Con "Fede e critica", saggio inedito del 1955-1956, Guido Morselli volle innanzitutto spiegare a se stesso, ragionando con quella lucidità ben nota ai lettori dei suoi romanzi, un passaggio decisivo della sua vita, in cui si sentì ricondotto, dalla sua posizione di «uomo qualsiasi... senza alcuna particolarità pia o edificante» a quella di uomo religioso. Piuttosto che darci ancora una volta «il racconto, drammatico o più spesso patetico, di una conversione», illuminato perciò da un punto d’arrivo, Morselli ha voluto (...) offrirci la sua vicenda «nella successione degli aspetti che le cose hanno mostrato via via che si presentavano». Perciò, al sorprendente manifestarsi di una ‘fede’ si accompagna qui a ogni passo la lama affilata della ‘critica’, una dura critica che vuole continuamente mettere «con le spalle al muro» le giustificazioni teologiche – innanzitutto per quanto riguarda il rapporto fra Dio e il male – e insieme mettere alla prova quell’ignoto personaggio che, all’interno del soggetto, dichiara appunto di credere. Nulla di apologetico, conciliativo o acquietante si troverà dunque in questo libro, che rivela l’altra parte, saggistica e speculativa, del narratore Morselli, ma una mobilissima e pulsante «fisiologia della vita religiosa», in forma di resoconto scritto da uno spirito disincantato sulla scoperta del mistero. Tutti i più grandi temi ed enigmi della religione cristiana vengono toccati in questo percorso: dalla carità al "Libro di Giobbe", dall’esistenza del male alla preghiera, dalla Trinità al peccato originale. E su tutti questi punti il ‘dilettante’ Morselli parla con rigoroso acume ‘critico’, ma soprattutto con una straordinaria capacità di rendere concreto ciò che ciascuno di quei grandi temi veniva a rappresentare, come d’improvviso, nella sua esperienza personale. Così egli ci offre un saggio che è anche un prezioso frammento di autobiografia e vuole consapevolmente «confermare la sentenza di Nietzsche: essere la nostra filosofia nient’altro che il compendio delle nostre memorie». E anche delle memorie future: sicché non saremo meravigliati quando, alla fine di un capitolo, troveremo alcune parole che poi sarebbero comparse, in forma quasi uguale, nel romanzo Roma senza papa: «E in ogni caso, non dimentichiamolo: Dio non è teologo. Dio non è prete». (shrink)

L’articolo si propone di chiarire uno dei punti oscuri della biografia di Giordano Bruno. Nel 1571 il Capitolo generale dei Domenicani di Roma lo assegnò come studente formale allo Studio di Andria. Secondo i suoi più importanti biografi, il Nolano non ci sarebbe mai andato. Attraverso l’accurata analisi dei documenti relativi al corso di studi, e il riscontro delle citazioni contenute in alcune opere, l’ipotesi che Bruno abbia soggiornato ad Andria per circa un anno appare, invece, estremamente probabile. The (...) article tries to clarify one of the obscure points of Giordano Bruno’s biography. In 1571 the General Chapter of the Dominicans in Rome assigned him, as a formal student, to the Study of Andria. According to his most important biographers, the Nolan never went there. However, through the careful analysis of the documents relating to his course of studies, and the comparison of the quotations contained in some of his works, the hypothesis that Bruno stayed in Andria for about a year appears extremely probable. (shrink)

According to virtue epistemology, the main aim of education is the development of the cognitive character of students (Pritchard, 2014, 2016). Given the proliferation of technological tools such as ChatGPT and other LLMs for solving cognitive tasks, how should educational practices incorporate the use of such tools without undermining the cognitive character of students? Pritchard (2014, 2016) argues that it is possible to properly solve this ‘technology-education tension’ (TET) by combining the virtue epistemology framework with the theory of extended cognition (...) (EXT) (Clark and Chalmers, 1998). He argues that EXT enables us to consider tools as constitutive parts of the students’ cognitive system, thus preserving their cognitive character from technologically induced cognitive diminishment. The first aim of this paper is to show that this solution is not sufficient to solve the TET. Second, I aim to offer a complementary and more encompassing framework of tool-use to address the TET. Then, I apply it to the educational uses of ChatGPT as the most notable example of LLM, although my arguments can be extended to other generative AI systems. To do so, in Sect. 1.1, I present Pritchard’s framework of cognitive character and virtue epistemology applied in education, to which I am committed in this treatment. In Sects. 2 and 3, I respectively illustrate Pritchard’s (2014) solution to the TET, and I highlight the general limitations of his proposal. Thus, in Sect. 4.1 I characterize ChatGPT as a computational cognitive artifact using Fasoli’s (2017, 2018) taxonomy of cognitive artifacts. In Sect. 4.2, I introduce my proposal, which combines Pritchard’s account of virtue epistemology with Fasoli’s (2017, 2018) taxonomy of cognitive artifacts to address the TET. Finally, in Sect. 5.1, I present some epistemically virtuous uses of ChatGPT in educational contexts. To conclude, I argue in favor of a multidisciplinary approach for analyzing educational activities involving AI technologies such as ChatGPT. (shrink)

Il saggio propone alcune osservazioni a margine delle tre lezioni tenute dal giudice federale statunitense Guido Calabresi a Macerata nel 2012. Le lezioni riguardano l'organizzazione delle corti di giustizia federale negli Stati Uniti, la forma e il ruolo delle sentenze giudiziarie all'interno di un sistema federale e il rapporto che intrattiene con la pena di morte un giudice a essa decisamente contrario. Secondo Melis queste lezioni restituiscono in maniera straordinariamente viva e precisa la struttura del sistema giudiziario e, al (...) tempo stesso, l'esperienza soggettiva di un giudice. (shrink)

Guido Adlers Studie über den Stil in der Musik bietet einen tiefgehenden Einblick in die musikalischen Strömungen vom Mittelalter bis zur Renaissance. Für alle, die ein tiefes Verständnis der Entwicklung von Europas Musikgeschichte gewinnen möchten. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, (...) you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In epistemology, the concept of knowledge is of distinctive interest. This fact is also reflected in the discussion of epistemic value, which focuses to a large extend on the value problem of knowledge. This discussion suggests that knowledge has an outstanding value among epistemic standings because its value exceeds the value of its constitutive parts. I will argue that the value of knowledge is not outstanding by presenting epistemic standings of checking, transferring knowledge, and proving in court, whose values exceed (...) the value of knowledge in certain contexts. Moreover, the values of these other epistemic standings do not always rely on the value of knowledge. In terms of value, knowledge is not an outstanding epistemic concept. Hence, in terms of value we cannot find support for the privileged position that knowledge enjoys in epistemology. (shrink)

Hassin recently proposed the “Yes It Can” (YIC) principle to describe the division of labor between conscious and unconscious processes in human cognition. According to this principle, unconscious processes can carry out every fundamental high-level cognitive function that conscious processes can perform. In our commentary, we argue that the author presents an overly idealized review of the literature in support of the YIC principle. Furthermore, we point out that the dissimilar trends observed in social and cognitive psychology, with respect to (...) published evidence of strong unconscious effects, can better be explained by the way how awareness is defined and measured in both research fields. Finally, we show that the experimental paradigm chosen by Hassin to rule out remaining objections against the YIC principle is unsuited to verify the new default notion that all high-level cognitive functions can unfold unconsciously. (shrink)

Modern society is challenged by a loss of efficiency in national governance systems values, and lifestyles. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourse builds upon a conception of organizational legitimacy that does not appropriately reflect these changes. The problems arise from the a-political role of the corporation in the concepts of cognitive and pragmatic legitimacy, which are based on compliance to national law and on relatively homogeneous and stable societal expectations on the one hand and widely accepted rhetoric assuming that all members (...) of society benefit from capitalist production on the other. We therefore propose a fundamental shift to moral legitimacy, from an output and power oriented approach to an input related and discursive concept of legitimacy. This shift creates a new basis of legitimacy and involves organizations in processes of active justification vis-à-vis society rather than simply responding to the demands of powerful groups. We consider this a step towards the politicization of the corporation and attempt to re-embed the debate on corporate legitimacy into its broader context of political theory, while reflecting the recent turn from a liberal to a deliberative concept of democracy. (shrink)

The 1927 Solvay conference was perhaps the most important meeting in the history of quantum theory. Contrary to popular belief, the interpretation of quantum theory was not settled at this conference, and no consensus was reached. Instead, a range of sharply conflicting views were presented and extensively discussed, including de Broglie's pilot-wave theory, Born and Heisenberg's quantum mechanics, and Schrödinger's wave mechanics. Today, there is no longer an established or dominant interpretation of quantum theory, so it is important to re-evaluate (...) the historical sources and keep the interpretation debate open. This book contains a complete translation of the original proceedings, with background essays on the three main interpretations of quantum theory presented at the conference, and an extensive analysis of the lectures and discussions in the light of current research in the foundations of quantum theory. The proceedings contain much unexpected material, including extensive discussions of de Broglie's pilot-wave theory (which de Broglie presented for a many-body system), and a theory of 'quantum mechanics' apparently lacking in wave function collapse or fundamental time evolution. This book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in physics and in the history and philosophy of quantum theory. (shrink)

New technologies have the potential to severely “challenge” or “disrupt” not only our established social practices but our most fundamental concepts and distinctions like person versus object, nature versus artificial or being dead versus being alive. But does this disruption also change these concepts? Or does it merely change our operationalizations and applications of the same concepts? In this paper, I argue that instead of focusing on individual conceptual change, philosophers of socially disruptive technologies (SDTs) should think about conceptual change (...) as a change in a network of interrelated concepts. What really generates a potential social disruption are changes of inferential relations between concepts – whether or not this entails a change of the respective individual concepts. Philosophers of socially disruptive technologies are therefore in the privileged position of being able to avoid commitments regarding the individuation of individual concepts. -/- . (shrink)

The goal of this paper was to investigate whether and how a firm that engages in different kinds of corporate social performance can create a favorable corporate reputation among its stakeholders, and as a result achieve a good financial performance. Building on stakeholder theory, we distinguish two types of reputation—reputation among public stakeholders and reputation among financial stakeholders. We argue that CSP activities affect these two reputations differently. In addition, we empirically test the relationship among different types of CSP, reputation (...) among public and financial stakeholders, and financial performance. Our results suggest that Carroll’s four types of CSP affect financial performance differently, and their effects are mediated by reputation among public and financial stakeholders. Our findings provide guidelines for managers on choosing to emphasize certain CSP aspects in their communication, depending on the specific stakeholder group they are targeting. (shrink)

Polysemy has only recently entered the debate on semantic minimalism and contextualism. This is surprising considering that the key linguistic examples discussed in the debate, such as ‘John cut the grass’ or ‘The leaf is green’ appear to be prime examples of polysemy. Moreover, François Recanati recently argued that the mere existence of polysemy falsi!es semantic minimalism and supports radical contextualism. The aim of this paper is to discuss how the minimalism-contextualism debate relates to polysemy. This connection turns out to (...) be far from clear-cut. This is partly due to the fact that the term ‘polysemy’ is used in a number of different ways in the literature, which will be reviewed in this paper. Finally, I discuss and reject Recanati’s claim that the existence of polysemy supports radical contextualism against moderate versions and semantic minimalism. I show that minimalism has a number of plausible options to account for polysemy. (shrink)

Due to the fact that advertising is produced, distributed, and received together with other elements of mass media, it stands to reason to include advertising in the media system – as did Niklas Luhmann. Given that most advertising is for commercial purposes, however, one might as well model advertising as a subsystem of the economica system – as did Siegfried J. Schmidt. Most advertising is indeed commercial, yet advertising is not necessarily limited to commercial purposes. Advertising neither follows the guiding (...) values of the media system nor those of the economic system exclusively. Therefore, advertising can reasonably be regarded as an autonomous social system – as did Guido Zurstiege. To emphasize the fact that, as a service provider, advertising has to account for different system logics, it can also be considered a zone in which the guiding principles of different systems are brought down to a common denominator – Gabiel Siegert and Dieter Brecheis have explicated this approach. Against the background of these four different systems theoretical approaches to advertising research this paper focuses on the power struggles and conflicts inherent in the advertising process. (shrink)

Studies link involuntary outpatient commitment with improved patient outcomes, fueling debate on its ethical justification. This study compares inpatient utilization for committed outpatients in the 1990s with those who were not under outpatient civil commitment orders. Findings reveal committed outpatients had higher utilization of inpatient services and restraint episodes prior to their commitment compared with a control group. Committed outpatients also were more likely to have been on discharge status at the time of admission, have been admitted involuntarily under emergency (...) legal procedures, and have had a greater number of admissions and hospital days prior to their commitment. Following commitment, patients had fewer hospitalizations, shorter lengths of stay, fewer seclusion episodes and hours, and fewer restraint episodes and hours. Findings are discussed within the context of parens patriae and therapeutic jurisprudence, and support medical and public policy justifications for ethical uses of outpatient civil commitment laws for seriously mentally ill patients. (shrink)

What makes trust such a powerful concept? Is it merely that in trust the whole range of social forces that we know play together? Or is it that trust involves a peculiar element beyond those we can account for? While trust is an attractive and evocative concept that has gained increasing popularity across the social sciences, it remains elusive, its many facets and applications obscuring a clear overall vision of its essence. In this book, Guido Möllering reviews a broad (...) range of trust research and extracts three main perspectives adopted in the literature for understanding trust. Accordingly, trust is presented as a matter of reason, routine or reflexivity. While all these perspectives contribute something to our understanding of trust, Möllering shows that they imply, but cannot explain, ‘suspension’ – the leap of faith that is typical of trust. He therefore proposes a new direction in trust research that builds on existing perspectives but places the suspension of uncertainty and vulnerability at the heart of the concept of trust. Beyond a purely theoretical line of argument, the author discusses implications for empirical studies of trust and presents original case material that captures the experience of trust in terms of reason, routine, reflexivity and suspension. Möllering concludes by suggesting how the new approach can enhance the relevance of trust research and its contributions to broader research agendas concerning the constitution of positive expectations in the face of prevalent uncertainty and change at various levels in our economies and societies. The book is essential reading for anyone who wants to gain a thorough understanding of trust. It can serve as a general introduction for advanced students and scholars in the social sciences, especially in economics, sociology, psychology and management. For more experienced researchers, it is a challenging and provocative critique of the field and a new approach to understanding trust. (shrink)

This paper provides a thorough analysis of two often informally stated claims. First, successful argumentation in the sense of persuasive argumentation requires agreement between the interlocutors about the rationality of arguments. Second, a general agreement about rationality of arguments cannot itself be established via argumentation, since such an attempt leads to an infinite meta‐regress. Hence, agreement about the rationality of arguments is a precondition for successful argumentation. As the paper argues, these plausible claims hold under the assumption that interlocutors are (...) subjectively rational and follow their own standards of rationality when engaging in argumentation. (shrink)

Many models of (un)ethical decision making assume that people decide rationally and are in principle able to evaluate their decisions from a moral point of view. However, people might behave unethically without being aware of it. They are ethically blind. Adopting a sensemaking approach, we argue that ethical blindness results from a complex interplay between individual sensemaking activities and context factors.