Binocular rivalry provides a useful situation for studying the relation between the temporal flow of conscious experience and the temporal dynamics of neural activity. After proposing a phenomenological framework for understanding temporal aspects of consciousness, we review experimental research on multistable perception and binocular rivalry, singling out various methodological, theoretical, and empirical aspects of this research relevant to studying the flow of experience. We then review an experimental study from our group explicitly concerned with relating the temporal dynamics of rivalrous (...) experience to the temporal dynamics of cortical activity. Drawing attention to the importance of dealing with ongoing activity and its inherent changing nature at both phenomenological and neurodynamical levels, we argue that the notions of recurrence and variability are pertinent to understanding rivalry in particular and the flow of experience in general. (shrink)

Suppose that a team of neurosurgeons and bioengineers were able to remove your brain from your body, suspend it in a life-sustaining vat of liquid nutrients, and connect its neurons and nerve terminals by wires to a supercomputer that would stimulate it with electrical impulses exactly like those it normally receives when embodied. According to this brain-in-a-vat thought experiment, your envatted brain and your embodied brain would have subjectively indistinguishable mental lives. For all you know—so one argument goes—you could be (...) such a brain in a vat right now.1 Daniel Dennett calls this sort of philosophical thought experiment an “intuition pump” (Dennett 1995). An intuition pump is designed to elicit certain intuitive convictions, but is not itself a proper argument: “intuition pumps are fine if they’re used correctly, but they can also be misused. They’re not arguments, they’re stories. Instead of having a conclusion, they pump an intuition. They get you to say ‘Aha! Oh, I get it!’ (Dennett 1995, p. 182). Philosophers have used the brain-in-a-vat story mainly to raise the problem of radical skepticism and to elicit various intuitions about meaning and knowledge (Putnam 1981). The basic intuition the story tries to pump is that the envatted brain, though fully conscious, has systematically false beliefs about the world, including itself. Some philosophers reject this intuition. They propose that the envatted brain’s beliefs are really about its artificial environment or that it.. (shrink)

cal basis of consciousness. We continue by discussing the relation between spatiotem- One of the outstanding problems in the cog- poral patterns of brain activity and con- nitive sciences is to understand how ongo- sciousness, with particular attention to pro- ing conscious experience is related to the cesses in the gamma frequency band. We workings of the brain and nervous system. then adopt a critical perspective and high-.

Immigrant farmworkers from Latin America experience multiple challenges in rural Vermont. A large body of literature has shown the benefits that collective agency can represent for migrant farmworkers in the U.S. food system. These initiatives have mainly focused on the improvement of human and labor conditions by empowering farmworkers. However, little is known about what factors influence the creation and progress of these types of collaborative efforts to address challenges faced by immigrant farmworkers in rural areas. By analyzing work completed (...) by the non-governmental organization, Migrant Justice in Vermont, this article explores why and how collective agency was formed outside the state power to facilitate resources for Latinx farmworkers on dairy farms. Collaborative work led by this non-governmental organization has resulted in multiple efforts and achievements that address immigrant farmworkers’ needs and challenges. Results from this research unveil the complicated role of the state and how specific aspects of collective identity influenced the formation and progress of collective agency. This study aims to enrich the existing literature and/or ongoing initiatives on food movements, food justice, fair food programs, and immigration in the U.S. (shrink)

We argue that the minimal biological requirements for consciousness include a living body, not just neuronal processes in the skull. Our argument proceeds by reconsidering the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment. Careful examination of this thought experiment indicates that the null hypothesis is that any adequately functional “vat” would be a surrogate body, that is, that the so-called vat would be no vat at all, but rather an embodied agent in the world. Thus, what the thought experiment actually shows is that the (...) brain and body are so deeply entangled, structurally and dynamically, that they are explanatorily inseparable. Such entanglement implies that we cannot understand consciousness by considering only the activity of neurons apart from the body, and hence we have good explanatory grounds for supposing that the minimal realizing system for consciousness includes the body and not just the brain. In this way, we put the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment to a new use, one that supports the “enactive” view that consciousness is a life-regulation process of the whole organism interacting with its environment. (shrink)

This book presents the framework for a new, comprehensive approach to cognitive science. The proposed paradigm, enaction, offers an alternative to cognitive science's classical, first-generation Computational Theory of Mind. _Enaction_, first articulated by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch in _The Embodied Mind_, breaks from CTM's formalisms of information processing and symbolic representations to view cognition as grounded in the sensorimotor dynamics of the interactions between a living organism and its environment. A living organism enacts the world it lives in; its (...) embodied action in the world constitutes its perception and thereby grounds its cognition. _Enaction_ offers a range of perspectives on this exciting new approach to embodied cognitive science. Some chapters offer manifestos for the enaction paradigm; others address specific areas of research, including artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, neuroscience, language, phenomenology, and culture and cognition. Three themes emerge as testimony to the originality and specificity of enaction as a paradigm: the relation between first-person lived experience and third-person natural science; the ambition to provide an encompassing framework applicable at levels from the cell to society; and the difficulties of reflexivity. Taken together, the chapters offer nothing less than the framework for a far-reaching renewal of cognitive science. Contributors: Renaud Barbaras, Didier Bottineau, Giovanna Colombetti, Diego Cosmelli, Hanne De Jaegher, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo. Andreas K. Engel, Olivier Gapenne, Véronique Havelange, Edwin Hutchins, Michel Le Van Quyen, Rafael E. Núñez, Marieke Rohde, Benny Shanon, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Adam Sheya, Linda B. Smith, John Stewart, Evan Thompson. (shrink)

My immediate aim in this lecture is to contribute something to the apt characterization of our representation and knowledge of the specifically human life form, as I will put it - and, to some extent, of things ‘human’ more generally. In particular I want to argue against an exaggerated empiricism about such cognition. Meditation on these themes might be pursued as having a kind of interest of its own, an epistemological and in the end metaphysical interest, but my own purpose (...) in the matter is practical-philosophical. I want to employ my theses to make room for a certain range of doctrines in ethical theory and the theory of practical rationality - doctrines, namely, of natural normativity or natural goodness, as we may call them. I am not proposing to attempt a positive argument for any such ‘neo-Aristotelian’ position, but merely to defend such views against certain familiar lines of objection; and even here my aims will be limited, as will be seen. (shrink)

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, biofuels were recognized as an important element in the overall strategy to reduce climate-forcing greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. Yet scientific research to more fully realize the potential of agricultural crops for liquid transportation fuel requires the coordination of many separate projects housed in different disciplines. Studies predicting and documenting adverse social impacts of plant-based ethanol and biodiesel led to the inclusion of social science components within research teams seeking to develop biofuels. (...) A 2008 rise in global food prices became a centerpiece of this research, leading to a search for non-food crops that could serve as energy feedstocks. Although coordinated scientific research teams have made significant strides toward incorporating social dimensions and broader impacts into what was originally a purely biophysical research effort, a simplistic diagnosis of the tension between agricultural production for food use and agricultural production intended for energy production continues to prevail. Some of the hard questions in the global development of the agricultural sector have been obscured as a result. (shrink)

This paper argues for the following three claims. First, the Agrippan mode from disagreement does not play a secondary role in inducing suspension of judgment. Second, the Pyrrhonist is not committed to the criteria of justification underlying the Five Modes of Agrippa, which nonetheless does not prevent him from non-doxastically assenting to them. And third, some recent objections to Agrippan Pyrrhonism raised by analytic epistemologists and experimental philosophers fail to appreciate the Pyrrhonist's ad hominem style of argumentation and the real (...) challenge posed by the mode from disagreement. (shrink)

I present a theory of alienation that accounts for the cognitive processes involved with moral thinking and political behavior in modern societies. On my account, alienation can be understood as a particular kind of atrophy of moral concepts and moral thinking that affect the ways individuals cognize and legitimate the social world and their place within it. Central to my argument is the thesis that modern forms of social integration—shaped by highly institutionalized, rationalized and hierarchical forms of social life—serve to (...) constrain the moral- cognitive powers of subjects leading to a condition of alienation as moral atrophy. This state results from the withering of the subject's internal powers of moral reflection and an overriding predisposition to rely on external value schemas to make sense of moral and political problems. I then present an analysis of alienated moral consciousness and its implications for modern social theory. (shrink)

Disagreement is a pervasive feature of human life whose skeptical implications have been emphasized particularly by the ancient Pyrrhonists and by contemporary moral skeptics. Although the connection between disagreement and skepticism is also a focus of analysis in the emerging and burgeoning area of epistemology concerned with the significance of controversy, it has arguably not received the full attention it deserves. The present volume explores for the first time the possible skeptical consequences of disagreement in different areas and from different (...) perspectives, with an emphasis in the current debate over the epistemic impact of disagreement. The thirteen new essays collected here examine the Pyrrhonian approach to disagreement and its relevance to the present epistemological discussions of the topic; the relationship between disagreement and moral realism and antirealism; disagreement-based skeptical arguments in contemporary epistemology; and disagreement and the possibility of philosophical knowledge and justified belief. Given the ever-growing interest in both the significance of disagreement and the challenge of skepticism, this volume makes a new contribution by conjugating two important trends in current philosophical research. (shrink)

An objection that has been raised to the conciliatory stance on the epistemic significance of peer disagreement known as the Equal Weight View is that it is self-defeating, self-undermining, or self-refuting. The proponent of that view claims that equal weight should be given to all the parties to a peer dispute. Hence, if one of his epistemic peers defends the opposite view, he is required to give equal weight to the two rival views, thereby undermining his confidence in the correctness (...) of the Equal Weight View. It seems that the same objection could be leveled against those who claim to suspend judgment in the face of pervasive unresolvable disagreements, as do the Pyrrhonian skeptics. In this paper, I explore the kind of response to the objection that could be offered from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, with the aim of better understanding the intriguing character of Pyrrhonian skepticism. (shrink)

It has been argued that, in political theory and political practice, a concern with the distribution of economic opportunities and resources has recently been displaced by a preoccupation with the acknowledgement of cultural identities and differences. In their jointly authored book, Redistribution or Recognition?, Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth present their very different reactions to this development. While Fraser argues that redistribution and recognition are two mutually irreducible elements of an account of social justice, Honneth contends that a suitably differentiated (...) account of recognition can provide the basis of a theory of justice on its own. This article critically assesses the relative merits of these two positions by focusing on their accounts of the nature of capitalism, the sort of social theories that are needed in light of these accounts, and the moral philosophies associated with these social theories. This assessment leads to a number of conclusions about the proper relationship between recognition and redistribution in a theory of social justice. (shrink)

Pyrrhonism was one of the two main ancient skeptical traditions. In this second paper of the three‐part series devoted to ancient skepticism, I present and discuss some of the issues on Pyrrhonian skepticism which have been the focus of much attention in the recent literature. The topics to be addressed concern the outlooks of Pyrrho, Aenesidemus, and Sextus Empiricus.

This Element engages with the epistemic significance of disagreement, focusing on its skeptical implications. It examines various types of disagreement-motivated skepticism in ancient philosophy, ethics, philosophy of religion, and general epistemology. In each case, it favors suspension of judgment as the seemingly appropriate response to the realization of disagreement. One main line of argument pursued in the Element is that, since in real-life disputes we have limited or inaccurate information about both our own epistemic standing and the epistemic standing of (...) our dissenters, personal information and self-trust can rarely function as symmetry breakers in favor of our own views. (shrink)

In this introductory chapter, I first offer an overview of the two themes addressed in the present collection - namely, disagreement and skepticism - and their connection, then present the purpose and content of the volume.

In this article, we explore the heuristic power of the theoretical distinction between framework and interaction theories applied to the case of General Relativity. According to the distinction, theories and theoretical elements can be classified into two different groups, each with clear ontological, epistemic and functional content. Being so, to identify the group to which a theory belongs would suffice to know a priori its prospects and limitations in these areas without going into a detailed technical analysis. We make the (...) exercise here with General Relativity, anticipate its ontological, epistemic and functional content and show afterwords that such expectations are justified in this case, being consistent with formal issues of General Relativity. With this, we attempt to make a case for the use of the distinction as a powerful tool for scientific and philosophical analysis. (shrink)

It is sometimes claimed that conciliatory views on disagreement ultimately lead to either global or widespread scepticism. This is deemed to be a serious problem for conciliationism either because scepticism of either kind is a patently untenable stance or because it poses a serious threat to our intellectual and social lives. In this paper, I first argue that the alleged untenability of both types of scepticism is far from being obvious and should therefore be established rather than taken for granted, (...) and then that those who reject them because of the threat they pose surprisingly confuse pragmatic reasons with epistemic reasons. (shrink)

The present paper has two, interrelated objectives. The first is to analyze the different senses in which arguments are characterized as persuasive in the extant writings of Sextus Empiricus. The second is to examine the Pyrrhonist’s therapeutic use of arguments in the discussion with his Dogmatic rivals – more precisely, to determine the sense and basis of Sextus’ distinction between therapeutic arguments that appear weighty and therapeutic arguments that appear weak in their persuasiveness.

Externalism about artifactual words requires that (a) members of an artifactual word’s extension share a common nature, i.e. a set of necessary features, and (b) that possession of such features determines the word’s extension independently of whether the linguistic community is aware of them (ignorance) or can accurately describe them (error). However, many common artifactual words appear to be so used that features that are universally shared among members of their extensions are hard to come by, and even fewer can (...) be plausibly regarded as necessary; morevoer, it is highly doubtful that a speaker could manage to refer to kind A while being utterly ignorant of the role the As play in the A-producing community, and it is no less doubtful that an artifactual word that was used to refer to certain objects would keep referring to them (and be regarded as having referred to them) once it has been shown that the associated description is utterly false of such objects, the reason being that we could easily make things that do fit the associated description. Against generalized externalism, it is suggested that artifactual words come in (at least) three different semantic varieties: a few have an externalist semantics, others have an internalist semantics, still others have neither but rather behave as “family names” in Wittgenstein’s sense. (shrink)

Exclusive moral concern for human beings is often thought to be the ideological source of many contemporary environmental problems. So the development of a non-anthropocentric theory of intrinsic moral value, according to which at least some parts of the non-human world are morally considerable for their own sake, is often thought to be a defining characteristic of a satisfying environmental ethic. This chapter unpacks three distinct forms of anthropocentrism, outlines three versions of ethical nonanthropocentrism, and sketches some of the debate (...) between anthropocentrists and nonanthropocentrists before concluding that a virtue-theoretic approach to human natural goodness exemplifies one form of anthropocentrism that may continue to play a vital role in developing an environmental ethic suitable to the Anthropocene. (shrink)

This paper approaches the current epistemological debate on peer disagreement from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, thus adopting a form of skepticism which is more radical than those discussed in the literature. It makes use of argumentative strategies found in ancient Pyrrhonism both to show that such a debate rests on problematic assumptions and to block some maneuvers intended to offer an efficacious way of settling a considerable number of peer disputes. The essay takes issue with three views held in the peer (...) disagreement debate: there is an objective fact of the matter about at least most controversial questions; we possess theory-neutral evidence bearing on those questions which grants us access to the truth of the matter; and many peer controversies are resolved by attending to which disputant has correctly evaluated the objective evidence. With respect to the first two views, it is argued that the belief in both objective facts and theory-neutral evidence is subject to fierce dispute, and should not therefore be taken for granted in the discussion of peer disagreement. As for the third view, it is argued that from either a first- or a third-person perspective, there seems to be epistemic symmetry between the disputants which makes it necessary to suspend judgment. (shrink)

The warrant for investigating the relationship between Augustine and narrative ethics is prompted, among other things, by a consideration of the appeals to Augustine among a diversity of views within the vast field of narrative ethics. Disparate thinkers from distinctively different backgrounds and with different motives and purposes, while all sharing an interest in the category of "narrative," also share a common interest in employing Augustine's Confessions in their efforts. Thus the question emerges as to what it is about this (...) ancient text which so readily serves such diverse yet unified purposes. ;After a thorough investigation and evaluation of the appeals to Augustine among a sampling of contemporary narrativists I turn to the Confessions directly. I argue that an examination of the anti-Manichaean aspects of its composition yield important insights regarding its usefulness in the efforts of contemporary narrativists. Specifically, I argue that implicit in this work is a theology of creation which supplies essential foundations to the contemporary discussion of narrative ethics. (shrink)

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein addressed the issue of beliefs that are not to be argued for, either because any grounds we could produce are less certain than the belief they are supposed to ground, or because our interlocutors would not accept our reasons. However, he did not address the closely related issue of justifying a conclusion to interlocutors who do not see that it follows from premises they accept. In fact, Wittgenstein had discussed the issue in the Remarks on the (...) Foundations of Mathematics; his view had been that certain inferential practices are constitutive of our notions of thinking and inferring. I argue that his treatment of unfounded beliefs in On Certainty essentially replicates, mutatis mutandis, his treatment of basic logical inference. (shrink)

This work deals with obstacles hindering a metaphysics of laws of nature in terms of dispositions, i.e., of fundamental properties that are causal powers. A recent analysis of the principle of least action has put into question the viability of dispositionalism in the case of classical mechanics, generally seen as the physical theory most easily amenable to a dispositional ontology. Here, a proper consideration of the framework role played by the least action principle within the classical image of the world (...) allows us to build a consistent metaphysics of dispositions as charges of interactions. In doing so we develop a general approach that opens the way towards an ontology of dispositions for fundamental physics also beyond classical mechanics. (shrink)

This paper engages with Svavar Svavarsson’s recent essay, “Sextus Empiricus on Persuasiveness and Equipollence,” arguing against both (i) his interpretation of whether two rival arguments appear equipollent to the Pyrrhonist because he himself is equally persuaded by both of them, and (ii) his interpretation of the way in which the argument from possible disagreement is supposed to induce suspension of judgment in the Pyrrhonist. In so doing, I aim to dispel some serious misunderstandings regarding key aspects of the Pyrrhonist’s skeptical (...) outlook and argumentative practice. (shrink)

Ancient philosophy knew two main skeptical traditions: the Pyrrhonian and the Academic. In this final paper of the three‐part series devoted to ancient skepticism, I present some of the topics about Academic skepticism which have recently been much debated in the specialist literature. I will be concerned with the outlooks of Arcesilaus, Carneades, and Philo of Larissa.

Some preliminary comments Introduction: The EDWs perspective in my article from 2005 and my book from 2008 -/- I. PHYSICS, COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY (‘REBORN DINOSAURS’ ) • (2016) Did Sean Carroll’s ideas (California Institute of Technology, USA) (within the wrong framework, the “universe”) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2010) (within the EDWs framework) on quantum mechanics, the relationship between Einstein relativity and quantum mechanics, life, the mind-brain problem, etc.? • (2016) The unbelievable similarities between Frank Wilczek’s ideas (Nobel Prize in Physics) and (...) my ideas (2002-2008, etc.) (Philosophy of Mind and Quantum Mechanics) • (2017-2019 NEW) Strong similarity between Carlo Rovelli’s ideas (Italy) in three books (2015, 2017) to my ideas (2002-2008) + commentary February 2018! • (2016) Kastner + (2017) R. E. Kastner, Stuart Kauffman, Michael Epperson “Taking Heisenberg’s Potentia Seriously”: Quite similar ideas to my ideas (2008) + • (2017) A trick: Unbelievable similarities between Lee Smolin’s ideas (2017) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (May 2018) ‘Thus spoke Zarathustra!’ - A fairy-tale with Eugen Ionesco and the Idiot about Nothingness -/- II. PHYSICS • (2011) The unbelievable similarities between Radu Ionicioiu (Physics, University of Bucharest, Romania) and Daniel R. Terno’s ideas (Physics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia) and my ideas (Quantum Mechanics) • (2013) Côté B. Gilbert (Oontario, Canada) Unbelievalbe similarities • (2015) The strong similarity between Pikovski Igor, Zych Magdalena, Costa Fabio, and Brukner Časlav’s ideas and my ideas (2006-2008) regarding the Schrodinger’s cat’s interactions with its environment (the gravitation of Earth) (both entities being macro-objects) (Quantum Mechanics) • (2015) The strong similarity between Elisabetta Caffau’s ideas (Center for Astronomy at the University of Heidelberg and the Paris Observatory) and my ideas (2011, 2014) regarding the appearance of Big Bang in many places (Cosmology) • (2015) Did Wolfram Schommers (University of Texas at Arlington, USA & Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany) plagiarize my ideas? (Physics) • (2015) Some astrophysicists about "Dark Matter May be 'Another Dimension' - Or Even a Major Galactic Transport System" January 22, 2015 • (2016) The strong similarities between Dylan H. Mahler, Lee Rozema, Kent Fisher, Lydia Vermeyden, Kevin J. Resch, Howard M. Wiseman, and Aephraim Steinberg’s ideas (USA) and my ideas (Quantum Mechanics) • (2016) The unbelievable similarities between Bill Poirier’s ‘Many Interacting Worlds’ and my EDWs (Quantum Mechanics) • (2016 or 2017) Similarities between Adam Frank’s ideas (University of Rochester in New York , USA) (“Minding matter - The closer you look, the more the materialist position in physics appears to rest on shaky metaphysical ground”) and my ideas (2005, 2008) • (2017, 2017) Did Sebastian de Haro (HPS, Cambridge, UK) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008) • (2017) Unbelievable similarities between Laura Condiotto’s ideas and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2016) The unbelievable similarities between Hugo F. Alrøe and Egon Noe’s (Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University, Denmark) ideas (USA) and my ideas (2002-2008) (Bohr's complementarity extended to ontology) • (2017) The unbelievable similar ideas between Federico Zalamea’s ideas and my ideas • (2018) Unbelievable similarities between Peter J. Lewis’s ideas (2018) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2018) Timothy Hollowood, ‘Classical from Quantum’, [arXiv:1803.04700v1 [quant-ph] 13 March 2018] • (2018) Mario Hubert and Davide Romano, ‘The Wave-Function as a Multi-Field’ -/- III. COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND • (2011-2014) Did Georg Northoff (Psychoanalysis, Institute of Mental Health) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008)? • (2011) The unbelievable similarities between Kalina Diego Cosmelli, Legrand Dorothée and Thompson Evan’s ideas (USA) and my ideas (Cognitive Neuroscience) • (2015) Did David Ludwig (Philosophy, University of Amsterdam) plagiarize many of my ideas? (Philosophy (of Mind) • (2016) Did Neil D. Theise (Department of Pathology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA) and Kafatos C. Menas (Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA) plagiarize my ideas of Physics and Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy (the mind-brain problem, quantum mechanics, etc.) from 2002-2008? • Did David Bourget (2018) (Director, Centre for Digital Philosophy, Western University (or University of Western Ontario) plagiarize my ideas regarding the mind-brain problem? + Chalmers • (2016) Unbelievable similarities between Dan Siegel’s ideas (Mindsight Institute, USA) and my ideas (2002-2008) -/- IV. Philosophy (of science) • (2010) The unbelievable similarities between Alexey Alyushin (Moscow, Russia) and my ideas (on Ontology) • (2013 + 2017) Did Markus Gabriel (Bonn University) plagiarize my ideas? • (2013) The unbelievable similarities between Andrew Newman’s ideas (University of Nebraska, at Omaha, USA) and my ideas (Ontology) • (2016) Did Tahko E. Tuomas (University of Helsinki, Finland) plagiarize my ideas? + Tahko E. Tuomas (‘The Epistemology of Essence’) • (2017) Did Jani Hakkarainen (University of Tampere, Finland) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008)? + (2017) Markku Keinänen, Antti Keskinen & Jani Hakkarainen • (2017) The unbelievable similarities between Dean Rickles’s ideas (HPS, Univ. of Sydney) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2017) Did Dirk K. F. Meijer and Hans J. H. Geesink (University of Groningen, Netherlands) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008)? (2017) • (2018) Unbelievable similar ideas between Jason Winning’s ideas (2018) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2018) David Mark Kovacs (Lecturer of philosophy at Tel Aviv University), ‘The Deflationary Theory of Ontological Dependence’, Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming) -/- Conclusion [Obviously, there are other “specialists” that published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas but I have not discovered them yet…] Bibliography [Some people haven't read my works but they claim my ideas can be found in other works. Soon, they will discover EDWs in Shakespeare, Bach, Sophocles and ET's letter sent 10 million years ago... me vs. people who have plagiarized my ideas: on Youtube] ------------------------------------------------------------------ July 2018 -/- • Oreste M. Fiocco • Baptiste Le Bihan (University of Geneva, forthcoming) • Antonella Mallozzi (The Graduate Center – CUNY, forthcoming in Synthese, penultimate draft) • Erik C. Banks (Wright State University, 2014) • Sami Pihlström (2009) • Katherin Koslicki’s ideas (2008) The Structure of Objects, Oxford University Press) and my ideas (2002-2005-2006) -/- November 2018 • Maurizio Ferraris (2014/2012) Manifesto of New Realism -/- • Graham Harman (2017) : Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Penguin Books) ---------------------------------------------------------------- -/- January 2019 • Philip Ball (2018): “Why everything you thought you knew about quantum physics is different” • Gerhard Grössing “Vacuum landscaping: cause of nonlocal influences without signaling” • Anne Sophie Meincke (November 2018) The Disappearance of Change (IJPS) 28. The Disappearance of Change Towards a Process Account of Persistence Forthcoming in: International Journal of Philosophical Studies DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2018.1548634 • Baptiste Le Bihana (University of Geneva) and James Read (Oxford Univ.) “Duality and Ontology” (forthcoming, in Philosophy Compass) • Baptiste Le Bihan (University of Geneva): “Space Emergence in Contemporary Physics: Why We Do Not Need Fundamentality, Layers of Reality and Emergence” in Disputatio, Vol. X, No. 49, November 2018 • Alexander Alexandrovich Antonov (2016) (Research Center of Information Technologies “TELAN Electronics”, Kiev, Ukraine): “Hypothesis of the Hidden Multiverse Explains Dark Matter and Dark Energy”, Journal of Modern Physics, 2016, 7, 1228-1246 -/- February 2019 • James Barham (2019): “The Reality of Purpose and the Reform of Naturalism” • Giorgio Lando (2017) Mereology - A Philosophical Introduction, Bloomsbury Academic • (2018) Albrecht von M¨uller • Elias Zafiris, Concept and Formalization of Constellatory Self-Unfolding - A Novel Perspective on the Relation between Quantum and Relativistic Physics • (2019) Flaminia Giacomini, Esteban Castro-Ruiz, & Časlav Brukner “Quantum mechanics and the covariance of physical laws in quantum reference frames”, Nature Communications • (2019) Valia Allori, “Scientific Realism without the Wave-Function: An Example of Naturalized Quantum Metaphysics” (to appear in J. Saatsi, S. French (eds.) “Scientific Realism and the Quantum” OUP (2019) - Department of Philosophy Northern Illinois University) • (2018) Paulo De Jesus “Thinking through enactive agency: sense-making, bio-semiosis and the ontologies of organismic worlds”, Phenom Cogn Sci • (2016) TIMOTHY MORTON, For a Logic of Future Coexistence, (Columbia University Press) • (2017) Andrew Cooper, Two directions for teleology: naturalism and idealism, Synthese . (shrink)

The connection between sense, verification, and mode of verification never entirely disappeared from Wittgenstein’s philosophy. However, there was a time – the years 1929– 1932 – when Wittgenstein upheld explicitly verificationist views: he identified a proposition’s meaning with the mode or method of its verification, and he said that to understand a proposition is to know how the proposition is verified. This has been regarded as puzzling, in view of the fact that the Tractatus is usually considered not to be (...) committed to verificationism; indeed, it is usually regarded as incompatible with verificationism. Several people have proposed to revise such a received view: Michael Wrigley (1989) has claimed that verificationism must be implicit in the Tractatus; and P. M.S. Hacker (1986) has argued that the Tractatus, though not verificationist, is not as distant from verificationism as it has been taken to be. In another paper (Marconi, forthcoming) I discuss their views. Here I will just notice that, even if one regards the Tractatus as implicitly verificationist, the problem remains of explaining why and how did Wittgenstein reach the explicitly – indeed, blatantly – verificationist outlook of the early Thirties. This is the first question I would like to try to answer in this paper. The second question is, why was such rampant verificationism short-lived? Or in other words, why was verificationism de-emphasized so that, although verificationist themes are undoubtedly present in the later Wittgenstein’s writings, the extreme formulations of the early Thirties tend to disappear after 1933? (shrink)

This paper assesses both the practical and the epistemic value of Pyrrhonism as this stance is described in Sextus Empiricus’s extant writings. It first explores whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension of judgment and undisturbedness make us behave in a moral or immoral way, and whether they allow us to attain those goals that would make it possible to live well. It then examines whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension of judgment makes it possible to reach the epistemic goals of attaining truth and avoiding (...) error. It finally considers whether the results of the previous analyses show that Pyrrhonism is of no philosophical interest to a contemporary audience. (shrink)

In questa comunicazione, non intendo contribuire all’analisi di questa o quella classe di espressioni linguistiche. Vorrei invece dare un contributo alla nostra consapevolezza (chiamiamola pure “filosofica”) della funzione che il concetto di forma logica svolge nelle nostre analisi. Più in particolare, vorrei mettere in guardia contro certe possibili conseguenze di quello che a me pare un uso “metafisico” dell’idea di forma logica. Vorrei dimostrare che una certa eredità filosofica, per lo pi...

Julia Annas has affirmed that the kind of modern moral skepticism which denies the existence of objective moral values rests upon a contrast between morality and some other system of beliefs about the world which is not called into doubt. Richard Bett, on the other hand, has argued that the existence of such a contrast is not a necessary condition for espousing that kind of moral skepticism. My purpose in this paper is to show that Bett fails to make a (...) good case against Annas’ thesis. To accomplish this, it will be helpful to consider the Pyrrhonean attitude towards morality as expounded in Sextus Empiricus’ work. (shrink)

Scholarship on ancient skepticism has undergone a remarkable renaissance in the last three decades. Specialists in ancient philosophy have explored the complex history of the Greco‐Roman skeptical traditions and discussed difficult philological and exegetical issues. But they have also assessed the philosophical significance of the various ancient skeptical outlooks. In this first paper, I provide a general presentation of this area of study, while in the two subsequent articles I will focus on some of the topics that have been the (...) object of much attention in the recent literature on ancient skepticism. (shrink)

: Michael Gazzaniga, a prominent cognitive neuroscientist, has argued against reductionist accounts of cognition. Instead, Gazzaniga defends a form of non-reductive physicalism: epistemological neuro-cognitive non-reductionism and ontological monist physicalism. His position is motivated by the theses that: cognitive phenomena can be realized by multiple neural systems; many outcomes of these systems are unpredictable; and multi-level explanations are required. Epistemological neuro-cognitive non-reductionism is presented as the most appropriate stance to account for the way in which phenomena should be explained in cognitive (...) neuroscience. In this paper, I argue, however, that a recent form of neuro-cognitive reductionism, namely neo-mechanistic reductionism accounts for the arguments presented by Gazzaniga. Thus, the theory offers a more consistent and well-articulated view of the relationship between cognitive and neural phenomena that is specifically compatible with the explanatory strategies and aims of contemporary cognitive neuroscience. Keywords: Neo-mechanistic Philosophy; Michael Gazzaniga; Non-reductionism; Reductionism; Philosophy of Cognitive Neuroscience L’antiriduzionismo neurocognitivo di Michael Gazzaniga e la sfida della riduzione neomeccanicista Riassunto: Uno dei più importanti neuroscienziati dei nostri tempi, Michael Gazzaniga, si è schierato contro una concezione riduzionista della cognizione. Al contrario Gazzaniga difende una forma di fisicalismo non-riduzionistico che risulta dalla combinazione, sul piano epistemologico, di un anti-riduzionismo cognitivo e, sul piano ontologico, di un monismo fisicalista. La sua posizione è motivata dalla tesi per cui i fenomeni cognitivi possono essere realizzati da molteplici sistemi neurali; molti esiti di tali sistemi non si possono prevedere; e sono pertanto necessarie spiegazioni a livelli plurimi. La concezione presentata come più adeguata per dare conto sul piano epistemologico di come i fenomeni dovrebbero essere spiegati all’interno delle neuroscienze cognitive è una forma di anti-riduzionismo neuro-cognitivo. In questo articolo si sostiene tuttavia che una recente forma di riduzionismo neuro-cognitivo può dare conto degli argomenti presentati da Gazzaniga. Si tratta di una teoria che offre una interpretazione maggiormente coerente ed articolata della relazione fra fenomeni cognitivi e neurali e che offre un modello di spiegazione compatibile con gli scopi esplicativi delle neuroscienze cognitive contemporanee. Parole chiave: Filosofia neomeccanicista; Michael Gazzaniga; Nonriduzionismo; Riduzionismo; Filosofia della neuroscienza cognitiva. (shrink)