Young children interpret some acts performed by adults as normatively governed, that is, as capable of being performed either rightly or wrongly. In previous experiments, children have made this interpretation when adults introduced them to novel acts with normative language (e.g. ‘this is the way it goes’), along with pedagogical cues signaling culturally important information, and with social-pragmatic marking that this action is a token of a familiar type. In the current experiment, we exposed children to novel actions with no (...) normative language, and we systematically varied pedagogical and social-pragmatic cues in an attempt to identify which of them, if either, would lead children to normative interpretations. We found that young 3-year-old children inferred normativity without any normative language and without any pedagogical cues. The only cue they used was adult socialpragmatic marking of the action as familiar, as if it were a token of a well-known type (as opposed to performing it, as if inventing it on the spot). These results suggest that – in the absence of explicit normative language – young children interpret adult actions as normatively governed based mainly on the intentionality (perhaps signaling conventionality) with which they are performed. (shrink)

Humans are normative beings through and through. This capacity for normativity lies at the core of uniquely human forms of understanding and regulating socio-cultural group life. Plausibly, therefore, the hominin lineage evolved specialized social-cognitive, motivational, and affective abilities that helped create, transmit, preserve, and amend shared social practices. In turn, these shared normative attitudes and practices shaped subsequent human phylogeny, constituted new forms of group life, and hence structured human ontogeny, too. An essential aspect of human ontogeny is therefore its (...) reciprocal nature regarding normativity. This chapter reviews recent evidence from developmental psychology suggesting that, from early on, human children take a normative attitude toward others’ conduct in social interactions, and thus a collectivistic and impersonal perspective on norms. We discuss to what extent our closest living primate relatives lack normative attitudes and therefore live in a non-normative socio-causal world structured by individual preferences, power relationships, and regularities. (shrink)

Human social life is structured by social norms creating both obligations and entitlements. Recent research has found that young children enforce simple obligations against norm violators by protesting. It is not known, however, whether they understand entitlements in the sense that they will actively object to a second party attempting to interfere in something that a third party is entitled to do — what we call counter-protest. In two studies, we found that 3-year-old children understand when a person is entitled (...) to do something, and so they actively defend this person’s entitlement against unjustified interference from second parties. In some cases, they even enforce second-order entitlements, for example, in the case of ownership where an owner is entitled to entitle others to use the owner’s property. (shrink)

Social norms have played a key role in the evolution of human cooperation, serving to stabilize prosocial and egalitarian behavior despite the self-serving motives of individuals. Young children’s behavior mostly conforms to social norms, as they follow adult behavioral directives and instructions. But it turns out that even preschool children also actively enforce social norms on others, often using generic normative language to do so. This behavior is not easily explained by individualistic motives; it is more likely a result of (...) children’s growing identification with their cultural group, which leads to prosocial motives for preserving its ways of doing things. (shrink)

Human adults incline toward moral objectivism but may approach things more relativistically if different cultures are involved. In this study, 4-, 6-, and 9-year-old children (N = 136) witnessed two parties who disagreed about moral matters: a normative judge (e.g., judging that it is wrong to do X) and an antinormative judge (e.g., judging that it is okay to do X). We assessed children’s metaethical judgment, that is, whether they judged that only one party (objectivism) or both parties (relativism) could (...) be right. We found that 9-year-olds, but not younger children, were more likely to judge that both parties could be right when a normative ingroup judge disagreed with an antinormative extraterrestrial judge (with different preferences and background) than when the antinormative judge was another ingroup individual. This effect was not found in a comparison case where parties disagreed about the possibility of different physical laws. These findings suggest that although young children often exhibit moral objectivism, by early school age they begin to temper their objectivism with culturally relative metaethical judgments. (shrink)

Research on children's developing moral cognition has mostly focused on their evaluation of, and reasoning about, others' intrinsically harmful (non-)verbal actions (e.g., hitting, lying). But assertions may have morally relevant (intended or unintended) consequences, too. For instance, if someone wrongly claims that “This water is clean!”, such an incorrect representation of reality may have harmful consequences to others. In two experiments, we investigated preschoolers' evaluation of others' morally relevant factual claims. In Experiment 1, children witnessed a puppet making incorrect assertions (...) that would lead to harm or to no harm. In Experiment 2, incorrect assertions would always lead to harm, but the puppet either intended the harm to occur or not. Children evaluated the puppet’s factual claim more negatively when they anticipated harmful versus harmless consequences (Experiment 1) and when the puppet’s intention was bad versus good over and above harmful consequences (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that preschoolers’ normative understanding is not limited to evaluating others’ intrinsically harmful transgressions, but also entails an appreciation of the morally relevant consequences of, and intentions underlying, others’ factual claims. (shrink)

The fact that humans cooperate with nonkin is something we take for granted, but this is an anomaly in the animal kingdom. Our species’ ability to behave prosocially may be based on human-unique psychological mechanisms. We argue here that these mechanisms include the ability to care about the welfare of others (other-regarding concerns), to “feel into” others (empathy), and to understand, adhere to, and enforce social norms (normativity). We consider how these motivational, emotional, and normative substrates of prosociality develop in (...) childhood and emerged in our evolutionary history. Moreover, we suggest that these three mechanisms all serve the critical function of aligning individuals with others: Empathy and other-regarding concerns align individuals with one another, and norms align individuals with their group. Such alignment allows us to engage in the kind of large-scale cooperation seen uniquely in humans. (shrink)

Debates on situated affectivity have mainly focused on tools that exert some positive influence on affective experience. Far less attention has been paid to artifacts that interact with the expression of affect, or to those that exert some negative influence. To shed light on that shadowy corner of our affective social lives, I describe the workings of an atypical socio-affective artifact, namely, sunglasses. Drawing on insights from psychology and other social sciences, I construe sunglasses as a social shield that helps (...) us block spontaneous emotional expressions, as well as affecting other social processes that heavily depend on the eye region: gaze direction detection, identity recognition, and the sense of intimacy afforded by eye contact. (shrink)

Terms of service of on-line platforms too often contain clauses that are potentially unfair to the consumer. We present an experimental study where machine learning is employed to automatically detect such potentially unfair clauses. Results show that the proposed system could provide a valuable tool for lawyers and consumers alike.

The paper argues that Frege’s primary foundational purpose concerning arithmetic was neither that of making natural numbers logical objects, nor that of making arithmetic a part of logic, but rather that of assigning to it an appropriate place in the architectonics of mathematics and knowledge, by immersing it in a theory of numbers of concepts and making truths about natural numbers, and/or knowledge of them transparent to reason without the medium of senses and intuition.

Philosophers have traditionally addressed the issue of scientific unification in terms of theoretical reduction. Reductive models, however, cannot explain the occurrence of unification in areas of science where successful reductions are hard to find. The goal of this essay is to analyse a concrete example of integration in biology—the developmental synthesis—and to generalize it into a model of scientific unification, according to which two fields are in the process of being unified when they become explanatorily relevant to each other. I (...) conclude by suggesting that this methodological conception of unity, which is independent of the debate on the metaphysical foundations of science, is closely connected to the notion of interdisciplinarity. 1 Introduction2 Some Troubles with Theory Reduction3 Interfield and Mechanistic Unification4 Foundations of the Developmental Synthesis5 Explanatory Relevance6 Concluding Remarks. (shrink)

Reductionists in biology claim that all biological events can be explained in terms of genes and macromolecules alone, while antireductionists argue that some biological events must be explained at a higher level. The literature, however, does not distinguish between different kinds of molecular explanation. The goal of this article is to identify and analyze three such kinds. The analysis of molecular explanations herein carries an important philosophical implication; in shunning crude reductionism and extreme versions of holism, we can combine the (...) insights of thoughtful reductionists with sophisticated antireductionism. When this is done, the question of explanatory reductionism becomes less substantial than often supposed. (shrink)

The recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in light of the impressive capabilities of transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs), have reignited the discussion in cognitive science regarding whether computational devices could possess semantic understanding or whether they are merely mimicking human intelligence. Recent research has highlighted limitations in LLMs’ reasoning, suggesting that the gap between mere symbol manipulation (syntax) and deeper understanding (semantics) remains wide open. While LLMs overcome certain aspects of the symbol grounding problem through human feedback, they (...) still lack true semantic understanding, struggling with common-sense reasoning and abstract thinking. This paper argues that while adding sensory inputs and embodying AI through sensorimotor integration with the environment might enhance its ability to connect symbols to real-world meaning, this alone would not close the gap between syntax and semantics. True meaning-making also requires a connection to subjective experience, which current AI lacks. The path to AGI must address the fundamental relationship between symbol manipulation, data processing, pattern matching, and probabilistic best guesses with true knowledge that requires conscious experience. A transition from AI to AGI can occur only if it possesses conscious experience, which is closely tied to semantic understanding. Recognition of this connection could furnish new philosophical insights into longstanding practical and philosophical questions for theories in biology and cognitive science and provide more meaningful tests of intelligence than the Turing test. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with concentrations of entities, which play an important—albeit often overlooked—role in scientific explanation. First, I discuss an example from molecular biology to show that concentrations can play an irreducible causal role. Second, I provide a preliminary philosophical analysis of this causal role, suggesting some implications for extant theories of causation. I conclude by introducing the concept of causation by concentration, a form of statistical causation whose widespread presence throughout the sciences has been unduly neglected and which (...) deserves to be studied in more depth. 1 Introduction2 Solving Lillie's Paradox: Lysogenic Induction in Phage λ3 Repressor Concentration and the Tuning of the Switch4 Concentration and Causality5 Preemption in Concentrations: Analysis and Implications6 Causation by Concentration: General Definition, Refinements, and Further Applications. (shrink)

Der Band widmet sich der Suche nach einem zur Korrespondenztheorie der Wahrheit alternativen Wahrheitsbegriff. Durch einen solchen Wahrheitsbegriff wird eine Orientierung des Menschen in der Welt moglich, die nicht ein Beharren auf der eigenen Meinung erzwingt, sondern einen Raum eroffnet, in dem sich der Mensch vertrauensvoll auf sein Gegenuber einlassen kann. In einer textnahen Lekture ausgewahlter Schriften Johann Georg Hamanns arbeitet der Autor heraus, wie ein Wahrheitsbegriff aussehen kann, der sich am Anderen orientiert. Dadurch kommen Glaube und Skepsis als Denkmoglichkeiten (...) in den Blick, die als Bewegung zum Anderen hin eine Orientierung des Menschen am Anderen ermoglichen und zugleich eine Theologie in Bewegung erfordern. (shrink)

All the powerful influences exertedby the subjective-interpersonal dimension onthe organic or technical-functional dimensionof sickness and health do not make anintersubjective test concerning medicaltherapeutic results impossible. Theseinfluences are not arbitrary; on the contrary,they obey laws that are de facto sufficientlystable to allow predictions and explanationssimilar to those of experimental sciences.While, in this respect, the rules concerninghuman action are analogous to the scientificlaws of nature, they can at any time be revokedby becoming aware of them. Law-like andreproducible regularities in the sciences ofman (...) are by no means separated from a patient'spersonal-hermeneutic mediation. This makes itpossible for human beings to modify, improve orsometimes even entirely (or better almostentirely) suspend these psychological,sociological, ethnological, medical,regularities. For this reason the sciences ofman including medicine are under the obligationof constantly inspecting the continuingvalidity of the rules on which theirpredictions and explanations are based, namelyby indirect, statistical methods. Thisrequires a synergistic collaboration ofextra-clinical and clinical tests through whichmedicine can obtain a good level ofintersubjective testability. (shrink)

The paper delves into the nature and origin of ideas, words, meanings, and language from the perspective of Indian mystics and philosophers Abhinavagupta and Sri Aurobindo. We begin with the Eastern viewpoint, commencing with the Vedic interpretation, in which the origin of all speech lies in the transcendent sound, known as the ‘Word’. Abhinavagupta delineates the genesis of words as a four-level process within consciousness, where mystic sounds gradually acquire concreteness in the form of human language. Sri Aurobindo extends this (...) insight by recognizing that all words stem from mind-impressions elicited by seed-sounds bearing psychological qualities. Moreover, according to Sri Aurobindo, the universe and its natural phenomena represent the expression of a creative transcendental Real-Idea, which serves as the foundation for all meanings, signs, words, and human language and Nature itself. Language, therefore, becomes an instrument for the expression of divine consciousness in manifestation. This comprehensive perspective transcends the confines of language philosophy, expanding into a universal spiritual outlook. Finally, it is shown how the integration of Western and Eastern philosophies reconciles many apparent inconsistencies within modern philosophy and science (especially in the philosophy of language, cognitive sciences, neuroscience, and AI.) This integral perspective surpasses a naturalistic viewpoint, providing a synthetic framework that unifies the diverse East-West philosophical positions. (shrink)

By using algebraic properties of (commutative unital) indecomposable polynomial rings we achieve results concerning their first-order theory, namely: interpretability of arithmetic and a uniform proof of undecidability of their full theory, both in the language of rings without parameters. This vastly extends the scope of a method due to Raphael Robinson, which deals with a restricted class of polynomial integral domains.

In the philosophical and cognitive literature, the word ‘intention’ has been used with a variety of meanings which occasionally have been explicitly distinguished. I claim that an important cause of this polysemy is the fact that intentions are complex entities, endowed with an internal structure, and that sometimes different theories in the field are erroneously presented as if they were in conflict with each other, while they in fact just focus on different aspects of the phenomenon. The debate between Gallese’s (...) embodied simulation theory and Csibra and Gergely’s teleological stance hypothesis is discussed as a case in point, and some misunderstandings occurring in that debate are analyzed. The thesis that intentions are complex entities is argued for by shedding light on the following aspects of intentions: conscious control; perceptual (and not only motoric) representations of end-states; attributions of value to those representations; appreciation of the rational relationships between means and ends. (shrink)

I argue that believing at will – i.e. believing for practical reasons – is in some sense possible and in some sense impossible. It is impossible insofar as we think of belief formation as a re-sult of our exercise of certain capacities (perception, memory, agency). But insofar as we think of belief formation as an action that might lead to such a result (i.e. a deliberation or an in-quiry), believing at will is possible. First I present and clarify the problem (...) and its philosophical relevance (section 1). I then argue that a belief formation as an immediate reaction to practical reasons is not necessarily equivalent to believing at will because the causal mechanism that leads to the formation might be deviant (section 2). Finally, I explain the difference between the two above mentioned meanings of “belief formation” in order to clarify the possibility and impossibility of believing at will (section 3). (shrink)

In Unfit for the Future, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu present a sophisticated argument in defense of the imperative of moral enhancement. They claim that without moral enhancement, the future of humanity is seriously compromised. The possibility of ultimate harm, caused by a dreadful terrorist attack or by a final unpreventable escalation of the present environmental crisis aggravated by the availability of cognitive enhancement, makes moral enhancement a top priority. It may be considered optimistic to think that our present moral (...) capabilities can be successfully improved by means of moral education, moral persuasion, and fear of punishment. So, without moral enhancement, drastic restrictions on human freedom would become the only alternative to prevent those dramatic potential outcomes. In this article, I will try to show that we still have reason to be less pessimistic and that Persson & Savulescu’s arguments are fortunately unconvincing. (shrink)

The aim of my contribution is to show that Fichte in the Anweisung zum seeligen Leben confronts the charge of nihilism raised against the Wissenschaftslehre by Jacobi in his “Open Letter” to Fichte of 1799. Although the term “nihilism” does not appear in the text of the Anweisung, it is nevertheless evident that the problem of nihilism, which Jacobi placed at the center of philosophical discussions, has influenced the development of the fundamental thought of this work. The transcendental ontology of (...) the Anweisung expresses in popular form the principles of the Wissenschaftslehre during the period 1804–1807. In this popular work Fichte endeavors to show that the principles of the Wissenschaftslehre do not result in the “annihilation” of reality, as Jacobi seems to have thought, but contain instead the core of a profound theory of life. Philosophy is conceived of in the Anwweisung as a self-critical and reflective way of looking at life, and thus it should not be confused either with a “totalitarian” way of thinking nor with a purely deconstructive way of thinking ; instead, philosophy is characterized here as a “reasonable understanding of reality”.Mein Beitrag will zeigen, dass Fichte sich in der Anweisung zum seeligen Leben vom Jahre 1806 mit dem Vorwurf des Nihilismus gegen die Wissenschaftslehre auseinandergesetzt hat, den Jacobi im Sendschreiben An Fichte im Jahre 1799 geäußert hatte. Selbst wenn im Text der Anweisung das Wort Nihilismus als solches faktisch nicht vorkommt, lässt sich dennoch behaupten, dass das Problem des Nihilismus, durch Jacobi in den Mittelpunkt der philosophischen Diskussionen gerückt, auf die Ausarbeitung des Grundgedankens dieses Werkes eingewirkt hat. Die transzendentale Ontologie der Anweisung bringt in populärer Form die Grundgedanken der Wissenschaftslehren des Zeitraums 1804–1807 zum Ausdruck. Fichte unternimmt darin den Versuch nachzuweisen, dass die Wissenschaftslehre in ihren Prinzipien und ihrer Entfaltung keine Vernichtung der Wirklichkeit vollzieht, wie Jacobi zu meinen scheint, sondern dass sie den zentralen Kern einer grundlegenden Lebenslehre beinhaltet. Philosophie wird in der Anweisung als selbstkritische und reflexive Darstellung des Einen Lebens konzipiert, welche weder mit einem „totalitären“ Denken noch mit einem bloß dekonstruierenden Denken zu verwechseln ist, sondern sich als „vernünftige Durchdringung der Wirklichkeit“ auszeichnet. (shrink)

Abstract The aim of the paper is to reassess the role of British Aristotelianism within the history of early modern logic between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as a crucial moment of cultural transition from the model of humanistic rhetoric and dialectic to that of facultative logic, that is, a logic which concerns the study of the cognitive powers of the mind. The paper shows that there is a special connection between Paduan Aristotelianism and British empiricism, through the mediation of (...) British Aristotelianism. British Aristotelians took the ideas of the Paduan Aristotelian tradition and carried them to an extreme, gradually removing them from the original Aristotelian context in which they were grounded and developing what would later become the fundamental ideas of British empiricism. (shrink)

This work evaluated the structure of dreams in people affected by schizophrenia. The verbal reports of 123 schizophrenic patients were compared with 123 dream reports from a control group. In accordance with the Jungian conceptualization of, dreams as texts, dream reports were assessed using textual analysis processing techniques.Significant differences were found in textual parameters, showing that the dreams reports of schizophrenic patients differ from those of the control group. It is thus possible that schizophrenia probably underlies changes in the oneiric (...) production and dream reports. This work confirms the value of textual analysis in the study of oneiric material. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to re-evaluate the position and role of Plato’s Charmides by analysing its second part. In this section, Critias tries to explain sôphrosunê as a form of knowledge that is self-referential in the sense that it is a type of knowledge of all other forms of knowledge without being knowledge of the objects of those other forms. Plato remains doubtful about the feasibility and usefulness of such a concept, as he believes that all types of (...) knowledge must be about something else, separate from the forms of knowledge themselves. He also thinks that such formal knowledge, if it indeed exists, is of little interest. This paper also aims to demonstrate that the Charmides belongs to a group of dialogues in which Plato discusses other people’s proposals, similar to what happens in the Theaetetus. In the case of the Charmides, this is very likely the project that we will later see developed in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. (shrink)

Este artigo pretende examinar questões centrais no particularismo moral de Jonathan Dancy a partir de uma comparação de suas principais teses com a ética aristotélica. Embora Dancy não reivindique uma linhagem aristotélica, será argumentado que tal comparação pode ser esclarecedora para o particularismo moral, bem com o para a ética aristotélica, especialmente no que concerne às regras que parecem não admitir qualquer exceção, como a proibição moral de agir com crueldade, ou o assassinato.

(2013). Distributed intentionality: A model of intentional behavior in humans. Philosophical Psychology: Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 267-290. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2011.641743.