This essay frames systemic patterns of mental abuse against women of color and Indigenous women on Turtle Island (North America) in terms of larger design-of-distribution strategies in settler colonial societies, as these societies use various forms of social power to distribute, reproduce, and automate social inequalities (including public health precarities and mortality disadvantages) that skew socio-economic gain continuously toward white settler populations and their descendants. It departs from traditional studies in gender-based violence research that frame mental abuses such as gaslighting--commonly (...) understood as mental manipulation through lying or deceit--stochastically, as chance-driven interpersonal phenomena. Building on structural analyses of knowledge in political epistemology (Dotson 2012, Berenstain 2016), political theory (Davis and Ernst 2017), and Indigenous social theory (Tuck and Yang 2012), I develop the notion of cultural gaslighting to refer to the social and historical infrastructural support mechanisms that disproportionately produce abusive mental ambients in settler colonial cultures in order to further the ends of cultural genocide and dispossession. I conclude by proposing a social epidemiological account of gaslighting that a) highlights the public health harms of abusive ambients for minority populations, b) illuminates the hidden rules of social structure in settler colonial societies, and c) amplifies the corresponding need for structural reparations. (shrink)

This paper addresses the phenomenological experience of precarity and vulnerability in racialized gender-based violence from a structural perspective. Informed by Indigenous social theory and anti-colonial approaches to intergenerational trauma that link settler colonial violence to the modalities of stress-inducing social, institutional, and cultural violences in marginalized women’s lives, I argue that philosophical failures to understand trauma as a functional, organizational tool of settler colonial violence amplify the impact of traumatic experience on specific populations. It is trauma by design. I explore (...) this through the history of the concept of trauma and its connection to tragedy. I give a brief overview of prominent theories of trauma and contrast these with the work of Indigenous feminist scholar Dian Million (2013), who highlights functional complicity of settler colonial institutions in shaping accounts of trauma in the west. I begin the piece with an important illustration of the kinds of lives and experiences that call for a politicized understanding of trauma in anti-colonial feminist theory. I end by offering an expansive notion of structural trauma that is a methodological pivot for conducting trauma-based gender-based violence research in a decolonial context, which calls for an end to narratives of trauma that are severed from the settler colonial project of Native land dispossession and genocide. [Volume 23, no.1]. (shrink)

The question whether AI systems have agency is gaining increasing importance in discussions of responsibility for AI behavior. This paper argues that an approach to artificial agency needs to be teleological, and consider the role of human goals in particular if it is to adequately address the issue of responsibility. I will defend the view that while AI systems can be viewed as autonomous in the sense of identifying or pursuing goals, they rely on human goals and other values incorporated (...) into their design, and are, as such, dependent on human agents. As a consequence, AI systems cannot be held morally responsible, and responsibility attributions should take into account normative and social aspects involved in the design and deployment of the said AI. My argument falls in line with approaches critical of attributing moral agency to artificial agents, but draws from the philosophy of action, highlighting further philosophical underpinnings of current debates on artificial agency. (shrink)

I argue that a study of the Nicomachean Ethics and of the Parva Naturalia shows that Aristotle had a notion of attention. This notion captures the common aspects of apparently different phenomena like perceiving something vividly, being distracted by a loud sound or by a musical piece, focusing on a geometrical problem. For Aristotle, these phenomena involve a specific selectivity that is the outcome of the competition between different cognitive stimuli. This selectivity is attention. I argue that Aristotle studied the (...) common aspects of the physiological processes at the basis of attention and its connection with pleasure. His notion can explain perceptual attention and intellectual attention as voluntary or involuntary phenomena. In addition, it sheds light on how attention and enjoyment can enhance our cognitive activities. (shrink)

Intersectionality is a term that arose within the black feminist intellectual tradition for the purposes of identifying interlocking systems of oppression. As a descriptive term, it refers to the ways human identity is shaped by multiple social vectors and overlapping identity categories (such as sex, race, class) that may not be readily visible in single-axis formulations of identity, but which are taken to be integral to robustly capture the multifaceted nature of human experience. As a diagnostic term, it captures the (...) confluence of power and domination on the social construction of identity in order to remedy concrete harms that result from this convergence. It is not a prescriptive methodology or closed system of analysis, but rather an open-ended hermeneutic lens through which interconnected systems of oppression can come into focus in the fight for social justice. (shrink)

Systemic epistemic failings in institutions are often explained through settler epistemologies and settler colonial frameworks that both obscure and reproduce the conditions necessary for those failings to endure. What is never questioned in the standard picture of institutional epistemic injustice is the implicit origin myth of an ‘institutional big bang’ that spawned many modern social institutions out of presumably noble orienting goals for a well-functioning society in democratic nation-states. We are concerned with the functional outcomes of institutions in settler colonial (...) societies, and how these outcomes consistently undermine whitewashed narratives of any inherent institutional design allegedly aimed at promoting testimonial justice in settler colonial societies. Institutions are built to target and maintain a status quo, especially (but not only) when they are charged with securing part of the social order or fabric of settler colonial societies. We will illustrate this concern through a discussion of various functional outcomes of the U.S. institution of asylum using Shannon Speed’s (2019. Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State. The University of North Carolina Press) analysis of the violence Indigenous women migrants from Latin America experience within the complex administrative web of U.S. migration and asylum systems. (shrink)

In the wake of continued structural asymmetries between women of color and white feminisms, this essay revisits intersectional tensions in Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State while exploring productive spaces of coalition. To explore such spaces, we reframe Toward a Feminist Theory of the State in terms of its epistemological project and highlight possible synchronicities with liberational features in women-of-color feminisms. This is done, in part, through an analysis of the philosophical role “method” plays in MacKinnon’s argument, (...) and by reframing her critique of juridical neutrality and objectivity as epistemic harms. In the second section, we sketch out a provisional coalitional theory of liberation that builds on MacKinnon’s feminist epistemological insights and aligns them with decolonizing projects in women-of-color feminisms, suggesting new directions and conceptual revisions that are on the way to coalition. (shrink)

One way to track the many critical impacts of women of color feminisms is through the powerful structural analyses of gendered and racialized oppression they offer. This article discusses diverse lineages of women of color feminisms in the global South that tackle systemic structures of power and domination from their situated perspectives. It offers an introduction to structuralist theories in the humanities and differentiates them from women of color feminist theorizing, which begins analyses of structures from embodied and phenomenological st¬¬andpoints--with (...) the day-to-day concerns of our lives. The essay is divided into three sections. In section one, I discuss theories of structure in the humanities and sciences, differentiating them from women of color’s analysis of structure as diagnostic of the ways colonial power relations are functionalized through social structures. In section two, I discuss the diverse contexts of interpretation that background women of color feminisms, outlining key themes and ideas related to theories of structure. I argue against a unified theory of women of color structural feminisms that supplants difference, favoring a rehabilitated concept of structure for the purposes of making targeted interventions in contemporary radical anti-colonial politics. I offer the example of systematic marginalization produced by colonial violence and mythology as one reason to take up this approach. In section three, I outline four provisional characteristics of women of color structural feminisms. I conclude that, when divested from colonial myths that guide mainstream notions of structure, it can be a useful hermeneutic tactic in the fight for liberation from ongoing colonial violence. (shrink)

This paper takes a critical stance on Tallis’s separation of causation and agency. While his critique of the causal theory of action and the assumptions about causation underlying different versions of determinism, including the one based on neuroscience is right, his rejection of causation (of all sorts) has implausible consequences. Denying the link between action and causation amounts to overlooking the role action plays in causal inference and in the origin of causal concepts. I suggest that a weaker version of (...) Tallis’ claim, compatible with causation understood as agency, would work better. (shrink)

Aristotle is a political scientist and a student of biology. Political science, in his view, is concerned with the human good and thus it includes the study of ethics. He approaches many subjects from the perspective of both political science and biology: the virtues, the function of humans, and the political nature of humans. In light of the overlap between the two disciplines, I look at whether or not Aristotle’s views in biology influence or explain some of his theses in (...) political science. I show that we should not seek a unified answer to this question, for the relationship between the two disciplines varies depending on the topic. In some cases, e.g. the nature of the human function, the biological background is likely to be endorsed as one of the presuppositions of the ethical enquiry. In other cases, e.g. the study of social hierarchies, even though the ethical works and the biological works come to similar conclusions, it is hard to establish that the biological approach is intended to provide support to the ethico-political approach. In conclusion, I show that Aristotle’s political science and his biology are in conflict at least in two important cases: his account of justice towards non-human animals and his exhortation to contemplate. (shrink)

This paper investigates the concept of behavioral autonomy in Artificial Life by drawing a parallel to the use of teleological notions in the study of biological life. Contrary to one of the leading assumptions in Artificial Life research, I argue that there is a significant difference in how autonomous behavior is understood in artificial and biological life forms: the former is underlain by human goals in a way that the latter is not. While behavioral traits can be explained in relation (...) to evolutionary history in biological organisms, in synthetic life forms behavior depends on a design driven by a research agenda, further shaped by broader human goals. This point will be illustrated with a case study on a synthetic life form. Consequently, the putative epistemic benefit of reaching a better understanding of behavioral autonomy in biological organisms by synthesizing artificial life forms is subject to doubt: the autonomy observed in such artificial organisms may be a mere projection of human agency. Further questions arise in relation to the need to spell out the relevant human aims when addressing potential social or ethical implications of synthesizing artificial life forms. (shrink)

This is the first of two papers concerned with the philosophical significance of dualities as applied in recent fundamental physics. The general idea is that, for its peculiarity, this ‘new’ ingredient in theory construction can open unexpected perspectives in the current philosophical reflection on contemporary physics. In particular, today’s physical dualities represent an unusual type of intertheory relation, the meaning of which deserves to be investigated. The aim is to show how discussing this point brings into play, at the same (...) time, what is intended by a 'theory’ and in which sense dualities are to be considered 'symmetries'. This paper is introductory and focusses on the first form of duality explicitly applied in twentieth century physics, that is electromagnetic duality as discussed in Dirac’s theory of magnetic poles. The extension of electromagnetic duality in the context of quantum field theory and string theory is explored in a forthcoming companion paper. (shrink)

We define proof nets for cyclic multiplicative linear logic as edge bi-coloured graphs. Our characterization is purely graph theoretical and works without further complication for proof nets with cuts, which are usually harder to handle in the non-commutative case. This also provides a new characterization of the proof nets for the Lambek calculus (with the empty sequence) which simply are a restriction on the formulas to be considered (which are asked to be intuitionistic).

A credible fear test is an in-depth interview process given to undocumented people of any age arriving at a U.S. port of entry to determine qualification for asylum-seeking. Credible fear tests as a typical immigration procedure demonstrate not only what structural epistemic violence looks like but also how this violence lives in and through the design of asylum policy. Key terms of credible fear tests such as “significant possibility,” “evidence,” “consistency,” and “credibility” can never be neutral in the context of (...) colonial administrative violence. We argue that these terms function as mechanisms of exclusion and demonstrate that the capacity to be violent (i.e. to be an instrument of violence) is built into these tests, ready to be deployed when an administration wants to stop certain people from certain places from entering without regard to their own ongoing occupation of Indigenous lands. Not only are such practices instruments of violence, but the concept of ‘violence’ continues to be organized, defined, and conceived within settler colonial epistemologies so as to exclude these administrative forms of violence deployed against Indigenous peoples and people of color from recognition and nameability. We argue that this is an intentional strategy of colonial power preservation that is functionalized through social processes that remain structurally stable and self-regenerating across historical and political changes. (shrink)

The hermeneutic resources necessary for understanding Indigenous women’s lives in Latin America have been obscured by the tools of Western feminist philosophical practices and their travel in North-South contexts. Not only have ongoing practices of European colonization disrupted pre-colonial ways of knowing, but colonial lineages create contemporary public policies, institutions, and political structures that reify and solidify colonial epistemologies as the only legitimate forms of knowledge. I argue that understanding this foreclosure of Amerindian linguistic communities’ ability to collectively engage in (...) interpretive processes of culture and be heard and understood as coherent is an essential background condition to conceiving and theorizing the multiplicity of social oppressions and their intersections in contemporary Latin American contexts. Further, the work of disrupting and disobeying colonial interpretive frameworks has long been practiced by Indigenous women in Latin America, whose testimonies and expressions have been made sub-audible by design in colonial systems of meaning-making. This is part of the extensive legacy of the long quillwork of communal alphabets of survival. (shrink)

There is a growing trend across North America of women being criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes. Rather than being a series of aberrations resulting from institutional failures, we argue that this trend is part of a colonial strategy of administrative violence aimed at women of color and Native women across Turtle Island. We consider a range of medical and legal practices constituting gender-based administrative violence, and we argue that they are the result of non-accidental and systematic production of population-level harms (...) that cannot be disentangled from the goals of ongoing settler occupation and dispossession of Indigenous lands. While white feminist narratives of gender-based administrative violence in Latin America function to distance the places where such violence occurs from the ‘liberal democratic’ settler nation-states of the U.S. and Canada, we hold that administrative forms of reproductive violence against Latin American women are structurally connected to efforts in the U.S. and Canada to criminalize women of color and Indigenous women for their reproductive outcomes. The purpose of these systemically produced harms is to sustain cultures of gender-based violence in support of settler colonial configurations of power. (shrink)

This article provides a conceptual account of causal understanding by connecting current psychological research on time and causality with philosophical debates on the causal asymmetry. I argue that causal relations are viewed as asymmetric because they are understood in temporal terms. I investigate evidence from causal learning and reasoning in both children and adults: causal perception, the temporal priority principle, and the use of temporal cues for causal inference. While this account does not suffice for correct inferences of causal structure, (...) I show it to serve as a preliminary understanding of causal concepts as asymmetric, that later incorporates other types of evidence. This approach supplies causal models with an asymmetric concept of causation that underlies hypotheses about causal structure, as I will illustrate from the framework of the knowledge-based causal induction model. I further argue for an integrating perspective, showing how the understanding of causes as preceding their effects underlies both psychological models and philosophical debates over time and the causal asymmetry, particularly regarding problem cases such as simultaneous causation or backwards causation, and the conceptual connection between causation and action. (shrink)

Post-truth politics comes forward as a challenge to the credibility of science through its association with skepticism and denialism about scientific approaches and findings. While debates over the nature of facts and the social character of scientific knowledge have mainly taken place in an academic setting, the current concerns about science skepticism have connected them to wider social issues. This chapter will examine this question with the focus on biomedical and physiological sciences and cast doubt on the claim that particular (...) strands of research from the ‘science wars’ period have enabled post-truth politics. Exploring the backdrop of controversies over the objectivity of science and relativism, I will show that the causes of the erosion of trust in science are better traced to socio-economic conditions that feed into legitimate distrust in science alongside other institutions. I will further argue that, quite paradoxically for the critics of relativism, construing science as social and sketching out ways of producing knowledge relevant to those who have good reasons for skepticism and distrust can help counter post-truth politics. (shrink)

Gender-based forms of administrative violence, such as reproductive violence, are the result of systems designed to enact population-level harms through the production and forcible imposition of colonial systems of gender. Settler statecraft has long relied on the strategic promotion of sexual and reproductive violence. Patterns of reproductive violence adapt and change to align with the enduring goals and evolving needs of settler colonial occupation, dispossession, and containment. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to end the constitutional right to abortion in (...) Dobbs v Jackson is but one instance of this larger pattern. We analyze reproductive and obstetric violence and the structural trauma they produce through the lenses of i) historical continuity and ii) the global architectures of neoliberal settler capitalism in order to connect reproductive rights rollbacks in the U.S. with the expansion of reproductive violence across a world connected by colonial globalization. (shrink)

Research on the role of values in science and objectivity has typically approached trust through its epistemic aspects. Yet, recent work on public trust in science has emphasized the role of non-epistemic values in building and maintaining trust. This paper will use a concept of trust that adds concerns about justice to epistemic conditions to investigate this problem in relation to public health. I will argue that trust-conducive values, particularly justice, are relevant in deciding which value influences are legitimate in (...) scientific decision-making. Drawing on public health ethics, I will provide a consequentialist justification for employing trust-conducive values. While several concepts of justice have been explored in the context of public health, I will further draw on public health ethics, focusing on a view that brings together both distributive and procedural aspects. For illustration, I will use the case of cardiovascular disease prevention, particularly how concerns about justice apply when choosing between population-based and individual-based approaches. (shrink)

Ganeri's [2018] discussion of mental time travel and the self focuses on remembering the past, but has less to say with respect to the status of future-oriented mental time travel. This paper aims to disambiguate the relation between prospection and the self from the framework of Ganeri's interpretation of three Buddhist views—by Buddhaghosa, Vasubandhu, and Dignaga. Is the scope of Ganeri's discussion confined to the past, or is there a stronger assumption that future thought always entails self-representation? I argue that (...) if mental time travel towards the past and towards the future are continuous, both past and future thought should be possible independently of self-representation. An assumption of discontinuity however would enable the employment of the self as one of the defining differences between remembering the past and imagining the future. The two options can be further contrasted on the basis of distinct ways of constructing past/future scenarios (field vs. observer perspective), modes of experiencing time (known vs. lived), and the origin of mental time travel (episodic vs. semantic memory). I further assess the compatibility of future-oriented thought with the three Buddhist views on the basis of these coordinates. (shrink)

This paper discusses von Wright's theory of causation from Explanation and Understanding and Causality and Determinism in contemporary context. I argue that there are two important common points that von Wright's view shares with the version of manipulability currently supported by Woodward: the analysis of causal relations in a system modelled on controlled experiments, and the explanation of manipulability through counterfactuals - with focus on the counterfactual account of unmanipulable causes. These points also mark von Wright's departure from previous action-based (...) theories of causation. Owing to these two features, I argue that, upon classifying different versions of manipulability theories, von Wright's view should be placed closer to the interventionist approach than to the agency theory, where it currently stands. Furthermore, given its relevance in contemporary context, which this paper aims to establish, I claim that von Wright's theory can be employed to solve present problems connected to manipulability approaches to causation. (shrink)

This paper will investigate justice requirements that a pluralist stance on concepts of mental disorder should meet for use on a global scale. This is important given that different concepts of mental disorder are connected to particular interventions which may be more or less successful in specific contexts. While taking a broadly normative view on mental disorders, I will describe relevant concepts in a more fine grained manner, referring to their connections to particular approaches to biology, the self, or community. (...) Drawing on research on epistemic injustice, I highlight the requirement that the set of multiple concepts be sufficiently flexible to enable the participation of those possessing relevant local knowledge. Using insights from health justice, I point out that the set of concepts should be conducive to distributive and procedural justice with regard to mental health and should support interventions on social determinants of health. These requirements apply to two dimensions of pluralism: regarding what concepts to include and how to relate them to one another. I conclude by explaining how an ontology of partial overlaps connected to a concept of health as metaphysically social can help address the challenges arising particularly regarding the latter dimension. (shrink)

Aristotle’s works on natural science show that he was aware of the affective powers of colour. At De an. 421a13, for example, he writes that hard-eyed animals can only discriminate between frightening and non-frightening colours. In the Nicomachean Ethics, furthermore, colours are the source of pleasures and delight. These pleasures, unlike the pleasures of touch and taste, neither corrupt us nor make us wiser. Aristotle’s views on the affective powers of colours raise a question about the limits he seems to (...) place on the affective powers of pictures at De an. 427b15-24, where he implies that pictures do not affect us immediately. In this paper, I examine the contrast between the affective powers of colour and the affective powers of pictures. I argue that colours can give rise to pleasure and pain in themselves and generate emotions incidentally. Similarly, pictures can please us or affect us in themselves and incidentally. In light of this account, I suggest that, on a plausible reading of De an. 427b15-24, the affective powers of pictures as mimetic objects are not immediate because they require an intervening cause in order to be effective. The representations of pictures and statues affect us either with the mediation of deception or with the mediation of interpretation. (shrink)

This article examines how specific realist and projectivist versions of manipulability theories of causation deal with the problem of objectivity. Does an agent-dependent concept of manipulability imply that conflicting causal claims made by agents with different capacities can come out as true? In defence of the projectivist stance taken by the agency view, I argue that if the agent’s perspective is shown to be uniform across different agents, then the truth-values of causal claims do not vary arbitrarily and, thus, reach (...) a satisfactory level of objectivity. My argument connects Price’s considerations on the situation of deliberation, whose structure, common to all agents, is the same with respect to both decision making and causal claims on a concept inspired by Douglas’s classification of objectivity of thought processes: the perspective of the detached agent. I further argue that, despite his agent-independent concept of intervention, Woodward’s claim of a stronger objectivity standard cannot be achieved, as the relativity of causal concepts to a variable set brings about the issue of the agent’s choice of variables. Consequently, a more permissive objectivity standard applies to both views. (shrink)

This paper discusses Simone de Beauvoir’s views on the meaning of life as presented in The Ethics of Ambiguity. I argue that Beauvoir’s view matches contemporary hybrid views on the meaning of life, incorporating both subjective and objective elements, while connecting them in a distinct way—through the tension between self and other. I then analyze the meaning of excessively competitive projects through Beauvoir’s ethics and conclude that success that amounts to denying other people’s access to the things one values is (...) absurd. I use the case of contemporary academia as an illustration of extreme competition, then employ Beauvoir’s views to suggest a shift towards more meaningful practices. (shrink)

I argue that, for Aristotle, virtues of character like bravery and generosity are, like the emotions, properties that require a hylomorphic analysis. In order to understand what the virtues are and how they come about, one needs to take into account their formal components and their material components. The formal component of a virtue of character is a psychic disposition, its material component is the appropriate state and composition of the blood. I defend this thesis against two potential objections and (...) I show that it is relevant for a study of Aristotle’s ethics. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are notable similarities between Collingwood’s method of investigating absolute presuppositions and contemporary strands of pragmatism, focusing on two areas - the critique of realism and causation. It is first argued that there are methodological similarities between Collingwood’s argument against realism and his Kantian-inspired critique of metaphysics, and Putnam’s critique of externalism. Regarding causation, it is argued that Collingwood’s view and Price’s pragmatist approach have a common method – investigating causation in the context of specific human (...) practices. Both authors place causation in the framework of scientific inquiry as opposed to making it the subject of the inquiry itself. Thus, Collingwood’s work proves to be in line with current metaphilosophical debates, particularly in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Recent philosophical investigations on the topic of vaccination research and policy have highlighted the importance of public trust for the success of vaccination programs. This paper will look at the problem of expert disagreement and trustworthiness in the case of vaccine research. Giubilini, Gur-Arie and Jamrozik (2025) have argued for a notion of trustworthiness involving virtues of experts, such as epistemic humility and transparency in order to deal with situations of uncertainty, when there is a minority of scientists disagreeing with (...) the majority consensus. Using this account as a starting point, I will investigate the conditions necessary for the trustworthiness of institutions involved in vaccine research under uncertainty. I will highlight that, in addition to the virtues of individual researchers, certain structural features of the research community are required. More specifically, I will make the case for conditions that enable a fair resolution of disagreement: involving all relevant members of the scientific community and seeking solutions that adequately respond to the public’s needs and interests. (shrink)

This paper examines philosophical debates about concepts of biodiversity, making the case for conceptual pluralism. Taking a pragmatist perspective, I argue that normative concepts of biodiversity and eco-centric concepts of biodiversity can serve different purposes. The former would help stress the values of local communities, which have often been neglected by both early scientific approaches to conservation, and by policy makers prioritizing the political or economic interests of specific groups. The latter would help build local research programs independent of pressures (...) from economic or political actors. I employ a case study on environmental research on walnut forests in Kyrgyzstan in support of my argument. Against tendencies to frame different understandings of biodiversity in terms of geographical areas, I propose an interpretation drawing on the philosophy of ecology. Adherence to environmental pragmatism enables a sufficiently complex picture of developing environmental research in the area, capturing issues about scientific framings and local understandings. (shrink)

This paper investigates how an introductory philosophy course influences the moral and political development of undergraduate students in a Liberal Arts university in Central Asia. Within a context of rapid changes characteristic of transitional societies—reflected in the organization of higher education—philosophy provides students with the means to reason about moral and political values in a way that overcomes the old ideological tenets as well as contemporary reluctance to theoretical inquiry. Studying philosophy provides a remedy for deficiencies in both secondary and (...) higher education, by improving general reading and reasoning skills, that enable the development of moral reasoning. Furthermore, familiarity with major works of moral and political philosophy can help students comprehend the patterns of social change, as well as surmount the issue of unsatisfactory theoretical foundations for social science. (shrink)

This paper reports an experiment that investigates interpretive distinctions between two different expressions of generalization in Spanish. In particular, our aim was to find out when the distinction between generic statements (GS) such as Tigers have stripes and universally quantified statements (UQS) such as All tigers have stripes was acquired in Spanish-speaking children of two different age groups (4/5-year-olds and 8/9-year-olds), and then compare these results with those of adults. The starting point of this research was the semantic distinction between (...) GS and UQS in that the former admit exceptions, unlike the latter. On the other hand, several authors have observed a Generic overgeneralization effect (GOG) consisting in allowing for UQS to be felicitous in the face of exceptions, thus proposing that this “error” stems from GS being defaults (simpler, more easily learned and processed). In the current paper we aimed to test the “Generics as Default” (GaD) hypothesis by comparing GS and UQS in three different age ranges. Our data show that, overall, the accuracy of GS is greater than the accuracy of UQS. Moreover, we also confirm a hypothesized interaction between age and NP type (GS vs UQS). Further, we present several data points that are not predicted by the GaD, including an observed decline in the accuracy of GS in the older group of children as well as in adults, and that children fail at rejecting statements that are not considered to be true generalizations. (shrink)

While loneliness has been linked to various mental and physical health problems, the sense in which loneliness is a cause of these conditions has so far attracted little philosophical attention. This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing research on health effects of loneliness and therapeutic interventions through current approaches to causality. To deal with the problem of causality between psychological, social, and biological variables, the paper endorses a biopsychosocial model of health and disease. I will investigate how three (...) main approaches to causality used in psychiatry and public health apply to loneliness: interventionism, mechanisms, and dispositional theories. Interventionism can specify whether loneliness causes specific effects, or whether a treatment works, incorporating results from randomized controlled trials. Mechanisms help explain how loneliness brings about negative health effects, spelling out psychological processes involved in lonely social cognition. Dispositional approaches help stress particular features of loneliness connected to negative social interactions, such as defensiveness. I will conclude by showing that previous research alongside emerging approaches to health effects of loneliness lend themselves to analysis in terms of the causal models under discussion. (shrink)

My contribution deals directly with the problem of Kant’s apparent commitment to pan- aestheticism, which is in particular attached to the task of explaining the possibility of the free play of the faculties. The aim is to provide an overview of the ways in which this problem can be confronted and eventually solved. In this regard, one way to deal with this problem consists in revisiting the assumption that the free play of the faculties is to be understood as simply (...) occurring without presupposing any concept. By contrast, one can fully endorse Kant’s commitment to pan- aestheticism and hence focus on how Kant’s account explains the fact that one does not actually experience everything as beautiful. Both of these alternatives, I firmly reject. By remarking upon the merely reflecting status of judgments of taste, I explain why Kant’s account of taste does not lend itself to pan-aestheticism. (shrink)

This paper aims to bridge philosophical and psychological research on causation, counterfactual thought, and the problem of backtracking. Counterfactual approaches to causation such as that by Lewis have ruled out backtracking, while on prominent models of causal inference interventionist counterfactuals do not backtrack. However, on various formal models, certain backtracking counterfactuals end up being true, and psychological evidence shows that people do sometimes backtrack when answering counterfactual questions in causal contexts. On the basis of psychological research, I argue that while (...) ordinarily both kinds of counterfactuals may be employed, non-backtracking counterfactuals are more easily used in causal inference because they are consistent with temporal order information embedded in the mental simulation heuristic, and they match reasoners’ experience of causation. While this approach is incompatible with the ambitions of counterfactual theories that seek to establish the non-backtracking interpretation as the only legitimate one, it can provide support for perspectival views on causation and open further inquiry on the functions of causal and counterfactual thought in the context of causal models. (shrink)

The article discusses the theoretical issues of designing a safe professional and educational environment. The environmental approach is substantiated as a methodology for this process. The environmental conditions that provide the teacher with safety and security in the implementation of professional activities are indicated. An attempt was made to determine the ratio of the structural components of the vocational and educational environment and the environmental conditions that ensure its safety. The stages and levels of designing a safe professional and educational (...) environment have been substantiated. (shrink)

This commentary addresses the proposal and argumentative line presented in the paper ‘Whole Body Gestational Donation’ (WBGD) by Anna Smajdor (2023), published as an intended ‘outrageous argument’ in a dedicated special issue of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. We believe that the paper is fatally flawed due to its lack of engagement with relevant approaches in ethics and essential sources in health sciences as well as its insufficient, superficial, and rash argumentation. Its critical weaknesses include, among others, that it does not (...) take any explicit ethical stance, it does not consider the societal impacts of its premise, and it hastily assumes a large degree of equivalency between WBGD and the usual organ donations. These scholarly flaws are made worse by the fact that the paper is not merely an academic thought experiment but contains important policy change proposals. As a consequence, the paper feeds into more general and systemic worries about the suitability of philosophy for public policy. (shrink)

This volume is the first to focus specifically on experimental studies of the semantics of gradability, scale structure and vagueness. It presents support for and challenges to current formal analyses of these phenomena in view of experimentally collected data, highlighting the ways semantic and pragmatic theory can benefit from experimental methodologies. The papers in the volume contribute to an explicit and detailed account of the use, representation, and online processing of gradable and vague expressions using various kinds of controlled speaker (...) judgment tasks, eye tracking, and ERP. The aim is to strengthen the foundations of experimental semantics and promote interaction between linguists, psycholinguists, psychologists, and philosophers who are interested in the semantics of natural language. Using data representing different languages and a variety of nominal and adjectival constructions, including degree modification and comparatives, the contributions address scale-based classifications of gradable predicates, such as the absolute vs. relative distinction; the nature of the standards for applicability of gradable expressions and the ways in which standards are determined; the nature of dimensions and multidimensionality in the meaning of scalar expressions; and the role of embodiment, subjectivity, and sociolinguistic considerations in the use and understanding of gradable expressions. (shrink)

Summary The First Sacred War was hotly debated in the 4th century. The crimes committed by the Crisaeans in this war were later equated to those committed by the Phocians during the Third Sacred War, or those committed by the Locrians of Amphissa during the Fourth Sacred War. This paper shows how the parallels drawn between the First and Third Sacred Wars (SW1–SW3) and between the First and Fourth Sacred Wars (SW1–SW4) were respectively shaped and used as an argument in (...) two different milieus: in pro-Macedonian intellectual circles in Athens, and in the Athenian forensic and deliberative arena. The main aim of this paper is to understand why ‘SW1–SW3’ is not used as an argument in the latter. In fact, Athens’ most prominent politicians had to cope with the Athenian support for the Phocians in the so-called Third Sacred War. Thus, the Phocians were depicted as guilty, but not to the point that they were compared to the Crisaeans. The legacy of the latter was ambivalent and lent itself to this shift in meaning. (shrink)

Biological conservation has a long story, but what distinguishes Conservation Biology from previous conservation fields is its multidisciplinary scope and its character as a mission-oriented crisis discipline. These characteristics suggested the introduction of the metaphor of biological conservation as a sort of surgery. This paper is about the initial stages of such surgery. Firstly, some data about the so-called “Big Sixth”—the disease—will be presented together with some information about Conservation Biology—the surgeon. Then epistemic and epistemological difficulties in extinction assessment and (...) conservation prioritization, and triage in particular, will be pointed out. It will be argued that, while data deficiency arising from empirical and practical constraints can in principle be overcome, a different order of difficulties stems from the competition among several species concepts. In this case, it will be suggested that the extent of complications is of such significance to require a thorough re-assessment of the very nature of the patients, i.e., outside the metaphor, of the concept of species. (shrink)

Nel 2009, prendendo le mosse da articoli e libri pubblicati negli anni precedenti, Maurizio Ferraris proponeva la “documentalità”, una ontologia sociale che, a differenza della received view basata sull’intenzionalità collettiva, individuava il fondamento degli oggetti sociali negli atti iscritti. Prendendo come spunto due oggetti sociali tipicamente torinesi – il capoluogo piemontese è il luogo di nascita del filosofo – e cioè la casa automobilistica Fiat e l’Università di Torino, in questo breve saggio si discutono alcune tra le tesi che caratterizzano (...) una ontologia sociale siffatta. Particolare attenzione viene data alla tesi secondo cui l’identità di un oggetto sociale e la sua permanenza attraverso il tempo dipenderebbero dall’iscrizione che ne è alla base anziché, come per esempio nella posizione searliana, dall’oggetto fisico sottostante. Questa tesi, si sostiene, acquisisce particolare pregnanza nell’epoca del web, quell’acceleratore della documentalità, per dirla con le parole del filosofo, che ha la caratteristica di mostrare nella sua evidenza la struttura stessa della realtà sociale e, in tal modo, di diventare uno strumento per il cambiamento. Mettendo in luce la linea concettuale che unisce Documentalità (2009) con uno dei lavori più recenti di Ferraris, Mobilitazione totale (2015), si articola e si sostiene l’idea secondo cui il web svolge una duplice funzione. Da un lato, rivelare l’emergere della società dalla natura, riproducendo in tempi osservabili e in un ambiente monitorabile, quello di cui non è possibile essere spettatori diretti. Dall’altro, renderne evidente la struttura ultima che, appunto, è una struttura documentale. (shrink)

After briefly reconstructing how and when anthropogenic climate change awareness and nature conservation emerged in Western societies (section “Introduction. The Discovery of Climate Change and the Beginning of Nature Conservation”), a comparison between “old” and today’s conservationism is offered (section “Old and New Conservationism”), and two cases of nature conservation motivated by climate change are presented: nature-based solutions, and the “Global Deal for Nature” (section “Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change”). Then, the End of Nature claim is discussed, and the main (...) features of nature – and nature conservation – in the Anthropocene are sketched (section “The End of Nature as We Know It”). Finally, some remarks concerning what remains of pristine nature and preservationism are offered (section “Conclusion. What Remains of Preservationism”). (shrink)

The author considers the Digital Humanities as a tendency towards a constructive synthesis of computer technology and humanitarian science in the context of their claim to make a paradigm shift in the humanities. As part of this review, the author raises a question about the role of interactive multimedia tools in the humanities, and tried to evaluate the novelty and content that scientific and educational projects receive with their help. The author develops and justifies the principle of systematization of Digital (...) Humanities projects, based on the priority of distinguishing projects by the nature of the relationship between their humanitarian and computer (technological) components. Considering both the actual digital projects and the academic publications devoted to them in the context of their systematization, the author observes that many projects are largely experimental in nature due to the use of ever new multimedia tools, so it is premature to talk about a meaningful transformation of humanitarian science. Focusing on the issue of a successful synthesis of digital technologies and the humanities, the author notes that new technological tools (multimedia, AI or neural networks, etc) allow raising new questions, updating additional objects of research and creating new methods. However, new tools do not always set the completeness of the new content, only supplementing it, and the acquired interactivity does not always directly work for scientific character. In this case, we face with the reverse situation, when the claims of technologically determined disciplines to be scientific are intertwined with the claims of disciplinary science to manufacturability. As a result, the author concludes that the direction of Digital Humanities is significantly influenced by technoscience with its dissolution of the boundaries between fundamental and applied research and the desire for new technologies that transform the processes under study, which makes McLuhan’s concept especially relevant. (shrink)

Although biological species might seem paradigmatic natural objects, several objections can be advanced against their independence from taxonomic activities and from scientific and social practices in general. Darwin himself, in the second chapter of the Origin, claimed to be looking «at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other». In this contribution, I sketch the sticking points of the issue whether species are natural or social objects in (...) the light of two of the main accounts of social objects, namely Searle’s, on the one hand, and Ferraris’ on the other. (shrink)

This article introduces a different insight on the role of leadership in the process to develop sustainability and achieve lasting improvement in quality of life. Authors bring together the societal, organizational and individual levels of sustainability in one conceptual framework and discuss the interconnectedness among these three levels. The conclusion is that an effective approach to sustainability starts from the inside, i.e. from the individual level. This implies a decisive role for personal leadership in the change path towards sustainability. It (...) brings new challenges and responsibilities for higher education in the preparation of a new generation of managers and leaders who can think and act from a sustainability perspective. (shrink)