The main purpose of the paper is to contribute to reconstructing the kind of normativity underlying Rawls’s notion of public reason and of the reasonable. The implicit target is the somewhat popular view according to which the transition from the framework of A Theory of Justice to that of Political Liberalism would entail a loss of normativity. On the contrary, the related ideas of public reason and the reasonable are argued to presuppose a notion of normativity – linked with judgment (...) – far more consistent with the premise of the fact of pluralism. After reconstructing Rawls’s notion of public reason, the two following problems are addressed: the problem of determining when allegedly shared truths, the building stones of public reason, are really such and, second, the problem of what it means for one reason to follow or proceed from a shared basis. In the context of such discussion three distinct meanings of the term ‘reasonable’ are identified, and the normatively more demanding one – the notion of some thesis or proposal being not just reasonable, but comparatively ‘more reasonable’ than another – is found to require that the reasonable be understood as the exemplary and, consequently, that we find ways to translate the Kantian doctrine of the exemplary yet universalist validity of aesthetic judgments into a non-aesthetic vocabulary. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to expatiate on the poetic function of language on the basis of considerations by Jakobson and Waugh. I try to bring in the consideration that pragmatics plays an important role in elucidating the poetic function of language. Contextualism allows us to interpret a poem: referents must be fixed or need not be fixed due to the requirements of the discourse; citations are brought in through pragmatic ways; polyphony is achieved by taking into account the context (...) of previous analyses of a poetic text; the vicinity of a certain word, or concept or line is likely to affect the interpretation of a certain expression; the poetic text can take different forms, from graffiti to discourse at the market place, to discourse between lovers. All these forms of poetic text would not exist if the notion of poetry did not include the idea of semantic/pragmatic compression which is matched, in interpretation, by expansions. (shrink)

The problem of truth in fiction concerns how to tell whether a given proposition is true in a given fiction. Thus far, the nearly universal consensus has been that some propositions are ‘implicitly true’ in some fictions: such propositions are not expressed by any explicit statements in the relevant work, but are nevertheless held to be true in those works on the basis of some other set of criteria. I call this family of views ‘implicitism’. I argue that implicitism faces (...) serious problems, whereas the opposite view is much more plausible than has previously been thought. After mounting a limited defence of explicitism, I explore a difficult problem for the view and discuss some possible responses. (shrink)

Classical modalism about essence is the view that essence can be analysed in modal terms. Despite Kit Fine's influential critique, no general refutation of classical modalism has yet been given. In the first part of the paper, I provide such a refutation by showing that the notion of essence cannot be analysed in terms of any sentential operator definable in the language of standard quantified modal logic. As a reaction to Fine's critique, some have defended sophisticated modalism, which attempts to (...) analyse essence in an enriched modal language quantifying over both possible and impossible worlds. In the second part of the paper, I argue that sophisticated modalism falls prey to variations on Fine's counterexamples to classical modalism. I conclude that the most promising approaches to understanding the notion of essence consist in taking essence either as primitive or as analysable via a combination of modal and non-modal notions. (shrink)

In 2011, van Dijck and Fias described a positional SNARC effect: the SPoARC. To-be-remembered items presented centrally on a screen seemed to acquire a left-to-right spatial dimension. If confirmed, this spatialization could be crucial for immediate memory theories. However, given the intricate links between visual and spatial dimensions, this effect could be due to the visual presentation, which could have probed the left-to-right direction of reading/writing. To allow a generalization of this effect, we adapted van Dijck and Fias's task using (...) an auditory version of Sternberg's paradigm. Lists of five consonants were auditorily presented at a rate of 3 s/item. A SPoARC effect was observed. The consequences are discussed first from an immediate memory perspective, putting forward the view that order could be coded through spatialization, and then in terms of similarities between SPoARC and SNARC. (shrink)

Kalisch et al. argue that appraisal and reappraisal are key mechanisms promoting resilience; however, experimental findings seem to contradict this simplistic view. We argue that a deeper look at affective neuroscience may provide complementary and stronger evidence on how emotional reactivity and emotion regulation may affect resilience.

Although the role of emotion in socioeconomic decision making is increasingly recognised, the impact of specific emotional disorders, such as anxiety disorders, on these decisions has been surprisingly neglected. Twenty anxious patients and twenty matched controls completed a commonly used socioeconomic task (the Ultimatum Game), in which they had to accept or reject monetary offers from other players. Anxious patients accepted significantly more unfair offers than controls. We discuss the implications of these findings in light of recent models of anxiety, (...) in particular the importance of interpersonal factors and assertiveness in an integrated model of decision making. Finally, we were able to show that pharmacological serotonin used to treat anxious symptomatology tended to normalise decision making, further confirming and extending the role of serotonin in co-operation, prosocial behaviour, and social decision making. These results show, for the first time, a different pattern of socioeconomic behaviour in anxiety disordered patients, in addition to the known memory, attentional and emotional biases that are part of this pathological condition. (shrink)

John Searle’s account of collective intentions in action appears to have all the theoretical pros of the non-reductivist view on collective intentionality without the metaphysical cons of committing to the existence of group minds. According to Searle, when we collectively intend to do something together, we intend to cooperate in order to reach a collective goal. Intentions in the first-person plural form therefore have a particular psychological form or mode, for the we-intender conceives of his or her intended actions as (...) singular contributions by means of which – or: by way of which – a collective goal is pursued. Accordingly, we-intentions are held to have a psychological mode with a “collective goal by means of singular contribution” structure, which makes them primitive and irreducible to intentions in the I-form. It is further contended that, albeit primitive and irreducible, we-intentions are not the mental states of an alleged group mind but always of an individual’s mind. This paper targets Searle’s claim of irreducibility by developing an argument whose aim is to show that, pace Searle, it is possible to track the idea of intentions with a psychological mode structured in terms of “collective goal by means of singular contribution” back to the concept of intentions in the I-form. The argument mainly relies on the idea that Searle’s technical expressions “being a collective goal by means of singular contribution intention in action” or “being a collective goal by way of singular contribution intention in action” are susceptible to conceptual analysis. The upshot of this analysis is that we-intentions can be reduced to complex bundles of mental states, all of which come in the first-person singular form. If this argument is sound, Searlean we-intentions do not belong to a primitive kind of mental states. (shrink)

Is it possible to explain and predict the development of living things? What is development? Articulate answers to these seemingly innocuous questions are far from straightforward. To date, no systematic, targeted effort has been made to construct a unifying theory of development. This novel work offers a unique exploration of the foundations of ontogeny by asking how the development of living things should be understood. It explores the key concepts of developmental biology, asks whether general principles of development can be (...) discovered, and examines the role of models and theories.The two editors have assembled a team of leading contributors who are representative of the scientific and philosophical community within which a diversity of thoughts are growing, and out of which a theory of development may eventually emerge. They analyse a wealth of approaches to concepts, models and theories of development, such as gene regulatory networks, accounts based on systems biology and on physics of soft matter, the different articulations of evolution and development, symbiont-induced development, as well as the widely discussed concepts of positional information and morphogenetic field, the idea of a. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Evolving Evolutionary Synthesis Population Genetics vs. Developmental Genetics Evo‐Devo's Central Target: The Study of Evolvability Origins? Conclusion Postscript: Counterpoint Acknowledgments References.

In this paper, I intend to analyze Baumgarten’s position about the dietetic care of the body in its relation to nascent aesthetics, with special regard to the problem of physical exercise. On the one hand, I will show that physical exercise can acquire aesthetic value with the example of the somatic fine arts. On the other hand, I will demonstrate that dietetics is also seminal for the emergence of every act of beautiful thinking. Eventually, I will bring to the fore (...) the dietetic potential of beauty itself. In this way, it will be possible to better appraise the constitutive link between health and beauty in the founding of aesthetics as an independent branch of philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, we take up an old issue that of pragmemes, broached by Mey and further explored by Capone. It is not easy to define pragmemes and distinguish them sufficiently from speech acts (units of language use broached by Austin and Searle) or from Wittgensteinian language games or from macro speech acts (see van Dijk on macrostructures) or from Goffman’s scripts. The best idea we could develop about pragmemes is that they instantiate the triple articulation of language, proposed by (...) Jock Wong; being essentially composed of phonological-syntactic units, that have a certain content relative to a social situation and to a certain culture, pragmemes express a certain function (or illocutionary force), like, e.g., modifying society or some aspect of it. They are part of a chapter that can be called either “societal pragmatics” or “emancipatory pragmatics,” to use the words by Mey. In fact, knowledge of how language is used to diminish the rights of people and to propagate the “status quo” may be instrumental to give rights and power to ordinary human beings who are oppressed by political and economical structures. -/- . (shrink)

Languages involving modalities and languages involving vagueness have each been thoroughly studied. On the other hand, virtually nothing has been said about the interaction of modality and vagueness. This paper aims to start filling that gap. Section 1 is a discussion of various possible sources of vague modality. Section 2 puts forward a model theory for a quantified language with operators for modality and vagueness. The model theory is followed by a discussion of the resulting logic. In Section 3, the (...) framework will permit us to address a puzzle raised by Elizabeth Barnes and Robert Williams. (shrink)

This edited volume on contextualism and pragmatics is interdisciplinary in character and contains contributions from linguistics, cognitive science and socio-pragmatics. Going beyond conventional contextual matters of truth-conditions and pragmatic intrusion, this text deals with a variety of issues including hyperbole, synonymy, reference, argumentation, schizophrenia, rationality, morality, silence and clinical pragmatics. Contributions also address the semantics/pragmatics debate and show to what extent the theory of contextualism can be applied. This volume is based on a unitary research project financed by the University (...) of Messina and appeals to students and researchers working in linguistics and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

The present paper is an inventory and a description of the known manuscripts of the Nyāyamañjarī, meant as a tool for philological research on Bhaṭṭa Jayanta’s magnum opus. The inventory is gradually built through a systematic analysis of archival data found in catalogi catalogorum, bibliographies of catalogues, individual catalogues, unpublished lists, and editions of the Nyāyamañjarī. The list is followed by a concise description of each manuscript, including an external description, an outline of the contents, and historical information.

The Nyayamanjari was composed in Kashmir, in the ninth century CE, by Bhatta Jayanta. It is a compendium of theses concerning ontological, epistemological and linguistic issues developed in the classical period of Indian philosophy. Jayanta's approximate date is confirmed by both internal and external evidences, so the Nyayamanjari has become a landmark in the historiography of Indian philosophy. Despite its relevance, however, the history of the textual transmission of the Nyayamanjari is in many respects still unknown. This new critical edition (...) is based on a comprehensive inventory of all the known sources, on a detailed description of the manuscripts, on a textual bibliography of the printed editions, on a genealogical study of the textual transmission, and on a rich apparatus of the indirect transmission. An important result of this research has been the development of a new, rigorous, and yet pragmatic method to edit Nyayamanjari passages, without the demand of formidable resources in terms of time, man-power, and funds. The first part of this publication includes all the propaedeutic steps in view of the critical edition. More specifically, it consists of the recensio of the known Nyayamanjari sources, including their inventory, their description, the collation of their variants, and the study of their genealogy, resulting in a fully documented stemma codicum which guides the editorial choices during the reconstruction of the edited text. The second part contains the critical edition, which covers the first of the three sections composing the sixth book of the Nyayamanjari. This particular section consists of a discussion on semantics and epistemology from the perspective of the Vyakarana, Mimansa and Nyaya traditions, hinging around the holistic theory of the sphota. (shrink)

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Philosophy of Language presents a systematic survey of philosophy of language in the Indian tradition, providing an up-to-date research resource for better understanding the history and future direction of the field. Each chapter addresses a particular philosophical problem from the viewpoint of seminal traditions and specific thinkers. Covering the philosophical insight on language found in the mainstream philosophies of Vyakarana, Mima?sa, Nyaya, Vedanta, Buddhism, and Alankarasastra, the chapters tackle crucial semantic and pragmatic questions such (...) as the relation of the speaker to reality, the use of metalanguage, the distinction between sentences, elliptic statements, and figurative usages, and the impact of textual structures on the philosophical message. Complete with further reading suggestions and an annotated bibliography, this collection makes an important contribution to both Eastern and Western contemporary philosophy of language. (shrink)

Este artigo procura compreender o modo como a via antiqua e a via moderna devem ser entendidas no processo de interpretação das obras de Aristóteles da Idade Média até o Humanismo. O autor expõe o sentido etimológico da " palavra modernus e mostra os diferentes significados dela - tanto em discussões filosóficas quanto teológicas - nos séculos 13, 14 e 15.

Este artigo pretende fazer algumas considerações preliminares e programáticas sobre a questão da cooperação entre filosofia política e ciências sociais empíricas; oferecer uma estratégia para chegar a uma definição de pobreza que independa de dados quantitativos específicos, embora aponte para a importância deles ; apontar para a necessidade de ouvir a voz dos pobres; mostrar as razões da exclusão política dos pobres. Obviamente não se pretende discutir tudo isso de forma exaustiva, mas somente indicar possíveis caminhos a serem explorados.The present (...) paper aims at presenting some preliminary and programmatic considerations on the question of the cooperation between political philosophy and empirical social sciences; offering a strategy to reach a definition of poverty that does not depend on specific quantitative data, while it recognizes their importance ; pointing at the necessity to hear the voice of the poor; showing the reasons for the political exclusion of the poor. Of course all this shall not be discussed in an exhaustive form, but only with the intention of indicating possible paths to be explored. (shrink)

A truthmaker solution to the Gettier problems is based on the idea that knowledge can be defined as justified true belief provided that the source of one’s justification is suitably connected with what makes the believed proposition true. Different developments of this basic intuition have been recently criticized on the basis of a series of arguments aiming at showing that no truthmaker theory can allow us to solve Gettier problems, since the very idea underlying such solution is ineffective. In this (...) paper, I discuss the criticism to the truthmaker solution I consider most promising and show how it can be successfully addressed. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Alexander argues that relaxing the requirement that sound knowers know their own soundness might provide a solution to Fitch’s paradox and introduces a suitable axiomatic system where the paradox is avoided. In this paper an analysis of this solution is proposed according to which the effective move for solving the paradox depends on the axiomatic treatment of the ontic modality rather than the limitations imposed on the epistemic one. It is then shown that, once the ontic (...) modality is standardly introduced, the paradox still follows and, in addition, some puzzling consequences arise. (shrink)

This article aims at exploring one specific facet of pluralism: How can we conceive of a variety of democratic cultures that are not just local adaptations of one basic western-centric understanding of the democratic ethos? Drawing on Islamic, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and Confucian sources, a convergence among diverse democratic cultures is cursorily highlighted on such elements as the priority of the common good, the acceptance of pluralism, the desirability of collegial deliberation, the equality of citizens, and the value of individuality. (...) Then two important points of dissonance are analysed in greater detail – the idea of the priority of rights over duties and the role of political conflict within a democratic polity – and shown not to be correlative with a divide between western and non-western contexts. Finally a typology of 4 kinds of democratic cultures is outlined. (shrink)

The experience of Costa Rica highlights the potential for conflicts between the right to health and fair priority setting. For example, one study found that most favorable rulings by the Costa Rican constitutional court concerning claims for medications under the right to health were either for experimental treatments or for medicines that should have low priority based on health gain per unit of expenditure and severity of disease. In order to better align rulings with priority setting criteria, in 2014, the (...) court initiated a reform in its assessment of claims for medicine. This paper assesses this reform’s impact on the fairness of resource allocation. It finds three effects. First, a reduction in successful claims for experimental medication, which is beneficial. Second, an increase in the success rate of medication lawsuits, which is detrimental because most claims are for extremely cost-ineffective medications. Third, a decline in the number of claims for medicine, which is beneficial because it forestalls such low-priority spending. This paper estimates that, taking all three effects into account, the reform has had a modest net positive impact on overall resource allocation. However, it also argues that there is a need for further reforms to lower the number of claims to low-priority medicines that are granted. (shrink)

This paper will examine the sanskrit short-poem Āta ṅkavādaśataka written in 1988 by the famous indian pandit Vagish Shastri. Although composed in a language that is 2500 year old, the Century deals with one of the most dramatic events in contemporary indian history: sikh nationalist terrorism. The poet provides both a socio-political interpretation as well as a mythological-theological one, managing to combine a traditional approach with a pronounced ideological awareness. We will both supply information on the social and historical background (...) of the phenomenon, and discuss the poetic qualities of the work. Special attention will be given to linguistic, metrical and rhetorical features, which link this contemporary composition to classical kāvya poetry. (shrink)

The article examines some of the consequences of the migration of musical works in cyberspace, particularly with regard to their ways of being and the ways in which we listen to them. Streaming is interpreted as the last stage in the expansion of a phenomenon that arose with the advent of phonography, namely, the ubiquity and availability of the works. A new development consists in the production of musical units in modular terms: works can consist of independent parts, which can (...) be replaced or constituted, in an order that depends on the user, taking inspiration from the model of the playlist. The diffusion of works on the web has also facilitated the development of the remix practice, changing listening standards and generating new conceptual conflicts concerning the identity of the works. The web weakens the distinction between the medium of communication and the medium of recording. It also favors the formation of new cognitive dispositions and generates more flexible and interactive ways of listening, generally different from those implicated in the era of the disc. (shrink)

How much is a moral judgment on a single act influenced by circumstances which have little to do with the nature of the act itself? How much have certain moral judgments to do with the common history and shared experience of a certain group of individuals? Using two cases taken from life (a German musician and a German CEO behaving both in a morally wrong way but with very different consequences from the point of view of moral judgement and with (...) very different reactions from the German public), the article tries to give an answer to these questions, touching issues like: guilt, moral responsibility, collective responsibility, and collective identity. (shrink)

L’article fait Je point sur les thèses néo-institutionnalistes et sur la théorie des jeux telles qu’elles ont été «appliquées» à l’histoire. L’analyse des marchés principaux (travail, terre, crédit) et leur impact sur la théorie du développement sont également présentés. L’auteur prend ensuite en considération la théorie des jeux, il en discute les hypothèses et les présupposés de manière à rendre explicites les usages qui en ont été faits en histoire. La dernière partie introduit des notions plus complexes de rationalité économique, (...) distingue entre information et connaissance et propose un schéma heuristique permettant d’intégrer certains éléments de l’économie de l’information et des jeux dans des démarches qui tiennent compte des notions temporelles propres à l’historiographie. (shrink)

Cet article étudie le lien entre confiance et réputation, règles de droit et normes informelles dans la détermination de la qualité des produits et des acteurs économiques. Après avoir rappelé les principales approches et solutions à ces problèmes avancés par l'historiographie, mais aussi par la sociologie et l'économie, nous étudierons le marché du vin en France au XIXe siècle. Nous mettrons l'accent sur le rôle que normes et confiance ont joué pendant le dernier quart du XIXe siècle, en réponse au (...) phylloxéra, d'une part, aux progrès techniques et au développement des marchés internationaux, de l'autre. Nous évaluerons enfin le débat et les pratiques autour des marques viticoles (individuelles et collectives) tout au long du XIXe siècle. Cette analyse nous permettra de développer les questions du lien entre la protection de la propriété individuelle, la confiance ancrée dans le territoire et la dynamique des marchés. Notre principal argument sera que normes, confiance et réputation sont moins des substituts les unes des autres que complémentaires dans le fonctionnement des marchés. La confiance s'inscrit dans un cadre institutionnel et cognitif précis sans lequel elle ne saurait intervenir dans la coordination des marchés. (shrink)

Il saggio prende in esame due punti della teorizzazione di Harry Frankfurt in merito alla moral agency. Il primo è la corretta concettualizzazione del momento della ‘decisione’ all’interno del­­la ca­tena deliberativa. Vengono esaminati tre passaggi critici: a) la base normativa a cui la decisione ri­spon­de; b) la teoria della ‘unificazione della persona’ attraverso la decisione e c) la distinzione fra ‘scelta’ e ‘decisione’. Il secondo punto è l’ambiguità in­sita nel concetto di ‘doveri d’amore’ pro­posto da Frankfurt. A questo pro­posito vengono (...) esaminate: a) la di­stin­zione fra amore ‘attivo’ e ‘passivo’ e b) la mancata tematizzazione della ‘legittimità del­l’a­more’, ovvero del rap­porto fra l’a­more in quanto relazione sociale e i quadri interpretativi del­la cul­tura entro cui si sviluppa.In this paper two aspects of Harry Frankfurt’s theory of moral agency will be examined. First, his conceptualization of the moment of ‘decision’ wi­thin the deliberative chain will be addressed. Three critical junctures will be dis­cussed: a) the normative basis of the actor’s ‘decision’; b) Frankfurt’s view of the ‘unification’ of the person via decision and c) his distinction of ‘choice’ and ‘decision’. The second point addressed is the ambiguity in­herent in Frankfurt’s notion of ‘duties of love’. With regard to this notion, the following points will be discussed: a) the distinction between ‘active’ and ‘passive’ love and b) Frankfurt’s neglect of the dimension of the ‘le­gi­timacy of love’, i.e. of the nexus of love qua social relation and the inter­pre­tive cadres of the culture within which it unfolds. (shrink)

This introduction first justifies the approach of this focus on the political thought of Foucault. Therefore it highlights the conditions that determine the appearance and the operation of the political discourse, then it clarifies because, according to Foucault, political discourse should not be analyzed in a format which opposes science to ideology, but as an act of discourse located in a strategic field and fighting with other discursive formations. It concludes with a look at the difference and interweaving that for (...) Foucault stand and connect political discourse and philosophy. (shrink)

The paper aims at analyzing some Wagnerian figures in order to show that the influence of Schopenhauer’s philosophy on Wagner is not as strong as commonly held – at least not in his operas. The figures that shall be considered are: Wotan and Brünnhilde, Tristan and Isolde, and finally Parsifal, who appears to be the only Schopenhauerian character of all.

Ernst Tugendhat is one of the most important living German philosophers. He was born in Brno in 1930 to a Jewish family. In 1938 the Tugendhatshad to leave the country because of the threat represented by Nazi Germany. They emigrated first toSwitzerland, then to Caracas, Venezuela. After classical studies at Stanford University ,Ernst Tugendhat moved to Germany in order to study philosophy in Freiburg and Münster . He became an assistant professor in Tübingen before getting a professorship in Heidelberg. He (...) worked at the Max-Plack-Institut zurErforschung der Lebensbedingungen der wissenschaftlich-technischen Welt , spend some years in Chile and was a professor at the FreieUniversität Berlin till his retirement. He was and still is visiting professor in universities in Europe aswell as in North and South America. Among his many books: Vorlesungen zur Einführung in diesprachanalytische Philosophie, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1976; Selbstbewusstsein undSelbstbestimmung, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1979; Probleme der Ethik, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1984;Vorlesungen über Ethik, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1993, and Egozentrizität und Mystik. Eineanthropologische Studie, München: Beck, 2003. (shrink)