Munch-Jurisic’s book thoroughly describes several cases of severe distresses reported and expressed by perpetrators of tremendous acts such as mass murders. Arguing against a simplistic reading according to which these signs of distress are straightforward manifestations of some innate moral nature, and against the optimistic reading according to which they will lead to prosocial behaviors, Munch-Jursic offers compelling reasons to adopt a more complex theory of emotion. In this commentary, I aim to stress the implications of her book for the (...) debate on moral enhancement and for emotion theory in general. However, while I concur with Munch-Jurisic that emotion theory must make room for complexity and indeterminacy, I challenge her claim that motivational theories of emotion are ill-equipped to face the challenges she poses. (shrink)

Experimental balance is usually understood as the control for the value of the conditions, other than the one under study, which are liable to affect the result of a test. We discuss three different approaches to balance. ‘Millean balance’ requires identifying and equalizing ex ante the value of these conditions in order to conduct solid causal inferences. ‘Fisherian balance’ measures ex post the influence of uncontrolled conditions through the analysis of variance. In ‘efficiency balance’ the value of the antecedent conditions (...) is decided ex ante according to the efficiency they yield in the estimation of the treatment outcome. Against some old arguments by Worrall, we show that in both Fisherian and efficiency balance there are good reasons to randomize the allocation of treatments, in particular when there is no agreement among experimenters as to the antecedent conditions to be controlled for. (shrink)

O ficcionalismo, geralmente classificado como um tipo de nominalismo, apresenta como perspectiva precípua a tese de que os entes matemáticos são ficções. Para o ficcionalista, o discurso matemático é desprovido de conteúdo. Hartry Field, que é o principal defensor dessa concepção ontológica da matemática, contesta, em Science Without Numbers, a utilização de entes matemáticos na redação de teorias da física, alegando que a defesa mais plausível do realismo ontológico matemático é o argumento da indispensabilidade de Quine-Putnam. O ficcionalismo defendido por (...) Field nos permite, de acordo com Shapiro, classificá-lo no grupo filosofia-primeiro, ou seja, entre os filósofos que defendem que a filosofia deve ser responsável por legislar a respeito da prática matemática. Dessa forma, podemos considerar Field um revisionista epistemológico. Como se sabe, a dependência da ciência moderna em relação ao discurso matemático coloca a tese ficcionalista em xeque. Ainda assim, se partirmos dos pressupostos filosóficos da vertente formalista da filosofia da matemática, que concebe a matemática como constituída de um conjunto de regras sem significado que podem ser manipuladas de maneira puramente sintática, poderemos traçar importantes analogias entre matemática e ficção, tal como também entre metamatemática e metaficção. Para um formalista simpático à tese ficcionalista, o estatuto ontológico da matemática é semelhante ao das regras de um jogo de xadrez. (shrink)

This paper presents two studies on the development and validation of a ten-item scale of epistemic vice and the relationship between epistemic vice and misinformation and fake news. Epistemic vices have been defined as character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. Examples of epistemic vice are gullibility and indifference to knowledge. It has been hypothesized that epistemically vicious people are especially susceptible to misinformation and conspiracy theories. We conducted one exploratory and one confirmatory observational survey study on (...) Amazon Mechanical Turk among people living in the United States (total _N_ = 1737). We show that two psychological traits underlie the range of epistemic vices that we investigated: indifference to truth and rigidity. Indifference manifests itself in a lack of motivation to find the truth. Rigidity manifests itself in being insensitive to evidence. We develop a scale to measure epistemic vice with the subscales indifference and rigidity. The Epistemic Vice Scale is internally consistent; has good convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity; and is strongly associated with the endorsement of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Epistemic vice explains additional variance in the endorsement of misinformation and conspiracy theories over and above demographic and related psychological concepts and shows medium to large effect sizes across outcome measures. We demonstrate that epistemic vice differs from existing psychological constructs, and show that the scale can explain individual differences in dealing with misinformation and conspiracy theories. We conclude that epistemic vice might contribute to “postfactive” ways of thinking. (shrink)

A questão da racionalidade e o desenvolvimento de uma teoria da argumentação são centrais no pensamento habermasiano. Partindo sobretudo do primeiro capítulo da Teoria da ação comunicativa, o artigo pretende analisar a noção de racionalidade proposta por Habermas, o que implica questões de natureza filosófica e sociológica, e também expor as bases de sua teoria da argumentação, realizando uma análise do discurso argumentativo e apresentando as críticas feitas a Toulmin, Klein e Tugendhat.

In diesem Beitrag möchte ich mich darauf beschränken, einige Aspekte von Fichtes Verhältnis zu Kant zu berücksichtigen, die mir sowohl für das Verständnis Fichtes als auch für das Verständnis Kants sehr lehrreich zu sein scheinen. Denn die Einsicht in die unterschiedlichen Auffassungen des alten und des jungen Denkers läßt um so mehr da, wo der zweite meint, den ersten bloß zu wiederholen, treu zu interpretieren oder allenfalls treu weiterzudenken, den Geist der beiden philosophischen Ansätze am deutlichsten zutage treten. Den manchmal (...) unbestimmten Ausdruck »Geist« darf man in diesem Fall wohl verwenden, da die Textstellen, die dem Vergleich feste Bezugspunkte angeben, nicht isoliert dastehen, sondern jeweils in zwei verschiedene und scharf konturierte philosophische Ansätze hinein konvergieren. (shrink)

In this article, Charlotte Blease argues that patient access to online shared clinical notes (also called ‘open notes’) may cause or exacerbate nocebo effects in two ways. 1 First, open notes may enhance patient understanding about the adverse effects of medications and treatments. However, reading information about adverse effects may lead patients to form negative expectations that, in turn, may cause or worsen symptoms via nocebo mechanisms. Second, open notes may paradoxically lower the quality of the therapeutic relationship by allowing (...) patients to detect signs of discrimination and stigma in clinical notes. By accessing their shared notes, patients may identify (or think that they are identifying) signs of stigmatisation and discrimination in clinicians’ words. This may diminish their trust while increasing their anxieties and fears, all factors that have been associated with enhanced nocebo effects. The article then suggests different strategies to mitigate nocebo effects while using open... (shrink)

Celano’s notion of a “pre-convention” is grounded in the opposition between two allegedly different kinds of normative behaviour: observing a “rule” and conforming to a “norm”. This opposition plays a central role in Celano’s paper, and marks a crucial point in his intellectual trajectory. Nevertheless, it remains largely implicit. In this paper, I try to make it fully explicit, giving a more precise characterisation of both kinds of normative behaviour. I also focus on the importance of distinguishing between them, express (...) some conjectures regarding Celano’s future research, and propose a criticism. (shrink)

Sometimes, we act in concert with others, as when we go for a walk together, or when two mathematicians try to prove a difficult theorem with each other. An interesting question is what distinguishes the actions of individuals that together constitute some joint activity from those that amount to a mere aggregation of individual behaviours. It is common for philosophers to appeal to collective intentionality to explain such instances of shared agency. This framework generalizes the approach traditionally used to explain (...) individual action: a behaviour is an action just in case it causally follows from the relevant intention. Contemporary philosophers of action, as well as cognitive psychologists, however, have criticised this way of explaining individual actions, favouring instead an approach that puts “control” or “guidance” as the discerning factor: a behaviour is an action just in case the agent controls it, or just in case it is guided by the agent. In this paper, I argue that we should include talk of guidance even in cases of joint action. I first show that problems of deviant causation arise also in cases of joint action, and that therefore guidance is required to face this issue. Then, I show what a “capacity to guide” amounts to for a group and how joint guidance relates to individual guidance. Joint guidance is actually constituted by task co-representation and the sense of commitment. I argue that an approach that favours joint guidance over collective intentions eschews a lot of metaphysical problems about collective mentality and group subjects, and it is thus more explanatorily fruitful. (shrink)

Induismo -- Buddhismo -- Ebraismo -- Islam -- Cristianesimo.

- "La piů grande figura religiosa del cristianesimo moderno" č quella di Sebastian Franck, che, perseguitato dai teologi di tutte le Chiese, visse povero ed errabondo, «mantenendo la visione piů viva e luminosa delle grandi veritÀ del cristianesimo ed immedesimandole con la sua personalitÀ e la sua vita». La sua opera maggiore, i Paradoxa, scritta nella scia della mistica medievale germanica, mostra che il cristianesimo consiste essenzialmente di una vita nello spirito, basata su conversione e distacco, indipendentemente da teologie e (...) credenze, da libri sacri, culti, cerimonie e Chiese. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Nach einer von Athen beförderten literarisch-philosophischen Tradition scheint überwiegend die Herrschaft einzelner den Greek way of politics in Sizilien geprägt zu haben: Als Charakteristikum der sikeliotischen Staatenwelt werden die häufigen Verfassungswechsel von der Oligarchie in die Tyrannis herausgehoben. Insbesondere im Rahmen zwischenstädtischer Bündnisse gegen die im Westteil der Insel herrschenden Punier zeigt sich jedoch an den Fallbeispielen von Akragas und Syrakus, dass der jeweilige Bürgerverband durch seine beschlussfähigen Polis-Gremien etwa in Bezug auf die Mehrheitswahl der mit außerordentlichen Kompetenzen ausgestatteten (...) Funktionsträger am politischen Leben aktiv teilnahm. Das spätarchaische und klassische Sizilien bot für die Bildung eines provinzialrömischen Städtebunds genügend föderale Vorstrukturen. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum è non solo una delle autrici più discusse nell’attuale dibattito filosofico internazionale, ma anche una delle poche figure accademiche contemporanee la cui fama non è circoscritta all’ambito della ricerca universitaria. La sua opera, sia per le modalità espressive adottate sia per l’attualità dei temi trattati (non solo lo statuto dell’emozione, ma anche i diritti umani, il multiculturalismo, l’animalismo, ecc.), è risultata particolarmente divisiva, suscitando talvolta apert...

Premessa al volume 76, numero 1-2, 2023.

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein claims that a sentence expresses the same proposition in every possible world and, hence, which proposition is expressed cannot depend on how each world is. In this paper, I shall explore the interpretation of this thesis under the perspective of Stalnaker’s theory of assertions as the reduction of the context set, i.e., the set of possible worlds compatible with the information gathered at a conversation. In Stalnaker’s version, this principle follows from the explication of assertions as (...) having the illocutionary point of excluding some possible worlds from the context set. If there is no unique instruction to exclude some worlds, then it is not clear which reduction is meant by the speaker. This might lead to a better understanding of Wittgenstein’s own version. (shrink)

The concept of »transcendental« is undoubtedly one of the most important terms in Kantian philosophy. For over one hundred and fifty years major Kantian scholars have debated its origin and set out various interpretations. The Kant-Forschung has recently established four different possible sources: 1) Schulmetaphysik 2) Ch. Wolff; 3) A. G. Baumgarten; 4) J. H. Lambert. The aim of this essay is to suggest a different origin and genesis of the Kantian concept of »transcendental« by the methodologies of Quellengeschichte and (...) Begriffsgeschichte, investigating the philosophical and historical background of Königsberg from the beginning of the seventeenth century to Kant and to show reasons for the shift of the concept of »transcendental« from metaphysics to logic. The doctrine of transcendentals was very much alive in Königsberg and already in Scholastic philosophers the »transcendentals« shifted its interest from being to the knowable, from ontology to logic. However, up to 1763, Kant accepts the Wolffian doctrine of transcendentals and the concept of »transcendental« is synonymous to »metaphysical«. In the second half of the Sixties, probably in the wake of the preparatory works to the Beweisgrund, Kant goes deeply into the interpretation of Baumgarten and the »transcendental« becomes synonymous with »essential« in opposition to »metaphysical«. In the wake of Crusius' reflections, instead, »transcendental« becomes »logical« in contrast with »metaphysical«. Beginning in the Seventies, in the preparatory fragments to the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, the »transcendental« establishes itself as a synonymous of »logical« and »essential« in opposition to »metaphysical« and »real«, and it concerns the object of knowledge in general without any reference to the experience. From this conception derives the concept of »transcendental« of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft as an examination of the condition of the possibility of an a priori knowledge. In the conclusion I argue that Kant did not deduce the doctrine of transcendentals from his logic, but that both doctrines are developed simultaneously and that Kant always tried to integrate them with each other. Fragments of the second half of the Seventies show a progressive attempt of this integration, which was doomed to fail. (shrink)

My first book concerning the mind body problem published in a series of books edited by Paolo Rossi Monti.

In this issue, Marshall et al discuss the importance of capacity and autonomy in the setting of opioid overdose, in Revise and Refuse: Capacity, Autonomy, and Refusal of Care After Opioid Overdose...

In the last decades it has become clear that medicine must find some way to combine its scientific and humanistic sides. In other words, an adequate notion of medicine requires an integrative position that mediates between the analytic-reductionist and the normative-holistic tendencies we find therein. This is especially important as these different styles of reasoning separate “illness” (something perceived and managed by the whole individual in concert with their environment) and “disease” (a “mechanical failure” of a biological element within the (...) body). While the demand for an integrative view has typically been motivated by ethical concerns, we claim that it is also motivated, perhaps even more fundamentally, by epistemological and methodological reasons. Evidence-based bio-medicine employs experimental and statistical techniques which eliminate important differences in the ways that conscious humans evaluate, live with, and react to disease and illness. However, it is precisely these experiences that underpin the concepts and norms of bio-medicine. Humanistic disciplines, on the other hand, have the resources to investigate these experiences in an intersubjectively testable way. Medicine, therefore, cannot afford to ignore its nature as a human science; it must be concerned not only with disease and illness, but also with the ways in which patients as persons respond to malady. Insofar as attitudes and expectations influence the criteria of illness and disease, they must be studied as part of the genuine subject matter of medicine as a human science. In general, we urge that this is a necessary step to overcome today's trend to split evidence-based and clinical medicine. (shrink)

The paper explores the possibility of philosophical cooperation between Thomism and American pragmatism by resurrecting a largely forgotten debate between Wilmon Henry Sheldon and Jacques Maritain. The discussion focuses primarily on the problem of truth as it is discussed by Peirce and by some contemporary Thomists, including Maritain but also Milbank, Pickstock, Lonergan, Balthasar, Pieper, and Ulrich. The paper claims that, if we bring Peirce’s version of pragmatism into the picture, cooperation is not possible but likely to be fruitful for (...) both pragmatism and Thomism. (shrink)