The present article argues for the non-authenticity of l. 38 in the first Horatian Epistle. Together with the allusions to avarice and pride at ll. 33 and 36, it contains a reference to the cardinal sins, a concept that did not yet exist at the time of Horace. In particular, the sins listed in the line at issue appear to coincide with those discussed by Gregory the Great in his Moralia in Iob (31.45) and eventually adopted by medieval thought. The (...) metrical pattern and a check of the main medieval commentaries support the suspected spuriousness of the line. (shrink)

This book employs a new eco-cognitive model of abduction to underline the distributed and embodied nature of scientific cognition. Its main focus is on the knowledge-enhancing virtues of abduction and on the productive role of scientific models. What are the distinctive features that define the kind of knowledge produced by science? To provide an answer to this question, the book first addresses the ideas of Aristotle, who stressed the essential inferential and distributed role of external cognitive tools and epistemic mediators (...) in abductive cognition. This is analyzed in depth from both a naturalized logic and an ecology of cognition perspective. It is shown how the maximization of cognition, and of abducibility – two typical goals of science – are related to a number of fundamental aspects: the optimization of the eco-cognitive situatedness; the maximization of changeability for both the input and the output of the inferences involved; a high degree of information-sensitiveness; and the need to record the “past life” of abductive inferential practices. Lastly, the book explains how some impoverished epistemological niches – the result of a growing epistemic irresponsibility associated with the commodification and commercialization of science – are now seriously jeopardizing the flourishing development of human creative abduction. (shrink)

Philosophers have debated at length the epistemological status of scientific thought experiments. I contend that the literature on this topic still lacks a common conceptual framework, a lacuna that produces radical disagreement among the participants in this debate. To remedy this problem, I suggest focusing on the distinction between the internal and the external validity of an experiment, which is also crucial for thought experiments. I then develop an account of both kinds of validity in the context of thought experiments. (...) I show that we can naturally conceptualise internal validity in terms of games of make-believe. Then, I argue that external validity is best defined as accurate representation of a target system. Finally, I turn back to the current debate on thought experiments and show that my diarchic account provides a general framework that can be shared by the competing philosophical views, as well as a fruitful guide for their reconciliation. (shrink)

Dasgupta :35–67, 2009) has argued that material individuals, such as particles and laptops, are metaphysically objectionable and must be eliminated from our fundamental theories of the world. He proposes to eliminate them by redescribing all the fundamental facts of the world in a variant of predicate functor logic. We study the status, on this theory, of a putative fact particularly recalcitrant to a formulation within predicate functor logic: his own claim that there are no fundamental or primitive material individuals. We (...) consider three regimentations of the denial of primitive individuals and show that—under some plausible hypotheses about fundamental truths and the fundamentality operator—they cannot be consistently translated in predicate functor logic by Dasgupta’s usual strategy. We conclude by discussing two approaches to salvage Generalism, in the absence of such a translation. (shrink)

This paper attempts a reconstruction of reason’s contribution to empirical truth in connection with Kant’s definition of truth as the agreement of cognition with its object. I argue that Kant’s treatment of truth in the Transcendental Analytic gets completed in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic with an often neglected but compelling argument (what I shall call the Variety Argument). This argument postulates such a variety in the appearances as to undermine any attempt at formulating empirical truths. Crucially, I argue (...) that this variety does not depict an extreme-case scenario, but our own epistemic situation without reason. Reason completes Kant’s theory of truth by allowing the understanding (i.) to form empirical concepts and (ii.) approximate to empirical truth. (shrink)

Scientific models typically contain idealizations, or assumptions that are known not to be true. Philosophers have long questioned the nature of idealizations: Are they heuristic tools that will be abandoned? Or rather fictional representations of reality? And how can we reconcile them with realism about knowledge of nature? Immanuel Kant developed an account of scientific investigation that can inspire a new approach to the contemporary debate. Kant argued that scientific investigation is possible only if guided by ideal assumptions—what he calls (...) “regulative ideas”. These ideas are not true of objects of nature, and yet they are not heuristic tools or fictional represen- tations. They are necessary rules governing the construction and assessment of scientific explanations. In this paper, I suggest that some idealizations can be interpreted as having necessary regulative value and as being compatible with scientific realism. I first analyze the puzzle of the nature of idealization and present the main approaches to this topic in the literature. Second, I reconsider the puzzle vis-a-vis a restricted, Kantian definition of idealization and a novel characterization of the relation between idealization and truth. Finally, I discuss in detail an example of idealization (the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium) along the suggested Kantian lines. (shrink)

We present an elementary system of axioms for the geometry of Minkowski spacetime. It strikes a balance between a simple and streamlined set of axioms and the attempt to give a direct formalization in first-order logic of the standard account of Minkowski spacetime in Maudlin and Malament. It is intended for future use in the formalization of physical theories in Minkowski spacetime. The choice of primitives is in the spirit of Tarski : a predicate of betwenness and a four place (...) predicate to compare the square of the relativistic intervals. Minkowski spacetime is described as a four dimensional ‘vector space’ that can be decomposed everywhere into a spacelike hyperplane—which obeys the Euclidean axioms in Tarski and Givant, 175–214 1999)—and an orthogonal timelike line. The length of other ‘vectors’ are calculated according to Pythagoras’ theorem. We conclude with a Representation Theorem relating models \ of our system \ that satisfy second order continuity to the mathematical structure \, called ‘Minkowski spacetime’ in physics textbooks. (shrink)

Spontaneous collapse theories of quantum mechanics turn the usual Schrödinger equation into a stochastic dynamical law. In particular, in this paper, I will focus on the GRW theory. Two philosophical issues that can be raised about GRW concern (i) the ontology of the theory, in particular the nature of the wave function and its role within the theory, and (ii) the interpretation of the objective probabilities involved in the dynamics of the theory. During the last years, it has been claimed (...) that we can take advantage of dispositional properties in order to develop an ontology for GRW theory, and also in order to ground the objective probabilities which are postulated by it. However, in this paper, I will argue that the dispositional interpretations which have been discussed in the literature so far are either flawed or – at best – incomplete. If we want to endorse a dispositional interpretation of GRW theory we thus need an extended account that specifies the precise nature of those properties and which makes also clear how they can correctly ground all the probabilities postulated by the theory. Thus, after having introduced several different kinds of probabilistic dispositions, I will try to fill the gap in the literature by proposing a novel and complete dispositional account of GRW, based on what I call spontaneous weighted multi-track propensities. I claim that such an account can satisfy both of our desiderata. (shrink)

Functionalism is the view that being x is to play the role of x. This paper defends a functionalist account of three-dimensional entities in the context of Wave Function Realism (WFR), that can explain in detail how we can recover three-dimensional entities out of the wavefunction. In particular, the essay advocates for a novel version of WFR in terms of a functional reductionist approach in the style of David Lewis. This account entails reduction of the upper entities to the bottom (...) ones, when the latter behave appropriately. As applied to WFR, it shows how the wavefunction can turn out to be identical to three-dimensional objects, provided certain conditions. The first major goal of the paper is thus to put forward an improved and more rigorous version of WFR, which dissolves several extant issues about the theory, and can serve as a starting point for future literature on the topic. Moreover, the second major goal of the article is to take WFR as a case study to demonstrate the pros of functional reductionism, especially in the form defended here, thereby helping to bring this view back in the philosophy of science debate. The positive upshots of this paper suggest a possible application of functional reductionism also to other contexts. (shrink)

We are living in the era of street art. Since Nick Riggle’s pivotal work on the definition of street art, several philosophers have addressed issues in the philosophy of street art. The goal of this paper is to summarize the literature. I consider the following matters, which have been at the core of philosophical discussions on street art: demarcation, value, illegality, and the ethical foundation of intellectual property (IP) protection. In answering the question ‘What is street art?,’ philosophers have generally (...) resisted skeptical approaches by developing a wide range of real and essentialist definitions of street art (Section 2). When considering street art’s value, I distinguish between aesthetic and non-aesthetic centered accounts. If the former focus on the aesthetic side of our experience of street art, the latter generally place emphasis on its activist nature and political significance (Section 3). In discussing the relationship between street art and illegality, I canvas different takes on the issue. If for some scholars illegality is either a necessary or sufficient condition for street art, philosophers tend to agree that it is neither, while not denying its relevance at the level of identity and authenticity (Section 4). Finally, I consider matters of IP protection of street art. On the one hand, copyright optimists defend the view that current IP legislations may very well have a positive impact on the promotion and preservation of street art. Pessimists, on the other hand, argue that an extension of copyright privileges to works of street art is likely to jeopardize the counter-cultural and rebellious nature of this urban art kind (Section 5). (shrink)

In this paper, we embark on the complicated discussion about the nature of vice in Virtue Ethics through a twofold approach: first, by taking seriously the claim that virtues (and certain flavours of vices) are genuinely dispositional features possessed by agents, and secondly, by employing a pluralistic attitude borrowed from Battaly’s pluralism (2008). Through these lenses, we identify three varieties of viciousness: incontinence, indifference, and malevolence. The upshot is that the notion of vice is not as categorically homogeneous as that (...) of virtue: some states of viciousness consist in interference of present virtuous dispositions, or mimicking of absent vicious ones, whereas others can be considered genuine dispositions themselves. Furthermore, this set-up can provide an interesting, albeit highly idealized story as to how, through the interference in one’s environment, one gets acquainted with vice in various degrees. Finally, this approach can be illuminating vis-à-vis Virtue Ethics in general; e.g. we can employ it to discuss more productively Johnston’s (2003) objection to Hursthouse’s (1999) account of moral conduct. Finally, this approach can be illuminating vis-a-vis Virtue Ethics in general; e.g. we can employ it to discuss more productively Johnston’s (2003) objection to Hursthouse’s (1999) account of moral conduct. (shrink)

A popular stance amongst philosophers is one according to which, in Lewis’ words, “identity is utterly simple and unproblematic”. Building from Lewis’ famous passage on the matter, we reconstruct, and then criticize, an argument to the conclusion that identities cannot be grounded. With the help of relatively uncontroversial assumption concerning identity facts, we show that not all identities are equi-fundamental, and, on the contrary, some appear to be provided potential grounding bases using two-level identity criteria. Further potential grounding bases for (...) identities are presented. Identity might be utterly simple and unproblematic, but this is not sufficient to conclude that identities are ungrounded, or fundamental. (shrink)

I consider a problem for functional reductionism, based on the following tension. Say that b is functionally reduced to a. On the one hand, a and b turn out to be identical, and identity is a symmetric relation. On the other hand, functional reductionism implies that a and b are asymmetrically related: if b is functionally reduced to a, then a is not functionally reduced to b. Thus, we ask: how can a and b be asymmetrically related if they are (...) the same thing? I propose a solution to this tension, by distinguishing between ontological levels and levels of description. (shrink)

In this article we argue for an extension of Pere Alberch’s notion of developmental morphospace into the realm of cognition and introduce the notion of cognitive phenotype as a new tool for the evolutionary and developmental study of cognitive abilities.

This article analyzes Italian research and experimentation on the economic potential of certain plant species in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, also providing insight into beekeeping and honey production. It focuses on continuity of method and progress across regimes and on the invisibility of many of the actors involved in the development of agricultural science and food research. Specifically, “continuity” refers to the continuation of certain threads of Old-Regime experimentation by the scientific apparatus put in place during the (...) Napoleonic era. These threads were reworked and strengthened with the new means available to Frenchified Europe. The concept of “invisibility” derives from an expression by Steven Shapin and refers to actors who contributed to the development of agricultural science while remaining in the shadows. These include various types of technicians and members of rural society who supported the scientific work of scholars without receiving overt recognition. Continuity and invisibility were therefore two fundamental components both in the epistemological development of agricultural science and in the improvement of food research. The article analyzes case studies mainly from northern Italy – or rather, the various geopolitical entities existing in this geographical region – during the late Old Regime and the Napoleonic era, comparing them with examples from all over Europe. (shrink)

The naturalization of logic aims at a revision of mainstream logic. In this article, I contend it is an urgent task to be completed. This new project will permit a new collaboration between logic and cognitive science. This can be accomplished doing for logic what many decades ago Quine and other philosophers undertook in the case of epistemology. First of all, this article analyzes how the naturalization can be achieved thanks to some insights provided by the recent John Woods’ book (...) Errors of Reasoning: Naturalizing the Logic of Inference; important concepts that regard a naturalized logic are synthetically analyzed: errors, paradigm creep, third-way reasoning, consequence-having and consequence drawing, agent based reasoning. The article also takes advantage of my own studies, which are aimed both at exculpating the negative fallacious character of abduction and at illustrating the EC-model of it, I have recently proposed. Aiming at encouraging the project of naturalization of logic, the article specifically recommends the increase of logical research on abduction, and emphasizes how current philosophical and logical research on human inferences is indebted towards Charles Sanders Peirce, a philosopher whose importance and modernity are too often underestimated. The final part of the article will introduce an analysis of the importance of the so-called optimization of situatedness, a concept that is necessary to understand that maximization of “abducibility”, which characterizes modern science. (shrink)

The phenomenological method, characterized by the suspension of judgment (epoché), has helped analyzing the subjective experience of patients affected by mental disorders. Psychiatry, dealing with the human being itself in its complexity and unicity, is placed between the biological positivistic attempt, for which the symptoms of mental illness are a mere consequence of brain dysfunctions and the phenomenological-existential approach, inclined to consider the symptoms as meaningful phenomena of the person’s subjective experience. Eugène Minkowski, Ludwig Binswanger, Arthur Tatossian, Kimura Bin, Henri (...) Maldiney and Hubertus Tellenbach are fundamental authors in the phenomenological psychopathology of depression; they described the alterations of the lived time, space, body and others experienced by the depressed. Starting from the main theoretical contributions of the authors, we will focus on the psychopathology and discuss the key themes of clinical depression: guilt, poverty and hypochondriasis. Finally we will focus on the typus melancholicus construct. (shrink)

Il est certes difficile de trouver, parmi les femmes musiciennes, interprètes ou compositrices capables de transmettre leur art, une figure qui puisse servir de référence indiscutable. Cette quête infructueuse peut donner lieu à deux interprétations différentes. L'opinion traditionnelle en déduira l'absence de femmes assez exercées dans l'art musical pour être reconnues et transmettre leurs connaissances, considérées comme inexistantes. La perspective féministe, que je partage, fera remarquer...

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant often remarks that phenomena consist only in relations. This is a highly puzzling thesis that is not easily reconcilable with the explanation of natural processes. More specifically, it is not clear whether and how a network of mere relations (such as ‘being higher than’, ‘being next to’, etc.) can give rise to genuine changes in nature. I call this the problem of global relationality. In this paper, I suggest a solution to this problem (...) by showing that Kant’s specific sense of relationality is ultimately grounded in the spatiality of phenomena and differs from the one usually assumed in the contemporary debate. I argue that a subset of empirical properties can be regarded as ‘comparatively intrinsic’ since they preserve a genuine sense of intrinsicness while being fully relational in space. As a result, real changes can take place in the phenomenal realm if they concern comparatively intrinsic properties of empirical objects. (shrink)

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

This book contains contributions presented during the international conference on Model-Based Reasoning (MBR'012), held on June 21-23 in Sestri Levante, Italy. Interdisciplinary researchers discuss in this volume how scientific cognition and other kinds of cognition make use of models, abduction, and explanatory reasoning in order to produce important or creative changes in theories and concepts. Some of the contributions analyzed the problem of model-based reasoning in technology and stressed the issues of scientific and technological innovation. The book is divided in (...) three main parts: models, mental models, representations; abduction, problem solving and practical reasoning; historical, epistemological and technological issues.. (shrink)

What constitutes the nature of pleasure? According to hedonic phenomenalism, pleasant experiences are pleasant in virtue of some phenomenological features. According to hedonic attitudinalism, pleasure involves an attitude—a class of mental states that necessarily have an object. Consequently, pleasures are always _about_ something. We argue that hedonic attitudinalism is not able to accommodate pleasant moods. We first consider this argument more generally, and then consider what we call _the globalist strategy response_ to the possible objectless of moods, namely that pleasant (...) moods have general, or undetermined, objects. We then discuss the case of blissful meditative states, and argue that the globalist strategy is not able to accommodate all pleasant states. (shrink)

In this article I will show why and how it is useful to exploit the hexagon of opposition to have a better and new understanding of the relationships between morality and violence and of fundamental axiological concepts. I will take advantage of the analysis provided in my book Understanding Violence. The Intertwining of Morality, Religion, and Violence: A Philosophical Stance. Springer, Heidelberg/Berlin, 2011) to stress some aspects of the relationship between morality and violence, also reworking some ideas by John Woods (...) concerning the so-called epistemic bubbles, to reach and describe my own concept of moral bubbles. The study aims at providing a simple theory of basic concepts of moral philosophy, which extracts and clarifies the strict relationship between morality and violence and more, for example the new philosophical concept of overmorality. I will also conclude that this kind of hybrid diagrammatic reasoning is a remarkable example of manipulative explanatory abduction—through drawing—in the spirit of “conceptual structuralism”, promoted by Robert Blanché and further developed by Jean-Yves Béziau. (shrink)

This article addresses some crucial assumptions that are rarely acknowledged when organisms and machines are compared. We begin by presenting a short historical reconstruction of the concept of “machine.” We show that there has never been a unique and widely accepted definition of “machine” and that the extant definitions are based on specific technologies. Then we argue that, despite the concept's ambiguity, we can still defend a more robust, specific, and useful notion of machine analogy that accounts for successful strategies (...) in connecting specific devices (or mechanisms) with particular living phenomena. For that purpose, we distinguish between what we call “generic identity” and proper “machine analogy.” We suggest that “generic identity”—which, roughly stated, presumes that some sort of vague similarity might exist between organisms and machines—is a source of the confusion haunting many persistent disagreements and that, accordingly, it should be dismissed. Instead, we endorse a particular form of “machine analogy” where the relation between organic phenomena and mechanical devices is not generic but specific and grounded on the identification of shared “invariants.” We propose that the machine analogy is a kind of analogy as proportion and we elucidate how this is used or might be used in scientific practices. We finally argue that while organisms are not machines in a generic sense, they might share many robust “invariants,” which justify the scientists' use of machine analogies for grasping living phenomena. (shrink)

A genealogical account of state sovereignty explores the ways in which the concept has emerged, evolved, and is in decline today. Sovereignty has a theological foundation, and is deeply bound up with the idea of God, in particular a voluntarist God, presented as being capable of intervening directly in the world. Religious conflicts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries forced the separation between religion and politics, and opened the space for the emergence of a national state endowed with sovereignty which (...) has dominated the world until now. Today’s rise of international and transnational obligations challenges the conventional understanding of state sovereignty, which cannot account for the normative density of the global order and the corresponding decline of state-based political authority. In order to explain that, I contrast two competing understandings of state sovereignty: a static one and a dynamic one. The static understanding regards sovereignty as absolute within the state territory. The dynamic understanding regards sovereignty as evolutionary: according to this account, the state is just one possible form that sovereignty can take. I conclude by suggesting that the dynamic understanding of state sovereignty is better suited to explaining the decline of state sovereignty. (shrink)

This article aims to investigate the nature and role of linguistic “images” in Husserl’s philosophy. At first, I will explain the idea of rigorous language emerging in relevant pages of Ideas I as well as the challenges that linguistic “images” pose to it. I will then examine the nature of linguistic “images,” relying on the reflections collected in Husserliana XXIII to show their nature of intuitive-imaginative syntheses. Finally, I will focus on the role that such “images” play in phenomenologizing. Taking (...) decisive cues from Fink and Adorno, I will show the figurative essence of Husserl’s operative concepts and the productivity of “conceptual constellations” in phenomenology. The main contention of this article is that the rigor of phenomenological language essentially relies on a peculiar imaginative experience. (shrink)

Through the many reinterpretations of Freud’s essay Das Unheimliche (1919) within French Postmodernism, in recent decades, the uncanny has become a vague synonym for the methodology of deconstruction. The article aims to disambiguate the uncanny by reestablishing its characterizing nucleus and relocating it within the aesthetics through the philosophy of Stanley Cavell. The American philosopher claims that this feeling can be generated by drawing attention to the ordinary, which is so close and familiar to fade out of focus. Cavell and (...) the German Philosopher Juliane Rebentisch following him show that artistic practices can reinforce this experience, as through displacements and dislocations, they deprive objects of daily use and ordinary matters of their familiarity and force us to look more closely at their material, sensorial, and phenomenological dimensions. In this way, Cavell and Rebentisch offer a path to reconstitute a stable conceptual framework for defining the uncanny, linking it to Freud’s definition of something familiar appearing in an unfamiliar light. At the same time, they also propose a novelty by interpreting the uncanny not as inherently frightening and disturbing but as a compelling affective state that encourages a willingness to reappropriate and rediscover the ordinary. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to save "the sexual" from the oblivion to which certain strands in queer theory tend to condemn it, and at the same time to limit the risks of anti-politics and solipsism contained in what has been termed antisocial queer theory. It takes a journey from Sigmund Freud to Mario Mieli and Guy Hocquenghem, from Michel Foucault and Judith Butler to Teresa de Lauretis, Leo Bersani, Lee Edelman, and Tim Dean, and from all of these thinkers (...) back to Immanuel Kant and Thomas Hobbes. At the end, through readings of Bruce LaBruce's movies on gay zombies, the elitism of antisocial queer theory is brought into contact with popular culture. The living dead come to represent a dispossessed form of subjectivity, whose monstrous drives are counterposed to predatory desires of liberal individuals. The reader is thus lead into the interstitial spaces of the Queer Apocalypses, where the past and the future collapse onto the present, and sexual minorities resurrect to the chance of a non-heroic political agency. (shrink)

By reconstructing the connections between different artistic forms, such as Art Sociologique, cybernetic, media and digital art, the paper addresses of how the concept of interactivity has evolved in relation to the development of aesthetic paradigms. Firstly, the paper problematizes the concept of interactive art, by discussing connections and differences with media and digital art. Secondly, the paper shows how Flussers’ concept of participatory media, influenced by the artistic work of Fred Forest, together with the theoretical perspective developed by members (...) of the “Group for an Aesthetics of Communication”, contributed to the development of new perspectives in interactive art. Thirdly, the paper shows how theoretical perspectives such as “Relational aesthetics” and the “Aesthetics of Communication” constituted the basis for the successive reflection on the potentialities of virtuality and immateriality from an artistic perspective. By drawing on such premises, the paper addresses the issue of the meta-operational processes involved in the use of Text-to-Image technologies (TTI), discussing the level of interactivity and the creative processes involved in its use. Finally, the paper problematizes the features of interactivity that characterize emerging forms of art made possible by virtual devices. (shrink)