Social factors have so far been neglected in embodied theories of perception despite the wealth of phenomenological insights and empirical evidence indicating their importance. I examine evidence from developmental psychology and neuroscience and attempt an initial classification according to whether social factors play a contextual, enabling, or constitutive role in the ability to perceive objects in a detached manner, i.e. beyond their immediate instrumental use. While evidence of cross-cultural variations in perceptual styles and the influence of social cues on visual (...) attention could not be said to play more than a contextual role, other factors such as the intricate developmental links between dyadic and triadic interactions in infancy, as well as episodes of peer-learning in children, play enabling roles. A common element in these factors is the presence and resolution of interpersonal conflict. Detached object perception could not develop without these social factors. I argue, in addition, that social skills such as managing partial social acts which are addressed to and completed by others, linguistic mediation, makebelieve play, and the ability to control perspectival switches are constitutive -- i.e. are of the essence -- of the ability to see objects as present with a detached attitude. I discuss the prospects of incorporating such social elements into dynamical interpretations of the sensorimotor approach through the enactive notion of participatory sense-making. (shrink)

Most of the work in default logic is about default theories that are completely specified. In this category are the proposals of appropriate semantics for default logic, the characterizations of the complexity of reasoning with a default theory, the algorithms for finding consequences of default theories, etc. Relatively little attention has been paid to the process of building a default theory, and most of the work on this topic is about translating knowledge bases from other formalisms (such as circumscription, autoepistemic (...) logic, and action description languages) into default logic. This paper is about expressing knowledge in default logic. In particular, we assume that defaults are initially formulated as normal, and are then corrected using specific inference examples. (shrink)

This paper is the first of a series of three articles that present the syntactic proof of the PA-completeness of the modal system G, by introducing suitable proof-theoretic objects, which also have an independent interest. We start from the syntactic PA-completeness of modal system GL-LIN, previously obtained in [7], [8], and so we assume to be working on modal sequents S which are GL-LIN-theorems. If S is not a G-theorem we define here a notion of syntactic metric d(S, G): we (...) calculate a canonical characteristic fomula H of S (char(S)) so that ⊢G ∼ H → (∼S) and ⊢GL-LIN ∼ H, and the complexity σ of ∼ H gives the distance d(S, G) of S from G. Then, in order to produce the whole completeness proof as an induction on this d(S, G), we introduce the tree-interpretation of a modal sequent Q into PA, that sends the letters of Q into PA-formulas describing the properties of a GL-LIN-proof P of Q: It is also a d(*, G)-metric linked interpretation, since it will be applied to a proof-tree T of ∼ H with H = char(S) and σ(∼ H) = d(S, G). (shrink)

At the same time, the book is a contribution to recent philosophical debates, in particular on the prospects for a successful nominalist reconstruction of .

What were the earliest reactions to Gödel's incompleteness theorems? After a brief summary of previous work in this area I analyse, by means of unpublished archival material, the first reactions in Vienna and Berlin to Gödel's groundbreaking results. In particular, I look at how Carnap, Hempel, von Neumann, Kaufmann, and Chwistek, among others, dealt with the new results.

Anti-realist epistemic conceptions of truth imply what is called the knowability principle: All truths are possibly known. The principle can be formalized in a bimodal propositional logic, with an alethic modality ${\diamondsuit}$ and an epistemic modality ${\mathcal{K}}$, by the axiom scheme ${A \supset \diamondsuit \mathcal{K} A}$. The use of classical logic and minimal assumptions about the two modalities lead to the paradoxical conclusion that all truths are known, ${A \supset \mathcal{K} A}$. A Gentzen-style reconstruction of the Church–Fitch paradox is presented (...) following a labelled approach to sequent calculi. First, a cut-free system for classical bimodal logic is introduced as the logical basis for the Church–Fitch paradox and the relationships between ${\mathcal {K}}$ and ${\diamondsuit}$ are taken into account. Afterwards, by exploiting the structural properties of the system, in particular cut elimination, the semantic frame conditions that correspond to KP are determined and added in the form of a block of nonlogical inference rules. Within this new system for classical and intuitionistic “knowability logic”, it is possible to give a satisfactory cut-free reconstruction of the Church–Fitch derivation and to confirm that OP is only classically derivable, but neither intuitionistically derivable nor intuitionistically admissible. Finally, it is shown that in classical knowability logic, the Church–Fitch derivation is nothing else but a fallacy and does not represent a real threat for anti-realism. (shrink)

In the present paper we discuss a recent suggestion of Schroeder-Heister concerning the possibility of defining an intensional notion of harmony using isomorphism in second-order propositional logic. The latter is not an absolute notion, but its definition is relative to the choice of criteria for identity of proofs. In the paper, it is argued that in order to attain a satisfactory account of harmony, one has to consider a notion of identity stronger than the usual one (based on β- and (...) η-conversions) that the authors have investigated in recent work. (shrink)

According to the orthodox account developed by Kaplan, indexicals like I, you, and now invariably refer to elements of the context of speech. This essay argues that the orthodoxy is wrong. I, you, and the like are shifted by certain modal operators and hence can fail to refer to elements of the context, for example, I can fail to refer to the speaker. More precisely, indexicals are syntactically akin to logical variables. They can be free, in which case they work, (...) roughly, on the Kaplan model. But they can also be bound: this happens, in a systematic fashion, when they are in the scope of epistemic modals or attitude verbs. The new view has two interesting philosophical consequences. First, it vindicates a broadly Fregean perspective on referential expressions, essentially refuting the idea that indexicals are rigid designators. Second, it suggests a new picture of the interaction between context and linguistic meaning: compositional semantics does not need to look at the context and hence has no need for a context parameter. (shrink)

Neuroeconomics, neuromarketing, neuroaesthetics, and neurotheology are just a few of the novel disciplines that have been inspired by a combination of ancient knowledge along with recent discoveries about how the human brain works.This fascinating and thought provoking new book critically questions our love affair with brain imaging.

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.

Can governments keep the pace of global markets? It is a defining characteristic of the present times, tested and measured within multiple studies, that we are living in an increasingly interconnected economy in which giant companies emerge and compete presenting new goods and products at a global scale. The competing environment of international markets produces quickly growing creatures that old nation-states struggle to understand, monitor and, consequently, regulate. In this regard, the selection process taking place in the market seems to (...) be far more effective and greedy than the selection process we apply to our governments. In this paper I discuss the basic theoretical mechanisms for the persistence of wealth concentration, introducing a general game-theoretical framework to connect governance, market economy, and wealth distribution, and to rethink democracy and fairness in policy-making, especially with the aim of global sustainability governance. (shrink)

Towards the end of The Coming Community (1993) [La comunità che viene, 1990], Giorgio Agamben writes something that may be interpreted as a paraphrase of Franz Kafka's famous statement that while t...

This paper extends the axiomatic treatment of intuitionistic mereology introduced in Maffezioli and Varzi (_Synthese, 198_(S18), 4277–4302 2021 ) by examining the behavior of constructive notions of overlap and disjointness. We consider both (i) various ways of defining such notions in terms of other intuitionistic mereological primitives, and (ii) the possibility of treating them as mereological primitives of their own.

In this article, I draw upon the ‘post-Kantian’ reading of Hegel to examine the consequences Hegel’s idea of God has on his metaphysics. In particular, I apply Hegel’s ‘recognition-theoretic’ approach to his theology. Within the context of this analysis, I focus especially on the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ. First, I argue that Hegel’s philosophy of religion employs a distinctive notion of sacrifice (kenotic sacrifice). Here, sacrifice is conceived as a giving up something of oneself to ‘make room’ for the (...) other. Second, I argue that the idea of kenotic sacrifice plays a fundamental role in Hegel’s account of Christ. Third, I conclude by sketching some of the consequences of Hegel’s idea of a God who renounces his own divinity for an idealistically conceived metaphysics. My main thesis is that the notion of incarnation is conceived by Hegel as the expression of a spirit that advances only insofar as it is willing to withdraw and make room for the other. A kenotic reading of the Hegelian notion of the incarnation is also useful in terms of a clarification of the dispute between ‘left Hegelians’ and ‘right Hegelians’ concerning the status of the idea of God in Hegel’s philosophy. (shrink)

The late Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) was an Italian philosopher whose work on Aeschylus has not yet been made available in English. In Il giogo: alle origini della ragione: Eschilo (The Yoke: At the Origins of Reason: Aeschylus, 1989), Severino seeks to demonstrate that Aeschylus belongs amongst the founders of philosophy, i.e., that Aeschylus was the first to set down some of philosophy’s most fundamental principles, including that ontological becoming produces unbearable suffering and that the only remedy to suffering is knowledge (...) of the truth. Thus, by introducing readers to Severino’s interpretation, and by translating various passages of his work, this article aims to enlarge Severino’s readership and spread his argument for the philosophical stature of Aeschylus. (shrink)

Copied in 80 manuscripts and printed in 25 editions Logica Parva was the most widely read logic book in 15th century Italy. By transmitting Oxford logic to Italy it influenced the course of science, philosophy and theology in the Renaissance.

RESUMO O artigo propõe uma releitura cruzada dos conceitos de acidente, desenvolvido por Landowski no âmbito de sua teoria sociossemiótica da interação, e explosão, elaborado por Lotman em seus últimos escritos de semiótica da cultura. Longe de ser um fim em si mesmo, este confronto almeja esboçar uma síntese teórico-epistemológica que possa contribuir à análise dos processos comunicacionais-discursivos que regem o devir dos sistemas socioculturais, bem como ao seu enquadramento conceitual. A minha hipótese é que a cifra desta articulação resida (...) no vínculo entre a indeterminação destacada por ambos os autores e a carga estésica, isto é, o núcleo de tensões sensíveis que, conforme vislumbra Landowski, os acontecimentos acidentais/explosivos são capazes de mobilizar. Para procurar demonstrar sua pertinência e relevância, partirei de um caso concreto: as jornadas de junho de 2013 e seu impacto no processo que levou, em 2016, ao impeachment de Dilma Rousseff e, em 2018, à eleição de Jair Bolsonaro. ABSTRACT The article proposes a comparison between the concepts of accident, developed by Landowski in his sociosemiotic theory of interaction, and explosion, elaborated by Lotman in his last writings on the semiotics of culture. Far from being an end in itself, this confrontation aims to sketch a theoretical-epistemological synthesis that can contribute to the analysis of the communicational-discursive processes that trigger the historical flow of sociocultural systems, as well as to their conceptual categorisation. My hypothesis is that the basis of this articulation lies in the link between the indeterminacy highlighted by both authors, and the aesthesic value, that is, the core of sensible tensions that, as shown by Landowski, the accidental/explosive events could mobilise. In order to demonstrate its pertinence and relevance, I will focus on a specific case study: the 2013 protests in Brazil and their impact on the process that led to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. (shrink)

It is usually maintained that a subject with manifestly contradictory beliefs is irrational. How can we account, then, for the intuitive rationality of dialetheists, who believe that some manifest contradictions are true? My paper aims to answer this question. Its ultimate goal is to determine a characterization of (or rather a constraint for) rational belief approvable by both the theorists of Dialetheism and its opponents. In order to achieve this goal, a two-step strategy will be adopted. First, a characterization of (...) rational belief applicable to non-dialetheist believers will be determined; this characterization will involve the semantic apparatus of Nathan Salmon’s Millian Russellianism but will get rid of the problematic and obscure notion of mode of presentation (guise in his own terminology), replacing it with a couple of novel devices, belief subsystems and cognitive coordination. Second, using ideas from Graham Priest, the leading proponent of Dialetheism, such a characterization will be modified, so as to devise a new one able to account for the intuitive rationality of both dialetheist and non-dialetheist believers. (shrink)

In this 2017 conversation, Gianni Vattimo discusses with Paolo Diego Bubbio the core themes of his own philosophical journey. Vattimo first comments on the legacy of his mentor Luigi Pareyson and on the differences between Pareyson’s conception of the relation between truth and interpretation and his own. Vattimo and Bubbio then elaborate on the return to Hegel and the possibility of a “hermeneuticized” Hegelianism. The participants also discuss Vattimo’s view of religion and the role that the Christian notion of (...) caritas plays in his “weak hermeneutics.” Finally, Vattimo comments on his recent political writings and on his view of a “hermeneutic communism,” arguing that revolution is possible only as a collective inner transformation. Vattimo concludes by mentioning his recent essays, collected under the title Being and Its Surroundings, in which he presents the radical thesis of Heidegger’s philosophy as a new form of theology. (shrink)

Forms of contemporary life attest to the dissolution of the concept of the ‘people’ and the renewed importance of the idea of the ‘multitude’. Though they took center stage in the seventeenth century debate that spawned much of our ethico-political lexicon, these two notions are polar opposites. The ‘people’ is by its very nature centripetal. Converging towards a general will, it acts as an interface between citizens and the State. The ‘multitude’ is plural. Fleeing all political unity, it shuns negotiations (...) with the sovereign and refuses to delegate its rights to that power; it is a recalcitrant and disobedient entity with a taste for certain forms of non-representative democracy. For example, Hobbes claims that citizens in rebellion against the State represent “the multitude against the people.” But while Hobbes spotted the greatest hindrance to the workings of the State within this multitude, Spinoza found in it the roots of liberty. The political existence of ‘multiples’ as such has been stricken from the horizon of modernity: not only by Absolute State theorists, but also by Rousseau, the liberal tradition, and the socialist movement itself. (shrink)

Unilateral neglect stems from a relatively selective impairment of exogenous, or stimulus-related, orienting of attention. This neuropsychological evidence parallels “change blindness” experiments, in which normal individuals lack awareness of salient details in the visual scene as a consequence of their attention being exogenously attracted by a competing event, suggesting that visual consciousness requires the integrity of exogenous orienting of attention.

Les réfutations sophistiques ont joui, au cours du Moyen Âge, d’une considération peut-être même supérieure à leurs mérites, mais par un juste retour des choses, elles ont été presque complètement négligées pendant l’époque contemporaine. Cet ouvrage — dont l’analyse avait été plus l’occupation préliminaire des médiévistes que l’intérêt central des aristotélisants — est maintenant l’objet d’une excellente étude par Louis-André Dorion, une étude qui réintroduit cet ouvrage «dans le courant de la recherche», fournissant une introduction tant historique que systématique, une (...) traduction fidèle et lisible à la fois et un commentaire constitué de quatre cent quatre-vingtune notes qui abordent des problèmes philosophiques, linguistiques, logiques et philologiques avec une compétence admirable. L’introduction traite de plusieurs questions qui nécessitaient une mise au point: l’origine et la signification du titre, la place originale des RS parmi les œuvres logiques d’Aristote, la chronologie, le contexte historique et culturel, la division du texte des RS, les problèmes liés à la taxinomie des paralogismes, les dettes d’Aristote à l’égard de Platon, etc. (shrink)