to drive to work only if I am the source of my choice and there is nothing outside of me from which the choice is ultimately derived. In what follows, we refer to the rst of these conceptions|the conception that free will is primarily a matter of having alternative possibilities|as the `leeway- based' conception. Similarly, we will refer to the second of these conceptions| that free will is primarily a matter of our being the source of our choices in a particular way|as the `sourcehood' conception. (John Fischer and Carolina Sartorio refers to sourcehood views as `actual sequence' views; see Fischer (2006) and Sartorio (2016)). Both of these notions can be seen in the following passage taken from Robert Kane: We believe we have free will when we view ourselves as agents ca- pable of in uencing the world in various ways. Open alternatives, or alternative possibilities, seem to lie before us. We reason and deliberate among them and choose. We feel (1) it is `up to us' what we choose and how we act; and this means we could have chosen or acted otherwise. As Aristotle noted: when acting is `up to us,' so is not acting. This `up-to-us-ness' also suggests (2) the ultimate control of our actions lies in us and not outside us in factors beyond our control (Kane (2005), 6). In the next two sections, I look in greater detail at each of these two approaches to the nature of free will, and how they each seek to approach what it means for an action to be `up to us'. I also show how the di erences between these two conceptions cut across the debate about what Kane refers to as the Com- patibility Question: \Is free will compatible with determinism?" (Kane (1996), 13). Along the way, I also brie y point out a number of ways how which of these conceptions is at work shapes how one engages various arguments and other issues regarding. (shrink)

An intricate, long, and occasionally heated debate surrounds Boltzmann’s H-theorem (1872) and his combinatorial interpretation of the second law (1877). After almost a century of devoted and knowledgeable scholarship, there is still no agreement as to whether Boltzmann changed his view of the second law after Loschmidt’s 1876 reversibility argument or whether he had already been holding a probabilistic conception for some years at that point. In this paper, I argue that there was no abrupt statistical turn. In the first (...) part, I discuss the development of Boltzmann’s research from 1868 to the formulation of the H-theorem. This reconstruction shows that Boltzmann adopted a pluralistic strategy based on the interplay between a kinetic and a combinatorial approach. Moreover, it shows that the extensive use of asymptotic conditions allowed Boltzmann to bracket the problem of exceptions. In the second part I suggest that both Loschmidt’s challenge and Boltzmann’s response to it did not concern the H-theorem. The close relation between the theorem and the reversibility argument is a consequence of later investigations on the subject. (shrink)

La distinción propuesta por Ernst Mayr y François Jacob entre biología funcionaly biología evolutiva es una clave fundamental para un tratamiento claro y concluyente de dos problemas que, recurrentemente, se colocan en el ámbito de la Filosofía de la Biología: aquel que atañe al posible carácter teleológico de las explicaciones biológicas y aquel relativo a la autonomía de la Biología en relación a la Física y a la Química. Sin sostener una alternativa de solución para ninguno de estos problemas, presentamos (...) esa oposición mostrando su relevancia para el tratamiento de tales cuestiones. Nuestra idea es que las mismas no deberían plantearse sin especificar a cual de los dos dominios de la ciencias de la vida nos estamos refiriendo.Mayr’s and Jacob’s distinction between functional biology and evolutionary biology is a fundamental key for a clearer and more conclusive treatment of two problems that, currently, are discussed in Philosophy of Biology: that which matter to the teleological character of biological explanations and that which matter to the autonomy of Biology from Physic and Chemistry. Without hold any alternative solution for none of these problems, we present that opposition showing its relevance for the treatment of both questions. Our idea is that these problems shouldn’t be posed without a specification of the domain of Biology that is being considered. (shrink)

Contemporary "essentialism", if we want to provide a succinct, yet sufficiently rigorous characterization, may be summarized in the thesis that some common terms are rigid designators. [1] By the quotation marks I intend to indicate that I regard this as a somewhat improper (though, of course, permitted) usage of the term (after all, nomina significant ad placitum [2]). In contrast to this, essentialism, properly so-called, is the Aristotelian doctrine summarizable in the thesis--as we shall see, no less rigorous in its (...) own theoretical context--that things have essences. (shrink)

This paper deals with the reification of the concept of race in biomedical research. It combines philosophical analysis and a quantitative approach to investigate the ways in which the reification fallacy may occur in race research, thereby providing theoretical legitimacy to the misuse of scientific research. It examines the prevalence of obesity in the US and some African countries as an empirical case to guide a conceptual analysis. The paper suggests that, to avoid the reification of race, researchers need to (...) be more aware of the fact that continental genetic clusters do not necessarily correspond to the genotypic partitions of interest in therapeutic reaction or disease etiology, and need to take seriously the phenotypic variability of breeding populations within continents. (shrink)

An attempt to clarify how the problem of absolute time and the problem of absolute motion relate to one another, especially with respect to causal attributions involving time and motion.

Economists tend to view ignorance as “rational,” neglecting the possibility that ignorance is unintentional. This oversight is reflected in economists’ model of “information search,” which can be fruitfully contrasted with “information browsing.” Information searches are designed to discover unknown knowns, whose value is calculable ex ante, such that this value justifies the cost of the search. In this model of human information acquisition, there is no primal or “radical” ignorance that might prevent people from knowing which information to look for, (...) lacking omniscience. Unlike ignorance that is rationally chosen on the basis of an accurate cost/benefit calculation, radical ignorance can explain human error. An account of error as grounded in radical ignorance bypasses the need to appeal to irrationality in order to explain economic (and other) mistakes. (shrink)

While the 2010 EPSRC principles for robotics state a set of 5 rules of what ‘should’ be done, I argue they should differentiate between legal obligations and ethical demands. Only if we make this difference can we state clearly what the legal obligations already are, and what additional ethical demands we want to make. I provide suggestions how to revise the rules in this light and how to make them more structured.