Although parents are the default legal surrogate decision-makers for minor children in the U.S., shared decision making in a pluralistic society is often much more complicated, involving not just parents and pediatricians, but also grandparents, other relatives, and even community or religious elders. Parents may not only choose to involve others in their children’s healthcare decisions but choose to defer to another; such deference does not imply agreement with the decision being made and adds complexity when disagreements arise between surrogate (...) decision-makers for minor children and their physicians. I argue that clinicians and ethicists have a duty to consider voices marginalized by hierarchical structures, including but not limited to gender-based inequalities. This approach involves negotiating potential conflicts: between respecting differences of culture and religion, on one hand, and assuring that the wishes of those who are most invested in children’s lives are considered, on the other. (shrink)

The temporality of intentions and actions in situations of social interaction can sometimes be paradoxical. I argue that in these situations it may sometimes be possible to conceive of individual acts that can, in a strong sense, be intended retroactively. This could happen when the relational patterns in social interaction literally alter the virtual structure of a participant's past corporeal intentions resulting in an odd experience of having intended something all along without knowing it. I propose that this possibility should (...) be interpreted as more than just a narrowly epistemic phenomenon. Examining this claim involves clarifying the enactive perspective on intentionality, which I do here. The enactive approach rejects the model of a causal relation between intention and action for one of an intrinsic qualitative relation between the two as facets of sense-making. I develop this idea and compare it with Merleau-Ponty's Fundierung model of the mutual relation between corporeal and reflexive intentionality to show that co-regulated moves/affections during social interaction may modulate both arcs of this relation, creating the possibility of a re-signification that alters not the actuality but the virtual tendencies that preceded the social act. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 937-947, December 2021.

In the literature there are at least two main formal structures to deal with situations of interactive epistemology: Kripke models and type spaces. As shown in many papers :149–225, 1999; Battigalli and Siniscalchi in J Econ Theory 106:356–391, 2002; Klein and Pacuit in Stud Log 102:297–319, 2014; Lorini in J Philos Log 42:863–904, 2013), both these frameworks can be used to express epistemic conditions for solution concepts in game theory. The main result of this paper is a formal comparison between (...) the two and a statement of semantic equivalence with respect to two different logical systems: a doxastic logic for belief and an epistemic–doxastic logic for belief and knowledge. Moreover, a sound and complete axiomatization of these logics with respect to the two equivalent Kripke semantics and type spaces semantics is provided. Finally, a probabilistic extension of the result is also presented. A further result of the paper is a study of the relationship between the epistemic–doxastic logic for belief and knowledge and the logic STIT by Belnap and colleagues. (shrink)

I temi della fede e della religione, e del loro conflitto con la cultura laica, sono da qualche tempo al centro di un interesse mediatico crescente, alimentato anche dalle polemiche politiche suscitate dal moltiplicarsi degli interventi e delle "scomuniche" del papa e della Conferenza Episcopale Italiana contro la modernità. Mancava fin qui, tuttavia, un testo di discussione, da punti di vista diversi e reciprocamente problematici, sulle ragioni dell'ateismo e della fede. Un confronto tra gli esponenti di tre posizioni ideologiche molto (...) lontane tra loro, accomunate però dal rifiuto di ogni appartenenza accademica: il cristianesimo nietzschiano del "pensiero debole" di Gianni Vattimo, la saggezza atea di una tradizione antica rilanciata da Michel Onfray e l'empirismo naturalistico-esistenziale della "filosofia del finito" di Paolo Flores d'Arcais. In questo insolito dialogo a tre voci emergono tutti gli interrogativi essenziali legati al problema, a partire da quello più generale: quali devono essere i rapporti tra filosofia e ateismo? L'"ipotesi Dio" deve ormai essere considerata superflua anche dalla riflessione filosofica, visto che le scienze ne fanno metodologicamente a meno? Quali sono le conseguenze etiche e politiche dell'essere atei o, all'opposto, credenti? (shrink)

In the Italian national elections in 2013, the Movimento Cinque Stelle, founded just four years earlier, gained 25 percent of votes, more than any other party. Analyses and interpretations are divided between those who consider M5S a member of the family of European populism and those who see M5S’s propositions as akin to the values of the left and social movements. The debate on M5S fits into the context of important ongoing trends in European politics: the growth of populist political (...) movements; the emergence of outsider parties able to challenge stable political systems; changing relationships between parties and social movements; changes in the forms of political organizing. This article investigates the political and cultural nature of this party by analyzing its discourse on democracy, its organizational choices and its main issues; comparing these elements with populism and the left; and linking its fundamental characteristics to contemporary economic processes usually termed “digital capitalism.”. (shrink)

In the context of the worsening economic crisis analogies tend to be drawn between the economic and political crisis in Europe of the 1920s and 1930s and the current situation. Now as then, it is argued, there is the risk that a systemic economic crisis and the crisis of representative politics will in turn lead to authoritarian outcomes. Rarer, however, is the idea that the current political and economic crisis may lead to a “progressive” outcome. This article examines both options (...) under the light of the thinking of one of the most important interpreters of political crisis and change in the 1920s and 1930s: Antonio Gramsci. One of the central arguments in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is the crisis of parliamentarism and democratic politics. Gramsci did not limit his analysis to the crisis however. His theoretical undertaking also consisted in the attempt to imagine the conditions for moving beyond the democratic crisis in a progressive manner. What emerges is an existing continuity between the Gramscian categories of Cesarism-Bonapartism, economic-corporative State, hegemonic crisis and contemporary politics, particularly with reference to phenomena such as populism, technocracy and neo-liberalism; the utility of the conceptual category of Passive Revolution to comprehend the current forms of exerting power and building social consent; the potential fruitfulness of Gramsci’s schemata on counter-hegemonies, to understand the changes in the party-organization and the possibilities of building counter-hegemonies. (shrink)

Hippogriffs and unicorns have a fixed role in philosophical reflection: they serve as interchangeable examples of fictional objects. The purpose of this article is to show that there are many different forms of imaginary objects and that drawing a taxonomy of these objects actually means rethinking the relation that binds imaginative products to our world – a relation that is far from being univocal.

This book aims to explain the decline of the later Wittgensteinian tradition in analytic philosophy during the second half of the twentieth century. Throughout the 1950s, Oxford was the center of analytic philosophy and Wittgenstein – the later Wittgenstein – the most influential contemporary thinker within that philosophical tradition. Wittgenstein's methods and ideas were widely accepted, with everything seeming to point to the Wittgensteinian paradigm having a similar impact on the philosophical scenes of all English speaking countries. However, this was (...) not to be the case. By the 1980s, albeit still important, Wittgenstein was considered as a somewhat marginal thinker. What occurred within the history of analytic philosophy to produce such a decline? -/- This book expertly traces the early reception of Wittgenstein in the United States, the shift in the humanities to a tradition rooted in the natural sciences, and the economic crisis of the mid-1970s, to revealthe factors that contributed to the eventual hostility towards the later Wittgensteinian tradition. (shrink)

Ever since the early decades of this century, there have emerged a number of competing schools of ecology that have attempted to weave the concepts underlying natural resource management and natural-historical traditions into a formal theoretical framework. It was widely believed that the discovery of the fundamental mechanisms underlying ecological phenomena would allow ecologists to articulate mathematically rigorous statements whose validity was not predicated on contingent factors. The formulation of such statements would elevate ecology to the standing of a rigorous (...) scientific discipline on a par with physics. However, there was no agreement as to the fundamental units of ecology. Systems ecologists sought to identify the fundamental organization that tied the physical and biological components of ecosystems into an irreducible unit: the ecosystem was their fundamental unit. Population ecologists sought, instead, to identify the biological mechanisms regulating the abundance and distribution of plant and animal species: to these ecologists, the individual organism was the fundamental unit of ecology, and the physical environment was nothing more than a stage upon which the play of individuals in perennial competition took place. As Joel Hagen has pointed out, the two schools were thus dividied by fundamentally different and irreconcilable assumptions about the nature of ecosystems.Notwithstanding these divisive efforts to elevate the image of ecology, the discipline remained in the shadows of American academia until the mid-1960s, when systems ecologists succeeded in projecting ecology onto the national scene. They did so by seeking closer involvement with practical problems: they argued before Congress that their approach to the theoretical problems of ecology was uniquely suited to the solution of the impending “environmental crisis.” With the establishment of the International Biological Program, they succeeded in attracting unprecedented levels of funding for systems ecology research. Theoretical population ecologists, on the other hand, found themselves consigned to the outer regions of this new institutional landscape. The systems ecologists' successful capture of the limelight and the purse brought the divisions between them and population ecologists into sharper relief — hence the hardening of the division of ecology observed by Hagen.45I have argued that the population biologist Richard Levins, prompted by these institutional developments, sought to challenge the social position of systems ecology, and to assert the intellectual priority of theoretical population ecology. He attempted to do so by articulating a nontrivial and rather carefully thought out classification of ecological models that led to the disqualification of systems analysis as a legitimate approach to the study of ecological phenomena. I have suggested that — ultimately —Levins's case against systems analysis in ecology rested on the view that an aspiration to realism and prediction was incompatible with an interest in theoretical issues, a concern that he equated with the search for generality. He sought to reinforce this argument by exploiting the fact that systems ecologists had staked their future on the provision of technical solutions to the problems of the “environmental crisis”: he associated systems ecologists' aspiration to realism and precision with a concern for practical issues, trading on the widely accepted view that practical imperatives are incompatible with the aims of scientific inquiry.46 These are plausible, but nonetheless questionable, claims which have now become an integral part of ecological knowledge. And finally, I hope to have shown how even the most abstract levels of scientific argument are shaped by political considerations, and how discussions of the conceptual development of modern ecology might benefit from a greater consideration of its historical and social dimensions.47. (shrink)

Still today it remains unclear whether Galileo ever climbed the leaning tower of Pisa in order to drop bodies from its top. Some believe that he established the principle of equal speeds for falling bodies by means of an ingenious thought experiment. However, the reconstruction of that thought experiment circulating in the philosophical literature is no more than a cartoon. In this paper I will tell the story of the thought processes behind the cartoon.Keywords: Galileo Galilei; Thought experiment; Falling bodies.

In Umberto Eco's semiotics, the encyclopedia is a multidimensional space of semiosis. It is a complex system of shared knowledge that governs the production and interpretation of signs inside communicative contexts. Every semiotic act involves the elements that form the encyclopedia. By means of several examples and comparisons with different semiotic theories, my paper aims to show how semiosis is governed by semantic categorizations, pragmatic rules, and narrative frames that the encyclopedia articulates and makes operative for interpreters and producers of (...) signs. (shrink)

Past research on recruitment has shown that employer image predicts job seekers’ perceptions of organizational attractiveness. We contribute to this body of work by examining job seekers’ reactions to a market-dominant employer that has suffered from a case of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI). We show that job seekers’ reaction is buffered in the case of dominant employers’ wrongdoing. This effect is stronger for job seekers who are very interested in working in the dominant employers’ industry. Market dominance, however, reduces the (...) negative impact of CSI only under certain circumstances. We find that market dominance provides a buffer against the negative effect of CSI only when (1) CSI is directly relevant to the domain of performance of the organization and (2) job seekers feel very certain about their attitudes toward the organization. In two experiments with participants actively looking for employment at the time of study, we tested a model of moderated mediation examining how market dominance and CSI influence perceived employer ethicality and perceived employer competence. These two variables, in turn, explain how job seekers form perceptions of organizational attractiveness. This is the first study to explore how job seekers react to potential employers that are dominant in a market but have suffered from a CSI incident. The study identifies the boundary conditions that explain why sometimes market-dominant employers can emerge relatively unscathed in the eyes of job seekers following CSI. The research opens important managerial implications concerning the recruitment efforts of organizations that have suffered from CSI. (shrink)

Refusing treatment for potentially curable childhood cancers engenders much discussion and debate. I present a case in which the competent parents of a young Amish child with acute myeloid leukemia deferred authority for decision making to the child’s maternal grandfather, who was vocal in his opposition to treatment. I analyze three related concerns that distinguish this case from other accounts of refused treatment.First, I place deference to grandparents as decision makers in the context of surrogate decision making more generally.Second, the (...) maternal grandfather’s ardent refusal of treatment and his rationale appeared to be inconsistent with the beliefs expressed by other family members and by members of the same Amish community, leading members of the medical team to question whether refusal of treatment should be treated differently when it appears to be based on the idiosyncratic beliefs of an individual rather than on community-wide values.Third, the medical team perceived tension and dissension between the nonverbal behavior of some family members and the verbal statements made by the maternal grandfather, leading the team to question the parents’ true wishes and debate how to weigh nonverbal and indirect forms of communication.Finally, building upon the conclusions of these queries, I explore whether, if the child’s prognosis was less favorable or if he were to relapse later, the maternal grandfather should have been permitted to drive a decision to refuse further treatment. (shrink)

En este texto se muestran los elementos que pueden llevar a mantener abierta la indagación y el debate sobre la religiosidad de Vico y sus relaciones con las cuatro religiones .Here are offered the elements which might bring to an open investigation and discussion about Vico's religiosity and his relation with the four religions.

The aim of my paper will be to provide a commentary on the introduction to the French edition of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985) by Bernard Williams (1929–2003) and to show the Nietzschean legacy that is made explicit there. In this introduction, called “L'éthique, question de style?” and published in 1990, Williams reflects on some of the problems of style that his book poses to French readers, to whom he feels his work is less familiar. Furthermore, Williams recalls (...) some moments of the Royaumont colloquium (which he attended in 1958) and dwells on some peculiarities that distinguish him from analytic philosophy, “French” philosophy, Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Finally, the text closes with a description of the image of the philosopher to whom Williams feels closest—that of Nietzsche—and illustrates the reasons that distance him from other models of philosophical writing. (shrink)

Il pensiero politico di Augusto Del Noce si caratterizza per una complessa interpretazione della modernità. Essa non rappresenta per lui il luogo del necessario processo verso la meta finale e perfetta dell’immanenza, che trova nelle religioni secolari del totalitarismo e nel nichilismo scientista delle società opulente la sua più significativa rappresentazione. La modernità come tale va per lui contestata nel suo significato assiologico perché la sua problematizzazione è la condizione filosofica e politica per immaginarne un esito che permetta invece di (...) recuperare il valore della persona umana come luogo dell’apertura alla trascendenza e come prima pietra dell’edificio sociale. Senza questa prospettiva le promesse di emancipazione delle teorie politiche legate ad una idea di progresso ineluttabile ma circoscritto entro visioni materialistiche ed atee sono destinate al fallimento, come è stato tragicamente testimoniato dalla storia. Diversa è stata l’ermeneutica della modernità offerta da Del Noce, che contro la rivoluzione intesa come tentativo di sostituire la religione nell’opera di liberazione dell’uomo dall’alienazione, vede invece nel risorgimento una categoria ancora feconda di possibilità di libertà per l’uomo dell’epoca della secolarizzazione. Di fronte ai dilemmi delle odierne società liberaldemocratiche, la visione personalistica, che fa dell’uomo un essere dotato di un principio di dignità infinito, rimane il retaggio di quelle figure della nostra tradizione ottocentesca che, lungi dall’avere esaurito sue potenzialità, offre per lui ancora delle risorse per la salvezza di ciò rimane di più prezioso dell’umanesimo europeo. (shrink)

This book addresses the various systems in place for collaborative e-research and how these practices serve to enhance the quality of research across disciplines, covering new networks available through social media as well as traditional methods such as mailing lists and forums.

La necessità che l’uomo avverte del rapporto con soggetti altri e analoghi a lui si pone in forza della trascendentalità che in essenza lo definisce come un centro illimitato di intenzionalità.

In a Socratic spirit of coming to a better understanding of man who finds himself in the midst of a "crisis about knowledge," this dissertation proposes to examine the human subject as a cognitive animal by turning to the long and rich tradition of Aristotelian philosophy, largely ignored today, to focus on and gain inspiration from one of its principal currents of reflection: nous inasmuch as this refers to the human intellectual operation intuiting the substantial level of reality, which can (...) then anchor scientific knowledge of it. ;The examination of nous is based on the text Posterior Analytics II.19, in which Aristotle briefly presents the "habit of nous" as the culmination of a non-rational-discursive process by which the principles of demonstration are acquired. By looking at each of the stages mentioned in the text, there is offered the opportunity to study in detail the different human cognitive capacities and the cognition they provide. This also allows for a comparison and contrast of the capacities and the relationships that can be established between them, which is helpful in understanding man as a cognitive animal, in general, and in determining, in particular, the place and role of intuition in human cognition. ;Starting with Aristotle's views on logic and science, it is established that the rational-discursive operations of the intellect presuppose other non-rational-discursive operations of the intellect, which opens the door to another intellectual operation that can complement the first-mentioned. This other intellectual operation is seen to be closely related to sense cognition and its powers, the means through which the intellect makes contact with external reality. The most important of the different levels of cognition provided by the senses is its highest level, experience; and since human experience involves the activity of the intellect, induction of the principles of science is seen to be an act of the intellect starting from the intelligibility of sense experience. It is concluded, finally, that this act of the intellect is essentially intuitive, consisting mainly in an intellectual grasp of a substance, an insight into its essence. (shrink)

In the article “When Parents Refuse: Resolving Entrenched Disagreements with Parents and Clinicians in Situations of Uncertainty and Complexity,” Janine Winters (2018) gets a great deal right. She...

In agreement with some of the ideas expressed by Perruchet & Vinter (P&V), we believe that some phenomena hitherto attributed to processing may in fact reflect a fundamental distinction between direct and reflexive forms of consciousness. This dichotomy, developed by the phenomenological tradition, is substantiated by examples coming from experimental psychology and lesion neuropsychology.

Abstract:Taking my title from "Lingering in the Woods," one of Umberto Eco's Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, I present a study of Stanley Cavell's style of writing. While a dominant Anglo-American style of philosophical writing seems to be motivated principally by a desire for argumentation, a Cavellian, lingering style aims at thorough expression and description of the human experience. Traces of this style can be found also in Ludwig Wittgenstein's writing. After reopening the debate that arose from some responses (...) to The Claim of Reason, I conclude with a close reading of Cavell's "Excursus on Wittgenstein's Vision of Language.". (shrink)