A spatial logic is a formal language interpreted over any class of structures featuring geometrical entities and relations, broadly construed. In the past decade, spatial logics have attracted much attention in response to developments in such diverse fields as Artificial Intelligence, Database Theory, Physics, and Philosophy. The aim of this handbook is to create, for the first time, a systematic account of the field of spatial logic. The book comprises a general introduction, followed by fourteen chapters by invited authors. Each (...) chapter provides a self-contained overview of its topic, describing the principal results obtained to date, explaining the methods used to obtain them, and listing the most important open problems. Jointly, these contributions constitute a comprehensive survey of this rapidly expanding subject. (shrink)

Discussions about the merits and shortcomings of non-inferiority trials are becoming increasingly common in the medical community and among regulatory agencies. However, criticisms targeting the ethical standing of non-inferiority trials have often been mistargeted. In this article we review the ethical standing of trials of non-inferiority. In the first part of the article, we outline a consequentialist position according to which clinical trials are best conceived as epistemic tools aimed at fostering the proper ends of medicine. According to this view, (...) clinical trials are means to ends, and thus their moral status depends both on how well they perform as means to reach desired ends and on which ends they are meant to achieve. Building upon this normative framework in the next two sections we analyze the specific ethical issues raised by non-inferiority trials. By making it clear that clinical trials are just epistemic tools – i.e. means to certain ends – it is possible not only to clarify the conceptual debate over a fundamental issue in clinical research, but also to identify which ethically relevant considerations ought to be addressed in setting up a non-inferiority trial. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen’s original formulation of the Consequence Argument employed an inference rule that was shown to be invalid given van Inwagen’s interpretation of the modal operators in the Consequence Argument. In response, van Inwagen recently suggested a revised interpretation of his modal operators. Following up on a debate between Blum and Schnieder, I analyze van Inwagen’s revised interpretation in terms of explanatory notions and I argue that van Inwagen faces a dilemma: he either has to admit that beta entails (...) fatalism, or he has to admit that a new counterexample invalidates beta. Either way, it seems reasonable to reject beta and to conclude that the Consequence Argument fails. Further, I argue that Widerker’s well-known substitute for rule beta is faced with a similar dilemma and, therefore, is bound to fail as well. I conclude that, if the modal operators are interpreted in terms of explanatory notions, neither van Inwagen’s nor Widerker’s rule of inference turns out to be valid. (shrink)

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)

How to demarcate the political units within which democracy will be practiced? Although recent years have witnessed a steadily increasing academic interest in this question concerning the boundary problem in democratic theory, social contract theory’s potential for solving it has largely been ignored. In fact, contract views are premised on the assumption of a given people and so presuppose what requires legitimization: the existence of a demarcated group of individuals materializing, as it were, from nowhere and whose members agree among (...) themselves to establish a political order. In order to fill this gap in social contract theory, a distinction is made between three kinds of contract views: Lockean political voluntarism, contractarianism, and contractualism. Each of these views can be (re)interpreted in such a way that it offers a democratic solution to the boundary problem. Ultimately, however, a Rawlsian interpretation of the contractualist solution is defended. (shrink)

A historical and philosophical reassessment of the impact of Aristotle and early-modern Aristotelianism on the development of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Kant and Aristotle reassesses the prevailing understanding of Kant as an anti-Aristotelian philosopher. Taking epistemology, logic, and methodology to be the key disciplines through which Kant’s transcendental philosophy stood as an independent form of philosophy, Marco Sgarbi shows that Kant drew important elements of his logic and metaphysical doctrines from Aristotelian ideas that were absent in other philosophical traditions, such (...) as the distinction of matter and form of knowledge, the division of transcendental logic into analytic and dialectic, the theory of categories and schema, and the methodological issues of the architectonic. Drawing from unpublished documents including lectures, catalogues, academic programs, and the Aristotelian-Scholastic handbooks that were officially adopted at Königsberg University where Kant taught, Sgarbi further demonstrates the historical and philosophical importance of Aristotle and Aristotelianism to these disciplines from the late sixteenth century to the first half of the eighteenth century. (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)

This essay pushes the history of a scientific discipline, morphology, toward a broader philosophically informed and cross-disciplinarily engaged history of knowledge. It shows that by looking at how knowledge and practices circulated between scientific disciplines (such as biology) and technoscientific ones (like architecture and design) we can better understand how (morphological) knowledge was produced. By doing so, the analysis contributes to the study of the mechanisms of knowledge exchange between the organic and the technical worlds and, more broadly, to the (...) study of the dynamics of knowledge circulation. First, the essay analyzes the engineering studies of organic form conducted by the Austro-Hungarian botanist Raoul Heinrich Francé (1874–1943) and the Scottish polymath D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948). Subsequently, the essay moves to twenty-first-century morphogenesis. It examines the transfer of the notion of morphospace, a paleontological practice of data visualization, into biology-inspired architectural design. The conclusion deals with the broader features of knowledge transfer and circulation. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century morphologists successfully translate and transfer morphogenetic processes from nature into technical artifacts to achieve technical solutions to given problems. In the translation of organic morphogenesis into a technical process, evolution’s intrinsic historical contingency was deliberately left behind. (shrink)

In his 1920 monograph Relativitätstheorie und Erkenntnis apriori the young Reichenbach distinguished between two meanings of the a priori: ‚apodictically valid, true for all time‘ and ‚constituting the concept of object‘. At the end of the 1990s Michael Friedman drew again the attention of philosophers of science to this forgotten distinction. In the spirit of Reichenbach’s early Kantianism Friedman attempted to construct a relativized or temporally variable a priori, which is nevertheless constitutive of the object of knowledge. Friedman rejects an (...) alternative historicized version of the a priori elaborated by the Marburg school and in particular by Cassirer. According to Friedman, Cassirer defended a regulative, but absolute version of the a priori, the existence of a yet-to-be-found set of final principles that are conditions of all scientific experience. This paper suggests that using the constitutive/regulative distinction as a basis for comparison is misleading. In order to understand the Marburg school’s conception of the a priori one should get back to Hermann Cohen’s interpretation of Kant and in particular to his own distinction between two meanings of the a priori. A more suitable comparison is that between Cohen’s opposition metaphysical-vs.-transcendental a priori and Reichenbach’s distinction apodictic-vs.-constitutive a priori. If the comparison is conducted along these lines—as already suggested in the mid-1920 s by the Dutch neo-Kantian Alfred C. Elsbach—it turns out that Cohen and the Marburg school and not Reichenbach provided a good example of a relativized a priori. (shrink)

Research on organizational epistemic vice alleges that some organizations are epistemically malevolent, i.e. they habitually harm others by deceiving them. Yet, there is a lack of empirical research on epistemic malevolence. We connect the discussion of epistemic malevolence to the empirical literature on organizational deception. The existing empirical literature does not pay sufficient attention to the impact of an organization’s ability to control compromising information on its deception strategy. We address this gap by studying eighty high-penalty corporate misconduct cases between (...) 2000 and 2020 in the United States. We find that organizations use two different strategies to deceive: Organizations ‘sow doubt’ when they contest information about them or their impacts that others have access to. By contrast, organizations ‘exploit trust’ when they deceive others by obfuscating, concealing, or falsifying information that they themselves control. While previous research has focused on cases of ‘sowing doubt’, we find that organizations ‘exploit trust’ in the majority of cases that we studied. This has important policy implications because the strategy of ‘exploiting trust’ calls for a different response from regulators and organizations than the strategy of ‘sowing doubt’. (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)

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.

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)

Doctor–patient communication is a crucial component in any therapeutic encounter. Physicians use words to formulate diagnoses and prognoses, to disclose the risks and benefits of medical interventions, and to explain why, how, and when a therapy will be administered to a patient. Likewise, patients communicate to describe their symptoms, to make sense of their conditions, to report side effects, to explore other therapeutic options, and to share their feelings. Throughout the history of medicine, the ethics of the doctor–patient communication has (...) been traditionally grounded on considerations of paternalistic beneficence and nonmaleficence. In this respect, it was no different from the ethics regulating.. (shrink)

In their attempt to connect the workings of the human mind with their neural realizers, cognitive neuroscientists often bracket out individual differences to build a single, abstract model that purportedly represents (almost) every human being’s brain. In this paper I first examine the rationale behind this model, which I call ‘Platonic Brain Model’. Then I argue that it is to be surpassed in favor of multiple models allowing for patterned inter-individual differences. I introduce the debate on legitimate (and illegitimate) ways (...) of mapping neural structures and cognitive functions, endorsing a view according to which function-structure mapping is context-sensitive. Building on the discussion of the ongoing debate on the function(s) of the so-called Fusiform “Face” Area, I show the necessity of indexing function-structure mappings to some populations of subjects, clustered on the basis of factors such as their expertise in a given domain. (shrink)

Neurointerventions—interventions that physically or chemically modulate brain states—are sometimes imposed on criminal offenders for the purposes of diminishing the risk that they will recidivate, or, more generally, of facilitating their rehabilitation. One objection to the nonconsensual implementation of such interventions holds that this expresses a disrespectful message, and is thus impermissible. In this paper, we respond to this objection, focusing on the most developed version of it—that presented by Elizabeth Shaw. We consider a variety of messages that might be expressed (...) by nonconsensual neurointerventions. Depending on the message, we argue either that such interventions do not invariably express this message, that expressing this message is not invariably disrespectful, or that the appeal to disrespect is redundant. (shrink)

Integrity is often conceived as a moral virtue that pertains to the coherence between one’s moral convictions and actions, as well as consistency in convictions over time. By contrast, I argue that integrity is primarily an epistemic virtue. To act with integrity, an individual or organisation must engage in responsible inquiry; that is, the collection, processing, sharing, and storage of information in ways that promote truth. Organisational structures such as division of labour and hierarchy present challenges to responsible inquiry, thereby (...) making epistemic integrity in organisations inherently vulnerable and increasing the risk of unintentional unethical behaviour. This epistemic perspective on organisational integrity emphasises the importance of developing virtuous epistemic infrastructure and an ethical epistemic culture. By aligning their beliefs with facts, organisations can also improve moral behaviour and reduce the risk of culpable ignorance. (shrink)

O artigo que se segue consiste num comentário e tradução de um idílio de Eduard Mörike, intitulado O velho galo da torre. Trata-se de situar as características da lírica desse poeta, marcada pela Dinggedicht [poesia das coisas] e por uma atmosfera de espírito tipicamente pós-idealista, ainda romântica, embora já realista, de meados do século XIX.

O artigo realiza alguns apontamentos gerais sobre a articulação da fenomenologia de Husserl em torno da noção de consciência. Trata-se de indicar como a preocupação principal da fenomenologia consiste em explorar o ser puro da consciência.

Cultured meat is a lab grown product that aims to tackle the cravings of omnivores who struggle to switch to a plant-based diet, while still being friendly to animals and the environment. Possibly, in time, the curiosity to apply this technology towards human meat production will emerge. However, when presented with the thought of eating cultured human meat potential consumers’ reaction greatly varies from pure disgust to indifference to excitement. This instinctive response indicates a lack of preformed judgements towards the (...) topic. Without a clear vision on the possibility of cultured human meat, scattered and uncertain regulations will fail to uphold paramount moral values. The risk is that we would either dig into this option out of excitement, or ban it without convincing motivations. The ethical theories of deontology and consequentialism can be followed to investigate this divisive issue. With an evaluation based on disgust I argue that the deontological perspective is mostly concerned with values of identity and humanness, while with a chain-reaction reasoning I argue that consequentialism would be concerned with health safety, privacy and equality. I conclude that cultured human meat is not acceptable. (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.

This paper analyzes correspondence between Reichenbach and Einstein from the spring of 1926, concerning what it means to ‘geometrize’ a physical field. The content of a typewritten note that Reichenbach sent to Einstein on that occasion is reconstructed, showing that it was an early version of §49 of the untranslated Appendix to his Philosophie der Raum-Zeit-Lehre, on which Reichenbach was working at the time. This paper claims that the toy-geometrization of the electromagnetic field that Reichenbach presented in his note should (...) not be regarded as merely a virtuoso mathematical exercise, but as an additional argument supporting the core philosophical message of his 1928 monograph. This paper concludes by suggesting that Reichenbach’s infamous ‘relativization of geometry’ was only a stepping stone on the way to his main concern—the question of the ‘geometrization of gravitation’. (shrink)

We prove that the category of Nachbin’s compact ordered spaces and order-preserving continuous maps between them is dually equivalent to a variety of algebras, with operations of at most countable arity. Furthermore, we observe that the countable bound on the arity is the best possible: the category of compact ordered spaces is not dually equivalent to any variety of finitary algebras. Indeed, the following stronger results hold: the category of compact ordered spaces is not dually equivalent to any finitely accessible (...) category, any first-order definable class of structures, and any class of finitary algebras closed under products and subalgebras. An explicit equational axiomatisation of the dual of the category of compact ordered spaces is obtained; in fact, we provide a finite one, meaning that our description uses only finitely many function symbols and finitely many equational axioms. In preparation for the latter result, we establish a generalisation of a celebrated theorem by Mundici: our result—whose proof is independent of Mundici’s theorem—asserts that the category of unital commutative distributive lattice-ordered monoids is equivalent to the category of what we call MV-monoidal algebras.Abstract taken directly from the thesis.E-mail: marco[email protected]: https://air.unimi.it/retrieve/handle/2434/812809/1698986/phd_unimi_R11882.pdf. (shrink)

Partindo das reflexões de Michel Foucault no final dos anos 1970 e da noção desenvolvida mais recentemente de “governamentalidade algorítmica”, entendida como um novo regime de poder e saber baseado na coleta, mineração e cruzamento de grandes volumes de dados, o presente artigo pretende analisar criticamente as chamadas “cidades inteligentes”, nas quais a infraestrutura e os serviços são interligados de maneira supostamente mais racionalizada e eficiente, oferendo finalmente o sonhado bem-estar e a vida feliz. Essa utopia de organização social será (...) associada a uma nova forma de racionalidade política e estratégia de governo por meio de algoritmos, que colocam importantes e inquietantes questões. Neste trabalho, ressaltaremos a capacidade que os algoritmos possuem de nos governar, no sentido de conduzir nossas condutas e estruturar o campo das ações possíveis. E o foco deste artigo recairá sobre a tensão entre liberdade e controle inscrita nessa nova governamentalidade, que tem por objeto mais imediato os dados, as relações e os ambientes. (shrink)