There is increasing interest in the EU about the central place of eIdentity (eID) in people’s lives. eID is increasingly seen as a bridge between the commercial viability of models based on large-scale provision of e-services and users’ need for privacy and security in online transactions. This paper examines technological, social and legal developments in the field of eID and asks whether there is the need for a new regulatory framework that both preserves users’ identity and enables the provision of (...) advanced services. Firstly, the paper interprets recent market moves in the eID field as a response to a rising regulatory tide. Secondly, it examines some of the challenges arising from Web2.0, and four emerging socio-legal issues associated with eID—behavioural profiling, social engineering, redlining and other unsocial practices. Thirdly, the paper examines the capacity of the current regulatory framework to absorb this turbulence, and finds it wanting. Finally, it advances a novel model of eID regulation that may help regulators create an identity-preserving, transaction-friendly eID environment. (shrink)

Supposition is frequently invoked in many fields within philosophy, including aesthetics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and epistemology. However, there is a striking lack of consensus about the nature of supposition. What is supposition? Is supposition a sui generis type of mental state or is it reducible to some other type of mental state? These are the main questions Margherita Arcangeli explores in this book. She examines the characteristic features of supposition, along the dimensions of phenomenology and emotionality, (...) among others, in a journey through the imaginative realm. An informed answer to the question “What is supposition?” must involve an analysis of imagination, since supposition is so often defined in opposition to the latter. She assesses rival explanations of supposition putting forward a novel view, according to which the proper way of seeing supposition is as a primitive type of imaginative state. Supposition and the Imaginative Realm: A Philosophical Inquiry will be of great interest to students of philosophy of psychology, aesthetics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and epistemology. (shrink)

The scientist’s toolkit counts at least three practices: real, thought and numerical experiments. Although a deep investigation of the relationships between these types of experiments should shed light on the nature of scientific enquiry, I argue that it has been compromised by at least four factors: (i) a bias for the epistemological superiority of real experiments; (ii) an almost exclusive focus on the links between either thought or numerical experiments, and real experiments; (iii) a tendency to try and reduce one (...) kind to another; and (iv) an excessive attention to the outputs of these types of experiments, more than to their processes. In this paper I support an unbiased triangular comparative analysis that focuses on the processes involved in real, thought and numerical experiments, and claim that all three types of experimentation are fundamental to scientific research. I do so by clarifying different notions of experimental processes, and by introducing a distinction between two varieties of mental simulation that play a role in them (i.e., mental models and imaginings). I then compare real, thought and numerical experiments in light of this distinction, showing their similarities, but also fundamental differences, which suggest that none of them is dispensable. (shrink)

When we remember a past situation, the emotional import of the latter often transpires in a modified form at the phenomenological level of our present memory. When it does, we experience what is sometimes called an “affective memory.” Theorists of memories have disagreed about the status of affective memories. Sceptics claim that the relationship between memory and emotion can only be of two types: either the memory is about a past emotion (the emotion is part of what is remembered), or (...) it causes a present emotion (the emotion is a separable effect of the memory). We argue that there is a third option, which points to an emotional way of representing the past situation. Drawing from Peter Goldie’s account of mental narratives, we show that three levels of mental perspective are involved in memories: the perspective of the represented subject (the character, if there is one), the perspective of the representing subject (the author), and the intermediary perspective of the narrator (who may remain virtual). Affective memories are cases in which the narrator’s emotional perspective has direct implications for the author’s emotional perspective, even if the former typically differs from the latter. (shrink)

We attribute the capability of imagination to the madman as to the scientist, to the novelist as to the metaphysician, and last but not least to ourselves. The same, apparently, holds for thought experimentation. Ernst Mach was the first to draw an explicit link between these two mental acts; moreover -in his perspective- imagination plays a pivotal role in thought experimentation. Nonetheless, it is not clear what kind of imagination emerges from Mach’s writings. Indeed, heated debates among cognitive scientists and (...) philosophers turn on the key distinction between sensory and cognitive imagination. Generally speaking, we can say that sensory imagination shares some processes with perception, cognitive imagination with the formation of belief. Both the vocabulary used in the literature on thought experiments and what I refer to as “Machian tradition” indicate imagination as a notion of central importance in the reasoning involved in thought experiments. However, most authors have really focused on sensory (in particular, visual) imagination, but have neglected the second kind. Moreover, some authors attribute to Mach the idea that it is visual imagery that is primarily at work in thought experiments. I claim another interpretation is possible, according to which Mach can be said to deal with cognitive imagination. The main aim of this paper is to retrace Mach’s original arguments and establish a connection with the cognitive literature on imagination. I will argue that imagination tout court could play a role in thought experimentation. Once imagination is seen as the key to the “cognitive black-box” of the thought experiment, we will have moved a step closer to a simulative imagining-based account of thought experimentation. (shrink)

The dispute between the Fregean and the Neo-Meinongian approach to existence has become entrenched: it seems that nothing but intuitions may be relied upon to decide the issue. And since contemporary analytic philosophers clearly are inclined towards the intuitions that support Frege's approach, it looks as if Fregeanism has won the day. In this paper, however, I try to develop a compromise solution. This compromise consists in abandoning the assumption shared by both Fregeanism and Neo-Meinongianism, namely that the notion of (...) existence adds something to the content of a statement. To the contrary, we should think of existence as a redundant notion. In other words, I will argue that we should be deflationist about existence. Moreover, the kind of deflationism I propose relies on what I call the existence equivalence schema, a schema which follows the blueprint of the well-known truth equivalence schema. From such a perspective, we can say that Fregean philosophers rightly deny the status of a discriminating property to existence; and, conversely, Neo-Meinongians, too, rightly reject the view that existence is captured by quantification or expresses a universal property of objects. Finally, the argument that we should take a deflationist approach to existence builds upon an analysis of natural language (general) existential statements and their intuitive entailment-relations. (shrink)

È questa la prima raccolta completa dei frammenti relativi a questo autore, comprendente anche testimonianze biografiche che precedentemente non erano state prese in considerazione. This is the first comprehensive collection of fragments related to this author, including biographical accounts that had not previously been considered.

This article examines Adorno’s use of the notion of mediation, which at first glance appears to be problematic and aporetic. While the emergence of such a concept marks Adorno’s renewed interest in Hegelian philosophy, and a distancing from Walter Benjamin’s thought, the understanding of mediation should not be reduced to the Hegelian model. This article will argue that Adorno introduces such a concept to explain theory’s necessity and verifiability, as well as the experience of the object. Only by taking these (...) two issues (the mediation between concepts and between subject and object) in their interconnection is it possible to explain the role of mediation in Adorno. I will argue that the idea of ‘constellations’ put forward in the Dialectics furnishes us with a model of mediation that goes beyond its original Hegelian formulation. (shrink)

Mental imagery has often been taken to be equivalent to “sensory imagination”, the perception‐like type of imagination at play when, for example, one visually imagines a flower when none is there, or auditorily imagines a music passage while wearing earplugs. I contend that the equation of mental imagery with sensory imagination stems from a confusion between two senses of mental imagery. In the first sense, mental imagery is used to refer to a psychological attitude, which is perception‐like in nature. In (...) the second sense, mental imagery refers to a mental content, which can be grasped via different attitudes. I will show that failure to acknowledge the distinction between these senses of mental imagery has muddled philosophical discussion. This distinction brings much needed clarity to debates where sensory imagination and mental imagery are invoked, shedding light on issues such as the nature of imagistic mental states, and the representational powers and limits of mental imagery. I will conclude by sketching a general attitudinal account of imagination that does justice to both senses of mental imagery, outlining a promising framework for understanding imagination. (shrink)

Among the attempts to oppose tobacco control legislation, the tobacco industry has alleged violations of its right to commercial speech. While the disputes that took place in some jurisdictions like the United States (US), Canada, or the European Union (EU) have been already analyzed, much less is known about how, globally, this doctrine has influenced the adoption of tobacco control measures. This article contributes to filling this gap by illustrating how the commercial speech doctrine influenced the negotiations of the Framework (...) Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Moreover, using the Tobacco Control Database of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, it shows that arguments on commercial speech have been used to challenge tobacco control measures in an increasing number of countries. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the influence of war as a metaphor in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. After an introduction on the traditional analysis of the war metaphor, we address the social consequences of using this metaphor, a topic that has been widely debated with regard to public communication in the context of COVID-19. We pay particular attention to a theory that many intellectuals have raised: the possibility that the use of the metaphor in this context is harmful (...) to a democratic society because it may lead citizens to accept limited civil liberties and authoritarian policies. After presenting the extensive literature on the use of the war metaphor before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, in the final section of the paper, we analyse experimental evidence of the effects of this metaphor. In the conclusion, we hint at open questions and suggest that the current evidence does not support claims of direct liberticidal influence. (shrink)

The problem of existence is reputed to be one of the oldest and most intractable of philosophy: What do we mean when we say that something exists or, even more challengingly, that something does not exist? Intuitively, it seems that we all have a firm grip upon what we are saying. But how should we explain the difference–if there is any–between statements about existence and other, garden-variety predicative statements? What is the difference between saying that something exists and saying, for (...) instance, that something is red, heavy, soft, etc.? These questions provide the focus of the present study. In the first part, this study addresses those authors that have been most effective and influential at widening the gap between statements about existence and garden-variety predicative statements. These are David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Franz Brentano, and Gottlob Frege. According to this family of approaches, existence becomes something very different from a property of objects. In the second part, this study turns to more recent attempts that have moved in the opposite direction by trying to reduce existence to a–more or less–plain property of objects. The philosophers that are going to be discussed here are Alexius Meinong, Richard Routley, Terence Parsons, William Rapaport, Edward Zalta, and Graham Priest. Between the first and the second part, an extensive chapter is dedicated to the approaches to existence developed under the heading of free logics. Finally, the third part of this study develops a deflationist account of existence: We should abandon the assumption shared by all accounts discussed in this study, namely that the notion of existence adds something to the content of a statement. To the contrary, we should think of existence as a redundant notion. The advantage of this strategy is that it does not make it contradictory to say that something does not exist – a frequent upshot of the approaches discussed in the first part. At the same time, this strategy avoids the epicycles common to the approaches discussed in the second part, which are strictly linked to the reduction of existence to a property of objects. (shrink)

El 23 de abril de 1996 falleció en Lima, a los 89 años, el padre Gerardo Alarco Larrabure, profesor de filosofía medieval de la mayoría de los miembros del comité editorial de Areté. Estos apuntes biográficos, que se limitan a su formación intelectual hasta su retorno de Europa al Perú en 1945, pretenden ser un homenaje a su persona y una muestra de gratitud por su labor docente.

The starting point of this paper is an apparent contradiction, often pointed out by commentators of the Poetics. In his treatise on poetry, whose object is human action, why does Aristotle assign a major role to necessity, while in the Rhetoric and the Nicomachean Ethics he clearly states that in the field of human action there is no place for necessity but only for probability? One answer has been, that in the Poetics Aristotle refers to a weaker type of necessity, (...) which in the end is more or less the same as probability. The fact that Aristotle (the argument continues) speaks almost always not only of necessity but also of probability, is proof of this weakening of necessity. I argue, on the contrary, that in the Poetics necessity and probability are two distinct principles, which concern different aspects of the tragedy (i. e. the most accomplished poetical work according to Aristotle), and which therefore should not be blurred. The first step is to make clear that the alleged contradiction is only apparent. It is in fact true that in the world of action, according to Aristotle, there can be no necessity, but action is only the object of poetry and not poetry itself. Poetry as such is a technique, which differs from other techniques (like medicine) on account of its ends, and, consequently, also on account of its object. In the world of technique, as is clearly stated both in the Methaphysics and in the Posterior Analytics, there is necessity, in the sense that to reach this or that end you have – necessarily – to do this or that. But then – this is the second step – what is the relation between technical necessity and the principle of probability? Evidently probability concerns the world of action, the object of poetry. This brings me to the following conclusion: When Aristotle tells us that the aim of the poet is to say what is possible according to probability and necessity, he means that the poet should take probable actions as objects and use them as necessary means to reach a particular end. This end, in the case of tragedy, is the tragic plot. The two principles are then strictly connected (every moment of the tragedy has to be looked at from one side and the other), but nonetheless distinct. (shrink)

Potentia of Poverty opposes to the surplus-value of capital a surplus-concept of life - of the worker, of the non-worker, of the poor, of the rich: an excess of being with the power to undo capital by using its own mechanism. Antonio Negri writes in the preface that 'The poor is the powerful, Pascucci tells us. She interprets Marx as a reader of Spinoza; however, maybe there is something more here than there is in Spinoza and Marx themselves. A further (...) passage is necessary to grasp this "more": namely, to tie the experience of poverty to an ontology of "cupiditas" [desire], that is, of "amor" [love]'. (shrink)

Here I critically assess an argument put forward by Kuorikoski et al. (Br J Philos Sci, 61(3):541–567, 2010) for the epistemic import of model-based robustness analysis. I show that this argument is not sound since the sort of probabilistic independence on which it relies is unfeasible. By revising the notion of probabilistic independence imposed on the models’ results, I introduce a prima-facie more plausible argument. However, despite this prima-facie plausibility, I show that even this new argument is unsound in most (...) if not all cases of model-based robustness analysis. This I do to demonstrate that the epistemic import of model-based robust analysis cannot be satisfactorily defended on the basis of probabilistic independence. (shrink)

Awe seems to be a complex emotion or emotional construct characterized by a mix of positive (contentment, happiness), and negative affective components (fear and a sense of being smaller, humbler or insignificant). It is striking that the elicitors of awe correspond closely to what philosophical aesthetics, and especially Burke and Kant, have called “the sublime.” As a matter of fact, awe is almost absent from the philosophical agenda, while there are very few studies on the experience of the sublime as (...) such in the psychological literature. The aim of this paper is to throw light on the complex relationship between awe (as understood by psychologists) and the experience of the sublime (as discussed by philosophers). We distinguish seven ways of conceiving this relationship and highlight those that seem more promising to us. Once we have a clearer picture of how awe and the experience of the sublime are related, we can use it to enhance collaboration between these domains. We would be able to use empirical results about awe in a philosophical analysis of the experience of the sublime, which in turn can help us to design novel experimental hypotheses about the contexts in which we experience awe. (shrink)

Aphantasia, a recently labelled spectrum condition affecting mental imagery, has brought to the fore the centrality of imagination in our lives. Intuitively it may seem that we cannot have a normal life without the possession of imaginative abilities. Yet, aphantasics do not seem to be much affected by their condition. Can aphantasia tell us anything about the nature and role of our imaginative abilities? I contend that an important distinction that can shed light on this question has been largely overlooked, (...) namely that between two senses of mental imagery: as a type of mental content (viz., mental imagery strictly speaking), and as a kind of psychological attitude (viz., sensory imagination). Drawing on this distinction, I suggest three possible conditions: (i) impairment in mental imagery only, (ii) impairment in sensory imagination only, (iii) impairment in both mental imagery and sensory imagination. I show that core cases of aphantasia are better understood as impairments in sensory imagination only, but I indicate empirical strategies to investigate whether some cases of aphantasia rather involve impairments in mental imagery, which would point toward a plurality of forms of aphantasia. Sensory imagination, however, does not exhaust the imaginative realm, therefore we shouldn’t jump to the hasty conclusion that aphantasics have no imagination. Most aphantasics lack sensory imagination, but arguably can exploit other forms of imagination. This would explain in which sense they still possess imaginative abilities. (shrink)

In this paper, translation engages not only with metaphors, but the ‘consistent multiplicity’ (Alliez & Feher 1986: 41) of figures of speech that intersemiotically animate Australian artist Brett Whiteley’s (1939-92) verbal and pictorial language. The aim is to address some ‘formative questions […] concerning language, medium and meaning’ (Harrison 2004: 5) by studying the rhetoric devices featuring in two texts: a letter written by Whiteley to his mother in 1979, and the painting Art, life and the other thing (1978). The (...) letter and the painting intersect in a series of hypertextual links, and map language nomadism across words and images. The comparative analysis of Whiteley’s painting and letter displays that the translating process is deeply influenced and sometimes completely transformed by the concurrence of heterogeneous elements. Pictures and words relate to each other: when translation enters, the text is completed. (shrink)

Robustness analysis (RA) is the prescription to consider a diverse range of evidence and only regard a hypothesis as well-supported if all the evidence agrees on it. In contexts like climate science, the evidence in support of a hypothesis often comes in the form of model results. This leads to model-based RA (MBRA), whose core notion is that a hypothesis ought to be regarded as well-supported on grounds that a sufficiently diverse set of models agrees on the hypothesis. This chapter, (...) which is the first part of a two-part review of MBRA, begins by providing a detailed statement of the general structure of MBRA. This statement will make visible the various parts of MBRA and will structure the discussion in the remainder of the chapter. The chapter explicates the core concepts of independence and agreement, and it discusses what they mean in the context of climate modeling. The statement shows that MBRA is based on three premises, which concern robust properties, common structures, and so-called robust theorems. The chapter analyzes what these involve and what problems they raise in the context of climate science. In the next chapter, which is the second part of the review, an analysis of how the conclusions of MBRA can be justified is provided. (shrink)

This chapter carries out an analysis of the manner in which dialectics is reappropriated and transformed by Hans‐Georg Gadamer and Theodor W. Adorno. If hermeneutics and critical theory can be seen as legitimate successors of Hegel's dialectical tradition, it is precisely thanks to the efforts of Adorno and Gadamer. Both Adorno's and Gadamer's reappraisals of Hegel's philosophy take the form of a drawing out of Hegelian dialectics what is implicit in its own premises. By examining the intellectual experience that the (...) principle of contradiction expresses, Adorno demonstrates that nonidentity is precisely the driving force behind Hegel's idealistic dialectics. The abandonment of the oppositional‐critical character of dialectics that marks Gadamer's fundamental difference from Adorno's negative dialectics, and makes it necessary for Gadamer to rebrand his method as hermeneutic: no longer critique, but rather understanding and interpretation in the shared and open‐ended dialogical process. (shrink)

Dans le domaine de l’analyse des données textuelles (ADT), les chercheurs s’intéressent à la relation entre le texte et son support d’exploration. Ces dernières années, l’évolution de l’informatique a profondément modifié notre rapport au texte induisant le développement de nouveaux outils d’étude et critères d’analyse. Dans ce contexte théorique, le concept de lecture polyangulaire permet de compléter les notions de lectures linéaire, réticulaire ou matricielle. Cette approche du texte est devenue possible grâce aux outils d’édition de corpus toujours plus performants (...) proposés par les logiciels de traitement automatique des textes, tel Hyperbase Web Édition. Les fondements de la lecture polyangulaire reposent à fois sur les techniques de corpus based et de corpus driven. Elle vise à multiplier les partitionnements de corpus afin de faire émerger aussi précisément que possible la trame du tissu textuel. Cette nouvelle méthode est ensuite illustrée par deux exemples issus des bases latines diffusées par le LASLA de l’Université de Liège. (shrink)