Obligations can be affected by knowledge. Several approaches exist to formalize knowledge-based obligations, but no formalism has been developed yet to capture the dynamic interaction between knowledge and obligations. We introduce the dynamic extension of an existing logic for knowledge-based obligations here. We motivate the logic by analyzing several scenarios and by showing how it can capture in an original manner several fundamental deontic notions such as absolute, prima facie and all-things-considered obligations. Finally, in the dynamic epistemic logic tradition, we (...) provide reduction axioms for the dynamic operator of the new logic. (shrink)

Since the 1990s the so-called transparency of experience has played a crucial role in core debates in philosophy of mind. However, recent developments in the literature have made transparency itself quite opaque. The very idea of transparent experience has become quite fuzzy, due to the articulation of many different notions of transparency and transparency theses. Absent a unified logical space where these notions and theses can be mapped and confronted, we are left with an overall impression of conceptual chaos. This (...) is a problem, given the constant and ubiquitous references to transparency in the literature and its prominent position in the contemporary philosophy of mind. My goal in this paper is to restore clarity through proper analysis of the mutual relations between the different transparency theses. This allows me to uncover a unitary multidimensional logical space where existing (as well as possible) views can be properly singled out and located. (shrink)

Recently some epistemologists have approached the question whether epistemic justification comes in degrees from a linguistic perspective. Drawing insights from linguistic analyses of gradable adjectives, they investigate whether epistemic occurrences of ‘justified’ are gradable and if yes what type of gradability they involve. These authors conclude that the adjective passes standard tests for gradability, but they classify it as belonging to different categories: as either an absolute or a relative gradable adjective. The aim of this paper is to further clarify (...) the question of what kind of gradability is instantiated by epistemic uses of ‘justified’, and to investigate the consequences that this may have on epistemological theorizing. In particular, we challenge the alleged evidence provided by Siscoe (2021: 517–59) for the relative gradability of ‘justified’ and we provide positive arguments for the claim that ‘justified’ is a specific kind of absolute gradable adjective (a totally closed scale absolute with default minimal reading). We consider some important philosophical implications of these results. We also argue that the scale type of ‘justified’ is ordinal, and we consider which other properties typically associated to justification possess a similar type of scale. We argue that several popular contemporary models of graded justification, such as probabilistic and reliabilist accounts and various kinds of Lockean views, do not fit well with our results about the gradability of ‘justified’. Linguistic data rather favour normalcy and plausibility accounts of graded justification. (shrink)

A theory of transgenerational justice ought to be grounded on intuitions shared in the human community. One is parental responsibility, postulating duties between the generating and the generated in a realm of proximity. To achieve greater political abstraction, it is necessary to deny self-sufficiency to such primary transgenerational level, arguing for its structural need to rely on external sources distant in space and time. A critical cross-examining of concepts relevant to justify the leap from proximity to distance follows (community and (...) society, equity and equality, singularity and repetition). The outcome is a notion of ius as object of transgenerational quest, including future generations only at the price of avoiding contractualist understandings of bonds between living and non-living entities. (shrink)

Recent trends in psychiatry involve a transition from categorical to dimensional frameworks, in which the boundary between health and pathology is understood as a difference in degree rather than as a difference in kind. A major tenet of dimensional approaches is that no qualitative distinction can be made between health and pathology. As a consequence, these approaches tend to characterize such a threshold as pragmatic or conventional in nature. However, dimensional approaches to psychopathology raise several epistemological and ontological issues. First, (...) we review major sources of evidence usually recruited in support of the dimensional trend (focusing on clinical observation and biological data), and we show that these are connected to different conceptualizations of how dimensional traits extend across health and pathology. Second, we criticize two unquestioned assumptions that stand at the core of the dimensional trend: a) that there is continuity from health to pathology at the symptomatic level; b) that such continuity reflects an underlying continuity in the genetic liability for pathological conditions. Third, we argue against the idea of a conventional threshold by showing that such a view implies a linear relationship between the genotype and the phenotype. Fourth, drawing on epigenetics and developmental biology, we offer a characterization of mental disorders as stable and dynamic constellations of multi-level variables that differ qualitatively from ‘healthy states’. We conclude by showing that our account has several theoretical advantages over both categorical and dimensional approaches. Notably, it provides crucial insights into psychological development over time and individual differences, with major implications in terms of intervention and clinical decision-making. (shrink)

"La struttura delle rivoluzioni scientifiche", dopo più di mezzo secolo dalla sua pubblicazione, è ancora in grado di offrire un contributo alla pratica filosofica? In questo articolo, attraverso i concetti peirceani di Abito, Abduzione e Verità, si propone una lettura pragmaticista del testo di Kuhn che intende rilanciare un fecondo confronto, ancora poco considerato, tra i due filosofi.

This research investigated whether perceived situational appropriateness (defined as the degree of fit between product and intended usage situations) is predictive of consumer choices for foods and beverages, on the theoretical premise that intended usage situation acts as a frame of reference in orienting choices. Extant research on the topic, though suggestive of a link, is very limited in scope and almost completely lacking with regards to choice behaviour (as opposed to other aspects such as food acceptability or intake). To (...) address the hypotheses, data collected in a series of 15 experiments ($N= 2731$ consumers in total) -- covering a wide range of product categories and usage situations -- are presented. In all studies, participants evaluated a set of stimuli varying with respect to perceived appropriateness (low to high), and evaluated each stimulus either monadically using a choice likelihood scale or by performing a discrete choice task. Regression analyses from all studies consistently indicated that perceived appropriateness significantly predicted choice response. The results were robust with respect to variation in product category and experimental protocol and, overall, strongly support the notion that appropriateness can provide a simple yet powerful (in some case accounting for over 50\% of variance) predictor of consumer choice. Effect sizes varied substantially: perceived appropriateness explained from a minimum of 3\% to over 65\% of variance in consumer choice, and this variation was linearly related to the degree of product heterogeneity in the product sets. This research also investigated possible moderators of the link between appropriateness and choice, by relating the results to consumers’ product familiarity and involvement. While both traits significantly (and positively) affected choice, they did not interact with appropriateness. Possible explanations for these results, as well as other possible candidate moderators to explore in future research, are highlighted. (shrink)

The aim of the present contribution is to defend a specific version of moderate skeptical invariantism, which I call Practical Skeptical Invariantism (PSI). The view is a form of skepticism to the extent that it denies knowledge of many facts that we ordinarily think or claim to know. It is moderate to the extent that it is supposed to be compatible with a quite weak, non-radical form of skepticism. According to this view, the threshold on evidential support required for knowledge (...) should be partially fixed by the practical circumstances of the subject: someone is in a position to know a proposition p only if she would be rational to act as if p even if the practical stakes on p were maximally high. I consider and address what I take to be the most pressing problem for the view, namely, that the view can’t avoid a collapse into a radical form of skepticism. Moreover, I propose a positive argument for this view. The argument relies on the claim that judgments in high stakes are generally more reliable than in low stakes. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A belief is correct if and only if the believed proposition is true. Some philosophers argued that from this standard of correctness it is possible to derive the statement of a norm, a claim about what a subject ought to do. Many formulations of the standard in terms of an ‘ought’-claim have been suggested, but all resulted affected by some problem. My aim in this article is to suggest a new formulation of the standard in ‘ought’-terms based on an (...) analysis of the relations occurring between the notions of correctness and ‘ought’. My suggested formulation is that, for any subject S and proposition p, according to the standard of correctness, given that S believes that p, it ought to be that p. (shrink)

Procreative obligations are often discussed by evaluating only the consequences of reproductive actions or omissions; less attention is paid to the moral role of intentions and attitudes. In this paper, I assess whether intentions and attitudes can contribute to defining our moral obligations with regard to assisted reproductive technologies already available, such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), and those that may be available in future, such as reproductive genome editing and ectogenesis, in a way compatible with person‐affecting constraints. I propose (...) the parent–child relationship argument, which is based on the moral distinction between creating and parenting a child. Hence, I first argue that intentions and attitudes can play a role in defining our moral obligations in reproductive decisions involving PGD. Second, I maintain that if we accept this and recognize reproductive genome editing and ectogenesis as person‐affecting procedures, we should be committed to arguing that prospective parents may have moral reasons to prefer reproduction via such techniques than via sexual intercourse. In both cases, I observe an extension of our procreative responsibility beyond what is proposed by the consequentialist person‐affecting morality. (shrink)

We show that intuitionistic logic is deductively equivalent to Connexive Heyting Logic ($$\textrm{CHL}$$ CHL ), hereby introduced as an example of a strongly connexive logic with an intuitive semantics. We use the reverse algebraisation paradigm: $$\textrm{CHL}$$ CHL is presented as the assertional logic of a point regular variety (whose structure theory is examined in detail) that turns out to be term equivalent to the variety of Heyting algebras. We provide Hilbert-style and Gentzen-style proof systems for $$\textrm{CHL}$$ CHL ; moreover, we (...) suggest a possible computational interpretation of its connexive conditional, and we revisit Kapsner’s idea of superconnexivity. (shrink)

The notion of maximal greatness is arguably part of the very concept of God: something greater than God is not even possible. But how should we understand this notion? The aim of this paper is to provide a Śaivist answer to this question by analyzing the form of theism advocated in the Pratyabhijñā tradition. First, I extract a model of divine greatness, the Hierarchical Model, from Nagasawa’s work "Maximal God". According to the Hierarchical Model, God is that than which nothing (...) could be greater by virtue of being better suited than all other beings in relation to certain great-making properties (§1). I then offer an analysis of the form of theism advocated in the Pratyabhijñā tradition by discussing passages from the works of Somānanda, the founder of the Pratyabhijñā school, and of Utpaladeva, the most prominent of Somānanda’s disciples. I argue that the Pratyabhijñā theist cannot account for divine greatness in terms of the Hierarchical Model. My argument is that the Hierarchical Model requires a comparison between God and other beings that cannot be made with the Pratyabhijñā God (§2). Finally, I develop an original alternative model, the Unlimited Nature Model, that accounts for God’s maximal greatness in a way that suits Pratyabhijñā’s theism. According to the Unlimited Nature Model, the nature of all ordinary beings is metaphysically limited as a result of realizing only a small portion of the potential of what could be, and God is maximally great because only he has a completely unlimited nature (§3). (shrink)

In one of the working notes from the Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty expresses the intention of resuming his critique of Lévi-Strauss ‘s notion of Gestatung in a future version of the text. The recent publication of the notes from the course at College de France (1954-55), and particularly the first of them regarding “L ‘institution dans ľhistoire personelle et publique”, allows a more thorough understanding of that otherwise rather obscure reference. In this paper, we track Merleau-Ponty’s critique of the (...) anthropologist’s theory of history in the courses on institution as well as in other texts of the sarne period (and particularly relevant is the reference to Les aventures de la dialectique). The French philosopher pursues a conceptual path that may move beyond the radical relativism professed by the Lévi-Strauss, which is nothing but a supplement of natural objectivism, and aims at a “ relativization of the relative”. We thus see how Merleau-Ponty focuses this question on the notion of “historical” and “social” perception, suggesting a “ perceptive” reading of the categories proposed by Lévi-Strauss. We believe that this particular phase of the merleau-pontyan reflection on history is a step of the greater importance in the theoretical path towards the ontological inquiries of his last works. (shrink)

Objectivism is the view that how an agent ought to act depends on all kinds of facts, regardless of the agent’s epistemic position with respect to them. One of the most important challenges to this view is constituted by certain cases involving specific conditions of uncertainty—so-called three-options cases. In these cases it seems overwhelmingly plausible that an agent ought to do what is recommendable given her limited perspective, even though the agent knows that this is not objectively the best course (...) of action. The standard objectivist response to this challenge relies on a distinction between what one ought to do and what would be blameworthy or unreasonable to do. This response is affected by several problems. In this paper I introduce and defend an alternative objectivist response to the challenge. My proposal admits that in the relevant cases the agent ought to do what is recommendable given her perspective, but maintains that this diagnosis of the cases is fully compatible with objectivism. I argue that this proposal has several advantages over alternative accounts of the cases. (shrink)

The paper offers a new approach to utopia in early and classical Greek texts from Homer to the fifth century. The model is based on four motifs regularly occurring in ‘utopian texts’, that is, descriptions of places that are distant in time and/or space. A comparative analysis of such texts and of how they manipulate the four motifs sheds new light on specific problems and encourages more nuanced readings of famous texts, such as Homer's account of Scheria.

The paper explains why the de Broglie-Bohm theory reduces to Newtonian mechanics in the macroscopic classical limit. The quantum-to-classical transition is based on three steps: (i) interaction with the environment produces effectively factorized states, leading to the formation of effective wave functions and hence decoherence; (ii) the effective wave functions selected by the environment–the pointer states of decoherence theory–will be well-localized wave packets, typically Gaussian states; (iii) the quantum potential of a Gaussian state becomes negligible under standard classicality conditions; therefore, (...) the effective wave function will move according to Newtonian mechanics in the correct classical limit. As a result, a Bohmian system in interaction with the environment will be described by an effective Gaussian state and–when the system is macroscopic–it will move according to Newtonian mechanics. (shrink)

The paper explains why the de Broglie–Bohm theory reduces to Newtonian mechanics in the macroscopic classical limit. The quantum-to-classical transition is based on three steps: (i) interaction with the environment produces effectively factorized states, leading to the formation of _effective wave functions_ and hence _decoherence_; (ii) the effective wave functions selected by the environment—the pointer states of decoherence theory—will be well-localized wave packets, typically Gaussian states; (iii) the quantum potential of a Gaussian state becomes negligible under standard classicality conditions; therefore, (...) the effective wave function will move according to Newtonian mechanics in the correct classical limit. As a result, a Bohmian system in interaction with the environment will be described by an effective Gaussian state and—when the system is macroscopic—it will move according to Newtonian mechanics. (shrink)

The aim of this virtual special issue is to bring together philosophical and historical perspectives to address long-standing issues in the interpretation, utility, and impacts of quantitative genetics methods and findings. Methodological approaches and the underlying scientific understanding of genetics and heredity have transformed since the field's inception. These advances have brought with them new philosophical issues regarding the interpretation and understanding of quantitative genetic results. The contributions in this issue demonstrate that there is still work to be done integrating (...) old and new methodological and conceptual frameworks. In some cases, new results are interpreted using assumptions based on old concepts and methodologies that need to be explicitly recognised and updated. In other cases, new philosophical tools can be employed to synthesise historical quantitative genetics work with modern methodologies and findings. This introductory article surveys three general themes that have dominated philosophical discussion of quantitative genetics throughout history: (1) how methodologies have changed and transformed our knowledge and interpretations; (2) whether or not quantitative genetics can offer explanations relating to causation and prediction; and (3) the importance of defining the phenotypes under study. We situate the contributions in this virtual special issue within a historical framework addressing these three themes. (shrink)

What is knowledge? What should knowledge be like? Call an epistemological project that sets out to answer the first question ‘descriptive’ and a project that sets out to answer the second question ‘normative’. If the answers to these two questions don’t coincide—if what knowledge should be like differs from what knowledge is like—there is room for a third project we call ‘revisionary’. A revisionary project starts by arguing that what knowledge should be differs from what knowledge is. It then proposes (...) that we revise our account of knowledge accordingly. Our aim in this paper was to develop a methodology for revisionary projects in epistemology. Put roughly, the thought is that we start by looking at the various things that we expect knowledge to do for us. Once we have a list of the various things we expect knowledge to do for us we have a ‘job description’; a list of tasks we need done, and that we expect knowledge to perform. With the job description in hand, we can ask what knowledge would hav.. (shrink)

In this paper, we will survey the different uses of the term algorithm in contemporary legal practice. We will argue that the concept of algorithm currently exhibits a substantial degree of open texture, co-determined by the open texture of the concept of algorithm itself and by the open texture inherent to legal discourse. We will substantiate our argument by virtue of a case study, in which we analyze a recent jurisprudential case where the first and second-degree judges have carved-out contrasting (...) notions of algorithm. We will see that, thanks to our analysis of the open texture of the notion of algorithm in legal language, we can make sense of the different decisions taken by the judges as different contextually-determined sharpenings of the concept of algorithm. Finally, we will draw some general conclusions concerning the use of technical terms in legal instruments that address new technologies, such as the EU AI Act. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.2 (2000) 113-126 [Access article in PDF] Dissenting Words:A Conversation with Jacques Rancière 1 Davide Panagia:In your writings you highlight the political efficacy of words. In The Names of History, for instance, this emphasis is discussed most vividly in terms of what you refer to as an "excess of words" that marks the rise of democratic movements in the seventeenth century. Similarly, in On The Shores of (...) Politics, you begin your discussion with an excursus on the end of politics as the end of the promise. Finally, in Dis-agreement you speak of "the part of those who have no-part" as voicing a "wrong" for the sake of equality.In each of these instances, however, your treatment of words (and language more generally) is very different from those thinkers of the "linguistic turn" in political philosophy who expound on an ethics of deliberation as the first virtue of modern democracies. For that matter, your approach is quite different from those thinkers who focus on the aporias of language as such.Could you discuss this thematic of the proliferation of words in your thinking about democratic politics?Would it be fair to characterize your research on and exposition of democratic thinking as a "poetics of politics"?Rancière's Reply:In order to address your question adequately, it would be wise to enlarge the sense of "linguistic turn" you invoke. In its most generally accepted sense, the linguistic turn in philosophy consists in ascribing to linguistic processes certain phenomena and specifiable modes of relating objects attributed, in a previous instance, either to factual processes or lines of thought. This approach is not limited to the two figures you invoke in your question. The linguistic turn also has two stages of development that, from my experience, have been more noticeable in France than in the United States. The first phase, then, emerged with Lévi-Strauss and his structural approach to social relations founded on a linguistic model of relationality, subsequently reprised in Lacan's psychoanalytic notion that "the unconscious is structured like a language" that, in its turn, conjoins the energetic mental processes Freud discusses to linguistic practices. The primacy of "the linguistic" thus granted language all the properties of the Freudian unconscious [End Page 113] along with those of a Marxist notion of infrastructure. The Saussurian opposition between langue and parole provided a privileged status to a linguistic model whose role was that of a general law that unconsciously structures the behavior of individuals and societies. It is on the basis of these parameters that the structuralist moment of the linguistic turn was constituted. At one and the same time, the analysis of speech acts became first and foremost a "symptomatic" analysis of those procedures of misrecognition that linguistically structured both the behavior of individuals and social relations. When we "read" Le Capital with Althusser, the interpretive and methodological schema for linguistic phenomena operated like a kind of "policing of the enunciated": that is, a search for those unsuccessful (i.e., inadequate) modes of expression that exemplify such symptomatic procedures of misrecognition.The second phase of the linguistic turn constituted itself more ambiguously. For those who shared intellectual experiences similar to my own, this version involved a critique of the langue/infrastructure model; that is, a further and more favorable consideration of the value of the political and the linguistic games therein that, according to the Althusserian/Marxist model (and, indeed, with structuralism more generally), were to be treated as ideological artifacts. In a very real sense, it all began with the May '68 assertion that "we are all German Jews"--an entirely ideological statement, the validity of which, if analyzed at the level of its content, one finds to rest entirely on the capacity to overturn the political relationship between the order of designations and that of events by emphasizing the gap that separates subject and predicate. From there, an entire field of understanding speech acts as political gestures opened up: a field that reconfigured the division between words and things while rearranging the distinction between legitimate... (shrink)

This paper is devoted to the investigation of term-definable connexive implications in substructural logics with exchange and, on the semantical perspective, in sub-varieties of commutative residuated lattices (FL ${}_{\scriptsize\mbox{e}}$ -algebras). In particular, we inquire into sufficient and necessary conditions under which generalizations of the connexive implication-like operation defined in [6] for Heyting algebras still satisfy connexive theses. It will turn out that, in most cases, connexive principles are equivalent to the equational Glivenko property with respect to Boolean algebras. Furthermore, we (...) provide some philosophical upshots like, e.g., a discussion on the relevance of the above operation in relationship with G. Polya’s logic of plausible inference, and some characterization results on weak and strong connexivity. (shrink)

During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, practitioners had to make tragic decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources in the ICU. The Italian debate has paid a lot of attention to identifying the specific regulatory criteria for the allocation of resources in the ICU; in this paper, however, we argue that deciding such criteria is not enough for the implementation of fair and transparent allocative decisions. In this respect, we discuss three ethical issues: (a) in the (...) Italian context, the treating physician, rather than a separate committee, was generally the one responsible for the allocation decision; (b) although many allocative guidelines have supported moral equivalence between withholding and withdrawing treatments, some health professionals have continued to consider it a morally problematic aspect; and (c) the health workers who have had to make the aforementioned decisions or even only worked in ICU during the pandemic often experienced moral distress. We conclude by arguing that, even if these problems are not directly related to the above-mentioned issues of distributive justice, they can nevertheless directly affect the quality and ethics of the implementation of allocative criteria, regardless of those chosen. (shrink)

I introduce and defend a view about knowledge that I call Moderate Skeptical Invariantism. According to this view, a subject knows p only if she is practically certain that p, where practical certainty is defined as the confidence a rational subject would have to have for her to believe that p and act on p no matter the stakes. I do not provide a definitive case for this view, but I argue that it has several explanatory advantages over alternative views (...) and I show how it can avoid two pressing problems commonly addressed to similar approaches. (shrink)

Linguistic data are commonly considered a defeasible source of evidence from which it is legitimate to draw philosophical hypotheses and conclusions. Traditionally epistemologists have relied almost exclusively on linguistic data from western languages, with a primary focus on contemporary English. However, in the last two decades there has been an increasing interest in cross-linguistic studies in epistemology. In this entry, we provide a brief overview of cross-linguistic data discussed by contemporary epistemologists and the philosophical debates they have generated.

In _The Poetics of Political Thinking_ Davide Panagia focuses on the role that aesthetic sensibilities play in theorists’ evaluations of political arguments. Examining works by thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to Jacques Rancière, Panagia shows how each one invokes aesthetic concepts and devices, such as metaphor, mimesis, imagination, beauty, and the sublime. He argues that it is important to recognize and acknowledge these poetic forms of representation because they provide evaluative standards that theorists use in appraising the value of ideas—ideas (...) about justice, politics, and democratic life. An investigation into the intertwined histories of aesthetic and political accounts of representation—such as Panagia presents here—sheds light on how modes of poetic thinking delimit the questions of unity and diversity that continue to animate contemporary political theory. Panagia not only illuminates the structure of much contemporary political theory but also shows why understanding the poetics of political thinking is vital to contemporary society. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s critique of negation and his privileging of paradox as the source of political thought, Panagia suggests that a non-teleological concept of difference might generate insight into pressing questions about foreignness and citizenship. Turning to the liberal/poststructural debate that dominates contemporary political theory, he compares John Rawls’s concept of justice to Rancière’s ideas about political disagreement in order to demonstrate how, despite their differences, both thinkers comprehend aesthetic and moral reasoning as part and parcel of political writing. Considering the writings of William Hazlitt and Jürgen Habermas, he describes how the essay has become the exemplary genre of what is considered rational political argument. _The Poetics of Political Thinking_ is a compelling reappraisal of the role of representation within political thought. (shrink)

Aim of the present paper is to provide a formal characterization of various different notions of responsibility within groups of agents (Who did that? Who gets the blame? Who is accountable for that? etc.). To pursue this aim, the papers proposes an organic analysis of organized collective agency by tackling the issues of organizational structure, role enactment, organizational activities, task-division and task-allocation. The result consists in a semantic framework based on dynamic logic in which all these concepts can be represented (...) and in which various notions of responsibility find a formalization. The background motivation of the work consists in those responsibility-related issues which are of particular interest for the theory and development of multi-agent systems. (shrink)

In this paper we show that axiomatic extensions of H. Wansing’s connexive logic $$\textsf{C}$$ ( $$\textsf{C}^{\perp }$$ ) are algebraizable (in the sense of J.W. Blok and D. Pigozzi) with respect to sub-varieties of $$\textsf{C}$$ ( $$\textsf{C}^{\perp }$$ )-algebras. We develop the structure theory of $$\textsf{C}$$ ( $$\textsf{C}^{\perp }$$ )-algebras, and we prove their representability in terms of twist-like constructions over implicative lattices (Heyting algebras). As a consequence, we further clarify the relationship between the aforementioned classes. Finally, taking advantage of (...) the above machinery, we provide some preliminary remarks on the lattice of axiomatic extensions of $$\textsf{C}$$ ( $$\textsf{C}^{\perp }$$ ) as well as on some properties of their equivalent algebraic semantics. (shrink)

This paper aims to perform a multi-level analysis of the Irish public discourse on Covid-19. Despite widespread agreement that Ireland’s response was rapid and effective, the country’s journey through the pandemic has been no easy ride. In order to contain the virus, the Government’s emergency legislation imposed draconian measures including the detention and isolation of people deemed to be even “a potential source of infection” and a significant extension of An Garda Síochána’s power of arrest. In April 2020, journalists John (...) Waters and Gemma O’Doherty initiated judicial review proceedings before the High Court to challenge such legislation, which they defined as unconstitutional, “disproportionate” and based on “fraudulent science”. The proceedings attracted widespread media coverage in what soon became a debate on the legitimacy of emergency legislation and the notion of ‘fake news’ itself. After a brief survey of the legislative background to Ireland’s Covid response, the argumentative strategy is analysed through which the High Court eventually dismissed Mr Waters and Ms O’Doherty’s challenge. Focusing on the process of justification of the judicial decision, the paper provides a descriptive account of the argument structure of the Court’s decision. This sheds light on the pattern of multiple argumentation through which the Court interpreted relevant norms in the Constitution and at once re-established the primacy of “facts” informing political decision-making at a time of national emergency. (shrink)

The volume offers the first large-scale study of the teaching of Descartes' philosophy in the early modern age. Its twenty chapters explore the clash between Descartes' "new" philosophy and the established pedagogical practices and institutional concerns, as well as the various strategies employed by Descartes' supporters in order to communicate his ideas to their students. The volume considers a vast array of topics, sources, and institutions, across the borders of countries and confessions, both within and without the university setting (public (...) conferences, private tutorials, distance learning by letter) and enables us thereby to reconsider from a fresh perspective the history of early modern philosophy and education. (shrink)

The volume offers the first large-scale study of the teaching of Descartes' philosophy in the early modern age. Its twenty chapters explore the clash between Descartes' "new" philosophy and the established pedagogical practices and institutional concerns, as well as the various strategies employed by Descartes' supporters in order to communicate his ideas to their students. The volume considers a vast array of topics, sources, and institutions, across the borders of countries and confessions, both within and without the university setting (public (...) conferences, private tutorials, distance learning by letter) and enables us thereby to reconsider from a fresh perspective the history of early modern philosophy and education. (shrink)

This article studies sixteenth-century discussions on the origin of the soul and reappraises a confessional divide that scholarship has identified within these discussions. Historians have claimed that while Catholic and Calvinist authors defended the idea that individual human souls were created by God ex nihilo (creationism), Lutherans argued that human souls were propagated through the seed of the parents, ex traduce (traducianism). This study demonstrates that, while several Lutherans did defend traducianism, this opinion was not required by their faith, and (...) the very fathers of the Lutheran faith, Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, refused to express any dogmatic conclusions on the topic. This article shows, then, both that sixteenth-century Lutherans held a number of different opinions on the origin of the soul and how traducianism became linked to – and sometimes part of – Lutheranism through polemical exchanges. (shrink)

This paper challenges the common assumption that some phenotypic traits are quantitative while others are qualitative. The distinction between these two kinds of traits is widely influential in biological and biomedical research as well as in scientific education and communication. This is probably due to both historical and epistemological reasons. However, the quantitative/qualitative distinction involves a variety of simplifications on the genetic causes of phenotypic variability and on the development of complex traits. Here, I examine three cases from the life (...) sciences that show inconsistencies in the distinction: Mendelian traits, Mendelian diseases, and polygenic mental disorders. I show that these traits can be framed both quantitatively and qualitatively depending, for instance, on the methods through which they are investigated and on specific epistemic purposes. This suggests that the received view of quantitative and qualitative traits has a limited heuristic power—limited to some local contexts or to the specific methodologies adopted. Throughout the paper, I provide directions for framing phenotypes beyond the quantitative/qualitative distinction. I conclude by pointing at the necessity of developing a principled characterisation of what phenotypic traits, in general, are. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify some conceptual aspects of decoherence that seem largely overlooked in the recent literature. In particular, I want to stress that decoherence theory, in the standard framework, is rather silent with respect to the description of (sub)systems and associated dynamics. Also, the selection of position basis for classical objects is more problematic than usually thought: while, on the one hand, decoherence offers a pragmatic-oriented solution to this problem, on the other hand, this can hardly be seen (...) as a genuine ontological explanation of why the classical world is position-based. This is not to say that decoherence is not useful to the foundations of quantum mechanics; on the contrary, it is a formidable weapon, as it accounts for a realistic description of quantum systems. That powerful description, however, becomes manifest when decoherence theory itself is interpreted in a realist framework of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

In this paper, we aim at rethinking the concept of obesity in a way that better captures the connection between underlying medical aspects, on the one hand, and an individual’s developmental history, on the other. Our proposal rests on the idea that obesity is not to be understood as a phenotypic trait or character; rather, obesity represents one of the many possible states of a more complex phenotypic trait that we call ‘energy metabolism.’ We argue that this apparently simple conceptual (...) shift can help solve important theoretical misconceptions regarding the genetics, epigenetics, and development of obesity. In addition, we show that our proposal can be fruitfully paired with the concept of developmental channeling of a trait, which connects to the study of the plasticity and canalization of complex traits. Finally, we discuss the potential impact of our approach on the assessment, treatment, and social narratives of obesity. (shrink)

Inspired by some logical considerations, the paper proposes a novel perspective on the use of two-players zero-sum games in abstract argumentation. The paper first introduces a second-order modal logic, within which all main Dung-style semantics are shown to be formalizable, and then studies the model checking game of this logic. The model checking game is then used to provide a systematic game theoretic proof procedure to test membership with respect to all those semantics formalizable in the logic. The paper discusses (...) this idea in detail and illustrates it by providing a game for the so-called skeptical preferred and skeptical semi-stable semantics. (shrink)

The model of human intelligence that is most widely adopted derives from psychometrics and behavioral genetics. This standard approach conceives intelligence as a general cognitive ability that is genetically highly heritable and describable using quantitative traits analysis. The paper analyzes intelligence within the debate on natural kinds and contends that the general intelligence conceptualization does not carve psychological nature at its joints. Moreover, I argue that this model assumes an essentialist perspective. As an alternative, I consider an HPC theory of (...) intelligence and evaluate how it deals with essentialism and with intuitions coming from cognitive science. Finally, I highlight some concerns about the HPC model as well, and conclude by suggesting that it is unnecessary to treat intelligence as a kind in any sense. (shrink)

Research in pharmacogenomics and precision medicine has recently introduced the concept of Polygenic Scores (PGSs), namely, indexes that aggregate the effects that many genetic variants are predicted to have on individual disease risk. The popularity of PGSs is increasing rapidly, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to the idealisations they make about phenotypic development. Indeed, PGSs rely on quantitative genetics models and methods, which involve considerable theoretical assumptions that have been questioned on various grounds. This comes with epistemological and (...) ethical concerns about the use of PGSs in clinical decision-making. In this paper, I investigate to what extent idealisations in genetics models can impact the data gathering and clinical interpretation of genomics findings, particularly the calculation and predictive accuracy of PGSs. Although idealisations are considered ineliminable components of scientific models, they may be legitimate or not depending on the epistemic aims of a model. I thus analyse how various idealisations have been introduced in classical models and progressively readapted throughout the history of genetic theorising. Notably, this process involved important changes in the epistemic purpose of such idealisations, which raises the question of whether they are legitimate in the context of contemporary genomics. (shrink)

Heterogeneous treatment effects represent a major issue for medicine as they undermine reliable inference and clinical decision-making. To overcome the issue, the current vision of precision and personalized medicine acknowledges the need to control individual variability in response to treatment. In this paper, we argue that gene-treatment-environment interactions (G × T × E) undermine inferences about individual treatment effects from the results of both genomics-based methodologies—such as genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and genome-wide interaction studies (GWIS)—and randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Then, (...) we argue that N-of-1 trials can be a solution to overcome difficulties in handling individual variability in treatment response. Although this type of trial has been suggested as a promising strategy to assess individual treatment effects, it nonetheless has limitations that limit its use in everyday clinical practice. We analyze the existing variability within the designs of N-of-1 trials in terms of a continuum where each design prioritizes epistemic and pragmatic considerations. We then support wider use of the designs located at the pragmatic end of the explanatory-pragmatic continuum. (shrink)

Health Recommender Systems are promising Articial-Intelligence-based tools endowing healthy lifestyles and therapy adherence in healthcare and medicine. Among the most supported areas, it is worth mentioning active aging. However, current HRS supporting AA raise ethical challenges that still need to be properly formalized and explored. This study proposes to rethink HRS for AA through an autonomy-based ethical analysis. In particular, a brief overview of the HRS’ technical aspects allows us to shed light on the ethical risks and challenges they might (...) raise on individuals’ well-being as they age. Moreover, the study proposes a categorization, understanding, and possible preventive/mitigation actions for the elicited risks and challenges through rethinking the AI ethics core principle of autonomy. Finally, elaborating on autonomy-related ethical theories, the paper proposes an autonomy-based ethical framework and how it can foster the development of autonomy-enabling HRS for AA. (shrink)

The paper investigates what type of motivation can be given for adopting a knowledge-based decision theory. KBDT seems to have several advantages over competing theories of rationality. It is commonly argued that this theory would naturally fit with the intuitive idea that being rational is doing what we take to be best given what we know, an idea often supported by appeal to ordinary folk appraisals. Moreover, KBDT seems to strike a perfect balance between the problematic extremes of subjectivist and (...) objectivist decision theory. We argue that these alleged advantages do not stand up to a closer scrutiny: KBDT inherits the same kinds of problems as alternative decision theoretic frameworks but doesn’t retain any of the respective advantages. Moreover, differently from other knowledge-action principles advanced in the literature, KBDT cannot fully explain the intuitive connections between knowledge and rational action. We conclude that the most serious challenge for knowledge-based decision theorists is to provide a substantive rationale for the adoption of such a view. (shrink)

El artículo analiza la herencia viquiana en el pensamiento moderno, en particular en el pensamiento moderno italiano. A partir de una periodización de esta herencia, según la cual el XIX es el siglo del Vico filósofo de la historia, el XX corresponde al Vico filósofo del lenguaje y el XXI pone en relieve al pensador del cuerpo y se reconoce en el “universale fantastico” (universal fantástico) el legado más relevante del pensamiento viquiano. Este legado actúa críticamente dentro del pensamiento de (...) autores como Agamben, Deleuze y Esposito e influye también en escritores como Pasolini. (shrink)