First published in 1917 and 1918, with a second edition in 1946, this is the first English translation of Santi Romano's classic work, L'ordinamento giuridico. The main focus of The Legal Order is the notion of institution, which Romano considers to be both the core and distinguishing feature of law. After criticising accounts of the nature of law centred on notions of rule, coercion or authority, he offers a compelling conception, not merely of law as an institution, but of the (...) institution as 'the first, original and essential manifestation of law'. Romano advances a definition of a legal institution as any group who share rules within a bounded context: for example, a family, a firm, a factory, a prison, an association, a church, an illegal organisation, a state, the community of states, and so on. Therefore, this understanding of legal institutionalism at the same time provides a ground-breaking theory of legal pluralism whereby 'there are as many legal orders as institutions'. The acme of a jurisprudential current long overlooked in the Anglophone environment, The Legal Order not only proposes what Carl Schmitt described as a 'very significant theory', but, more importantly, it offers precious insights for a thorough rethinking of the relationship between law and society in today's world. (shrink)

Teodicea e relazione. La teologia come garanzia di giustizia nella dialettica tra ordine e libero arbitrio. Teodicy and relationship. The theology as guarantee of justice in the dialectics between order and free will.

One of the legacies of modern philosophy is to have separated or bifurcated the human from nature. Marco Altamirano offers a critique of the modern concept of nature in order to chart a new trajectory for the philosophy of nature. -/- By examining the history of the concept of nature, Altamirano shows how a spatial and epistemological concept of nature emerged in Descartes, where a subject confronts an object in space and subsequently wonders about her mode of access to (...) that object. He then argues that a time-based concept of nature is necessary in order to reinstall the subject within its eventual ecology. Deploying conceptual resources from Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault, and Leroi- Gourhan (among others), Altamirano shows how the concept of technology harbors an escape route from the spatial and epistemological picture of nature. Ultimately, this book draws the profile of a concept of nature based on time and technology that bypasses the nature-artifice distinction that has mired the philosophy of nature since modern philosophy. (shrink)

By the end of the 1820s, an innovative product was introduced in the northern Italian editorial market: technical and popular periodicals offering “useful knowledge” to a larger audience composed of members of the provincial middle-class, clergymen, and modestly educated craftsmen. By examining their medical content, this paper shows that popularisation did not merely entail disseminating a set of stable, unanimous, and trustworthy medical doctrines; rather, it represented a crucial step in the making of science during a period in which medical (...) theories were still various and contradictory. Moreover, it demonstrates that the environmental and preventative approach to disease, which these medical contributors often employed, did reflect recent developments in chemical or physical knowledge and responded to pedagogical and informative goals; but it mostly served to affirm the social usefulness of medicine and the legitimacy of health professionals' participation in determining how to regulate more general epidemiologic, social, and political issues. (shrink)

A view that emancipates free will by means of quantum indeterminism is frequently rejected based on arguments pointing out its incompatibility with what we know about quantum physics. However, if one carefully examines what classical physical causal determinism and quantum indeterminism are according to physics, it becomes clear what they really imply–and, especially, what they do not imply–for agent-causation theories. Here, we will make necessary conceptual clarifications on some aspects of physical determinism and indeterminism, review some of the major objections (...) against libertarian conjectures, and show that there is no conceptual incompatibility preventing us from taking a ‘quantum-libertarian’ approach to the problem of free will. In particular, we will illustrate the possible role of self-causation (causa sui) as a potential solution to otherwise apparently incompatible or even paradoxical statements concerning free will and quantum indeterminism. (shrink)

A partire dalla metà del Novecento, dopo una modernità dominata da prospettive di stampo deontologistico o utilitaristico, la filosofia pratica contemporanea ha visto il sorgere di una ripresa di interesse per un’etica “in prima persona”, in grado di offrire una prospettiva integrale sul soggetto e centrata sullo sviluppo del suo carattere e della sua personalità; in breve, si è assistito a un nuovo potente ingresso in scena dell’idea del bene, e, con essa, della virtù quale via maestra per conseguire il (...) fine adeguato della vita umana. Il volume si propone di rendere conto – anche in correlazione al ruolo delle emozioni, ma non solo – del percorso filosofico della virtù: dall’indagine delle sue fonti “classiche”, all’inizio del suo declino nella modernità, al risorgere della sua vitalità negli ultimi decenni nelle diverse aree linguistico-culturali, tenendo anche conto delle differenti discipline con cui si è interfacciata. Esso non pretende di esaurire i percorsi e le suggestioni che una tematica così vasta presenta, né di coprirne tutta la storia; piuttosto, vuole rappresentare uno stimolo alla ricerca, ponendo in connessione tagli disciplinari e metodologici differenti per offrire una riflessione a tutto campo, che metta in dialogo studiosi provenienti da ambiti diversi ed apra nuove prospettive.Saggi di: Francesco Camera, Angelo Campodonico, Elisabetta Cattanei, Michel Croce, Elisa Cuttini, Marco Damonte, Elisa Grimi, Simona Langella, Alberto Masala, Alma Massaro, Letterio Mauro, Giacomo Samek Lodovici, Maria Silvia Vaccarezza, Paolo Vignola, Lodovica Maria Zanet, Matteo Zoppi. (shrink)

In Unfit for the Future, Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu present a sophisticated argument in defense of the imperative of moral enhancement. They claim that without moral enhancement, the future of humanity is seriously compromised. The possibility of ultimate harm, caused by a dreadful terrorist attack or by a final unpreventable escalation of the present environmental crisis aggravated by the availability of cognitive enhancement, makes moral enhancement a top priority. It may be considered optimistic to think that our present moral (...) capabilities can be successfully improved by means of moral education, moral persuasion, and fear of punishment. So, without moral enhancement, drastic restrictions on human freedom would become the only alternative to prevent those dramatic potential outcomes. In this article, I will try to show that we still have reason to be less pessimistic and that Persson & Savulescu’s arguments are fortunately unconvincing. (shrink)

We investigate the major mathematical theories of space from a modal standpoint: topology, affine geometry, metric geometry, and vector algebra. This allows us to see new fine-structure in spatial patterns which suggests analogies across these mathematical theories in terms of modal, temporal, and conditional logics. Throughout the modal walk through space, expressive power is analyzed in terms of language design, bisimulations, and correspondence phenomena. The result is both unification across the areas visited, and the uncovering of interesting new questions.

This essay is concerned with concentrations of entities, which play an important—albeit often overlooked—role in scientific explanation. First, I discuss an example from molecular biology to show that concentrations can play an irreducible causal role. Second, I provide a preliminary philosophical analysis of this causal role, suggesting some implications for extant theories of causation. I conclude by introducing the concept of causation by concentration, a form of statistical causation whose widespread presence throughout the sciences has been unduly neglected and which (...) deserves to be studied in more depth. 1 Introduction2 Solving Lillie's Paradox: Lysogenic Induction in Phage λ3 Repressor Concentration and the Tuning of the Switch4 Concentration and Causality5 Preemption in Concentrations: Analysis and Implications6 Causation by Concentration: General Definition, Refinements, and Further Applications. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the variety and richness of the taxonomical practices between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. During these decades, zoologists and paleontologists came up with different quantitative practices in order to classify their data in line with the new biological principles introduced by Charles Darwin. Specifically, I will investigate Florentino Ameghino’s mathematization of mammalian dentition and the quantitative practices and visualizations of several German-speaking paleontologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. In (...) so doing, this paper will call attention to the visual and quantitative language of early twentieth-century systematics. My analysis will therefore contribute to a prehistory of the statistical frame of mind in biology, a study which has yet to be written in full. Second, my work highlights the productive intertwinement between biological practices and philosophical frameworks at the turn of the nineteenth century. Deeply rooted in Kantian bio-philosophy, several biologists sought to find rules in order to apply ordering principles to chaotic taxonomic information. This implies the necessity to investigate the neglected role of Kantian and Romantic bio-philosophy in the unfolding of twentieth-century biology. (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)

Cuando hablamos de iconos nos referimos a representaciones que producen un cierto impacto en nosotros aunque no sean perfectas; del icono se esperan armonía, belleza, simplicidad. Cuando el icono no es una imagen sino una persona humana, se convierte en referente: observamos aspectos de su personalidad con los que nos identificamos aunque nos coincidan exactamente con los nuestros. A lo largo de la historia de la ciencia, las mujeres han sido iconos referenciales fundamentalmente por dos cosas, su calidad humana y (...) su excelencia científica. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the German morphological tradition made a major contribution to twentieth-century study of form. Several scientists paved the way for this research: paleontologist Adolf Seilacher, entomologist Hermann Weber, and biologist Johann-Gerhard Helmcke together with architect Frei Otto. All of them sought to examine morphogenetic processes to illustrate their inherent structural properties, thus challenging the neo-Darwinian framework of evolutionary theory. I point out that the German theoretical challenge to adaptationist thinking was possible through an exchange and (...) transfer of practices, data, technologies, and knowledge between biologically oriented students of form and architects, designers, and engineers. This exchange of practices and knowledge was facilitated by the establishment of two collaborative research centers at the beginning of the 1970s. Hence, by showing the richness of topics, methods, and technologies discussed in German-speaking morphology between 1950 and the 1970s, this paper paves the way to a much broader comprehension of the shifts that have shaped twentieth-century evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Between 1909 and 1913, Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde (Berlin Museum of Natural History) unearthed more than 225 tons of fossils in former German East Africa and transported them to Berlin. Among them were the bones of Brachiosaurus brancai, which would eventually become the biggest mounted dinosaur in the world. By analyzing the social and communicative strategies that made this expedition possible, this paper aims to reveal several aspects of natural history knowledge production at the end of the long nineteenth century. (...) Using rhetoric, the director of the Geological–Paleontological Museum in Berlin, Wilhelm von Branca, conducted a highly successful campaign to market the dinosaurs in Prussia and to convince public opinion and the Prussian central state of the value of paleontology. He fired the Prussian imagination and took advantage of the competitive urge to emulate American paleontology and industry. This work examines how his public relations strategies shaped the German biological “landscape” of the first decades of the twentieth century. It asks: when and under what conditions did paleontology successfully appeal to the public? How does communication dictate, shape, and constrain the development of a specific epistemic agenda? And what kind of power do the public and money have? (shrink)

Meditation comprises a series of practices mainly developed in eastern cultures aiming at controlling emotions and enhancing attentional processes. Several authors proposed to divide meditation techniques in focused attention and open monitoring techniques. Previous studies have reported differences in brain networks underlying FA and OM. On the other hand common activations across different meditative practices have been reported. Despite differences between forms of meditation and their underlying cognitive processes, we propose that all meditative techniques could share a central process that (...) would be supported by a core network for meditation since their general common goal is to induce relaxation, regulating attention and developing an attitude of detachment from one’s own thoughts. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a quantitative meta-analysis based on activation likelihood estimation of 10 neuroimaging studies on different meditative techniques to evidence the core cortical network subserving meditation. We showed activation of basal ganglia , limbic system and medial prefrontal cortex . We discuss the functional role of these structures in meditation and we tentatively propose a neurocognitive model of meditation that could guide future research. (shrink)

In considering what it means to lead organizations effectively and ethically, the literature comprising spirituality at work and spiritual leadership theory has become highly influential, especially in the USA. It has also attracted significant criticism. While in this paper, we endorse this critique, we argue that the strand of literature which purportedly takes a Christian standpoint within the wider SAW school of thought, largely misconstrues and misapplies the teaching of its founder, Jesus. As a result, in dismissing the claims and (...) application of SAW and SLT, there is a real risk that we lose the vital contribution of Christian thought, not least some of the timeless counter-cultural wisdom of Jesus which, we contend, offers a vital foundation to the practice of ethical leadership and business ethics in organizations. In proposing a way forward, two thorny issues which face all leaders are addressed: dealing with ego and closing the gap between what we say and what we do. The more we understand about the dynamics of human nature, the more we learn about the profundity of Jesus’ teachings. We then propose a number of ways in which Jesus-centred ethical leadership can be practised. Each is radical and each implies risk: both the personal risk of inner renewal arising from repentance as a doorway to personal integrity, as well as the risk of opposing unethical practices and promoting the excellence of core practices in the workplace. (shrink)

This paper proposes new ways of characterizing eighteenth-century French Cartesianism. Besides two widely-accepted elements—the belief in “strict mechanism” and the idea that to demonstrate in physics does not involve mathematics, but reference to mechanical models—I add two more, hitherto neglected, features. First, a strong emphasis on experimentalism, namely the view that experiments are crucial to natural-philosophical practice. Second, an epistemological thesis that I call “conjecturalism,” which consists in doubting that natural philosophy would attain an ultimate truth on the nature of (...) things. To explore these facets of Cartesianism, I focus on the works of the Jesuit Noël Regnault. (shrink)

Abstract The aim of the paper is to reassess the role of British Aristotelianism within the history of early modern logic between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as a crucial moment of cultural transition from the model of humanistic rhetoric and dialectic to that of facultative logic, that is, a logic which concerns the study of the cognitive powers of the mind. The paper shows that there is a special connection between Paduan Aristotelianism and British empiricism, through the mediation of (...) British Aristotelianism. British Aristotelians took the ideas of the Paduan Aristotelian tradition and carried them to an extreme, gradually removing them from the original Aristotelian context in which they were grounded and developing what would later become the fundamental ideas of British empiricism. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of developing a new understanding of the traditional notion of human death as the separation of soul and body by relying on the resources of St Thomas’s hylomorphism. It therefore develops the concept of material kenosis, showing in what way the Thomistic understanding of death should be broadened beyond the mere understanding of it as substantial change. The paper concludes by suggesting that this view of human death supplements St Thomas’s interpretation of the notion of (...) Divine kenosis in Philippians 2:7. (shrink)

In the contemporary philosophy of mind and consciousness studies, views such as panpsychism or theories of universal consciousness, have enjoyed a recent renaissance of metaphysical speculations in Western philosophy. Its similarities with Eastern philosophical traditions went not unnoticed. However, the potential contribution that the evolutionary cosmology of the Indian poet, mystic and philosopher Sri Aurobindo can offer to these ontologies, remains largely unknown or unexplored. Here, consciousness, mind, life, matter and evolution are interpreted in an extended metaphysical framework, uniting Western (...) and Eastern traditions inside a modern philosophical system where materialism, panpsychism, cosmopsychism and philosophical idealism are not seen as irreconcilable exclusives, but different points of view that can be reconciled in a synthesis of knowledge, as envisioned from higher states of consciousness. This integral view of reality offers a conceptual platform that can complement and incorporate current theoretical approaches in modern philosophy, where their present internal inconsistencies do not emerge, and can be suggestive for scientists as well, especially in the fields of biology and physical sciences. (shrink)

In the philosophy of mind, neuroscience, and psychology, the causal relationship between phenomenal consciousness, mentation, and brain states has always been a matter of debate. On the one hand, material monism posits consciousness and mind as pure brain epiphenomena. One of its most stringent lines of reasoning relies on a ‘loss-of-function lesion premise,’ according to which, since brain lesions and neurochemical modifications lead to cognitive impairment and/or altered states of consciousness, there is no reason to doubt the mind-brain identity. On (...) the other hand, dualism or idealism (in one form or another) regard consciousness and mind as something other than the sole product of cerebral activity pointing at the ineffable, undefinable, and seemingly unphysical nature of our subjective qualitative experiences and its related mental dimension. Here, several neuroscientific findings are reviewed that question the idea that posits phenomenal experience as an emergent property of brain activity, and argue that the premise of material monism is based on a logical correlation-causation fallacy. While these (mostly ignored) findings, if considered separately from each other, could, in principle, be recast into a physicalist paradigm, once viewed from an integral perspective, they substantiate equally well an ontology that posits mind and consciousness as a primal phenomenon. (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)

As COVID-19 emerged as a phenomenon of the total environment, and despite the intertwined and complex relationships that make humanity an organic part of the Bio- and Geospheres, the majority of our responses to it have been corrective in character, with few or no consideration for unintended consequences which bring about further vulnerability to unanticipated global events. Tackling COVID-19 entails a systemic and precautionary approach to human-nature relations, which we frame as regaining diversity in the Geo-, Bio-, and Anthropospheres. Its (...) implementation requires nothing short of an overhaul in the way we interact with and build knowledge from natural and social environments. Hence, we discuss the urgency of shifting from current to precautionary approaches to COVID-19 and look, through the lens of diversity, at the anticipated benefits in four systems crucially affecting and affected by the pandemic: health, land, knowledge and innovation. Our reflections offer a glimpse of the sort of changes needed, from pursuing planetary health and creating more harmonious forms of land use to providing a multi-level platform for other ways of knowing/understanding and turning innovation into a source of global public goods. These exemplary initiatives introduce and solidify systemic thinking in policymaking and move priorities from reaction-based strategies to precautionary frameworks. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I will offer some examples of the effectiveness of Adorno’s concept of mimesis for an analysis of extreme violence and for a defence of democratic institutions against possible regressions into authoritarian regimes. I will start by reading the concept of mimesis through the lens of the interlacement between the concepts of play and power. My aim is twofold: first, I wish to further the analysis of Adorno’s concept of mimesis by showing that it can be interpreted (...) as a form of play, which either empowers subjectivity or becomes a means of domination; second, I will use these speculations to highlight the relevance of Horkheimer and Adorno’s explanation of anti-Semitic violence when seen through the lens of the concept mimesis. Before concluding, I will briefly highlight Adorno’s ideas about what makes democracy vulnerable to potential regressions into extreme violence, and examine what can be done practically – from an Adornian perspective – to avoid regression: defending democratic institutions, and working towards a removal of those barriers that obstruct genuine mimetic experience and self-reflection. (shrink)

The age at which children acquire the concept of belief is a subject of debate. Many scholars claim that children master beliefs when they are able to pass the false belief test, around their fourth year of life. However, recent experiments show that children implicitly attribute beliefs even earlier. The dispute does not only concern the empirical issue of discovering children’s early cognitive abilities. It also depends on the kind of capacities that we associate to the very concept. I claim (...) that concept possession must be understood in terms of the gradual development of the abilities that underlie the concept in question. I also claim that the last step to possess the concept of belief requires children to understand how beliefs and desires are used in everyday explanations of people’s actions. Thus, I suggest that understanding folk psychology as an explanatory theory is what children lack when they fail the false belief test. (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)