Notes on Medieval Landscape. Sculptural Cycles of Months in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Tuscany - Starting from the cycle of Months depicted on twelfth- and thirteenth-century Tuscan monuments, this paper seeks to discern whether and, if so, how medieval representations inform later generations about actual rural terrain and agrarian practices during the Middle Ages. Combining visual and written medieval sources (notably, the writings of Hugh of St Victor, ca 1096-1141) with studies of historical agricultural production reveals how iconographic choices were informed (...) by both theological conceptualizations and first-hand experience of the physical environment. (shrink)

This paper investigates Hegel’s account of the animal organism as it is presented in the Philosophy of Nature, with a special focus on its normative implications. I argue that the notion of “organisation” is fundamental to Hegel’s theory of animal normativity. The paper starts by showing how a Hegelian approach takes up the scientific image of organism and assigns a basic explanatory role to the notion of “organisation” in its understanding living beings. Moving from this premise, the paper turns to (...) the group of accounts in contemporary theoretical biology known as “organisational accounts”, which offer a widely debated strategy for naturalizing teleology and normativity in organisms. As recent scholarship recognizes, these accounts explicitly rely on insights from Kant and Post-Kantianism. I make the historical and conceptual argument that Hegel’s view of the organism shares several basic commitments with OAs, especially regarding the notion of “organisational closure”. I assess the account of normativity that such accounts advance and its implications for how we approach Hegel. Finally, I argue that the notion of “organisation” is more fundamental to Hegel’s theory of animal normativity than the Aristotelian notion of “Gattung” or “species”, which by contrast appears derivative – at least in the Philosophy of Nature and the Lectures – and does not play the central role in his account maintained by some scholars. (shrink)

We discuss a well-known puzzle about the lexicalization of logical operators in natural language, in particular connectives and quantifiers. Of the many logically possible operators, only few appear in the lexicon of natural languages: the connectives in English, for example, are conjunction _and_, disjunction _or_, and negated disjunction _nor_; the lexical quantifiers are _all, some_ and _no_. The logically possible nand (negated conjunction) and Nall (negated universal) are not expressed by lexical entries in English, nor in any natural language. Moreover, (...) the lexicalized operators are all upward or downward monotone, an observation known as the Monotonicity Universal. We propose a logical explanation of lexical gaps and of the Monotonicity Universal, based on the dynamic behaviour of connectives and quantifiers. We define update potentials for logical operators as procedures to modify the context, under the assumption that an update by \( \phi \) depends on the logical form of \( \phi \) and on the speech act performed: assertion or rejection. We conjecture that the adequacy of update potentials determines the limits of lexicalizability for logical operators in natural language. Finally, we show that on this framework the Monotonicity Universal follows from the logical properties of the updates that correspond to each operator. (shrink)

The concept system around 'quantity' and 'quantity value' is fundamental for measurement science, but some very basic issues are still open on such concepts and their relation. This paper argues that quantity values are in fact individual quantities, and that a complementarity exists between measurands and quantity values. This proposal is grounded on the analysis of three basic 'equality' relations: (i) between quantities, (ii) between quantity values and (iii) between quantities and quantity values. A consistent characterization of such concepts is (...) obtained, which is then generalized to 'property' and 'property value'. This analysis also throws some light on the elusive concept of magnitude. (shrink)

This paper develops a new theory of the morality of promissory obligations. T. M. Scanlon notoriously argued that promising consists in assuring the promisee that we will do something. I disagree. I argue that it is true that promising consists in assuring the promisee, but what the promisor gives to the promisee is not an assurance that they will do something, but that the normative situation is in a certain way.

Constitutivism argues that the source of the categorical force of the norms of rationality and morality lies in the constitutive features of agency. A systematic failure to be guided by these norms would amount to a loss or lack of agency. Since we cannot but be agents, we cannot but be unconditionally guided by these norms. The constitutivist strategy has been challenged by David Enoch. He argues that our participation in agency is optional and thus cannot be a source of (...) categorical demands. In this paper, I defend the viability of constitutivism by showing that agency is indeed a special ‘inescapable’ enterprise. Agency has the largest jurisdiction, and it is closed under rational assessment. This inescapability does not exempt constitutivism from raising the question whether agents have reason to be agents, but this question has to be taken up within agency. If this question is answered affirmatively, then—I argue—the criteria of practical correctness are self-ratifying in a non-circular way. This is sufficient to show the viability of the constitutivist strategy. Whether agents have conclusive reasons to be agents, however, is a matter to be addressed in the terms of particular versions of constitutivism. (shrink)

Transmission of justification across inference is a valuable and indeed ubiquitous epistemic phenomenon in everyday life and science. It is thanks to the phenomenon of epistemic transmission that inferential reasoning is a means for substantiating predictions of future events and, more generally, for expanding the sphere of our justified beliefs or reinforcing the justification of beliefs that we already entertain. However, transmission of justification is not without exceptions. As a few epistemologists have come to realise, more or less trivial forms (...) of circularity can prevent justification from transmitting from p to q even if one has justification for p and one is aware of the inferential link from p to q. In interesting cases this happens because one can acquire justification for p only if one has independent justification for q. In this case the justification for q cannot depend on the justification for p and the inferential link from p to q, as genuine transmission would require. The phenomenon of transmission failure seems to shed light on philosophical puzzles, such as Moore's proof of a material world and McKinsey's paradox, and it plays a central role in various philosophical debates. For this reason it is being granted continued and increasing attention. (shrink)

Both evolutionary and developmental research indicate that humans are adapted to respecting property rights, independently (and possibly orthogonally) of considerations of fairness. We offer evidence from psychological experiments suggesting that enforcing one's rights and respecting others' possessions are basic cognitive mechanisms automatically activated and grounded in humans' sensory-motor system. This may entail an independent motivation that is more profound than considerations of fairness and impartiality.

Deflationists about truth hold that the function of the truth predicate is to enable us to make certain assertions we could not otherwise make. Pragmatists claim that the utility of negation lies in its role in registering incompatibility. The pragmatist insight about negation has been successfully incorporated into bilateral theories of content, which take the meaning of negation to be inferentially explained in terms of the speech act of rejection. We implement the deflationist insight in a bilateral theory by taking (...) the meaning of the truth predicate to be explained by its inferential relation to assertion. We combine this account of the meaning of the truth predicate with a new diagnosis of the Liar Paradox: its derivation requires the truth rules to preserve evidence, but these rules only preserve commitment. The result is a novel inferential deflationist theory of truth, which solves the Liar Paradox in a principled manner. We end by showing that our theory and simple extensions thereof have the resources to axiomatize the internal logic of several supervaluational hierarchies, including Cantini’s. This solves open problems of Halbach (2011) and Horsten (2011). (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 10, October 2022.

According to some currents of modern historiography, Galilei's propensity for circular motion would have led him to consider this and not rectilinear motion as “natural motion”; therefore the principle of inertia could not be fully attributed to Galileo, which he would never have formulated. The question of the authorship of the principle of inertia certainly weighs on both nationalistic elements and returns of antigaleleism, while the question of its not explicit formulation as a principle is due to ignorance of the (...) type of organization that Galileo intended to give to the exposition of his physics. The author, after having hinted at possible prodromes of the principle of inertia and having reported the adverse opinions of illustrious historians of science (A. Koyré, I. B. Cohen, P. M. Duhem, P. Rossi, G. Holton), through a careful analysis of the Galilean writings, conducted on the digital versions with the help of text analysis programs, firmly reaffirms Galileo's authorship of the principle of inertia and the consequent principle of classical relativity. (shrink)

The crucial problem in the philosophy of psychiatry is to determine under which conditions certain behaviors, mental states, and personality traits should be regarded as symptoms of mental illnesses. Participants in the debate can be placed on a continuum of positions. On the one side of the continuum, there are naturalists who maintain that the concept of mental illness can be explained by relying on the conceptual apparatus of the natural sciences, such as biology and neuroscience. On the other side (...) of the continuum, there are normativists who maintain that the appropriate characterization of the concept of mental illness cannot avoid reference to epistemic, moral and other social values. Although, this article is primarily an introduction to the debate, we stress the importance of the normativist positions. (shrink)

La naturalisation de la phénoménologie et la nature des phénomènesLe projet de naturalisation de la phénoménologie est né comme une tentative d’intégrer réciproquement les neurosciences et la philosophie phénoménologique. Les principaux représentants de ce projet, Jean Petitot et Francisco Varela, ont étés inspirés par Merleau-Ponty en tant que référence philosophique permettant de développer de façon féconde ce point de vue. Cependant, les deux auteurs ne semblent pas assumer jusqu’au bout les enjeux réels posés par la réflexion philosophique de Merleau-Ponty qui, (...) si d’un côté permet certainement de concevoir la pensée et l’expérience en termesd’incorporation, d’autre part, développe une ontologie phénoménologique qui échappe à l’approche réductionniste commun à Varela et Petitot. Dans les deux cas, en effet, le présupposé ontologique est encore dérivé d’une compréhension de la nature comme domaine de la matière comprise en termes déterministes, modèle que l’ontologie phénoménologique de Merleau-Ponty permet au contraire de subvertir. Par conséquent, les fructueuses indications théoriques contenues dans le projet de naturalisation de la phénoménologie doivent néanmoins faire face à une compréhension adéquate de la signification de l’idée de naturalisation, qui soit effectivement phénoménologique en n’acceptant pas de façon acritique aucune option théorique quoique significative.La naturalizzazione della fenomenologia e la natura dei fenomeniIl progetto di naturalizzazione della fenomenologia nasce come tentativo di integrare reciprocamente le neuroscienze e la filosofia fenomenologica. Gli esponenti principali di questo progetto, Jean Petitot e Francisco Varela, si sono ispirati a Merleau-Ponty come a colui che ha consentito di sviluppare nel modo più fecondo tale prospettiva. Tuttavia entrambi gli autori sembrano non fare fino in fondo i conti con la riflessione di Merleau-Ponty, che se da una parte consente effettivamente di concepire il pensiero e l’esperienza in termini di incorporazione, d’altro canto sviluppa una ontologia fenomenologica che sfugge all’approccio riduzionistico comune a Varela e Petitot. In entrambi i casi infatti il presupposto ontologico è pur sempre ricavato da una comprensione della natura come dominio della materia intesa in senso deterministico, che l’ontologia fenomenologica della natura di Merleau-Ponty sovverte. Pertanto le pur feconde indicazioni teoriche contenute nel progetto di naturalizzazione della fenomenologia devono ancora fare i conti con una adeguata comprensione del significato dell’idea di naturalizzazione, che sia autenticamente fenomenologico nel non assumere in modo inavvertito alcuna opzione teorica per quanto significativa. (shrink)

The paper introduces and formally defines a functional concept of a measuring system, on this basis characterizing the measurement as an evaluation performed by means of a calibrated measuring system. The distinction between exact and uncertain measurement is formalized in terms of the properties of the traceability chain joining the measuring system to the primary standard. The consequence is drawn that uncertain measurements lose the property of relation-preservation, on which the very concept of measurement is founded according to the representational (...) viewpoint. Finally, from the analysis of the inter-relations between calibration and measurement the fundamental reasons of the claimed objectivity and intersubjectivity of measurement are highlighted, a valuable epistemological result to characterize measurement as a particular kind of evaluation. (shrink)

This article takes a clinical perspective on the phenomenon of addiction in order to open up wider questions of the posthuman. The author identifies two distinct drives, prosthesis and addiction itself. It is pointed out that both drives share a common distance from the mediation of language and address directly, without the support of fantasy, the real of the body. However, the two drives are distinct in that the prosthetic drive lends itself to social control whereas the addictive drive constitutes (...) a pathological limit to socialization. The final section of the article characterizes the various clinical responses to addiction as simultaneously political responses to the rise of the prosthetic drives in the context of late capitalism. (shrink)

The article has the aim to show that Kant’s “standard” conception of the highest good does not represent his last word about the problem. Kant moves from a conception of the highest good close connected with the metaphysical tradition and with the aim of a new, moral justification of traditional metahysical concepts such as God and immortality of the soul. This view does find many difficulties and oscillations in the Critiques, looking for different formulations of a moral “proof” for the (...) metaphysical concepts, grounded upon the need of justice and of a rational solution to the question of theodicy. The failure of this project is apparent with the essay on theodicy. In the last decade of Kant’s intellectual activity, the expression “highest good” occurs few times and the concept looses its systematic relevance, as shown by the last works up to the Opus postumum. (shrink)

Given the common assumption that measurement plays an important role in the foundation of science, the paper analyzes the possibility that Measurement Science, and therefore measurement itself, can be properly founded. The realist and the representational positions are analyzed at this regards: the conclusion, that such positions unavoidably lead to paradoxical situations, opens the discussion for a new epistemology of measurement, whose characteristics and interpretation are sketched here but are still largely matter of investigation.

The book addresses Merleau-Ponty's so-called ontology of the flesh, a rather obscure expression that the book explains in depth by drawing from Merleau-Ponty's lecture courses, published in the last years. In light of these publications, the book shows the importance and the novelty of Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy, which until recently has been seldom addressed in its entirety. Thanks to the knowledge of the whole range of Merleau-Ponty's now published body of work and of the as yet unpublished texts, as well (...) as a scholarship acquired through more than 20 years spent working on these themes, the author of the book is able to offer a groundbreaking interpretation of one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, whose philosophical relevance is now widely acknowledged both in Europe and the USA, and whose scholarship is fast growing, while at the same time still lacking an overall systematic assessment, which this book aims to provide. (shrink)

For Damascius, any attempt to grasp the first principle of all things, the Ineffable, implies the rejection of the principle of non-contradiction (PNC). The reasoning soul, using aporia, is forced to admit contradictory statements as true when it comes to cognising what lies beyond any intelligible being. Damascius shows that it is necessary to postulate a completely transcendent and unknowable Absolute which is the uncoordinated cause of all things beyond the One. This paper examines how Damascius relates the rejection of (...) the PNC and regressive arguments by distinguishing two types of reversal (peritropê) of arguments. This paper begins by analysing: i) Damascius’ first aporia, ii) his characterisation of the first principle as ineffable and iii) its unknowable nature. This leads to some comments about Damascius’ use of predicates and their negations. Finally, the paper distinguishes between regression and reversal to suggest that Damascius’ reversal of the predicates implies that the first principle lies beyond the PNC but does not involve an infinity of first principles. (shrink)

Language acquisition may be one of the most difficult tasks that children face during development. They have to segment words from fluent speech, figure out the meanings of these words, and discover the syntactic constraints for joining them together into meaningful sentences. Over the past couple of decades, computational modeling has emerged as a new paradigm for gaining insights into the mechanisms by which children may accomplish these feats. Unfortunately, many of these models assume a computational complexity and linguistic knowledge (...) likely to be beyond the abilities of developing young children. This article shows that, using simple statistical procedures, significant correlations exist between the beginnings and endings of a word and its lexical category in English, Dutch, French, and Japanese. Therefore, phonetic information can contribute to individuating higher level structural properties of these languages. This article also presents a simple 2‐layer connectionist model that, once trained with an initial small sample of words labeled for lexical category, can infer the lexical category of a large proportion of novel words using only word‐edge phonological information, namely the first and last phoneme of a word. The results suggest that simple procedures combined with phonetic information perceptually available to children provide solid scaffolding for emerging lexical categories in language development. (shrink)

Possessive DPs are “complex” in the sense that they involve two distinct nominal expressions as components.1 In this paper I address the issue of characterizing the nature of the syntactic relation holding between these two nominal expressions in possessives whose possessum is arguably not a syntactic argument-taking category. This amounts to providing an account of what licenses the insertion of the possessor in the derivation of possessive DPs and in accounting for any further steps in the syntactic derivation which lead (...) to the structure which undergoes Spell-Out. (shrink)

I suggest that a communicative context that has the potential to establish and maintain a shared advantage of behavioral lateralization should be identified in the domain of sexual selection, specifically in the interactions that individuals exploit to assess the fitness of potential mates.

This chapter discusses the structure of our temporally extended agency. We do not have the power to act directly at a distance, so any of our temporally extended projects must be sustained over its temporal unfolding by momentary actions. We need both the capacity to organize these momentary steps in light of a synoptic overview of the extended activity as a whole and to sustain our motivation to continue to pursue the extended activity. Hence, the distinctive mode in which we (...) act over time is that of ’planning agency,’ which requires a form of temporal identification that goes beyond mere psychological continuity. I then discuss the differences in internal structure between merely continuous and integrated activities, and between telic and atelic ones. I provide a taxonomy of the different kinds of temporal goods and values and how these structures might bear on the risk of crisis of meaning in our temporal existence. I then touch briefly on the issue of how our mortality might make a difference to the structure of what we find valuable and how it relates to the temporal features of our agency. In the closing section, I discuss the effects of the moving temporal location of the agent (with her local executive powers) relative to her extended pursuits, including the asymmetries generated by the distinction between past and future stages of the activity and the moving horizon of what the agent can anticipate and (indirectly) control. (shrink)

In this paper we focus on transmission and failure of transmission of warrant. We identify three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for transmission of warrant, and we show that their satisfaction grounds a number of interesting epistemic phenomena that have not been sufficiently appreciated in the literature. We then scrutinise Wright’s analysis of transmission failure and improve on extant readings of it. Nonetheless, we present a Bayesian counterexample that shows that Wright’s analysis is partially incoherent with our analysis of (...) warrant transmission and prima facie defective. We conclude exploring three alternative lines of reply: developing a more satisfactory account of transmission failure, which we outline; dismissing the Bayesian counterexample by rejecting some of its assumptions; reinterpreting Wright’s analysis to make it immune to the counterexample. (shrink)

One type of argument to sceptical paradox proceeds by making a case that a certain kind of metaphysically “heavyweight or “cornerstone” proposition is beyond all possible evidence and hence may not be known or justifiably believed. Crispin Wright has argued that we can concede that our acceptance of these propositions is evidentially risky and still remain rationally entitled to those of our ordinary knowledge claims that are seemingly threatened by that concession. A problem for Wright’s proposal is the so-called Leaching (...) worry: if we are merely rationally entitled to accept the cornerstones without evidence, how can we achieve evidence-based knowledge of the multitude of quotidian propositions that we think we know, which require the cornerstones to be true? This paper presents a rigorous, novel explication of this worry within a Bayesian framework, and offers the Entitlement theorist two distinct responses. (shrink)

As systems based on opaque Artificial Intelligence (AI) continue to flourish in diverse real-world applications, understanding these black box models has become paramount. In response, Explainable AI (XAI) has emerged as a field of research with practical and ethical benefits across various domains. This paper not only highlights the advancements in XAI and its application in real-world scenarios but also addresses the ongoing challenges within XAI, emphasizing the need for broader perspectives and collaborative efforts. We bring together experts from diverse (...) fields to identify open problems, striving to synchronize research agendas and accelerate XAI in practical applications. By fostering collaborative discussion and interdisciplinary cooperation, we aim to propel XAI forward, contributing to its continued success. Our goal is to put forward a comprehensive proposal for advancing XAI. To achieve this goal, we present a manifesto of 27 open problems categorized into nine categories. These challenges encapsulate the complexities and nuances of XAI and offer a road map for future research. For each problem, we provide promising research directions in the hope of harnessing the collective intelligence of interested stakeholders. (shrink)

Crispin Wright maintains that the architecture of perceptual justification is such that we can acquire justification for our perceptual beliefs only if we have antecedent justification for ruling out any sceptical alternative. Wright contends that this principle doesn’t elicit scepticism, for we are non-evidentially entitled to accept the negation of any sceptical alternative. Sebastiano Moruzzi has challenged Wright’s contention by arguing that since our non-evidential entitlements don’t remove the epistemic risk of our perceptual beliefs, they don’t actually enable us to (...) acquire justification for these beliefs. In this paper I show that Wright’s responses to Moruzzi are ineffective and that Moruzzi’s argument is validated by probabilistic reasoning. I also suggest that Wright cannot answer Moruzzi’s challenge without weakening the support available for his conception of the architecture of perceptual justification. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Hans Jonas has reflected on the notion of the human soul and on the concept of man being created in God’s image. A careful analysis of his writings reveals that (approximately) from 1968 he changed his perspective on these topics. Before this year, Jonas used some Gnostic myths to speak about the image of man in relation to God and was concerned that referring to the immortality of the human soul or to the notion of imago Dei (...) could lead to dualistic or pseudo-Gnostic interpretations of the natural world. From 1968 (when Jonas published an article for an American Jewish journal) he started to underline the importance of the Judeo-Christian notion of imago Dei (from the book of Genesis) for his ethical project. Subsequently, he used this concept (derived from the Bible rather than from Gnostic texts) in support of his ethical approach to show the special role that God assigned to humanity to act as a steward of His creation. This article presents the development of Jonas’s contributions on these issues over time, their importance in relation to his ethical project and how he was influenced in the development of his perspective on this subject. (shrink)

This paper offers an overview of the ways agents might extend over time and the characteristic structure of extended human agency. Agency can extend in two distinct but combinable modes: the ontological, which gives rise to simple continuous agents; and the conceptual, which gives rise to agents who conceive of and care about distal times, and have minimal planning abilities. Our extended form of agency combines both. But we are still limited by the temporal locality in the operation of our (...) psychological and executive powers. To account for this locality, I introduce the notion of 'temporal selves,' as the loci of immediacy in the agent's determination of their psychology, conduct, and practical standpoint. I argue that the passage of time generates, by itself, the threat of temporal alienation from distant temporal selves. A genuinely extended agency requires temporal identification: the sharing, by separate temporal selves, of a temporally extended and integrated practical standpoint. This temporal identification cannot be produced simply by temporal identity as continuity. What is required is temporal identity in the mode of unity and integration. This identity does not precede temporal identification but is co-constituted with it. I offer a preliminary account of the structure of the units of integration for agents who aspire to persist in the mode of unity and integration. I close with a cautionary note: the complex structure of integration, although familiar in everyday life, is often missed by standard philosophical accounts, which tend to focus on simple models of extended agency. (shrink)

The analysis of the structure of the I-thoughts is intertwined with several epistemic and metaphysical questions. The aim of this paper is to highlight that the absence of an identification component does not imply that the “I" doesn’t perform a referential function, nor that it necessarily involves a specific metaphysical thesis on the nature of the self-conscious subject. Particularly, as far as the Cartesian illusion concerning the thinking subject’s immaterial nature is concerned, Kant and Wittgenstein seem to share the same (...) philosophical concerns and focus on the same type of reference involved in the “I", obviously via different philosophical paths and antipodal metaphysical assumptions. (shrink)

Crispin Wright has given an explanation of how a first time warrant can fall short of transmitting across a known entailment. Formal epistemologists have struggled to turn Wright’s informal explanation into cogent Bayesian reasoning. In this paper, I analyse two Bayesian models of Wright’s account respectively proposed by Samir Okasha and Jake Chandler. I argue that both formalizations are unsatisfactory for different reasons, and I lay down a third Bayesian model that appears to me to capture the valid kernel of (...) Wright’s explanation. After this, I consider a recent development in Wright’s account of transmission failure. Wright suggests that his condition sufficient for transmission failure of first time warrant also suffices for transmission failure of supplementary warrant. I propose an interpretation of Wright’s suggestion that shield it from objections. I then lay down a fourth Bayesian framework that provides a simplified model of the unified explanation of transmission failure envisaged by Wright. (shrink)