This volume brings together a number of previously unpublished essays that will advance the reader's philosophical understanding of specific aspects of causation, agency and moral responsibility. These are deeply intertwined notions, and a large proportion of the volume is taken up by papers that shed light on their mutual connections or defend certain claims concerning them. The volume investigates several important questions, including: Can causation be perceived? If it can, can it be perceived in any way other than visually? Can (...) the interventionist theory developed by James Woodward offer an adequate account of causation? Is a causal relation a necessary condition for moral responsibility? Can there be a responsibility difference without a causal difference? Are causal ascriptions based on the more primitive language game of blame ascriptions? What can be learnt from the analogy between causal interference and unbreakable processes, on one side, and motivational interferences and "unbreakable" resolutions, on the other side? How can humans be routinely considered responsible for non-deliberated omissions? Should the connection between moral responsibility and the epistemic conditions usually required for moral responsibility to be obtained be weakened? What is the connection between awareness of one's doing and intentional action? These essays constitute a valid contribution towards the discovery of reasonable answers to such deep questions as the metaphysics of causal relations, the epistemology of causal explanations, the interventionist theory of causation, and the relationship among causality and moral responsibility, willpower, agency and intentional action. (shrink)

Although philosophers have been concerned with truth since at least the age of Plato, the last thirty years have witnessed a veritable explosion of the philosophical debate on this topic. The touchpaper which lit the fuse for this was undoubtedly the Deflationist Renaissance (half a century after the seminal work of F.P. Ramsey) due, in the Seventies, both to the Quinean disquotational interpretation of the Tarskian truth definitions and to the development of the prosentential theory of truth by D. Grover, (...) J. Kamp and N. Belnap, and, from the second half of the Eighties onwards, to the forceful defences of deflationary conceptions provided by H. Field and P. Horwich. The philosophical struggle on deflationism has been thought-provoking: by arguing on the merits and shortcomings of such a conception, philosophers have come to broaden and deepen the discussion on truth beyond the boundaries of deflationism. The varieties of problems tackled by the essays in this book highlight how the land of Truth is still far from having been totally explored, and how, in this intellectual endeavour, real progresses can be achieved. (shrink)

This paper tackles some of the arguments Steve Fuller – arguably the best advocate of post-truth currently on the scene – put forward to show that, correctly understood, post-truth is the best conceptual tool to get a clear picture not only of what is happening in our societies today, but also of what has happened throughout the secular history of Western culture. The implicit assumption is that post-truth represents a reliable ‘epistemological compass’ – that is, a notion (or a set (...) of notions) for proper orientation in both cultural and physical environments. The aim of the paper is to show that Fuller’s arguments do not work, because an epistemological compass can only be centered on a plausible notion of objectivity, and – it will be contended – this is exactly what Fuller lacks. Accordingly, it will be stressed how the upshot of his theses is the opposite of what he presumes it to be and, moreover, that his theses prove lethal to his own position. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to Richard Rorty’s thought, with the aim of exploiting a certain contention of his and directing it, as it were, against Rorty himself. Here is the contention: he thinks that – when it comes to metaphysical questions such as realism and anti-realism – the only kind of argument a pragmatist has at her disposal is rhetorical. Following the lines of the well-known wager Blaise Pascal laid on the belief in the existence of God, I will try (...) to show that the realist can avail herself of a rhetorical argument in favor of her view which is more convincing than any rhetorical argument of a Rortyan kind, while abiding by the Rortyan maxim according to which ‘What has no bearing on our practice, shouldn’t have a bearing on philosophy’. This will allow me to challenge Rorty standing on his home ground. (shrink)

In introducing the present issue, we make clear that the concept of the other is susceptible to so multifarious declinations that it actually forms a conceptual galaxy. It is precisely this galaxy that the ten essays in the issue aim to shed light on. We then account for the basic ideas of each essay, and we stress the remarkable fact that they help to clarify how the concept of the other represents a useful means to undermine the purported divide between (...) continental and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Two convictions underlie the following article. The first is that Hilary Putnam has been one of the greatest thinkers of our time, a philosopher who was able to propose groundbreaking ideas in virtually every area of philosophy. As the reader will see, the topics he tackled in his writings included questions of philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics and logic, philosophy of mind, metaethics, the fact-value dichotomy, the interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later thought, the question of relativism, the (...) analysis of rationality, the analysis of religious experience, the character of Jewish philosophy, the interpretation of pragmatism, the elucidation of the concept of truth, the question of realism, the relationship between mind and the world. The second is that the changes some of his positions underwent, far from being a point of weakness—as some critics have sometimes felt compelled to claim—reveal the freshness and genuineness of Putnam’s way of philosophising and at the same time the essence of philosophical discussion itself. (shrink)

As the subtitle reveals, this is a book devoted to one of the most distinguished philosophers of our time, Robert Brandom, a thinker whose importance for the debate on topics such as meaning, truth, rationality, objectivity, agreement, holism, compositionality – to name just a few of them – is hardly deniable. Thousands among articles and books have been dedicated in the last two decades to the evaluation of Brandom’s thought, but still considerably few are the works in the Italian panorama (...) d... (shrink)

After stressing how the attempt to provide a plausible account of the connection between language and the world was one of Putnam’s constant preoccupations, this article describes the four stages his thinking about the concepts of truth and reality went through. Particular attention is paid to the kinds of problems that made him abandon each stage to enter the next. The analysis highlights how all the stages but one express a general non-epistemic stance towards truth and reality—the right stance, according (...) to Putnam, in order to develop full-blooded realism. Since the last stage combines a version of direct realism with a pluralist conception of truth, the article proceeds by focusing on Putnam’s alethic pluralism, carefully distinguishing it from alethic deflationism. Finally a suggestion is made as to where Putnam’s alethic pluralism may be placed within the constellation of current pluralist positions about truth. (shrink)

The paper starts by highlighting that virtually nobody would object to claims such as “to regard an assertion or a belief or a thought as true or false is to regard it as being right or wrong”—a claim that shows that truth is intrinsically normative. It is well known that alethic deflationists deny this. Paul Horwich, for instance, maintains that nothing shows that TRUTH is a normative concept in the way that OUGHT is. By relying on a distinction among dimensions (...) of normativity I will try to pinpoint the weakness of Horwich’s argument in the fact that he works with a strong, uncalled-for, interpretation of normativity, whereas a weaker interpretation is more than enough. However, the impression might persist that a different understanding of the normativity of truth on the part of deflationists could eventually show the compatibility between alethic deflationism and normativity. The remaining part of the paper is devoted to contend that this is a wrong impression. Accordingly, it is stated that the normativity exerted by truth is ascribable in the final analysis to the world, and the provocative claim is defended that alethic deflationism lacks the conceptual resources to account for the relation between language and the world. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam's Philosophical Naturalism: Making Philosophy Matter for Life offers a faithful illustration of the trajectory of Putnam's thought to show how, despite the shifts in opinion on issues of central philosophical importance, his thought reveals a systematic backbone and strong continuities.

Riassunto: In una prospettiva naturalistica, lo studio della religione presenta subito un punto problematico: se essa è così diffusa, tanto da apparire un tratto inscritto nella natura umana, ciò significa che la religione comporta dei vantaggi adattivi o, quantomeno, significa che essa non comporta svantaggi tali da ostacolare la sopravvivenza di chi la pratica. Nel primo caso, si tratta di individuare la possibile funzione della religione, ovvero una qualche utilità che ne giustificherebbe il suo permanere nella storia umana. Alla luce (...) di un modello antropologico che vede l’identità soggettiva segnata da una fragilità ontologica, in questo articolo offriremo una particolare versione della tesi che assegna alla religione, quale byproduct, una funzione positiva, ipotizzando quella che potrebbe essere una sua utilità nella difesa dell’unità dell’autocoscienza. Sarà dunque sulla religione quale insieme di tecniche difensive del self che concentreremo la nostra indagine. Parole chiave : Ernesto De Martino; Naturalismo darwiniano; Meccanismi di difesa; Identità soggettiva; Religione Religion as a Defensive Technique for Subjective Identity: From a naturalistic perspective, the study of religion immediately leads to a problematic point: if religion is so widespread, to the extent that it seems to be a trait inscribed in human nature, then it should have adaptive advantages or, at the very least, it should not have disadvantages that would stand in the way of the survival of those who practice religion. In the former case, we need to understand the function of religion, viz. a utility it confers that may justify its persistence across human history. Against the backdrop of an anthropological model that considers subjectivity identity to be characterized by ontological fragility, this article will offer a special version of the claim that religion, viewed as a byproduct, has a positive function: we will make the hypothesis that it contributes to the defense of the unity of self-consciousness. Thus our focus will be on religion construed as a repertoire of strategies designed to protect the self. Keywords: Ernesto De Martino; Darwinian Naturalism; Defense Mechanisms; Subjective Identity; Religion. (shrink)

The recent book 'Putnam' by Massimo Dell’Utri concerns the philosophical and argumentative journey of Hilary Putnam, that led him to explore the implications of Quine’s views about analyticity and the many ways in which realism can be understood in epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, its main entailments for the philosophy of mind, and more recently about issues concerning ethics, meta-ethics, and value-theory. The present critical review briefly recollects the reading presented in the book, and then highlights some (...) of the implications of this reconstruction, especially those concerning a key passage in the evolution of Putnam’s thought: Putnam’s abandonment of internal realism and the endorsement of natural realism. (shrink)

SAGGI DI VITTORIO MARCHIS, UMBERTO BOTTAZZINI, FABIO TOSCANO, MASSIMO NEGROTTI, GIUSEPPE O. LONGO, STEFANO A. E. LEONI, ALBERTO CASADEI, SILVANO TAGLIAGAMBE.

Massimo Dell'Utri (1990) provides a reconstruction of Hilary Putnam's argument (1981, chapter 1) to show that the hypothesis that we are brains in a vat is self-refuting. I will explain why the argument Dell'Utri offers us is, on the face of it, quite problematic. Then I will provide a way out of the difficulty.

Philosophers of science have given up on the quest for a silver bullet to put an end to all pseudoscience, as such a neat formal criterion to separate good science from its contenders has proven elusive. In the literature on critical thinking and in some philosophical quarters, however, this search for silver bullets lives on in the taxonomies of fallacies. The attractive idea is to have a handy list of abstract definitions or argumentation schemes, on the basis of which one (...) can identify bad or invalid types of reasoning, abstracting away from the specific content and dialectical context. Such shortcuts for debunking arguments are tempting, but alas, the promise is hardly if ever fulfilled. Different strands of research on the pragmatics of argumentation, probabilistic reasoning and ecological rationality have shown that almost every known type of fallacy is a close neighbor to sound inferences or acceptable moves in a debate. Nonetheless, the kernel idea of a fallacy as an erroneous type of argument is still retained by most authors. We outline a destructive dilemma we refer to as the Fallacy Fork: on the one hand, if fallacies are construed as demonstrably invalid form of reasoning, then they have very limited applicability in real life. On the other hand, if our definitions of fallacies are sophisticated enough to capture real-life complexities, they can no longer be held up as an effective tool for discriminating good and bad forms of reasoning. As we bring our schematic “fallacies” in touch with reality, we seem to lose grip on normative questions. Even approaches that do not rely on argumentation schemes to identify fallacies fail to escape the Fallacy Fork, and run up against their own version of it. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Massimo Dell’Utri proposes the idea of an ‘epistemological compass’, which he alleges provides a common intuitive sense of objectivity, the existence of which defenders of ‘post-truth’ positions would perversely try to deny. I argue that Dell’Utri’s choice of a compass – metaphorical or otherwise – is unfortunate because it is a device that presupposes that what appears plain to the senses is directed by hidden forces emanating from distant sources, such as the stars. More generally, the post-truth condition (...) is not about the denial of facts as ordinarily understood. Rather, it is about the denial of a privileged context in terms of which the significance of the facts should be understood. In Dell’Utri’s terms, it implies a plurality of epistemological compasses, which in turn undermines the effectiveness of the metaphor. I have described this situation as a struggle over ‘the name of the game’. In terms of philosophical logic, it is about which metalanguage provides the semantics for expressions in the object language the people try to deploy to their advantage. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe discursive analysis of criminal organizations’ family dynamics and ideological devices may provide important insights into the inner functioning of these groups. In this article, we describe and analyze a specific set of discursive strategies and the thematic narratives emerging from a TV interview with Giuseppe Riina, a member of Cosa Nostra and the son of one of the most important mafia bosses. Our analyses demonstrate the existence of recurring ideological devices such as reductionism, amoralism, familism, verticalism, normalism, victimism and (...) religious relativism. The results are discussed in light of previous research that examines how discursive strategies and narratives may represent powerful tools for understanding criminal organizations. Family-related discourses, in particular, reveal meanings, values and ideas that contribute to constructing criminal organizations’ internal structure, as well as their relationship with the external world. (shrink)

We establish a simple condition, based on the willingness to bet on events, under which two biseparable preferences have cardinally equivalent utilities.

We find a short way to construct a formula which axiomatizes a given finite frame of the modal logicK, in the sense that for each finite frameA, we construct a formula A which holds in those and only those frames in which every formula true inA holds.To obtain this result we find, for each finite model and each natural numbern, a formula which holds in those and only those models in which every formula true in , and involving the firstn (...) propositional letters, holds. (shrink)

The recent publication of the books La razionalità, by Paolo Labinaz, and I modi della razionalità, edited by Massimo Dell’Utri and Antonio Rainone, offers the opportunity to provide an overview of some important discussions on rationality. In particular, I highlight how the modern and Cartesian ideal of this notion is undergoing a transformation that is enhanced by results coming from empirical studies in the field of cognitive science. These transformations are visible in many ambits concerning rationality: this discussion privileges (...) the traditional ones, i.e., logical, theoretical, and practical rationality. (shrink)

A collection of essays dedicated to Pier Luigi Lecis' retirement. Contributors include: Mariano Bianca, Silvana Borutti, Vinicio Busacchi, Massimo Dell'Utri, Rosaria Egidi, Roberta Lanfredini, Giuseppe Lorini, Diego Marconi, Francesco Orilia, Paolo Parrini, Alberto Peruzzi, Simonluca Pinna, Pietro Salis, Paolo Spinicci.

Purpose This study aims to explore whether face recognition technology – as it is intensely used by state and local police departments and law enforcement agencies – is racism free or, on the contrary, is affected by racial biases and/or racist prejudices, thus reinforcing overall racial discrimination. Design/methodology/approach The study investigates the causal pathways through which face recognition technology may reinforce the racial disproportion in enforcement; it also inquires whether it further discriminates black people by making them experience more racial (...) discrimination and self-identify more decisively as black – two conditions that are shown to be harmful in various respects. Findings This study shows that face recognition technology, as it is produced, implemented and used in Western societies, reinforces existing racial disparities in stop, investigation, arrest and incarceration rates because of racist prejudices and even contributes to strengthen the unhealthy effects of racism on historically disadvantaged racial groups, like black people. Practical implications The findings hope to make law enforcement agencies and software companies aware that they must take adequate action against the racially discriminative effects of the use of face recognition technology. Social implications This study highlights that no implementation of an allegedly racism-free biometric technology is safe from the risk of racially discriminating, simply because each implementation leans against our society, which is affected by racism in many persisting ways. Originality/value While the ethical survey of biometric technologies is traditionally framed in the discourse of universal rights, this study explores an issue that has not been deeply scrutinized so far, that is, how face recognition technology differently affects distinct racial groups and how it contributes to racial discrimination. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on the question of whether nanotechnology is giving rise to new ethical problems rather than merely to new instances of old ethical problems. Firstly, I demonstrate how important it is to make a general distinction between new ethical problems and new instances of old problems. Secondly, I propose one possible way of interpreting the distinction and offer a definition of a “new ethical problem”. Thirdly, I examine whether there is good reason to claim that nanotechnology (...) is giving or will give rise to new ethical problems. My conclusion is that there are no new ethical problems in nanotechnology but merely new occurrences of certain well-known types of ethical problems. Fourthly, I consider three arguments by van de Poel (NanoEthics 2:25–28, 2008) which contradict my conclusion. I argue that my negative conclusion is consistent with the claim that certain ethical issues arising in nanotechnology may require new normative standards or new analytical tools. I conclude that it is likely that a number of ethical issues arising in nanotechnology will have a considerable impact on our ethical theories and values – and that ethical reflection on nanotechnology will be one of the mother lodes of future ethical research – in spite of the fact that no ethical problem in nanoethics will actually be “new”. (shrink)

The practice of joint fantasizing concerns interacting participants’ collective construction of imaginary realities with internal consistency and coherence. Based on a corpus of conversations held by an informal Italian prayer community of elderly Catholic women, this contribution aims to show that joint fantasizing is not necessarily a humorous activity and is embedded in the participants’ social and personal background. The analysis also indicates that through joint fantasizing the participants conceptualize themselves as victims and idealized opponents of the unfair present and (...) past societies. Framing joint fantasizing as a cross-contextual activity of social criticism allows us to understand that the participants use this interactional practice as an activity endowed with moral suffering and responsibility. This rhetorical seriousness contrasts with other studies in which joint fantasies are generally connected with playful, jocular and laughable practices. (shrink)

This paper explores the Persistence Question about cities, that is, what is necessary and sufficient for two cities existing at different times to be numerically identical. We first show that we can possibly put an end to the existence of a city in a number of ways other than by physically destroying it, which reveals the metaphysics of cities to be partly different from that of ordinary objects. Then we focus in particular on the commonly perceived vulnerability of cities to (...) imaginary relocation; and we make the hypothesis that cities do have among their essential properties that of being surrounded by a specific geographical context. Finally we investigate the pos- sibility that a city can survive relocation in virtue of the capacity of its geographical context to survive it in the first place. We suggest that city contexts may not be essentially context-dependent in turn, and outline a possible description of the cri- teria for their persistence over time. (shrink)