Half a century later, a Dretskean stance on epistemic closure remains a minority view. Why? Mainly because critics have successfully poked holes in the epistemologies on which closure fails. However, none of the familiar pro-closure moves works against the counterexamples on display here. It is argued that these counterexamples pose the following dilemma: either accept that epistemic closure principles are false, and steal the thunder from those who attack classical logic on the basis of similarly problematic cases—specifically, relevance logicians and (...) like-minded philosophers—or stick with closure and surrender to relevantist claims of failure in truth-preservation aimed at classical rules of inference. Classicist closure advocates find the promise of a way out of the dilemma in the works of Roy Sorensen and John Hawthorne. The paper argues against their pro-closure move and renews Robert Audi’s call for a theory of closure-failure. (shrink)

The ‘standard picture of meaning’ suggests that natural languages are composed of two different kinds of words: concrete words whose meaning rely on observable properties of external objects and abstract words which are essentially linguistic constructs. In this study, we challenge this picture and support a new view of the nature and composition of abstract concepts suggesting that they also rely to a greater or lesser degree on body-related information. Specifically, we support a version of this new view which we (...) call “x-ception theory” maintaining that abstract concepts are based on internal information of a proprioceptive, interoceptive and affective kind. Secondly, we address a methodological issue concerning the so-called concreteness and imageability measures, two tools that are widely used in (mainly psycholinguistic) empirical research to assess the degree of concreteness of specific words. On the basis of this analysis we argue that—even though the classical concreteness and imageability measures were developed in relation to the standard picture of meaning—they can also be used in the new framework of x-ception theory. In particular, we suggest that the discrepancy between these two measures provides a clue as to whether a word relies on internal information. By contrast, we argue that a new measure for concreteness recently proposed in order to address some problems with the old measure is completely inappropriate for this aim. (shrink)

This article discusses the account of Kant's view of concept formation that Alberto Vanzo has put forward in "Kant e la formazione dei concetti" (Trento: Verifiche, 2012).

Este trabalho discute a formação da mentalidade individual, por meio de uma reflexão comparativa entre Democracia e educação, de John Dewey, e Admirável mundo novo, de Aldous Huxley. O texto literário permite um diálogo e uma leitura em face do texto filosófico, que o caracteriza como campo para a realização de um experimento de pensamento. Esse experimento é a discussão do valor atribuído por Dewey ao crescimento individual e ao social, em contraposição ao valor encontrado na narrativa de Huxley, da (...) estabilidade. Confrontando as leituras dessas duas obras, se pode compreender mais profundamente e, em uma perspectiva diferenciada, a relevância das condições do crescimento na formação plena da mentalidade individual. (shrink)

This volume serves as a reference on the field of cognitive semantics. It offers a systematic and original discussion of the issues at the core of the debate in semiotics and the cognitive sciences. It takes into account the problems of representation, the nature of mind, the structure of perception, beliefs associated with habits, social cognition, autism, intersubjectivity and subjectivity. The chapters in this volume present the foundation of semiotics as a theory of cognition, offer a semiotic model of cognitive (...) integration that combines Enactivism and the Extended Mind Theory, and investigate the role of imagination as the origin of perception. The author develops an account of beliefs that are associated with habits and meaning, grounded in Pragmatism, testing his Narrative Practice Semiotic Hypothesis on persons with autism spectrum disorders. He also integrates his ideas about the formation of the theory of mind with a theory of subjectivity, understood as self-consciousness which derives from semiotic cognitive abilities. This text appeals to students, professors and researchers in the field. (shrink)

The idea that qualities can be had partly or to an intermediate degree is controversial among contemporary metaphysicians, but also has a considerable pedigree among philosophers and scientists. In this paper, we first aim to show that metaphysical sense can be made of this idea by proposing a partial taxonomy of metaphysical accounts of graded qualities, focusing on three particular approaches: one which explicates having a quality to a degree in terms of having a property with an in-built degree, another (...) based on the idea that instantiation admits of degrees, and a third which derives the degree to which a quality is had from the aspects of multi-dimensional properties. Our second aim is to demonstrate that the choice between these accounts can make a substantial metaphysical difference. To make this point, we rely on two case studies (involving quantum observables and values) in which we apply the accounts in order to model apparent cases of metaphysical gradedness. (shrink)

Even though the link between perceived corporate social responsibility fit and corporate reputation has received much attention from scholars, this tradition has ignored that the underpinnings of this association vary depending on the particular characteristics of each industry under study. To delve into this matter, we investigate in the increasingly relevant context of controversial industries how PCSR-fit could enhance corporate reputation and which are the mediating mechanisms of this association. Our academic contribution is twofold. First, we find that controversial sectors (...) indeed can increase corporate reputation through CSR activities. However, we find that to achieve this goal, the nature of PCSR-fit should be different than what extant literature indicates, because companies in these settings should directly focus on avoiding or reducing their inherent controversial harm or impact. Second, we evidence that “CSR initiatives' legitimacy” and “situational skepticism” mediate the PCSR-fit and corporate reputation relationship in CIs. Therefore, we further unravel the underpinnings of this association to advance what we know on the matter and aid practitioners in this particular context. (shrink)

On the basis of arguments showing that none of the most influential analyses of Moore's paradox yields a successful resolution of the problem, a new analysis of it is offered. It is argued that, in attempting to render verdicts of either inconsistency or self-contradiction or self-refutation, those analyses have all failed to satisfactorily explain why a Moore-paradoxical proposition is such that it cannot be rationally believed. According to the proposed solution put forward here, a Moore-paradoxical proposition is one for which (...) the believer can have no non-overridden evidence. The arguments for this claim make use of some of Peter Klein's views on epistemic defeasibility. It is further suggested that this proposal may have important meta-epistemological implications. (shrink)

In the following reflection Claudio Corradetti and Allen Wood engage in a controversy concerning the possibilities and the limits of textual interpretation. Should an interpreter still be authorized to call an author’s interpretation the logical stretch of text beyond its black printed letters? The authors offer two different standpoints on what can still be defined as textual interpretation. Whereas for Allen Wood a clear-cut separation must be kept between what a text shows and what an interpreter argues starting from (...) the text, for Claudio Corradetti such distinction remains internal to textual exegesis in so far as the interpreter’s conclusions follow a logical pattern of jus tification starting from evidential hints. (shrink)

En este trabajo reportamos algunos de los hallazgos preliminares del proyecto de investigación _Concepciones ideológicas acerca del proceso constitucional chileno _(2021). Presentamos resultados del análisis lingüístico valorativo de textos de ciberprensa y de sus efectos retóricos, referidos al hito fundante del proceso constitucional: el “Estallido Social”. Los principales resultados indican que _El Mostrador_ se posiciona críticamente respecto al gobierno a través de los ejes temáticos “el gobierno doblegado”, “la denuncia de la oposición” y “gobierno como la dictadura”. El cibermedio _Emol_ (...) adopta una mirada crítica de la violencia y sus consecuencias en el Metro de Santiago por medio de los temas “el caos de la evasión”, “la relevancia del metro” y “la repartición de culpas”. Mientras que _La Tercera_ tematiza la violencia y releva las obligaciones asumidas por el gobierno frente a ella. Las polaridades semánticas y los actores sociales representados constituyen un territorio discursivo de tensiones y alineaciones ideológicas. (shrink)

The zone of latent solutions hypothesis provides an alternative approach to explaining cultural patterns in primates and many other animals. According to the ZLS hypothesis, non-human great ape cultures consist largely or solely of latent solutions. The current competing hypothesis for ape culture argues instead that at least some of their behavioural or artefact forms are copied through specific social learning mechanisms and that their forms may depend on copying. In contrast, the ape ZLS hypothesis does not require these forms (...) to be copied. Instead, it suggests that several social learning mechanisms help determine the frequency of these behaviours and artefacts within connected individuals. The ZLS hypothesis thus suggests that increases and stabilisations of a particular behaviour’s or artefact’s frequency can derive from socially-mediated form reinnovations. Therefore, and while genes and ecology play important roles as well, according to the ape ZLS hypothesis, apes typically acquire the forms of their behaviours and artefacts individually, but are usually socially induced to do so. The ZLS approach is often criticized—perhaps also because it challenges the current null hypothesis, which instead assumes a requirement of form-copying social learning mechanisms to explain many ape behavioural forms. However, as the ZLS hypothesis is a new approach, with less accumulated literature compared to the current null hypothesis, some confusion is to be expected. Here, we clarify the ZLS approach—also in relation to other competing hypotheses—and address misconceptions and objections. We believe that these clarifications will provide researchers with a coherent theoretical approach and an experimental methodology to examine the necessity of form-copying variants of social learning in apes, humans and other species. (shrink)

This article traces Pasolini’s engagement with Aeschylus Oresteia and the concept of the “irrational,” through which he sought to excavate patterns of ideological resistance in the classical past. I argue that Pasolini’s translations and adaptations of Aeschylus ultimately failed to achieve his desired ambition to forward an Aeschylus fit for the proletariat, and whose words might spark new kinds of Marxist thought. However, there is value in reading into Pasolini’s practices and his reflections on his work. Acknowledging and parsing his (...) affects of disappointment and resignation, the broader conceptual outlines of his ambitions become clearer as gestures of kind of “failed” classical reception – an attempt to turn the classics to new political ends. An analysis of this kind of failure teaches us broader theoretical lessons about what it might mean to perform a generative and politically fruitful appropriation of the classics, necessarily confronting the entrenched ideologies of the past and their tenacious ability to reproduce themselves even in the most unexpected literary and political contexts. The article engages with selections from Pasolini’s literary, personal, and political writings from the 1960s until his death – connecting his translations and adaptations of Aeschylus to other contemporaneous essayistic, novelistic, and cinematic projects. (shrink)

The first section of the paper establishes the minimal properties of so-called consequential implication and shows that they are satisfied by at least two different operators of decreasing strength and \). Only the former has been analyzed in recent literature, so the paper focuses essentially on the latter. Both operators may be axiomatized in systems which are shown to be translatable into standard systems of normal modal logic. The central result of the paper is that the minimal consequential system for (...) \, CI\, is definitionally equivalent to the deontic system KD and is intertranslatable with the minimal consequential system for \, CI. The main drawback ot the weaker operator \ is that it lacks unrestricted contraposition, but the final section of the paper argues that \ has some properties which make it a valuable alternative to \, turning out especially plausible as a basis for the definition of operators representing synthetic conditionals. (shrink)

Given two (positive) equivalence relations ∼ 1 , ∼ 2 on the set ω of natural numbers, we say that ∼ 1 is m-reducible to ∼ 2 if there exists a total recursive function h such that for every x, y ∈ ω, we have $x \sim_1 y \operatorname{iff} hx \sim_2 hy$ . We prove that the equivalence relation induced in ω by a positive precomplete numeration is complete with respect to this reducibility (and, moreover, a "uniformity property" holds). This (...) result allows us to state a classification theorem for positive equivalence relations (Theorem 2). We show that there exist nonisomorphic positive equivalence relations which are complete with respect to the above reducibility; in particular, we discuss the provable equivalence of a strong enough theory: this relation is complete with respect to reducibility but it does not correspond to a precomplete numeration. From this fact we deduce that an equivalence relation on ω can be strongly represented by a formula (see Definition 8) iff it is positive. At last, we interpret the situation from a topological point of view. Among other things, we generalize a result of Visser by showing that the topological space corresponding to a partition in e.i. sets is irreducible and we prove that the set of equivalence classes of true sentences is dense in the Lindenbaum algebra of the theory. (shrink)

As early as 1905, Husserl made clear that, when it comes to aesthetic consideration, our “interest” is not directed toward the existence of the object as such, but rather toward the object’s way of appearance. Husserl’s famous letter to Hofmannsthal (1907) goes as far as to suggest that any existential concerns are potentially even a menace to the purity of aesthetic experience. This position clearly echoes Kant’s account of aesthetic judgment presented in the third Critique, notably as regards the notion (...) of disinterestedness. However, this is not tantamount to claiming that aesthetic attitude implies the suspension of all interest: this paper aims to show that it would be more appropriate to discuss it in terms of a change of interest: from an existential interest to an axiological one. (shrink)

The present paper has three closely related aims. We first argue that Agazzi’s scientific realism about Quantum Mechanics is in line with Selleri’s and Tarozzi’s proposal of Quantum Waves. We then go on to formulate rigorously different metaphysical principles such as property compositional determinateness and mereological extensionalism. We argue that, contrary to widespread agreement, realism about Quantum Mechanics actually refutes only the former. Indeed we even formulate a new quantum mechanical argument in favor of extensionalism. We conclude by noting that, (...) given the results of the work, Agazzi’s particular attitude towards Quantum Mechanics is still one of the most promising theoretical perspectives. (shrink)

Monism is roughly the view that there is only one fundamental entity. One of the most powerful argument in its favor comes from quantum mechanics. Extant discussions of quantum monism are framed independently of any interpretation of the quantum theory. In contrast, this paper argues that matters of interpretation play a crucial role when assessing the viability of monism in the quantum realm. I consider four different interpretations: modal interpretations, Bohmian mechanics, many worlds interpretations, and wavefunction realism. In particular, I (...) extensively argue for the following claim: several interpretations of QM do not support monism at a more serious scrutiny, or do so only with further problematic assumptions, or even support different versions of it. (shrink)

Ontology, in its philosophical meaning, is the discipline investigating the structure of reality. Its findings can be relevant to knowledge organization, as well as models of knowledge can in turn offer relevant ontological suggestions. Several philosophers in time have pointed out that reality is structured into a series of integrative levels, like the physical, the biological, the mental, and the cultural one, and that each level plays as a base for the emergence of more complex ones. Among them, more detailed (...) theories of levels have been developed by Nicolai Hartmann and James K. Feibleman, and these have been considered as a source for structuring principles in bibliographic classification by both the Classification Research Group (CRG) and Ingetraut Dahlberg. CRG's analysis of levels and of their possible application to a new general classification scheme based on phenomena instead of disciplines, as it was formulated by Derek Austin in 1969, is examined in detail. Both benefits and open problems in applying integrative levels to bibliographic classification are pointed out. (shrink)

Those of us who have followed Fred Dretske's lead with regard to epistemic closure and its impact on skepticism have been half-wrong for the last four decades. But those who have opposed our Dretskean stance, contextualists in particular, have been just wrong. We have been half-right. Dretske rightly claimed that epistemic status is not closed under logical implication. Unlike the Dretskean cases, the new counterexamples to closure offered here render every form of contextualist pro-closure maneuvering useless. But there is a (...) way of going wrong under Dretske's lead. As the paper argues, Cartesian skepticism thrives on closure failure in a way that is yet to be acknowledged in the literature. The skeptic can make do with principles which are weaker than the familiar closure principles. But I will further claim that this is only a momentary reprieve for the skeptic. As it turns out, one of the weaker principles on which a skeptical modus tollens must rest can be shown false. (shrink)

Regulation is nothing without enforcement. This particularly holds for the dynamic field of emerging technologies. Hence, this article has two ambitions. First, it explains how the EU´s new Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) will be implemented and enforced by various institutional bodies, thus clarifying the governance framework of the AIA. Second, it proposes a normative model of governance, providing recommendations to ensure uniform and coordinated execution of the AIA and the fulfilment of the legislation. Taken together, the article explores how the (...) AIA may be implemented by national and EU institutional bodies, encompassing longstanding bodies, such as the European Commission, and those newly established under the AIA, such as the AI Office. It investigates their roles across supranational and national levels, emphasizing how EU regulations influence institutional structures and operations. These regulations may not only directly dictate the structural design of institutions but also indirectly request administrative capacities needed to enforce the AIA. (shrink)

It is argued, on the basis of new counterexamples, that neither knowledge nor epistemic justification (or epistemic rationality ) can reasonably be thought to be closed under logical implication. The argument includes an attempt to reconcile the fundamental intuitions of the opposing parties in the debate.

This is the text of the Claudio Rozzoni's interview with Jorge Molder that took place in Portuguese on June 21, 2018, at the artist's atelier in Lisbon. English translation by Claudio Rozzoni.

In the first half of the 20 th century, philosophers of science used to sustain that the correct theory acceptance in science derived from their conforming to certain rules. However, from the historicist and practical turn in the philosophy of science, the theory acceptance started to be analyzed based on values rather than on a priori established rules. In this article, I will present four paradigmatic positions on the role of values in science. The first position, articulated by Hugh Lacey, (...) defends a regulative ideal of 'impartiality' in the acceptance of scientific theories as established. The other positions convey arguments that seem to conflict with this ideal. I characterize them as 'blind spot argument', 'inductive risk argument' and 'trust-based acceptance argument'. Based on this analysis, I will defend two main theses. My first thesis is that the ideal of impartiality is compatible with the arguments just mentioned. My second thesis is that the defense of impartiality has the advantage of providing a support for the epistemic authority of properly established scientific knowledge. Following Lacey, I will argue that theories can only be accepted as established under specified domains of phenomena. However, theories are accepted for other purposes, for example, when they are adopted to develop research or when they are endorsed to inform the legitimacy of an action. In such cases of theory acceptance, impartiality is neither possible nor desirable, which requires the support of other ideals. (shrink)

For elite athletes seeking a winning advantage, manipulation of their own genetic code has become a realistic possibility. In Genetic Technology and Sport, experts from sports science, genetics, philosophy, ethics, and international sports administration describe the potential applications of the new technology and debate the questions surrounding its use.

Accountability is a cornerstone of the governance of artificial intelligence (AI). However, it is often defined too imprecisely because its multifaceted nature and the sociotechnical structure of AI systems imply a variety of values, practices, and measures to which accountability in AI can refer. We address this lack of clarity by defining accountability in terms of answerability, identifying three conditions of possibility (authority recognition, interrogation, and limitation of power), and an architecture of seven features (context, range, agent, forum, standards, process, (...) and implications). We analyse this architecture through four accountability goals (compliance, report, oversight, and enforcement). We argue that these goals are often complementary and that policy-makers emphasise or prioritise some over others depending on the proactive or reactive use of accountability and the missions of AI governance. (shrink)