The painter Francis Bacon and the philosopher Gilles Deleuze agree with Heraclitus: any phenomenon is constituted of movement or becoming and no appearance endures. I read Francis Bacon, The Logic of Sensation from the perspective of the Heraclitean flux. This allows me to show the eminent role of forces in the work of Deleuze, which he inherits from the Greek philosopher. I point at sensation as Deleuze's re-thinking of the notion of becoming. ‘How can an artist make an object endure?’ (...) The artistic product, for Deleuze, embodies the force to recreate itself, and thus to endure in the universe. This phenomenon is a bloc of sensation. (shrink)

COVID-19 has brought to light the severity of economic inequalities by testing the capacity of the poorest families to make ends meet. Food insecurity has in fact soared all over the UK, with many people forced to rely on food support providers to not go hungry. This paper uses a unique dataset on 55 food support organizations active in Greater Manchester during the first COVID-19 wave, and 41 semi-structured interviews with food aid spokespersons and stakeholders, to shed light on what (...) they overcame, the complications and drawbacks of the food emergency response plan put in place. The results indicate that food aid organizations that remained open were surprisingly effective despite the growth in user demand and the decrease in volunteers. However, the necessity to maintain a timely supply food at all costs came with important drawbacks. The lockdown measures that followed COVID-19 not only affected the financial stability and management of the organizations, and the availability of food, but undermined the ways in which food support providers used to operate. Owing to physical distancing measures and to the increasing numbers of users, more or less intangible forms of support such as financial advice, empathic listening and human warmth were partially lost, probably when they were needed more than ever. (shrink)

Ackrill’s Problem is a tension between Aristotle’s alleged view that the matter of a living being is a body that is essentially ensouled, and his view that the matter of a substance preexists its generation. Most interpreters solve the tension by claiming that the subject of substantial generation is not the organic body of the living being, but its non-organic matter. I defend a different solution by showing that the embryological theory ofOn the Generation of Animalsimplies that the organic body (...) of a living being already exists before acquiring the soul in actuality. (shrink)

First published in 1997, this volume addressed the growing preoccupation of scientists at the time had in environmental phenomena, such as global warming, ozone layer depletion, acid rains, fresh water and ocean pollution, desertification, deforestation and the loss of bio-diversity. The crucial and pressing nature of these issues spawned says the author a new wave of research in environmental economics. The volume provides broad surveys of the developments in the economics of the environment and reports on the developing set of (...) environmental problems, analytical tools and economic policies. The importance of the developing approach was that environmental problems are no longer isolated from all other economic dimensions. Throughout the volume they are analysed in an open, generally non-competitive economy with transnational or global externalities. The first part deals with the relationship between the environment, economic growth and technological innovation. The second part analyses the optimal design of environmental taxation, while the third part considers the international dimension of environmental policy. (shrink)

The last quarter of a century has featured a surge in interest and studies on the commons, spearheaded, of course, by the efforts of Elinor Ostrom. These efforts have problematized the once well-established paradigm of the tragedy of the commons most clearly described by Garrett Hardin in 1968. One could say that the commons, thus, have become a fundamental field of study in most social sciences. This is not the case in the field of legal scholarship, which leads me to (...) the overarching issue of this essay, namely the difficult relationship between jurists and the commons. The phrase?difficult relationship? does not refer to an explicit antagonism, but to something even worse: complete indifference and a scandalous lack of knowledge. While my main purpose is to try to explain this sorry state of affairs, I also hope to make a more general point on the nature of law and legal change. In this sense, the commons can be considered a case-study in legal theory. The main issue of this paper is to tackle following sub-questions. What is the status of commons in the Western European legal discourse? Why do most legal scholars pay such a poor attention to the growing literature on the commons in other disciplines? What factors contribute to this peculiar case of cultural deafness? What promise of improvement does the future hold? nema. (shrink)

Étienne Souriau (1892-1979) demeure un philosophe et esthécien français du xx e siècle encore largement méconnu. Cette première biographie coécrite par Filippo Domenicali et Fabien Le Tinnier – regroupant leurs recherches respectives sur l’œuvre d’Étienne Souriau, pour l’un sur ses années lyonnaises, l’autre sur ses années parisiennes –, cherche à restaurer la place qu’occupait l’œuvre du philosophe au sein de l’histoire de la philosophie française contemporaine. Fondée sur l’étude de nombreuses archives pour la première fois mises au jour, cette (...) biographie retrace le cursus honorem du professeur Souriau durant plus soixante ans. En resituant ainsi la trajectoire intellectuelle de Souriau, l’évolution de sa carrière, la toile de ses amitiés philosophes ainsi que ses réseaux collégiaux parmi les lieux qu’il a fréquenté, cette biographie vise encore à éclairer son travail à la lumière des livres, idées et événements qui ont chacun participé à façonner son abondante œuvre philosophique que depuis quelques années de nombreux chercheurs et universitaires français, belges et italiens redécouvrent. Depuis ses années parisiennes de formation passées à l’École Normale Supérieure jusqu’au faste de ces années passée à l’université de Paris occupant la chaire d’esthétique à partir de juillet 1946, Souriau fait rayonner la philosophie française par-delà les frontières françaises comme en témoignent ses nombreuses publications étrangères et déplacements professionnels. Figure majeure de la philosophie universitaire, Souriau et son œuvre parcourent ainsi le monde philosophique du milieu du xx e siècle. (shrink)

The global spread of the novel coronavirus is affected by the spread of related misinformation—the so-called COVID-19 Infodemic—that makes populations more vulnerable to the disease through resistance to mitigation efforts. Here, we analyze the prevalence and diffusion of links to low-credibility content about the pandemic across two major social media platforms, Twitter and Facebook. We characterize cross-platform similarities and differences in popular sources, diffusion patterns, influencers, coordination, and automation. Comparing the two platforms, we find divergence among the prevalence of popular (...) low-credibility sources and suspicious videos. A minority of accounts and pages exert a strong influence on each platform. These misinformation “superspreaders” are often associated with the low-credibility sources and tend to be verified by the platforms. On both platforms, there is evidence of coordinated sharing of Infodemic content. The overt nature of this manipulation points to the need for societal-level solutions in addition to mitigation strategies within the platforms. However, we highlight limits imposed by inconsistent data-access policies on our capability to study harmful manipulations of information ecosystems. (shrink)

Since the publication of Truth, Paul Horwich’s ‘Minimalism’ has become the paradigm of what goes under the label ‘the deflationary conception of truth’. Despite the many theoretical virtues of Horwich’s minimalism, it is usually contended that it cannot fully account for the normative role that truth plays in enquiry. As I see it, this concern amounts to several challenges. One such challenge—call it the axiological challenge—is about whether deflationists have the theoretical resources to explain the value of truth. Some philosophers (...) have argued that they do not. The thought is that by being valuable in the way it is, truth plays a non-trivial explanatory role with respect to core phenomena of enquiry. In order to account for this aspect of truth, the challenge goes, we need to inflate truth’s nature to an extent incompatible with core tenets of the minimalist conception. In this paper, I first provide some clarifications of what we mean exactly when we say that truth is valuable. By borrowing important distinction from the current debate in axiology, I elaborate a framework within which to conduct investigations into the value of truth. With reference to Horwich’s discussion of the issue, I then discuss the link between questions concerning the explanatory role of truth and the issue of its metaphysical inflation. I conclude by briefly exploring a few strategies on behalf of minimalists to address the axiological challenge. (shrink)

Within the framework of Meinongianism, nothingness turns out to have contradictory features—it seems to be an object and not. In this paper, we explore two different kinds of Meinongian accounts of nothingness. The first one is the consistent account, which rejects the contradiction of nothingness, while the second one is the inconsistent account, which accepts the contradiction of nothingness. First of all, after showing that the consistent account of nothingness defended by Jacquette fails, we express some concerns on the general (...) possibility of consistently characterizing nothingness. Secondly, starting from Priest’s inconsistent characterization of nothingness :146–158, 2014b), we will introduce our own inconsistent account. The key idea of our account is to take nothingness as the complement of the totality. Finally, we will make formal sense of it by constructing an inconsistent mereological system, which is the development of the paraconsistent mereology proposed by Weber and Cotnoir. (shrink)

Il presente volume raccoglie diversi articoli, relazioni e conferenze, fatti in circostanze diverse e in vari luoghi durante il decennio 1953-1962. I saggi qui presentati sono stati quindi gia pubblicati tutti, eccetto pochi. Tuttavia essi vengono qui non solo organicamente riuniti, ma anche in molti punti rimaneggiati, completati e in qualche caso fusi insieme. La grande attualita di argomenti di filosofia della scienza ci hanno spinto a curare la presente raccolta, come modesto contributo ad una delle piu urgenti problematiche della (...) cultura moderna. In essa, infatti, se occorre evitare il pericolo che la scienza nel senso stretto subordini a se ogni altro valore, bisogna pero anche riconoscere ad essa il suo reale valore teoretico e pratico ed evitare quindi che la filosofia si isoli in un piano puramente concettuale ed astratto, avulso dalla vera realta dei nostri tempi. (shrink)

This paper considers Niccolò Machiavelli’s contribution to a theory of constituent power. Modern authors who have analysed the concept of constituent power generally agree on its ambiguous, paradoxical and apparently contradictory essence. With few exceptions, Machiavelli is absent from both the historical reconstructions of and the theoretical debates on the origin of constituent power. My argument is built around two main theses: reintroducing Machiavelli to the debate on constituent power offers an original response to the theoretical fallacies and inconsistencies identified (...) by modern scholars. In particular, Machiavelli’s philosophy contributes to the comprehension of constituent power as a living force within social order. My second thesis is that by tracing the source of constituent power back to Machiavelli, we can overcome the main theoretical problem implied by this concept, namely the problem of the priority of the factual or the juridical, by providing a vision that emphasises their immanent coexistence. (shrink)

In Savoring Disgust, Carolyn Korsmeyer argues that disgust is peculiar amongst emotions, for it does not need any of the standard solutions to the so-called paradox of fiction. I argue that Korsmeyer’s arguments in support of the peculiarity of disgust with respect to the paradox of fiction are not successful.

Spesso ha luogo un confronto tra varie concezioni della filosofia della natura, diverse tra loro per il metodo ed il contenuto, ed e bene che la corrente aristotelicotomista, spesso criticata ma non sostituita, vi sia adeguatamente rappresentata. Il libro e diviso in due parti: la conoscenza del mondo e la natura del mondo. Abbondanti sono i riferimenti e le citazioni in varie lingue di filosofi e scienziati dell'antichita fino ad oggi. Filippo Selvaggi e stato professore di logica e di (...) filosofia della natura e della scienza presso la Pontificia Universita Gregoriana. (shrink)

This book offers a clear, analytic, and innovative interpretation of Heidegger's late work. This period of Heidegger's philosophy remains largely unexplored by analytic philosophers, who consider it filled with inconsistencies and paradoxical ideas, particularly concerning the notions of Being and nothingness. This book takes seriously the claim that the late Heidegger endorses dialetheism--namely the position according to which some contradictions are true--and shows that the idea that Being is both an entity and not an entity is neither incoherent nor logically (...) trivial. The author achieves this by presenting and defending the idea that reality has an inconsistent structure. In doing so, he takes one of the most discussed topics in current analytic metaphysics, grounding theory, into a completely unexplored area. Additionally, in order to make sense of Heidegger's concept of nothingness, the author introduces an original axiomatic mereological system that, having a paraconsistent logic as a base logic, can tolerate inconsistencies without falling into logical triviality. This is the first book to set forth a complete and detailed discussion of the late Heidegger in the framework of analytic metaphysics. It will be of interest to Heidegger scholars and analytic philosophers working on theories of grounding, mereology, dialetheism, and paraconsistent logic. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

Shutter Island is a much-criticized and highly debated film. Scorsese, in fact, has been accused of distorting the facts and altering his historical sources. The depictions we see of the Holocaust are false, not based on visual documents, a mix of incompatible evidences and iconographies, an amalgam of irreconcilable informations and representations. The director has created a visual style and a sound design that vacillate between thriller and horror, drama and fantasy, while betraying the medial transparency of the reconstruction and (...) the ethical responsibility of interpretation. The viewer sees and believes in the images of the concentration camp of Dachau which are, in reality, dialectical imaginings of another scene: in these images, constructed according to the clinical and critical vision of Scorsese as cinephile, the past and the repressed return in the present. In our present too. On the one hand, in fact, the viewer participates empathically in the mental images relived and suffered by the protagonist in his post-traumatic hallucinations; on the other hand, the viewer is prompted to recall the pictures quoted or paraphrased from the archives of the imagery of cinema and of the photojournalism of war–in which Pontecorvo, Resnais, Fuller, George Stevens and John Huston live side by side with the RKO horror films of Jacques Tourneur and Mark Robson. For Scorsese, the images of the violence of war and of the horror of extermination cannot be linked to an origin or past that have definitively been concluded. They are more than recorded pictures or concrete evidences: they are clues and symptoms. They come from a conflictual and endless descent of which cinema is the living and ambiguous memory; they are the open wounds of an original struggle between human and inhuman and of man–they still survive, here and now. (shrink)

Existence Since Thales fell into the well while gazing at the stars, philosophers have invested considerable effort in trying to understand what, how and why things exist. Even though much ink has been spilled about those questions, this article focuses on the following three questions: What is the nature of existence? Are there … Continue reading Existence →.

Control is typically accepted as a necessary condition for moral responsibility. Thus, humans are morally responsible for their actions only if we can realise the right kind of control. Are there good reasons to think that humans can psychologically realise control? This paper is an attempt to address this question by establishing choice and agenthood as separate but interconnected aspects of control. I consider two challenges to the claim that humans can realise the kind of control required for moral responsibility. (...) First, an empirical challenge from cognitive neuroscience provides a familiar way to argue against the realisation of the choice aspect by human psychology. Second, a more formidable conceptual challenge to the aspect of agenthood presents us with scepticism about the kind of explanations that psychology can provide. The second challenge suggests that, in psychological accounts of choice, the agent disappears. Drawing on recent empirical models of cognitive control and philosophical accounts of agency, I conclude that the psychological explanation of choice is consistent with the aspect of agenthood being realised by human psychology. (shrink)

We hypothesize that heritable epigenetic changes can affect rates of fitness increase as well as patterns of genotypic and phenotypic change during adaptation. In particular, we suggest that when natural selection acts on pure epigenetic variation in addition to genetic variation, populations adapt faster, and adaptive phenotypes can arise before any genetic changes. This may make it difficult to reconcile the timing of adaptive events detected using conventional population genetics tools based on DNA sequence data with environmental drivers of adaptation, (...) such as changes in climate. Epigenetic modifications are frequently associated with somatic cell differentiation, but recently epigenetic changes have been found that can be transmitted over many generations. Here, we show how the interplay of these heritable epigenetic changes with genetic changes can affect adaptive evolution, and how epigenetic changes affect the signature of selection in the genetic record. (shrink)

Neural complexity and brain entropy have gained greater interest in recent years. The dynamics of neural signals and their relations with information processing continue to be investigated through different measures in a variety of noteworthy studies. The BEN of spontaneous neural activity decreases during states of reduced consciousness. This evidence has been showed in primary consciousness states, such as psychedelic states, under the name of “the entropic brain hypothesis.” In this manuscript we propose an extension of this hypothesis to physiological (...) and pathological aging. We review this particular facet of the complexity of the brain, mentioning studies that have investigated BEN in primary consciousness states, and extending this view to the field of neuroaging with a focus on resting-state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. We first introduce historic and conceptual ideas about entropy and neural complexity, treating the mindbrain as a complex nonlinear dynamic adaptive system, in light of the free energy principle. Then, we review the studies in this field, analyzing the idea that the aim of the neurocognitive system is to maintain a dynamic state of balance between order and chaos, both in terms of dynamics of neural signals and functional connectivity. In our exploration we will review studies both on acute psychedelic states and more chronic psychotic states and traits, such as those in schizophrenia, in order to show the increase of entropy in those states. Then we extend our exploration to physiological and pathological aging, where BEN is reduced. Finally, we propose an interpretation of these results, defining a general trend of BEN in primary states and cognitive aging. (shrink)

Il volume e un omaggio del P. Selvaggi al pensiero filosofico del Prof. Annibale Pastore, eminente studioso vissuto tra la seconda meta del XIX secolo fino alla prima meta del XX secolo. Il volume parte dalla iniziale riflessione sulla filosofia della scienza, sui suoi metodi e sul suo valore alle considerazioni sulla logica e in particolare sulla logica aristotelica, alle relazioni tra la logica e la matematica fino alla elaborazione della sua teoria: la logica del potenziamento basata sulla relativita. Con (...) la sua teoria il Pastore vuole superare sia l'idealismo kantiano sia il materialismo. Egli parte da un dualismo: soggetto e oggetto, natura e spirito, ma lo supera, non con la negazione degli opposti come fanno i materialisti e gli idealisti, bensi mediante l'identificazione dei termini con la relazione che li unisce. Il lavoro del P. Selvaggi e innanzitutto una descrizione dello sviluppo del pensiero di Pastore e un commento critico alle sue elaborazioni e conseguenze. (shrink)

Passage 228a7-8 of Plato’s Sophist has been the object of a broad debate by reason of a number of subtle interpretative problems. The present work attempts to take stock of this passage and to put forward a satisfying solution from both a philological and an exegetic perspective. I seek to show that the reading cited by Galen and adopted in the editions of the Sophist (τὴν τοῦ φύσει συγγενοῦς ἔκ τινος διαφθορᾶς διαφοράν) cannot be preferred to the variant found in (...) the manuscripts of the dialogue (τὴν τοῦ φύσει συγγενοῦς ἔκ τινος διαφορᾶς διαφθοράν). As for the interpretation, both readings stand out as problematic. I propose to reconsider the interpretation of the syntagma τοῦ φύσει συγγενοῦς and to translate it as “the natural kinship” rather than as “what is naturally kindred”. The paper continues with an analysis of the role played by kinship in Plato’s philosophy, showing how its sundering can be identified with stasis. (shrink)

This paper deals with the metaphysics of the notion of quantity in the philosophy of Leibniz, and its aim is to defend the following bi-conditional: for any object x, x has a certain quantity if and only if x has a (metaphysical) limit or a bound. The direction from left to right is justified in §3, while in §4 I develop an argument to justify the direction from right to left. Since the bi-conditional links the metaphysical notion of limit to (...) the mathematical notion of quantity (and in this way it links Leibniz’s metaphysics with his conception of Mathesis Universalis), it allows the use of metaphysics to clarify the features of the mathematical notion of quantity. This task is accomplished in §5 and §6. Finally, §7 discusses a possible objection. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger is a towering figure in the history of continental philosophy, but his work has recently been brought into productive engagement with analytic philosophy. This paper introduces and explores two channels along which such engagement has been taking place. The first is in metaphysics, where Heideggerian thought has been interpreted either as making the metaphysical concept of being literally senseless or as mandating a revision to classical logic. The second is in philosophy of mind, and more particularly in philosophy (...) of cognitive science, where Heideggerian thought has been used to mount a challenge to representational theories of mind. (shrink)

In this paper I offer some critical comments to MacFarlane's recent book "Assessment Sensitivity". I focus primarily on MacFarlane's understanding of the normative aspects of enquiry—in particular I take issue with the phenomena of retraction and disagreement as preclusion of joint accuracy. I argue that both notions are problematic and that—at least in the case of basic taste—they are not needed in order to account for our intuitions.