Since the middle of the last century, normative language has been much studied. In particular, the normative function performed by certain sentences and by certain speech acts has been investigated in depth. Still, the normative function performed by certain physical artifacts designed and built to regulate human behaviors has not yet been thoroughly investigated. We propose to call this specific type of artifacts with normative intent ‘deontic artifacts’. This article aims to investigate this normative phenomenon that is so widespread in (...) our daily reality, but so often forgotten by scholars of norms and normativity. (shrink)

A widespread opinion holds that norms and codes of conduct as such can only be established via words, that is, in some lexical form. This perspective can be criticized: some norms produced by human acts are not word-based at all. For example, many norms are actually conveyed through graphics (e. g. road signs and land-use maps), sounds (e. g. the referee’s whistle), a silent gesture (the traffic warden’s signal to halt). In this article, we will focus on the norms that (...) are created by means of drawings and can be termed “drawn norms” or “graphical norms.” Specifically, we will inquire into the phenomenon of graphical norms with particular regard to traffic signs and land-use plans, and we will discuss the philosophical and legal problems to which these phenomena give rise. (shrink)

This volume sheds new light on Immanuel Kant’s conception of anthropology. Neither a careful and widespread search of the sources nor a merely theoretical speculation about Kant’s critical path can fully reveal the necessarily wider horizon of his anthropology. This only comes to light by overcoming all traditional schemes within Kantian studies, and consequently reconsidering the traditional divisions within Kant’s thought. The goal of this book is to highlight an alternative, yet complementary path followed by Kantian anthropology with regard to (...) transcendental philosophy. The present volume intends to develop this path in order to demonstrate how irreducible it is in what concerns some crucial claims of Kant’s philosophy, such as the critical defense of the unity of reason, the search for a new method in metaphysics and the moral outcome of Kant’s thought. (shrink)

Credentials play an important role in all modern societies, but the analysis of their nature and function has thus far been neglected by social philosophers. We present a view according to which the function of credentials is certify the identity and the institutional status (including the rights) of individuals. More importantly, credentials enable rights-holders to exercise their rights, so that for a particular right to be exercisable the right-holder should possess, carry and sometimes show to an authority (or QR code (...) scanner) a document of a specific kind. Driving licenses, identity cards, passports, boarding passes, library passes, credit cards, ATM cards, health insurance cards are all examples of credentials in this sense. Credentials have in every case a bearer, and the bearer should be able to carry them easily on his or her person. Credentials should also be inspectable – not least because credentials can be forged. The authors analyse several historical and contemporary examples of credentials, focusing on the credentials carried by the pilgrims of the Way of Saint James. (shrink)

In Speech Acts, John Searle argues that institutional facts presuppose, for their existence, the existence of certain institutions (understood as systems of constitutive rules). In this paper I extend Searle’s theory of institutional facts arguing that a further level is needed for the investigation of the structure of institutional reality: the level of meta-institutional concepts. The meta-institutional concepts are concepts that go beyond (Greek: metá) the institutions of which they are conditions of possibility. An example of meta-institutional concept is the (...) concept of game. In a culture which does not have the concept of game, we could move the chess-men according to the rules of chess, we could also perform a castling, but it would be impossible to play chess. (shrink)

Riprendendo quanto George Edward Moore scrive a proposito del concetto di “bene” (“good”), Hans Kelsen sostiene che il concetto di “dovere” (“Sollen”) sia un concetto semplice, un concetto ultimo, e in quanto tale né definibile, né analizzabile. Questa tesi di Kelsen sembra essere smentita dalle ricerche che sono state condotte parallelamente da Georg Henrik von Wright e Amedeo Giovanni Conte a partire dagli anni '80 del XX secolo. Von Wright e Conte hanno, infatti, distinto dal concetto di “dovere deontico” (“deontic (...) Ought”), il dovere par excellence, altre specie di dovere che essi considerano categorialmente irriducibili al concetto di dovere deontico come il “dovere tecnico” (“technical Ought”) e il “dovere anankastico”. È proprio all'indagine di queste due specie di dovere adeontico che è dedicato il libro Anankastico in deontica. (shrink)

Generally, when thinking of artifacts, one imagines “technical artifacts”. Technical artifacts are those artifacts that perform a mere causal function. Their purpose is to instrumentally help and support an action, not to change behaviour. However, technical artifacts do not exhaust the set of artifacts. Alongside technical artifacts there are also artifacts that we can call “cognitive artifacts”. Cognitive artifacts are all those artifacts that operate upon information in order to improve human cognitive performances. Artifacts of a further, different kind are (...) what we may call “regulatory artifacts”; that is, material artifacts devised and made to regulate behaviour. Consider a roundabout, a traffic light or a speed bump. These artifacts do not make us stronger, faster, or more intelligent. They are placed on the road surface to regulate traffic. This article investigates artifacts of this third kind and, especially, the functions that they perform. (shrink)

Siamo ormai lontani dalla stagione in cui la forza propulsiva della “svolta linguistica” si impose come tendenza dominante nel dibattito filosofico. Da varie angolazioni si è potuto parlare negli ultimi anni di pictorial turn come antidoto all’egemonia del paradigma linguistico in filosofia. Il volume Verità, Immagine, Normatività. Truth, Image, and Normativity non si inserisce direttamente in questa nuova tendenza, ma ruota comunque intorno a questioni che derivano dal medesimo sfondo. I 24 saggi qui raccolti tengono conto dei diversi ruoli che (...) le immagini possono svolgere, a seconda che si focalizzi la loro dimensione descrittiva o normativa, e indagano alcuni aspetti del rapporto tra immagine e linguaggio. Questi problemi di filosofia dell’immagine, intesa sia come immagine cognitiva sia come immagine grafica, costituiscono il fil rouge di questo volume. Una tale riflessione sui linguaggi figurati e sulla comunicazione visiva non-linguistica costringe a riformulare in termini nuovi le grandi domande concernenti le tradizionali nozioni di verità, oggettività, normatività, consenso e persuasione. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, Volume 45, Issue 4, Page 512-527, October 2022.

The present paper aims to provide an overview on Kant’s dealing with the main theories of causality which were proposed and discussed in his time. The goal is to show that, since the pre-critical period, he has never simply accepted the theories of causality that he could find in second-scholastic sources, but has always tried to develop an original position. Starting from a general acceptance of the theory of the “physical influx”, Kant tries to amend this theory, as it had (...) been roughly provided by Knutzen and Crusius. This emendation is carried out through elements coming from the Leibnitian tradition. But neither in this field Kant totally embraces the Wolffian, as well as the Baumgartenian model. The paper tries also to shed light on the way in which the critical conception of space allows Kant to fulfill his original theory of causality as an amended version of the physical influx. (shrink)

In continuity with the first volume of the series, edited by Corey W. Dyck and Falk Wunderlich, whose focus was on "Logic, Mind, Epistemology, Science and Ethics," this collection of essays carries on an impressive project in the history of thought and ideas that, due to its breadth and depth of analysis, can be compared to Dieter Henrich's monumental Konstellationen. Probleme und Debatten am Ursprung der idealistischen Philosophie. Yet, while the latter's program aimed at tracing the personal and intellectual relations (...) between the various figures of German idealism, here the goal is to bring out of the shadows the German panorama of the second half of the eighteenth... (shrink)

En el presente ensayo, el autor, partiendo del libro de John R. Searle The Construction of Social Reality, estudia la ontología social del último Searle poniendo en evidencia las novedades respecto a la teoría de los hechos institucionales formulada por el propio Searle en los años sesenta. Es así novedosa la cuestión que se plantea sobre la fundación de la realidad institucional: ¿Cómo pueden existir objetos institucionales en un mundo que se compone totalmente de partículas físicas en campos de fuerza? (...) Es novedosa también la delimitación trazada por Searle entre dos de los rasgos de las entidades institucionales: la socialidad y la simbolicidad. Es novedosa la definición que da Searle de las "reglas constitutivas", no como reglas que constituyen el objeto del cual son regla, sino como reglas que adscriben funciones. Y es finalmente novedosa la postura de Searle sobre el nexo entre los performativos y los estados de cosas institucionales, y en concreto la consideración de los estados de cosas producidos por performativos como estados de cosas institucionales. El ensayo termina con una crítica a la tesis de Searle sobre la exhaustividad del paradigma bruto vs. institucional. (shrink)

El autor investiga el papel desarrollado por las reglas constitutivas en la construcción de la realidad social. En particular, niega que, por ejemplo, las reglas constitutivas del ajedrez sean condición suficiente de la práctica llamada juego del ajedrez. Para crear una nueva práctica, se necesita también la existencia de la gramática de esa práctica, o sea el sentido mismo de la práctica (por ejemplo: el sentido de juego). Es la gramática de una práctica (y no las reglas constitutivas) la que (...) determina la naturaleza de la práctica misma. El sentido de una práctica no puede ser creado por las reglas constitutivas. (shrink)

In the last decades, scholars have aptly pointed out the limits of J.N. Tetens’ contribution to the rise of Kant’s critical theory of knowledge. Less attention has been paid to the possibility of recognizing a further, possibly more consistent, contribution by Tetens to Kant’s thought, namely, to the development of Kant’s anthropology. The present paper aims to test some possible research lines in this direction. After an overview on the observational method shared by Tetens’ gnoseological framework and Kant’s anthropological approach, (...) we will more specifically dwell on some topics that seem to allow a continuity-claim between Tetens’ psychological analysis of the human cognitive faculties and Kant’s anthropological project. The main issues at stake in this investigation are the faculty of empirical productive imagination, the figure of the genius, and the relationship between language and Denkungsart. (shrink)

Scholars are prone to emphasize A.G. Baumgarten’s foundation of aesthetics as a discipline in its own right and Kant’s use of Baumgarten’s Metaphysica as a handbook for his lectures on metaphysics. Nonetheless there are some further and deeper reasons for Baumgarten to mark a division between the so called Leibnizian-Wolffian tradition and the Kantian transcendental revolution. The goal of this paper is to take into account these reasons and to analyze them in order to show that they are rooted in (...) psychology as it is treated in Baumgarten’s Metaphysica. The paper’s aim is to highlight Baumgarten’s methodological approach, that is, the use of Leibnizian doctrines, which are exposed through the Wolffian order. The radical originality of this procedure can be adequately assessed only by virtue of its Kantian development. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 2 Seiten: 356-361.

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 4 Seiten: 659-664.