It has been argued that quantum mechanics forces us to accept the existence of metaphysical, mind-independent indeterminacy. In this paper we provide an interpretation of the indeterminacy involved in the quantum phenomena in terms of a view that we call Plural Metaphysical Supervaluationism. According to it, quantum indeterminacy is captured in terms of an irreducibly plural relation between the actual world and various misrepresentations of it.

In this paper we discuss an often-neglected topic in the literature on the ethics of voting. Our aim is to provide an account of what states are obligated to do, so that voters may fulfil their role as public decision-makers in an epistemically competent manner. We argue that the state ought to provide voters with what we call a substantive opportunity for competence. This entails that the state ought to actively foster the epistemic capabilities that are necessary to achieve competent (...) participation in political decision-making practices. (shrink)

Tradition has it that first-person thought is somehow special. It is also commonplace to maintain that the first-person concept obeys a rule of reference to the effect that any token first-person thought is about the thinker of that thought. Following Annalisa Coliva and, more recently, Santiago Echeverri, I take the specialness claim to be the claim that thinking a first-person thought comes with a certain guarantee of its pattern of reference. Echeverri maintains that such a guarantee is explained by a (...) fairly flatfooted interpretation of the thinker-reflexive rule. I argue, however, that the explanatory aspirations of the thinker-reflexive rule are fulfilled only if we accept an epistemically loaded gloss on the notion of a thinker of a thought featuring the rule. That gloss is unpacked in terms of the subject’s ability to be acquainted with the phenomenal character of their thoughts. (shrink)

The initial online publication contained a typesetting mistake in the author information. The original article has been corrected.

This article presents a fairness principle for evaluating decision-making based on predictions: a decision rule is unfair when the individuals directly impacted by the decisions who are equal with respect to the features that justify inequalities in outcomes do not have the same statistical prospects of being benefited or harmed by them, irrespective of their socially salient morally arbitrary traits. The principle can be used to evaluate prediction-based decision-making from the point of view of a wide range of antecedently specified (...) substantive views about justice in outcome distributions. (shrink)

__Neurotechnology and Direct Brain Communication__ focuses on recent neuroscientific investigations of infant brains and of patients with disorders of consciousness, both of which are at the forefront of contemporary neuroscience. The prospective use of neurotechnology to access mental states in these subjects, including neuroimaging, brain simulation and brain computer interfaces, offers new opportunities for clinicians and researchers, but has also received specific attention from philosophical, scientific, ethical and legal points of view. This book offers the first systematic assessment of these (...) issues, investigating the tools neurotechnology offers to care for verbally non-communicative subjects and suggesting a multidisciplinary approach to the ethical and legal implications of ordinary and experimental practices. The book is divided into three parts: the first and second focus on the scientific and clinical implications of neurological tools for DOC patient and infant care. With reference to these developments, the third and final part presents the case for re-evaluating classical ethical and legal concepts, such as authority, informed consent and privacy. Neurotechnology and Direct Brain Communication will appeal to researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of cognitive science, medical ethics, medical technology, and the philosophy of the mind. With implications for patient care, it will also be a useful resource for clinicians, medical centres and health practitioners. (shrink)

The intriguing issue of pain and suffering in patients with disorders of consciousness (DOCs), particularly in Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome/Vegetative State (UWS/VS) and Minimally Conscious State (MCS), is assessed from a theoretical point of view, through an overview of recent neuroscientific literature, in order to sketch an ethical analysis. In conclusion, from a legal and ethical point of view, formal guidelines and a situationist ethics are proposed in order to best manage the critical scientific uncertainty about pain and suffering in DOCs (...) and ensure the best possible care for the patient. (shrink)

In the original publication of the article, the funding information was inadvertently missed out. The information is provided in this Correction.

:In this article, we begin by identifying three main neuroethical approaches: neurobioethics, empirical neuroethics, and conceptual neuroethics. Our focus is on conceptual approaches that generally emphasize the need to develop and use a methodological modus operandi for effectively linking scientific and philosophical interpretations. We explain and assess the value of conceptual neuroethics approaches and explain and defend one such approach that we propose as being particularly fruitful for addressing the various issues raised by neuroscience: fundamental neuroethics.

Le sujet de cette étude est la manière dont Plotin, dans une perspective qui reste essentiellement platonicienne, interprète la notion de noeîn dans Parménide, surtout à la lumière du bien connu Fr. 3 DK, sur l’identité de l’être et de la pensée, dont Plotin, avec Clément d'Alexandrie, est notre source. Cette interprétation est essentielle pour comprendre la nature et la fonction ontologique-métaphysique de l’hypostase plotinienne du Noûs. La conception parménidienne de noeîn est profondément remaniée par Plotin et intégrée dans une (...) perspective compatible avec l’ontologie platonicienne et la métaphysique néoplatonicienne. (shrink)

In the Logical Investigations, Husserl argues that “sign” is an ambiguous word because it refers to two essentially different signitive functions: indication and expression. Indications work in an evidential way, providing information through a direct association of the sign and the presence of an object or state of affairs. Expressions work in a non-evidential way, pointing to possible experiences and displaying that the speaker or someone else has had such experience. In this paper I show that Husserl went back to (...) the distinction between indications and expressions in a much later text, a manuscript from 1931, in order to distinguish between two kinds of communication with different essential features. I call these indicative and expressive communication. My claim is that Husserl’s distinction between these two types of communication is a crucial contribution to the phenomenology of knowledge sharing. In knowledge sharing, we appropriate someone else’s knowledge as someone else’s knowledge. Husserl shows that only expressive communication, and not indicative communication, makes this appropriation possible. Since Husserl argues that only humans use expressive communication, his analysis of indicative and expressive communication is also a contribution to understanding the uniquely human capacity for accumulating knowledge. (shrink)

What aspects of spatial relations influence speakers’ choice of locative? This article presents a study of static spatial descriptions from 24 languages. The study reveals two kinds of spatial terms evident cross‐linguistically: specific spatial terms and general spatial terms (GSTs). Whereas specific spatial terms—including English prepositions—occur in a limited range of situations, with concomitant specificity in their meaning, GSTs occur in all spatial descriptions (in languages that employ them). Because of the extreme differences in range of application, the two are (...) considered separately. A multidimensional scaling analysis is used with specific spatial terms to extract statistically valid similarities across the languages sampled. For GSTs, which have not been previously analyzed in the literature, a semantic analysis is proposed and experimentally validated. The results suggest the importance of geometry, function, and qualitative physics to the meanings of both kinds of spatial terms, although the details differ. (shrink)

Marginal structural models can be used to estimate the causal effect of a potentially time-varying treatment in the presence of time-dependent confounding via weighted regression. The standard approach of using inverse probability of treatment weighting can be sensitive to model misspecification and lead to high-variance estimates due to extreme weights. Various methods have been proposed to partially address this, including covariate balancing propensity score to mitigate treatment model misspecification, and truncation and stabilized-IPTW to temper extreme weights. In this article, we (...) present kernel optimal weighting, a convex-optimization-based approach that finds weights for fitting the MSMs that flexibly balance time-dependent confounders while simultaneously penalizing extreme weights, directly addressing the above limitations. We further extend KOW to control for informative censoring. We evaluate the performance of KOW in a simulation study, comparing it with IPTW, sIPTW, and CBPS. We demonstrate the use of KOW in studying the effect of treatment initiation on time-to-death among people living with human immunodeficiency virus and the effect of negative advertising on elections in the United States. (shrink)

In the literature, there have been several methods and definitions for working out whether two theories are “equivalent” or not. In this article, we do something subtler. We provide a means to measure distances between formal theories. We introduce two natural notions for such distances. The first one is that of axiomatic distance, but we argue that it might be of limited interest. The more interesting and widely applicable notion is that of conceptual distance which measures the minimum number of (...) concepts that distinguish two theories. For instance, we use conceptual distance to show that relativistic and classical kinematics are distinguished by one concept only. (shrink)

Karl Polanyi is one of the most influential social scientists of our era. A report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) begins by noting that we are in a "Polanyi era": a time of dangerously unregulated markets, where the greatest need for decisive political action is matched by the least trust in politics. This handbook provides a comprehensive of recent research on Polanyi's work and ideas, including the central place occupied by his thinking on the relationship (...) between economics and politics. The stellar line-up of contributors to this book explore Polanyi's work reflecting the intrinsic interdisciplinarity of Polanyi's approach to understanding our society, its place in history, its fundamental dynamics, and its contradictions, as well as the methodological issues he raises. The handbook broadly follows a chronological structure beginning with influences on Polanyi, his formative experiences and early works. A significant section is dedicated to Polanyi's seminal work, The Great Transformation, and its impact. Further sections also look at Polanyi's wider influence, on various disciplines and methodological debates, and his ongoing relevance for present-day issues including debates on populism, neoliberalism and low carbon transitions. This handbook is a vital resource for students and scholars of economics, politics, sociology, and other social sciences. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines Torquato Tasso’s Il Messaggiero [The Messenger], by focusing on the political subject matter, as discussed in the final part of the text through an imaginary dialogue, that is, the figure of the ambassador, the framework of his office and its relationship with power. Tasso’s dialogue features the nature of the ambassador as a figure incarnating his own ‘self’, while simultaneously representing his prince and acting on his own behalf within a specific political context, an external dimension, (...) namely, the ‘international’. Such a condition of alienation is one of the origins of the office’s ‘conflicting obligations’ toward the prince and toward its conciliatory function. We should indeed discuss the diplomatic personae or a divided persona. Tasso rejects the concept of the ambassador as a mere executor of policy, which is a striking departure from the previous general conception of the ambassador. The paradoxical conclusion that emerges is that the messenger, or the ambassador, is not a simple messenger. Tasso’s text and its context is the article’s epicentre. However, this article concerns the possible links between certain ideas and discourses regarding the ambassador’s persona and the growth of diplomacy as a part of the rise of the ‘international’. (shrink)

Even though it has been a privileged form of philosophical inquiry since its origins, dialogue seems to have a marginal role in the teaching of philosophy in Italian schools. The attempt to overcome this paradox through methodologies from the Anglo-Saxon tradition, such as debate, does not seem to respond to the intrinsic needs of the discipline to promote a problematizing attitude towards reality because it is based on a formalization of the debate that emphasizes the competition but neglects self-confrontation and (...) the real questioning of one’s pre-knowledge. Through an analysis of the related literature, this paper proposes a recovery of the Socratic model of dialogue, as a tool to induce cognitive dissonance, a necessary condition for the development of critical thinking. (shrink)

Institutional operability refers to the normative conditions governing the exercise of power of office that makes an institution work. Because institutional action occurs by the interrelated actions of the officeholders, a focus on institutional operability requires the analysis and assessment of the officeholders’ conduct in their institutional capacity. This article distinguishes two perspectives on operability: ‘outward’ and ‘inward.’ The outward view emphasizes predefined instructions for efficient execution, focusing on rule-following to achieve institutional purposes. The inward perspective highlights role-playing and reflective (...) engagement among officeholders to uphold an institution’s raison d’être. The inward perspective brings to the fore the relational aspect of institutional life and officeholders’ interrelated responsibility for guiding institutional action. (shrink)

This article highlights certain aspects of Rodolfo Sacco’s theoretical work on comparative law. Rather than offering an exhaustive discussion, it outlines key points in his intellectual journey to help the reader understand how certain themes gained prominence in his work. An outstanding figure in the comparative law community since the 1970s, he remained active until the end of his life, well into the twenty-first century. Through his many contributions to the field, Sacco took comparative law research in new directions. He (...) developed a more nuanced and complex analysis of the tasks of the comparative lawyer, elaborating an approach to comparison that does justice to the multiple components of all legal systems (“legal formants”) and their dynamics. We owe him a fine study of the silent, implicit dimensions of law that have a major impact on its application (“cryptotypes”), and a reflection on the relationship between law and language that shows how comparative law is deeply implicated in the process of translation. (shrink)

This paper addresses a largely neglected question in ongoing debates over disagreement: what is the relation, if any, between disagreements involving credences and disagreements involving outright beliefs? The first part of the paper offers some desiderata for an adequate account of credal and full disagreement. The second part of the paper argues that both phenomena can be subsumed under a schematic definition which goes as follows: A and B disagree if and only if the accuracy conditions of A's doxastic attitude (...) are such that, if they were fulfilled, this would ipso facto make B's doxastic attitude inaccurate, or vice-versa. (shrink)

Éclaircissements sur le titre et les limites de la communication.Le problème de Dieu se pose comme problème cosmologique ou comme problème logico-formel. Le problème de Dieu comme expérience intérieure étant posé, on rejette la chose en soi de l’ancienne métaphysique, mais on critique la prétention de la philosophie moderne de l’immanence, qui veut résoudre toute réalité dans l’activité du sujet, tout en lui reconnaissant le mérite d’avoir montré explicitement que la chose en soi était insoutenable. Nier la chose en soi (...) ne veut pourtant pas dire nier la transcendance de Dieu, mais admettre que Dieu est une réalité présente à notre conscience, en entendant cette présence comme connaissance d’une réalité qui nous dépasse. On conclut que la transcendance de Dieu est le problème de l’expérience intérieure et qu’il se pose comme problème moral. (shrink)