Tommaso Campanella’s dignitas hominis acquires its own autonomous and innovative historiographical value in recognizing the connection between mens and religion as a distinctive element of human be...

Neuromoral theorists are those who claim that a scientific understanding of moral judgment through the methods of psychology, neuroscience and related disciplines can have normative implications and can be used to improve the human ability to make moral judgments. We consider three neuromoral theories: one suggested by Gazzaniga, one put forward by Gigerenzer, and one developed by Greene. By contrasting these theories we reveal some of the fundamental issues that neuromoral theories in general have to address. One important issue concerns (...) whether the normative claims that neuromoral theorists would like to make are to be understood in moral terms or in non-moral terms. We argue that, on either a moral or a non-moral interpretation of these claims, neuromoral theories face serious problems. Therefore, neither the moral nor the non-moral reading of the normative claims makes them philosophically viable. (shrink)

Heather Battaly has argued that vice-epistemology has a Responsibility Problem. From analysing the ‘card-carrying feminist’ committing testimonial injustice due to implicit gender bias, Battaly argues that non-voluntarist vice-epistemologists are committed to either (1) counting some vices as blameworthy yet not reprehensible, or (2) holding agents equally responsible for cognitive defects as for implicit bias. This in turn implies that (2a) epistemic vices include certain cognitive defects or (2b) that implicit bias is excluded as epistemic vice. This paper aims to deflate (...) the Responsibility Problem, by arguing that vice-epistemologists can embrace route (2b) without problematic implications. In applying Miranda Fricker’s ‘no-fault responsibility’ to the card-carrying feminist case, I defend the following three claims: First, Battaly’s analysis of the card-carrying feminist case is flawed, because it fails to acknowledge that the vice of testimonial injustice and implicit prejudice are conceptually distinct. Second, excluding implicit prejudice as a vice is actually compatible with Fricker’s theoretical commitments. Third, contrary to what much of the literature seems to assume, it isn’t that problematic to exclude (individual) implicit bias as a vice, or to assign equal responsibility for implicit prejudice as for cognitive defects like impaired vision. (shrink)

A ética do discurso justifica o conteúdo de uma moralidade que salienta a simetria entre os sujeitos e a solidariedade entre todos. Para Habermas “a solidariedade é a outra face da justiça” (1999, p. 42), ou seja, são duas faces da mesma moeda. Esta é uma afirmação chave em relação ao conteúdo cognitivo do âmbito moral. A validade das normas pressupõe uma fundamentação normativa estruturada linguisticamente, de forma a vincular a justiça com a solidariedade. A ênfase está em uma razão (...) prática capaz de fundamentar princípios igualitários e universalistas da moral e do direito (2009, p. 63). A legitimação do estado de direito deve preservar sua neutralidade ideológica, alicerçada em uma moral racional, isto é, laica (ou secular). Com isso, as exigências normativas devem ser aceitas por todos em uma sociedade pluralista, formada por cidadãos de diferentes credos e, inclusive, por não crentes (HABERMAS, 2009, p. 69). (shrink)

This article seeks to provide a new reading of the work of Celestin Freinet and his use of the printing press. Specifically, this article aligns Freinet’s approach to teaching and learning with a counter-reformation in pedagogical thought-an approach that places him both within and outside of the ‘progressive’ turn in education that began to emerge at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Freinet’s pedagogical experiment in rural France during mid-twentieth century demonstrated the way that student (...) freedom, uninhibited by overarching ideological pre-emption, and unbound from the progressive imperatives typical of reform education in either its Marxist or liberal variants, can be utilized as a way to inspire pedagogical techniques founded on alternative social, political, and anthropological postulates. Specifically, the authors demonstrate how Freinet’s use of the press helps us to think about the following: 1) a different relationship to technology and the role it could play in the conception of the common within the classroom; 2) the creation of an existential good as opposed to the private good discovered through the amassing of property and the advancement of the related notion of progress; 3) and a reaffirmation of the possibility of a genuine workers education. (shrink)

A bold, insightful book that rejects the myth of America the Unphilosophical, arguing that America today towers as the most philosophical culture in the history of the world, an unprecedented marketplace of truth and argument that far surpasses ancient Greece or any other place one can name.Publisher's description.

: In this paper, I investigate Leibniz's conception of final causation. I focus especially on the role that Leibnizian final causes play in intentional action, and I argue that for Leibniz, final causes are a species of efficient causation. It is the intentional nature of final causation that distinguishes it from mechanical efficient causation. I conclude by highlighting some of the implications of Leibniz's conception of final causation for his views on human freedom, and on the unconscious activity of substances.

Nathan Carlin revisits the role of religion in bioethics, an increasingly secular enterprise, and argues that pastoral theologians can enrich moral imagination in bioethics by cultivating an aesthetic sensibility that is theologically-informed, psychologically-sophisticated, therapeutically-oriented, and experientially-grounded. To achieve these ends, Carlin employs Paul Tillich's method of correlation by positioning four principles of bioethics with four images of pastoral care.

Throughout his early writings, Leibniz was concerned with developing an acceptable account of God's relationship to the created world. In some of these early writings, he endorsed the idea that this relationship was similar to the human soul's relationship to the body. Though he eventually came to reject this idea, theanima mundi thesis remained the topic of several essays and correspondences during his career, culminating in the correspondence with Clarke. At first glance,Leibniz's discussions of this thesis may seem less important (...) in comparison to others, since it might seem like a topic which is far removed from what are regarded as his most important philosophical doctrines. I hope to show in what follows that such a view is mistaken. The large amount of attention Leibniz paid to this thesis is a sure indication of its importance to him. Further, as we shall see, his discussions of this thesis tum on some of his most interesting metaphysical topics, including the development of his thinking about the actual infinite, the structure of organic wholes, and the relationship between God and the created universe. In what follows, I examine these discussions chronologically, from the De Summa Rerum (1675-6), to the correspondence with Clarke (1715-6). (shrink)

Cognitive niche theories consist in a theoretical framework that is proving extremely profitable in bridging evolutionary biology, philosophy, cognitive science, and anthropology by offering an inter-disciplinary ground, laden with novel approaches and debates. At the same time, cognitive niche theories are multiple, and differently related to niche theories in theoretical and evolutionary biology. The aim of this paper is to clarify the theoretical and epistemological relationships between cognitive and ecological niche theories. Also, by adopting a constructionist approach we will try (...) to explain the shift from ecological to cognitive niches and their actual and theoretical overlaps. In order to do so, we will take two concepts expressing loose forms of causation in the interaction between organisms and their environment: the biological notion of “enablement” and the psycho-cognitive one of “affordance”. (shrink)

In this essay, I approach issues of post-truth and fake news from the perspective of “ignorance studies,” a fairly recent multidisciplinary area of scholarship. It looks at epistemology from the opposite direction adopted by traditional theorists of knowledge, seeing if analyzing ignorance can shed light on knowledge and truth in new ways. After looking at examples of ignorance from a common-sense standpoint informed by my dual careers as a philosopher and a journalist, I argue in the first half that journalists, (...) like philosophical pragmatists and scientists, make the best knowledge judgments they can at a particular time, conscious that future context and circumstances may alter their judgments. Journalists, I note, also often choose to be ignorant of less important facts, part of the inevitable selectivity required when covering news. In the second half of the essay, I seek to address a fresh, traditionally philosophical issue in journalism—the widespread use by reporters of casual generalizations not backed up by rigorous empirical investigation. I suggest that readers may tolerate such generalizations because they recognize them to function rhetorically as something other than strict truth claims. At the same time, many thinkers, from Machiavelli to William Blake, have heavily criticized generalization, and most people repudiate insulting generalizations, such as racial slurs. I end by strongly advising greater scrutiny of journalistic generalizations by both philosophers and media professionals. (shrink)

A quasivariety of algebras has the joint embedding property (JEP) if and only if it is generated by a single algebra A. It is structurally complete if and only if the free ℵ0‐generated algebra in can serve as A. A consequence of this demand, called ‘passive structural completeness’ (PSC), is that the nontrivial members of all satisfy the same existential positive sentences. We prove that if is PSC then it still has the JEP, and if it has the JEP and (...) its nontrivial members lack trivial subalgebras, then its relatively simple members all belong to the universal class generated by one of them. Under these conditions, if is relatively semisimple then it is generated by one ‐simple algebra. We also prove that a quasivariety of finite type, with a finite nontrivial member, is PSC if and only if its nontrivial members have a common retract. The theory is then applied to the variety of De Morgan monoids, where we isolate the sub(quasi)varieties that are PSC and those that have the JEP, while throwing fresh light on those that are structurally complete. The results illuminate the extension lattices of intuitionistic and relevance logics. (shrink)

On Surface and Place is a rich and poetic exploration of surfaces which foregrounds their significance in our understanding and experience of place. Adopting weaving as its overarching metaphor, it departs from Gottfried Semper's discussion of correspondences between architecture and textiles, and emerges from the reading of photographs, a swatch of Harris Tweed and curtain wall façade juxtaposed. In juxtaposing the fabric of the city with the weave of Harris Tweed the book charts an original course across a range of (...) connected ideas and questions, combining many different themes, writers and disciplines. It presents integrated and innovative rethinkings on a number of fundamental relationships, including correlations between body and building, word and image, and between the rural and the metropolitan, and the hand-crafted and the mass-reproduced. In doing so, it seeks to foreground the very interrelationship of surface and place, as it makes a claim for the relational nature of the world in which we live. (shrink)

Il volume analizza il tema della soggettività umana così come esso è stato affrontato nel pensiero francese del Novecento, a partire dal clima filosofico dello spiritualismo fino agli esiti teoretici della stagione post-strutturalista. Il presente lavoro vuole offrire l’occasione per approfondire e problematizzare le questioni del soggetto umano e dell’identità personale tramite lo specifico contributo che a queste tematiche hanno dato grandi autori del clima filosofico francese, un clima particolarmente ricco di prospettive speculative e soprattutto aperto al confronto critico con (...) le scienze umane, tra queste la psicoanalisi in particolare. La prima parte del volume (Lineamenti generali) delinea i principali tratti delle diverse filosofie che hanno caratterizzato il Novecento francese: in essa vengono presi in considerazione lo spiritualismo, il personalismo, l’esistenzialismo, lo strutturalismo, l’ermeneutica e la stagione di pensiero comunemente definita post-moderna. Si tratta di un excursusche descrive in maniera sintetica le metodologie tramite le quali i temi della soggettività e della persona sono stati affrontati nei diversi contesti filosofici. Nella seconda parte del libro (Percorsi di approfondimento) presentiamo undici saggi nei quali le tematiche della soggettività e dell’identità personale vengono trattate in riferimento ad uno specifico autore e contesto storiografico. Nei saggi sono presi in esame il concetto di riconoscimento intersoggettivo (Anerkennung) elaborato da Alexandre Kojève a partire dai suoi studi hegeliani, la figura emblematica dell’homme révolté in Albert Camus, la nozione di persona in Emmanuel Mounier e in Jacques Maritain, l’ontologia dell’homo capax in Paul Ricoeur, la decostruzione del sé in Jacques Derrida, il significato dell’alterità in Emmanuel Lévinas, l’ermeneutica del sé in Michel Foucault e l’analisi ontologica della soggettività compiuta da Alain Badiou. Gli ultimi due saggi del libro si caratterizzano per un approfondimento del tema della soggettività in ambito psicoanalitico: essi vertono sulle questioni sollevate da una “clinica del soggetto” e si rivolgono in particolare al pensiero di Jacques Lacan e di René Kaës. (shrink)

In this note, I argue that McCain and Moretti’s account of non-inferential justification is subject to the subjective point of view objection, and that for this reason, it does not provide an internalistically acceptable alternative to the account of this justification supplied by Huemer’s Phenomenal Conservatism (PC). Moreover, I contend that PC’s account is not afflicted by the same problem and that it does not generate the over-intellectualization and regress problem. Finally, contra McCain and Moretti, I argue that the non-inferential (...) justification described by PC does not engender a form of vicious epistemic circularity, and so that it does not raise the reflective awareness problem. (shrink)

This article introduces the key issues and themes that the articles in the Special Issue aim to apply and develop in greater detail. First, we argue that the field of collective remembering can be conceived as a site of active contestation, rather than simply a means of communicating a historic past or our deontic position in relation to these pasts. Approaching collective remembering as a Lieu de Dispute allows us, in turn, to foreground three consequential dimensions of remembrance, which the (...) articles in the issue examine in different ways: that collective remembering is an interpersonal, political and affective practice. This introduction discusses these three dimensions to collective remembering in greater detail, before outlining the remaining contents of the Special Issue. (shrink)

A traditional and widespread belief among theists is that God administers punishment for sins and/or immoral actions. In this paper, Iargue that there is good reason to believe that the infliction of any suffering on humans by God (i.e., a perfectly just being) is morally unjustified. This is important not only because it conflicts with a deeply entrenched religious belief, but also because, as I show, a number of recent argumentative strategies employed by theistic philosophers require that divine punishment be (...) morally justifiable. I conclude, then, that the arguments put forth by these theistic philosophers do not succeed. (shrink)

In “There’s No Harm in Talking,” McCarthy, Homan, and Rozier note that in recent years theological bioethicists have not felt the need to translate their insights for a broader pluralistic a...

This article builds on a recent paper coauthored by the present author, H. Hosni and F. Montagna. It is meant to contribute to the logical foundations of probability theory on many-valued events and, specifically, to a deeper understanding of the notion of strict coherence. In particular, we will make use of geometrical, measure-theoretical and logical methods to provide three characterizations of strict coherence on formulas of infinite-valued Łukasiewicz logic.

A contemporary of Giordano Bruno and Galileo, Tommaso Campanella was a controversial philosopher, theologian, astrologer, and poet who was persecuted during the Inquisition and spent much of his adult life imprisoned because of his heterodox views. He is best known today for two works: _The City of the Sun_, a dialogue inspired by Plato’s _Republic_, in which he prophesies a vision of a unified, peaceful world governed by a theocratic monarchy; and his well-meaning _Defense of Galileo_, which may have (...) done Galileo more harm than good because of Campanella’s previous conviction for heresy. But Campanella’s philosophical poems are where his most forceful and undiluted ideas reside. His poetry is where his faith in observable and experimental sciences, his astrological and occult wisdom, his ideas about deism, his anti-Aristotelianism, and his calls for religious and secular reform most put him at odds with both civil and church authorities. For this volume, Sherry Roush has selected Campanella’s best and most idiosyncratic poems, which are masterpieces of sixteenth-century Italian lyrics, displaying a questing mind of great, if unorthodox, brilliance, and showing Campanella’s passionate belief in the intrinsic harmony between the sacred and secular. (shrink)

RésuméIl y a, dans le Nafs d'Avicenne, deux enquêtes cheminant dès le début en parallèle : celle sur l’âme comme entité relationnelle, toujours considérée dans sa connexion avec le corps, et celle sur l’âme humaine en elle-même. Les deux enquêtes visent à établir l'existence et l'essence de l’âme, respectivement en relation au corps dont elle est l’âme et en soi-même. Le but de cette contribution est de reconstruire les étapes de ces enquêtes, afin de mettre en relief leur relation mutuelle, (...) et d'identifier ce qui fait office d'indicateur permettant de localiser la transition de la première enquête, plus générale, à la seconde, plus spécifique. Selon la reconstitution ici présentée, ce rôle peut être attribué à l'expérience de l’homme volant. Afin de corroborer cette interprétation, on prendra en considération trois autres ouvrages d'Avicenne, ceux-ci contenant les trois autres formulations attestées de l’homme volant, ainsi qu'un mouvement argumentatif similaire à celui que l'on peut reconstituer dans le Nafs. (shrink)

C. Thi Nguyen's (2020) recent account of echo chambers as social epistemic structures that actively exclude outsiders’ voices has sparked debate on the connection between echo chambers and epistemic injustice (Santos 2021; Catala 2021; Elzinga 2021).In this paper I am mainly concerned with the connection between echo chambers and testimonial injustice, understood as an instance whereby a speaker receives less epistemic credibility than they deserve, due to a prejudice in the hearer (Fricker 2007). In her reconstruction of the types of (...) testimonial injustice, Catala implicitly equates incidental testimonial injustice as resulting from epistemic prejudice and systematic testimonial injustice as resulting from identity prejudice. As I will argue, there as certain cases that fall in between these interpretations, namely instances of incidental testimonial injustice, whereby the impact on the speaker is localized, but where the credibility deficit nevertheless results from identity prejudice. One example of how this can manifest is the structural distrust against health-care experts in anti-vaccination echo-chambers, wherein said experts’ testimony is dismissed due to unwarranted assumptions regarding their motives qua their social type. To understand the importance and severity of the testimonial injustices in echo chambers, we need to look beyond the specific harms that are done to the targeted speakers and the immediate loss of knowledge, but also take into account the consequences for fairness in public deliberation—the latter being a fundamental condition for procedural democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

A logic is said to admit an equational completeness theorem when it can be interpreted into the equational consequence relative to some class of algebras. We characterize logics admitting an equational completeness theorem that are either locally tabular or have some tautology. In particular, it is shown that a protoalgebraic logic admits an equational completeness theorem precisely when it has two distinct logically equivalent formulas. While the problem of determining whether a logic admits an equational completeness theorem is shown to (...) be decidable both for logics presented by a finite set of finite matrices and for locally tabular logics presented by a finite Hilbert calculus, it becomes undecidable for arbitrary logics presented by finite Hilbert calculi. (shrink)

Deleuze & Guattari, Politics and Education mobilizes Deleuzian-Guattarian philosophy as a revolutionary alternative to the lingering forms of transcendence, identity politics, and nihilism endemic to Western thought. Operationalizing Deleuze and Guattari's challenge to contemporary philosophy, this book presents their view as a revolutionary alternative to the lingering forms of transcendence, identity politics, and nihilism endemic to the current state of Western formal education. This book offers an experimental approach to theorizing, creating an entirely new way for educational theorists to approach (...) their work as the task of revolutionizing life itself. Examining new conceptual resources for grappling with and mapping a sustainable political alternative to the cliche's that saturate contemporary educational theory, this collection of essays works toward extracting a genuine image of education and learning that exists in sharp contrast to both the neo-liberal educational project and the critical pedagogical tradition. (shrink)

We report a series of experiments in which subjects were required to make spatial discriminations about naturally obtained images, as follows. Subjects were shown two natural images on a computer screen, side by side and for a period of 500 ms. Subjects were then shown, on a separate part of the computer screen, a small patch of one of the images selected at random. Subjects were required to decide which of the two full images the patch comes from, and whereabouts (...) in that image it is taken from. They indicated their response by clicking the mouse cursor at the appropriate point on the screen. -/- The proportion of trials on which the subjects selected the correct image and the accuracy of the spatial position of their correct responses were calculated. These two measures independently indicate the general discriminability of the two image sets, and the extent to which the spatial layout of the image has been perceived. By comparing response accuracy for images that are from different sets (such as mountain or town scenes) with response accuracy when the two images are from the same set it is possible to establish the image properties that underlie coarse scene apprehension. By using sets of images that are perhaps best described as being natural textures (such as patterns of foliage or rock surface) it is possible to measure the extent to which texture is processed spatially. Our results are interpreted in the light of statistical differences between the image sets that we have used. (shrink)

While it is well known that Leibniz and Berkeley adopted versions of phenomenalism, it is less well known that both thinkers also believed that knowledge of phenomenal nature, via the mechanical philosophy, is a necessary condition for human happiness. Yet an examination of their respective accounts of happiness reveals weighty differences, and these differences are rooted in their respective phenomenalisms. The upshot is the somewhat surprising conclusion that adhering to a certain type of phenomenalism can place restrictions on one’s account (...) of human happiness, for Berkeley could not, by the very logic of his phenomenalism, embrace Leibniz’s views on human happiness, nor could Leibniz embrace Berkeley’s. This is significant not only for understanding the systems of Leibniz and Berkeley, but it also illuminates any view that grounds the science of happiness in knowledge of a “material” world that is in some sense mind-dependent. (shrink)

This cumulative dissertation comprises four articles addressing questions related to the socalled ‘epistemic crisis of democracy’, in particular regarding widespread contestation of expertise and denial of scientific consensus. These phenomena are worrisome for (deliberative) epistemic democrats, as they can undermine the epistemic merits of democracy. These worries are typically only understood in veristic consequentialist terms, or as instrumental concerns for democracy, leading to suboptimal outcomes. But this picture, I argue, is incomplete. This dissertation utilizes tools from the social epistemology of (...) testimony to analyse the epistemic crisis from a novel perspective and locates issues that have so far remained underexplored. The following research question guides this inquiry: How does the contemporary (online) epistemic environment affect testimonial exchange of political information, and what are the implications of these changes for epistemic democracy? Article 1-3 provide a deeper understanding of the epistemic challenges citizens face when gathering political information. Article 1, ‘Public Credibility Dysfunction and Unreliable, Unsafe Political Beliefs’, discusses how our (online) epistemic environment thwarts citizens ability to make apt credibility appraisals. It further argues that the widespread failure of credibility monitoring and policing, what I call ‘public credibility dysfunction’, not only explains widespread ignorance and increasing false beliefs, but also affects the epistemic status of our true beliefs. Article 2 and 3 illustrate how public credibility dysfunction frustrates public uptake of expert-testimony. Article 2, ‘Echo Chambers, Epistemic Injustice and Anti-Intellectualism’, discusses conceptual links between testimonial injustice and echo chambers, and how the latter can cause dismissal of experttestimony on politically sensitive topics (e.g. vaccination). Article 3, ‘Testimonial Injustice Without Social Injustice: Rejection of Expert-Testimony as Morally Significant Epistemic Negligence’, builds on these insights and provides a broader account of testimonial injustice, that acknowledges how (epistemically) privileged groups (i.e. experts) can be treated unjustly in testimonial exchange. Article 4 ‘Procedural Epistemic Democracy and Virtue-based Citizen Competence’, argues that procedural views are not irrelevant for discussions of challenges to epistemic democracy. It provides a broader understanding of citizen competence that includes virtue-based epistemic responsibilities, and argues that procedural accounts of epistemic democracy can generate such responsibilities by employing a procedural account of social epistemology. (shrink)

In this work, I investigate the implications of reversing the common assumption of rationality on behalf of human agents typically underlying philosophical research. Instead, I assume that human agents can become rational only if they learn to edge against their dumbness. Specifically, I show that intelligence cannot be considered the opposite of dumbness. To this end, I embrace the difference among System 1, System 2, and System 1.5. On these grounds, I argue that System 2 can be considered the system (...) of intelligence, whereas Systems 1 and 1.5 can be viewed as the systems of rationality. More precisely, I argue that System 2 concerns theoretical reasoning, whereas System 1 and 1.5 concern practical reasoning. Accordingly, I show that people are dumber whenever they fail to have rational control over System 1 via System 1.5, whereas people become more rational whenever they manage to have rational control over System 1 via System 1.5. Interestingly, both cases can be considered the causes of two distinct social processes. On one side, when dumbness increases among individuals, social groups achieve coordination that detriments general welfare. On the other, when dumbness decreases among individuals, social groups achieve coordination that maximizes general welfare. (shrink)

This paper sheds new light on the subtle relation between probability and logic by (i) providing a logical development of Bruno de Finetti's conception of events and (ii) suggesting that the subjective nature of de Finetti's interpretation of probability emerges in a clearer form against such a logical background. By making explicit the epistemic structure which underlies what we call Choice-based probability we show that whilst all rational degrees of belief must be probabilities, the converse doesn't hold: some probability values (...) don't represent decision-relevant quantifications of uncertainty. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this study, we investigate how different internal and external stakeholders influence the innovation strategy of a social enterprise to adopt product, process, and partnership innovations that impact either social or commercial performance. Relying on survey data from a sample of work integration social enterprises, we find that in situations of turbulence, administrative leaders do not significantly influence the innovation strategy of a social enterprise. Instead, board members and external stakeholders seem to play a role. Our study contributes to strategic (...) and business ethics research on social enterprises and, more broadly, to the literature that explores how business organizations combine social value creation and wealth generation. (shrink)