: This paper investigates epistemological differences in the cognitive neuroscientific and phenomenological approaches to outstanding questions in psychiatry. We argue that clinical neuroscience provides scientific explanation in line with a mechanistic approach and describe several examples from computational approaches that illustrate what research on neural processing can tell us about psychiatric diseases. By contrast, phenomenology offers complex descriptions of experiential phenomena. Through a discussion of executive function and the related construct of impulsivity, we show that both cognitive neuroscience and phenomenology (...) provide valuable types of explanation. Our focus on psychopathology also allows us to address some important epistemic differences between these two disciplines. Keywords: Phenomenology; Consciousness; Clinical Neuroscience; Computational Neuroscience; Cognitive Mechanisms Coscienza e meccanismi cerebrali: ricerche epistemologiche tra fenomenologia e neuroscienza clinica Riassunto: Il presente lavoro propone di esaminare le differenze epistemologiche tra la fenomenologia e le neuroscienze cognitive riguardo dibattiti psichiatrici. Le neuroscienze cliniche saranno discusse in linea con un approccio meccanicista della spiegazione scientifica, mentre descrizioni fenomenologiche saranno proposte nel momento in cui complessi fenomeni esperenziali dovranno essere indagati. Un’interpretazione meccanicista delle neuroscienze cognitive sarà esemplificata ricorrendo ad alcuni esempi dagli approcci computazionali che si occupano di questi temi, i quali ci aiuteranno a definire cosa le ricerche sui processi neurali ci stanno dicendo rispetto alle sintomatologie psichiatriche. Questi argomenti saranno sviluppati attraverso una discussione che verterà sulle funzioni esecutive e il costrutto di impulsività a esse legato. Sarà discusso come sia le neuroscienze cognitive sia la fenomenologia possano fornire specifiche forme di spiegazione. Allo stesso tempo, si proporrà un’argomentazione che consentirà di discernere differenze epistemiche che caratterizzano i suddetti approcci, le quali potranno con più facilità emergere nel dibattito psichiatrico. Parole chiave : Fenomenologia; Coscienza; Neuroscienza clinica; Neuroscienza computazionale; Meccanismi cognitivi. (shrink)

Riassunto: Applicando il metodo fenomenologico e ricostruendo alcune tematiche della ricerca neuroscientifica, verranno nel testo discriminate le strutture trascendentali dell’esperienza, attraverso le quali il mondo circostante acquisisce significato, e le computazioni inconsce indagate nel dominio psico-fisiologico. L’emozionalità umana coinvolge meccanismi neurali-istintivi che precedono l’attività cosciente, ed essi possono essere esclusivamente investigati ricorrendo a metodi causali-quantitativi. La motivazione, che può essere descritta attraverso il metodo fenomenologico, esprime una forma di causalità più complessa, che ci consente di riflettere sulla nostra emozionalità all’interno (...) del flusso temporale della coscienza. La distinzione tra emozione e sentimento offre un importante indizio per comprendere la dimensione causale della prima rispetto alle caratteristiche motivazionali della seconda: in questo modo, potremo meglio approfondire il ruolo del sentimento in fenomenologia, coinvolgendo esso processi temporali-costitutivi. Parole chiave: Fenomenologia; Neuroscienza; Causalità; Emozione; Motivazione. -/- Emotional Experience between Causality and Motivation: Phenomenology and Neuroscience on the Human Capacity for Reflection: Applying the phenomenological method and drawing on neuroscientific research, I discriminate between the transcendental structures of experience, through which the surrounding world acquires meaning, and unconscious computations made in the psycho-physiological domain. Human emotionality involves neuronal-instinctive mechanisms that precede subjective conscious activity, and these can only be investigated using causal-quantitative methods. Motivation, which can be described using the phenomenological method, speaks to a more complex causality, that allows us to reflect on our emotionality within the temporal flux of consciousness. The distinction between emotion and feeling offers an important clue to understanding the causal dimension of the former and the motivational characteristics of the latter: in this way, we can better understand the role that feeling, which involves constitutive-temporal processes, plays in phenomenology. Keywords: Phenomenology; Neuroscience; Causality; Emotion; Motivation. (shrink)

Assisted reproductive technologies have greatly increased our control over reproductive choices, leading some bioethicists to argue that we face unprecedented moral obligations towards progeny. Several models attempting to balance the principle of procreative autonomy with these obligations have been proposed. The least demanding is the minimal threshold model (MTM), according to which every reproductive choice is permissible, except creating children whose lives will not be worth living. Hence, as long as the future child is likely to have a life worth (...) living, prospective parents may be allowed to use preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to select embryos with genetic diseases or disabilities. Assuming a consequentialist person‐affecting view of morality, this paper investigates whether the MTM is an appropriate tool to guide procreative decisions given the continuous development of reproductive genetic technologies. In particular, I consider germline genome editing (GGE) and I argue that its application in human reproduction, unlike PGD, should be conceived as person‐affecting towards future progeny. I claim that even if we assume the plausibility of the MTM within PGD, we are committed to accepting that a greater moral obligation towards progeny should guide procreative decisions if GGE were available. In this case, the MTM should no longer be considered an appropriate instrument to guide procreative choices. Finally, I investigate when we face this greater moral obligation, concluding that it applies only when prospective parents have already engaged in the in vitro fertilization process. (shrink)

This paper recognizes a specific correspondence between biological evolution and technological development and on this basis tries to set up a semioticapproach to the evolutionary phenomenon of exaptation. To do this, the existence of a historical-structural and pragmatic analogy between organs and tools is shown, which in turn implies on a communicative ground the dissolution of some of their traditional distinctive att ributes. Finally, a philosophical-analytical approach to natural and cultural functions is applied to define three types of exaptations.

Critical discussions can often require conceptual engineering, a process in which speakers are engaged in revising each other’s concepts. We show that the analysis of conceptual engineering can benefit from integrating argumentation theory with models of conceptual representation. Argumentation theory accounts for the argumentative moves of the discussants, allowing the detection of speakers’ conceptual disagreements, for which some fallacies can be seen as cues. Models of conceptual representation, such as Conceptual spaces and the theory of meeting of minds, allow us (...) to study the cognitive side of engineering practices. However, when this integrated framework is applied to practical scenarios, conceptual engineering faces different challenges. In particular, assuming a psychological view about concepts, revisionary strategies are significantly narrowed down, if not impossible, in practice. These criticisms lead to a kind of dilemma for conceptual engineers, highlighting the necessity of further work on the definition of concept embraced by this research program. (shrink)

The aim of the present contribution is to defend a specific version of moderate skeptical invariantism, which I call Practical Skeptical Invariantism (PSI). The view is a form of skepticism to the extent that it denies knowledge of many facts that we ordinarily think or claim to know. It is moderate to the extent that it is supposed to be compatible with a quite weak, non-radical form of skepticism. According to this view, the threshold on evidential support required for knowledge (...) should be partially fixed by the practical circumstances of the subject: someone is in a position to know a proposition p only if she would be rational to act as if p even if the practical stakes on p were maximally high. I consider and address what I take to be the most pressing problem for the view, namely, that the view can’t avoid a collapse into a radical form of skepticism. Moreover, I propose a positive argument for this view. The argument relies on the claim that judgments in high stakes are generally more reliable than in low stakes. (shrink)

The notion of maximal greatness is arguably part of the very concept of God: something greater than God is not even possible. But how should we understand this notion? The aim of this paper is to provide a Śaivist answer to this question by analyzing the form of theism advocated in the Pratyabhijñā tradition. First, I extract a model of divine greatness, the Hierarchical Model, from Nagasawa’s work "Maximal God". According to the Hierarchical Model, God is that than which nothing (...) could be greater by virtue of being better suited than all other beings in relation to certain great-making properties (§1). I then offer an analysis of the form of theism advocated in the Pratyabhijñā tradition by discussing passages from the works of Somānanda, the founder of the Pratyabhijñā school, and of Utpaladeva, the most prominent of Somānanda’s disciples. I argue that the Pratyabhijñā theist cannot account for divine greatness in terms of the Hierarchical Model. My argument is that the Hierarchical Model requires a comparison between God and other beings that cannot be made with the Pratyabhijñā God (§2). Finally, I develop an original alternative model, the Unlimited Nature Model, that accounts for God’s maximal greatness in a way that suits Pratyabhijñā’s theism. According to the Unlimited Nature Model, the nature of all ordinary beings is metaphysically limited as a result of realizing only a small portion of the potential of what could be, and God is maximally great because only he has a completely unlimited nature (§3). (shrink)

The thesis includes six essays, each corresponding to a chapter, which have the target of widening the discussion on the limits of knowability through the consideration of some general problematics and the discussion of specific topics. The work is composed of two parts, each of three chapters. In the first part, the discussion is focused on a perspective proper of the philosophy of language. In particular, I consider the discussion on the limits of knowability from the point of view of (...) the debate between semantic realism and antirealism. The second part of the thesis is focused on the discussion on the limits of knowability from a perspective more strictly epistemological and proper of the philosophy of science. (shrink)

In un mondo frastagliato e scivoloso ma in continua espansione come quello delle pratiche filosofiche, non mancano ormai un certo numero di manuali o introduzioni al tema. Questo volume tenta tutt'altro: una riflessione sulla Pratica filosofica che, arrischiandone una lettura non disciplinare, la esamini come effetto di una condizione preliminare della filosofia. Scopo del volume e pertanto la raffigurazione della curva, fin dove la possiamo vedere, di quella che si considera la "svolta pratica" del pensiero contemporaneo. Per tracciare il passaggio (...) dalla filosofia "classica" - ove i concetti sono oggettuali - al pensiero come attivita che riflette sugli stili di vita e le forme concrete dell'esistenza, si e tentato di guardare lo sviluppo del pensiero da un occhio di bue: la reattivita alla vita e l'offerta della filosofia al mondo. In questa rilettura mutano e si ricollocano concetti che siamo usi considerare solidi, forse scontati, e prende vita un intenso dialogo con autori come Hadot, Zambrano, Sgalambro, Sloterdijk, costretti a confronto serrato con le istanze della svolta pratica.". (shrink)

A recent view in contemporary epistemology holds that practical reasoning is governed by an epistemic norm. Evidence for the existence of this norm is provided by the ways in which we assess our actions and reasoning on the basis of whether certain epistemic conditions are satisfied. Philosophers disagree on what this norm is—whether it is knowledge, justified belief or something else. Nobody however challenges the claim that practical reasoning is governed by such a norm. I argue that assuming the existence (...) of an epistemic norm of practical reasoning is neither the only nor the best way to accommodate the available data. I introduce and defend an alternative account that avoids the assumption. According to this account, the relevant epistemic assessments of action and reasoning are instrumental assessments relative to the regulation conditions of a non-epistemic norm. (shrink)

In _The Poetics of Political Thinking_ Davide Panagia focuses on the role that aesthetic sensibilities play in theorists’ evaluations of political arguments. Examining works by thinkers from Thomas Hobbes to Jacques Rancière, Panagia shows how each one invokes aesthetic concepts and devices, such as metaphor, mimesis, imagination, beauty, and the sublime. He argues that it is important to recognize and acknowledge these poetic forms of representation because they provide evaluative standards that theorists use in appraising the value of ideas—ideas (...) about justice, politics, and democratic life. An investigation into the intertwined histories of aesthetic and political accounts of representation—such as Panagia presents here—sheds light on how modes of poetic thinking delimit the questions of unity and diversity that continue to animate contemporary political theory. Panagia not only illuminates the structure of much contemporary political theory but also shows why understanding the poetics of political thinking is vital to contemporary society. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s critique of negation and his privileging of paradox as the source of political thought, Panagia suggests that a non-teleological concept of difference might generate insight into pressing questions about foreignness and citizenship. Turning to the liberal/poststructural debate that dominates contemporary political theory, he compares John Rawls’s concept of justice to Rancière’s ideas about political disagreement in order to demonstrate how, despite their differences, both thinkers comprehend aesthetic and moral reasoning as part and parcel of political writing. Considering the writings of William Hazlitt and Jürgen Habermas, he describes how the essay has become the exemplary genre of what is considered rational political argument. _The Poetics of Political Thinking_ is a compelling reappraisal of the role of representation within political thought. (shrink)

Believing in free will may arise from a biological need for control. People induced to disbelieve in free will show impulsive and antisocial tendencies, suggesting a reduction of the willingness to exert self-control. We investigated whether undermining free will affects two aspects of self-control: intentional inhibition and perceived self-control. We exposed participants either to anti-free will or to neutral messages. The two groups then performed a task that required self-control to inhibit a prepotent response. No-free will participants showed less intentional (...) inhibitions than controls, suggesting a reduction of self-control. We assessed perceived self-control by asking participants whether the response resulted from a deliberate intention or from an impulsive reaction. Perceived self-control was lower in the no-free will group than in control group. Our findings show that undermining free will can degrade self-control and provide insights into how disbelieving in free will leads to antisocial tendencies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A belief is correct if and only if the believed proposition is true. Some philosophers argued that from this standard of correctness it is possible to derive the statement of a norm, a claim about what a subject ought to do. Many formulations of the standard in terms of an ‘ought’-claim have been suggested, but all resulted affected by some problem. My aim in this article is to suggest a new formulation of the standard in ‘ought’-terms based on an (...) analysis of the relations occurring between the notions of correctness and ‘ought’. My suggested formulation is that, for any subject S and proposition p, according to the standard of correctness, given that S believes that p, it ought to be that p. (shrink)

Objectivism is the view that how an agent ought to act depends on all kinds of facts, regardless of the agent’s epistemic position with respect to them. One of the most important challenges to this view is constituted by certain cases involving specific conditions of uncertainty—so-called three-options cases. In these cases it seems overwhelmingly plausible that an agent ought to do what is recommendable given her limited perspective, even though the agent knows that this is not objectively the best course (...) of action. The standard objectivist response to this challenge relies on a distinction between what one ought to do and what would be blameworthy or unreasonable to do. This response is affected by several problems. In this paper I introduce and defend an alternative objectivist response to the challenge. My proposal admits that in the relevant cases the agent ought to do what is recommendable given her perspective, but maintains that this diagnosis of the cases is fully compatible with objectivism. I argue that this proposal has several advantages over alternative accounts of the cases. (shrink)

We introduce a sequent system which is Gentzen algebraisable with orthomodular lattices as equivalent algebraic semantics, and therefore can be viewed as a calculus for orthomodular quantum logic. Its sequents are pairs of non-associative structures, formed via a structural connective whose algebraic interpretation is the Sasaki product on the left-hand side and its De Morgan dual on the right-hand side. It is a substructural calculus, because some of the standard structural sequent rules are restricted—by lifting all such restrictions, one recovers (...) a calculus for classical logic. (shrink)

Cet article a déjà paru dans Maria do Carmo Ribeiro & Arnaldo Sousa Mello, Evolucão da paisagem urbana cidade e periferia, Braga, Centro de Investigação Transdisciplinar « Cultura, Espaço e Memória » – Instituto de Estudos Medievais – Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2014, pp.175-204. Il est disponible en ligne sur la base des Archives ouvertes. Nous remercions Hélène Noizet et Davide Gherdevich de nous avoir autorisé à le republier ici. Comme la plupart des villes, Paris connaît une dynamique - (...) Géographie – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Davide Serpico describes his research at the Special Collection dedicated to the distinguished population geneticist John R. G. Turner at the University of Leeds’ Library.

This is an introduction to the Topical Collection Current Themes in Epistemology: Asian Epistemology Network.

Recently some epistemologists have approached the question whether epistemic justification comes in degrees from a linguistic perspective. Drawing insights from linguistic analyses of gradable adjectives, they investigate whether epistemic occurrences of ‘justified’ are gradable and if yes what type of gradability they involve. These authors conclude that the adjective passes standard tests for gradability, but they classify it as belonging to different categories: as either an absolute or a relative gradable adjective. The aim of this paper is to further clarify (...) the question of what kind of gradability is instantiated by epistemic uses of ‘justified’, and to investigate the consequences that this may have on epistemological theorizing. In particular, we challenge the alleged evidence provided by Siscoe (2021: 517–59) for the relative gradability of ‘justified’ and we provide positive arguments for the claim that ‘justified’ is a specific kind of absolute gradable adjective (a totally closed scale absolute with default minimal reading). We consider some important philosophical implications of these results. We also argue that the scale type of ‘justified’ is ordinal, and we consider which other properties typically associated to justification possess a similar type of scale. We argue that several popular contemporary models of graded justification, such as probabilistic and reliabilist accounts and various kinds of Lockean views, do not fit well with our results about the gradability of ‘justified’. Linguistic data rather favour normalcy and plausibility accounts of graded justification. (shrink)

In a recent paper (Okasha, Mind 120:83–115, 2011), Samir Okasha uses Arrow’s theorem to raise a challenge for the rationality of theory choice. He argues that, as soon as one accepts the plausibility of the assumptions leading to Arrow’s theorem, one is compelled to conclude that there are no adequate theory choice algorithms. Okasha offers a partial way out of this predicament by diagnosing the source of Arrow’s theorem and using his diagnosis to deploy an approach that circumvents it. In (...) this paper I explain why, although Okasha is right to emphasise that Arrow’s result is the effect of an informational problem, he is not right to locate this problem at the level of the informational input of a theory choice rule. Once the informational problem is correctly located, Arrow’s theorem may be dismissed as a problem. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 16, Issue 3, Page 53-61, September 2011.

Deontic Doxastic Constitutivism is the view that beliefs are constitutively governed by deontic norms. This roughly means that a full account and understanding of the nature of these mental attitudes cannot be reached unless one appeals to some norm of this type. My aim in this article is to provide an objection to such a conception of the normativity of belief. I argue that if some deontic norm is constitutive of belief, then the addressees of such a norm are committed (...) to a potentially infinite number of norms. Furthermore, if addressees are in the position to fulfill all such norms, they must also be able to hold a potentially infinite number of logically independent beliefs. Both these consequences are problematic if compared with limited human capacities to act and believe. (shrink)

While prior research suggests a link between mindfulness and ethical decision-making, most of the evidence for this link is correlational and refers to self-focused ethical behaviors. The paucity of experimental evidence, coupled with a lack of clarity on what mechanisms underlie the effect, limits our understanding of whether and how mindfulness might foster other-focused ethical behaviors. In this research, we hypothesize that state mindfulness might promote other-focused ethical behaviors by increasing resourcefulness, which we define as a perceived state of resource (...) abundance. Across four experimental studies, we report causal evidence for the effects of state mindfulness instantiated through brief mindful meditation exercises on other-focused ethical behaviors, including choice of fair-trade products, charitable giving, and volunteering. Resourcefulness mediates the effects of mindfulness on other-focused ethical behaviors. Our work answers the call for more experimental research on mindfulness and its important implications for ethical decision-making. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that mapping-based accounts of applications cannot be comprehensive and must be supplemented by analyses of other, qualitatively different, forms of application. I support these claims by providing a detailed discussion of the application of mathematics to a problem of election design that is prominent in social choice theory.

Baker claims to provide an example of mathematical explanation of an empirical phenomenon which leads to ontological commitment to mathematical objects. This is meant to show that the positing of mathematical entities is necessary for satisfactory scientific explanations and thus that the application of mathematics to science can be used, at least in some cases, to support mathematical realism. In this paper I show that the example of explanation Baker considers can actually be given without postulating mathematical objects and thus (...) cannot be used by the mathematical realist. I also show that, despite this, mathematics keeps playing an important methodological role in the explanation and does not reduce to a merely computational or descriptive framework. (shrink)

Certain mathematical problems prove very hard to solve because some of their intuitive features have not been assimilated or cannot be assimilated by the available mathematical resources. This state of affairs triggers an interesting dynamic whereby the introduction of novel conceptual resources converts the intuitive features into further mathematical determinations in light of which a solution to the original problem is made accessible. I illustrate this phenomenon through a study of Bertrand’s paradox.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.2 (2000) 113-126 [Access article in PDF] Dissenting Words:A Conversation with Jacques Rancière 1 Davide Panagia:In your writings you highlight the political efficacy of words. In The Names of History, for instance, this emphasis is discussed most vividly in terms of what you refer to as an "excess of words" that marks the rise of democratic movements in the seventeenth century. Similarly, in On The Shores of (...) Politics, you begin your discussion with an excursus on the end of politics as the end of the promise. Finally, in Dis-agreement you speak of "the part of those who have no-part" as voicing a "wrong" for the sake of equality.In each of these instances, however, your treatment of words (and language more generally) is very different from those thinkers of the "linguistic turn" in political philosophy who expound on an ethics of deliberation as the first virtue of modern democracies. For that matter, your approach is quite different from those thinkers who focus on the aporias of language as such.Could you discuss this thematic of the proliferation of words in your thinking about democratic politics?Would it be fair to characterize your research on and exposition of democratic thinking as a "poetics of politics"?Rancière's Reply:In order to address your question adequately, it would be wise to enlarge the sense of "linguistic turn" you invoke. In its most generally accepted sense, the linguistic turn in philosophy consists in ascribing to linguistic processes certain phenomena and specifiable modes of relating objects attributed, in a previous instance, either to factual processes or lines of thought. This approach is not limited to the two figures you invoke in your question. The linguistic turn also has two stages of development that, from my experience, have been more noticeable in France than in the United States. The first phase, then, emerged with Lévi-Strauss and his structural approach to social relations founded on a linguistic model of relationality, subsequently reprised in Lacan's psychoanalytic notion that "the unconscious is structured like a language" that, in its turn, conjoins the energetic mental processes Freud discusses to linguistic practices. The primacy of "the linguistic" thus granted language all the properties of the Freudian unconscious [End Page 113] along with those of a Marxist notion of infrastructure. The Saussurian opposition between langue and parole provided a privileged status to a linguistic model whose role was that of a general law that unconsciously structures the behavior of individuals and societies. It is on the basis of these parameters that the structuralist moment of the linguistic turn was constituted. At one and the same time, the analysis of speech acts became first and foremost a "symptomatic" analysis of those procedures of misrecognition that linguistically structured both the behavior of individuals and social relations. When we "read" Le Capital with Althusser, the interpretive and methodological schema for linguistic phenomena operated like a kind of "policing of the enunciated": that is, a search for those unsuccessful (i.e., inadequate) modes of expression that exemplify such symptomatic procedures of misrecognition.The second phase of the linguistic turn constituted itself more ambiguously. For those who shared intellectual experiences similar to my own, this version involved a critique of the langue/infrastructure model; that is, a further and more favorable consideration of the value of the political and the linguistic games therein that, according to the Althusserian/Marxist model (and, indeed, with structuralism more generally), were to be treated as ideological artifacts. In a very real sense, it all began with the May '68 assertion that "we are all German Jews"--an entirely ideological statement, the validity of which, if analyzed at the level of its content, one finds to rest entirely on the capacity to overturn the political relationship between the order of designations and that of events by emphasizing the gap that separates subject and predicate. From there, an entire field of understanding speech acts as political gestures opened up: a field that reconfigured the division between words and things while rearranging the distinction between legitimate... (shrink)

In this article, I claim that film matters to political theory not because of the stories films recount, but because the medium of film offers political theorists an image of political thinking that emphasizes the stochastic serialization of actions. I thus argue that the stochastic serialization of moving images that films project makes available for democratic theory an experience of resistance and change as a felt discontinuity of succession, rather than as an inversion of hierarchical power. In my treatment of (...) these issues, I rely on Hume's ontology of ‘broken appearances’ and ‘interrupted perceptions’, as well as Stanley Cavell's ontology of film as treated in The World Viewed. I elaborate the following four aspects of the relation between film and political theory: the action-image; discontinuity and the fact of series; actors, artificial persons and human somethings; and political resistance and an aesthetics of politics. The manner in which I proceed is to show the aspectual overlay between film and political thinking. Such a method of exposition suggests a further, methodological site where film matters to political theory: the stochastic serialization of moving images in film provides political theory with a genre for elaborating ideas that is not reducible to the analytics of causal argument. (shrink)

Lo studio sonda l’incidenza della Völkerpsychologie di Lazarus e Steinthal nei primi testi filosofici di Croce . A partire da quest’angolo prospettico propone un’analisi del complesso atteggiamento del filosofo verso i plessi tematici della Prelezione labrioliana prevalentemente ispirati dalla psicologia dei popoli. Croce non solo interpreta diversamente da Labriola la Völkerpsychologie, rigettandola in quanto illegittimo tentativo di fondazione psicologica degli studi storici maturato nel clima positivistico della seconda metà dell’Ottocento, ma respinge anche il piano generale e le linee strutturanti la (...) filosofia della storia di Labriola, in cui la psicologia dei popoli perde la paradossalità della ricerca di leggi del corso storico per diventare un’analisi delle forme di categorizzazione del fatto storico. Da questo confronto emerge, infine, il compito di classificazione trascendentale assegnato da Croce, nella sua produzione giovanile, alla filosofia. (shrink)

One of the biggest challenges of contemporary science is to develop innovative approach to excite society about science and scientific topics. One of the attempts to find new ways to communicate with the public has been to use artistic language to explore scientific topics. Specifically, theatre, allows to explore emotions and raise awareness of ethical and social issues. This type of art can have the power to excite people about certain topics, including scientific ones. Based on these premises, a project, (...) titled _Social sciences on stage_ is presented that create a creative link between social science and theater. The aim is to encourage the participation of scientists in the creation and expression of theater and to reflect on the social context of science. It will generate a reflection on the social context of science. (shrink)

The problem of free will is among the most fascinating and disputed questions throughout the history of philosophy and psychology. Traditionally limited to philosophical and theological debate, in the last decades it has become a matter of scientific investigation. The theoretical and methodological advances in neuroscience allowed very complex psychological functions related to free will (conscious intentions, decision-making, and agency) to be investigated. In parallel, neuroscience is gaining momentum in the media, and various scientific findings are claimed to provide evidence (...) that free will is nothing more than an illusion. Why do neuroscientific findings have such a strong impact on our notion of free will? Does it really matter what neuroscience tells us about free will? Here we critically examine studies in experimental philosophy, social psychology and cognitive neuroscience that attempt to provide an empirical answer to these questions. This overview of the literature demonstrates that inducing disbelief in free will has an impact on folk psychology, social behavior and intentional action. (shrink)

Prologue : narratocracy and the contours of political life -- From nomos to nomad : Kant, Deleuze, and Rancière on sensation -- The piazza, the edicola, and the noise of the utterance -- Machiavelli's theory of sensation and Florence's vita festiva -- The viewing subject : Caravaggio, Bacon, and the ring -- "You're eating too fast!" slow food's ethos of convivium -- Epilogue : "the photographs tell it all" : on an ethics of appearance.