Mimicry, camouflage, transvestism, chance or cryptic anamorphism, fascination – all ways of changing clothes, habits and habitats in nature as well as in culture, in any symbolic field created by human beings during their history. Art and artification, aestheticization, stylization and beautification are all practices reflecting the need and desire for biological as well as social adaptation, all performances producing functional and fictional frames, boundaries or hierarchies in ordinary life, including the artworld. They can persuade and convince by creating consensus (...) and belief, but they can also lead to a different common sense, a sensorium – a sensorial medium and an aesthetic mediation open to a new world and to new experiences. -/- By investigating mimetism as a fundamental and polymorphic aesthetic performance, this issue of «Aisthesis» aims to rethink the concept, value, and function of mimesis and its media in the context of camouflage, simulation, and dissimulation, where images do not reveal themselves as such, but are to be perceived unambiguously as what they are not – as hieroglyphs or puzzles. In the animal kingdom, as well as in war or in ordinary public life, camouflage consists in taking on the traits, colours, and shapes of a given form or environment. This is a twofold process: on the one hand, by blending two or more shapes in one, the camoufleur seeks to remain hidden and to mislead the others in order to keep a vital secret or an ephemeral whim; on the other hand, however, he/she aims to be recognized by a specific milieu or group, thus betraying a craving for communication and familiarity, as well as a need to convey an agreeable appearance and to share a way of life. (shrink)

Rodolfo Sacco developed the idea of “mute behaviours” during his studies on mute law. The notion of “mute behaviours” denotes an action that is able to mould a legal relationship without any use of language. Certainly, this concept may give rise to some doubts in relation to the attribution—to a behaviour qualified as mute—of the capability to affect dynamics involving a plurality of people. Aiming to clarify the idea of “mute behaviours” by this point of view, the authors analysed the (...) semiotic terminology used by Sacco himself to explain this notion and the issue of its silent nature. Therefore, the terms “signifying signs” and “symptoms”, deemed by Sacco—respectively—incompatible and compatible with the theory of mute behaviours were considered. The former term was traced back to the notion of conventional and arbitrary sign, the notion of the latter was reconstructed linking it to the concept of signs based on signification and suggesting a possible framework in view of the idea of “presentative meanings” developed by the philosopher Guido Morpurgo-Tagliabue. Clarified this dichotomy by a terminological analysis, the authors noticed—as affirmed by Rodolfo Sacco himself—the impossibility to ascribe the notion of gesture to the mute behaviour’s category, as some exegetes proposed. Consequently to this last remark, the authors tried to analyse the relationship between gestures and “mute behaviours”, identifying the category of “sema-pragmatic acts”, that includes gestures and may be seen as an intermediate phase between “mute behaviours” and legally relevant behaviours operated by speaking. (shrink)

This is a draft of the introduction to the collective volume "The birth of string theory", including the book's index and preface. The book explores the history of the theory’s early stages of development, as told by its main protagonists. It journeys from the first version of the theory in the late 1960s, as an attempt to describe the physics of strong interactions outside the framework of quantum field theory, to its reinterpretation around the mid-1970s as a quantum theory of (...) gravity unified with the other interactions, and its successive developments up to the superstring revolution in 1984. The introductive Chapter summarizes the main developments and contains a chronological synopsis with a list of key results and publications. (shrink)

Implanting deep brain stimulation (DBS) electrodes in patients with Parkinson’s disease often results in the appearance of a non-infectious, delayed-onset edema that disappears over time. However, the time window between the DBS electrode and DBS stimulating device implant is often used to record local field potentials (LFPs) which are used both to better understand basal ganglia pathophysiology and to improve DBS therapy. In this work, we investigated whether the presence of post-surgery edema correlates with the quality of LFP recordings in (...) eight patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease implanted with subthalamic DBS electrodes. The magnetic resonance scans of the brain after 8.5 ± 1.5 days from the implantation surgery were segmented and the peri-electrode edema volume was calculated for both brain hemispheres. We found a correlation (ρ = −0.81, p < 0.0218, Spearman’s correlation coefficient) between left side local field potentials of the low beta band (11–20 Hz) and the edema volume of the same side. No other significant differences between the hemispheres were found. Despite the limited sample size, our results suggest that the effect on LFPs may be related to the edema localization, thus indicating a mechanism involving brain networks instead of a simple change in the electrode-tissue interface. (shrink)

ArgumentEusapia Palladino (1854-1918) is remembered as one of the most famous mediums in the history of spiritualism. Renowned scientists attended her séances in Europe and in the United States. They often had to admit to being unable to understand the origin of the phenomena produced. Cesare Lombroso, for example, after meeting Eusapia, was converted first to mediumism, then spiritualism. This article will retrace the early stages of her career as a medium and shed light on the way she managed to (...) gain the attention of scientists. It will also show why they chose her as an epistemic object. (shrink)

Uberto Decembrio's Four Books on the Commonwealth (De re publica libri IV, ca. 1420), edited and translated by Paolo Ponzù Donato, is one of the earliest examples of the reception of Plato's Republic in the 15th century. This humanistic dialogue provides a thoughtful insight on themes such as justice, the best government, the morals of the prince and citizen, education, and religion. Decembrio's dialogue is dedicated to Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, the 'worst enemy' of Florence. Making (...) use of literary and documentary sources, Ponzù Donato convincingly proves that Decembrio's thought, sharing many points with the Florentine humanist Leonardo Bruni, belongs to the same world of Civic Humanism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“It’s not true, but I believe it”: Discussions on jettatura in Naples between the End of the Eighteenth and Beginning of the Nineteenth CenturiesFrancesco Paolo de CegliaIntroduction: What is Jettatura?Non èvero...ma ci credo (“It’s not true... but I believe it”) is the title of a comedy by the Italian actor and playwright, Peppino De Filippo, younger brother of the more famous Eduardo, which was staged for the (...) first time in 1942. The narrated events take place in the twentieth century and concern Gervasio Savastano, a Neapolitan businessman who is tormented by the fear of jettatura. The character, victim of grotesque events, first sacks a worker, believing him to be a jettatore, and then hires another, who is a hunchback and so should bring him good luck. In the end, however, it is discovered that the presumed jettatore has never harmed anyone and that the hunchback is not what he seems: he has stuffed his jacket in order to enter into the good graces of the gullible businessman and marry his daughter, with whom he has planned a con trick. The “lucky” events ascribed to his presence can therefore be considered casual. The epilogue? In keeping with the logic of compromise, typical of the brothers De Filippo’s theater, even though the character is rationally convinced of the unfounded nature of his beliefs, he remains adamant: “It’s not true, but I believe it” in other words.1 [End Page 75]“Where I come from, jettatura rules,” wrote the journalist and scriptwriter Giuseppe Marotta in 1947. Indeed, it is still a part of popular Neapolitan culture today.2 Often confused with similar beliefs, such as fascination (fascino) and the evil eye (malocchio), jettatura assumed its present form between the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, at a time when a polite debate on its nature was taking shape in the city. In this period, the epistemological pluralism animating the discussions was translated into a variety of interpretative hypotheses and literary genres, in which grotesque atmospheres and spirited quips also found room, all perfectly in line with what could be considered the Weltanschauung of Savastano. It is the purpose of this article to examine these discussions, which even spread the term abroad and, with it, the “local color” of the concept.Nineteenth-century European writers on jettatura knew the Neapolitan authors well, and either quoted them explicitly or associated them with characters whose names were a deformation of real people’s: for example, Volitta for Valletta (Stendhal), don Jo (Stendhal) or Ojori (Dumas) for De Jorio. They explained that jettatura corresponded to the more familiar evil eye, but they left the term in Italian, as if to underline the fact that it was untranslatable.Is jettatura a mere anthropological issue, linked to a “primitive” culture, in the face of which official science would remain refractory? A belief that could not be exported or shared by those educated in more “highly developed” contexts? Well, in part, yes. Nevertheless, in the 1840s there was a visitor to Naples who expressed himself in the following terms: “When a foreigner arrives in Naples, at first he laughs at jettatura, then, little by little, he becomes troubled by it, and finally, after a stay of three months, you will see him covered in horns and with his right hand forever clenched [to ward off evil].”3 [End Page 76]So wrote the novelist Alexandre Dumas, père, one of the many travellers who, after having completed the Grand Tour of southern Italy, decided to describe its picturesque scenes and backward customs.4 Creating a veritable topos of travel literature, in the same period the philologist Karl August Mayer commented, “often foreigners let themselves be influenced” by local “superstitions.”5 Indeed many of them were captivated by these Neapolitan beliefs, despite their desire to remain objective and detached; and so they were “converted,” and driven to seek scientific explanations, often after meeting “a Real Jettatore,” whose image had nothing in common with the exotic fantasies of “a French Novelist’s Idea of Jettatore.”6Actually, Dumas and Mayer probably exaggerated somewhat in order to make their descriptions more... (shrink)

In the past two decades academic and research literature on “corruption” has flourished. During the same period organizations and initiatives fighting against corruption have also significantly expanded, turning “anti-corruption” into a new research subject. However, despite a few exceptions there is a division of labor between scholars who study corruption itself and those who study the global anti-corruption industry. Juxtaposing corruption’s local discourses and anti-corruption international practices, this article is an attempt to bring together these two intertwined research dimensions and (...) explore how an ethnographic approach might contribute to framing them together. Firstly, it describes how corruption in Romania is often conceptualized and explained in terms of national heritage, something related to old and recent cultural history, including traditional folklore. Secondly, it explores how anti-corruption works in practice, focusing on international legal cooperation projects monitoring the progress and shortcomings both prior to and post Romania’s accession to the European Union. Finally, revealing the articulations of these two apparently unrelated research fields, the article argues that corruption’s local explanations and the circular logic of auditing observed within the anti-corruption industry share a common developmental ideology mirroring the crypto-colonialist structure of power relations and dependency among European nation-states emerging out of the Cold War. (shrink)

Recent crises in Europe and beyond have renewed a longstanding debate on the status and treatment of refugees. Hannah Arendt famously questioned the limits of universalistic human rights discourse based on the widespread phenomena of statelessness and displacement that emerged during and after World War II. In this paper, we analyze recent patterns of inclusion and exclusion of refugees in Italy through the lens of Arendtian narrative and theorizing. We consider three cases of interaction between families, schools, and other public (...) institutions in light of the shifting normative framework before and during the war in Ukraine. Two major insights emerge from this analysis. From a pedagogical point of view, the most promising educational practices with refugees are those centered on enabling their agency and corresponding experiences of "natality". From an ethical-political perspective, these practices highlight a latent tension between the universalistic scope of human rights enshrined in the human rights declarations and their structural dependence on the particular norms and procedures enacted by nation states. The understanding and teaching of human rights within our political communities is inseparable from the practices that engage with refugees. In this sense, our practices of inclusion and exclusion affect the understanding of national borders as a barrier or threshold with other political communities, but also the interpretation of our own ethical-political principles. (shrink)

We hypothesize that heritable epigenetic changes can affect rates of fitness increase as well as patterns of genotypic and phenotypic change during adaptation. In particular, we suggest that when natural selection acts on pure epigenetic variation in addition to genetic variation, populations adapt faster, and adaptive phenotypes can arise before any genetic changes. This may make it difficult to reconcile the timing of adaptive events detected using conventional population genetics tools based on DNA sequence data with environmental drivers of adaptation, (...) such as changes in climate. Epigenetic modifications are frequently associated with somatic cell differentiation, but recently epigenetic changes have been found that can be transmitted over many generations. Here, we show how the interplay of these heritable epigenetic changes with genetic changes can affect adaptive evolution, and how epigenetic changes affect the signature of selection in the genetic record. (shrink)

The global spread of the novel coronavirus is affected by the spread of related misinformation—the so-called COVID-19 Infodemic—that makes populations more vulnerable to the disease through resistance to mitigation efforts. Here, we analyze the prevalence and diffusion of links to low-credibility content about the pandemic across two major social media platforms, Twitter and Facebook. We characterize cross-platform similarities and differences in popular sources, diffusion patterns, influencers, coordination, and automation. Comparing the two platforms, we find divergence among the prevalence of popular (...) low-credibility sources and suspicious videos. A minority of accounts and pages exert a strong influence on each platform. These misinformation “superspreaders” are often associated with the low-credibility sources and tend to be verified by the platforms. On both platforms, there is evidence of coordinated sharing of Infodemic content. The overt nature of this manipulation points to the need for societal-level solutions in addition to mitigation strategies within the platforms. However, we highlight limits imposed by inconsistent data-access policies on our capability to study harmful manipulations of information ecosystems. (shrink)

A proposal for the biological grounding of intrinsic teleology and sense-making through the theory of autopoiesis is critically evaluated. Autopoiesis provides a systemic language for speaking about intrinsic teleology but its original formulation needs to be elaborated further in order to explain sense-making. This is done by introducing adaptivity, a many-layered property that allows organisms to regulate themselves with respect to their conditions of viability. Adaptivity leads to more articulated concepts of behaviour, agency, sense-construction, health, and temporality than those given (...) so far by autopoiesis and enaction. These and other implications for understanding the organismic generation of values are explored. (shrink)

A proposal for the biological grounding of intrinsic teleology and sense-making through the theory of autopoiesis is critically evaluated. Autopoiesis provides a systemic lan- guage for speaking about intrinsic teleology but its original formulation needs to be elaborated further in order to explain sense-making. This is done by introducing adaptivity, a many-layered property that allows organisms to regulate themselves with respect to their conditions of via- bility. Adaptivity leads to more articulated concepts of behaviour, agency, sense-construction, health, and temporality than (...) those given so far by autopoiesis and enaction. These and other implications for understanding the organismic generation of values are explored. (shrink)

Logical abductivism is the epistemic view about logic according to which logical theories are justified by abduction (or Inference to the Best Explanation), that is on how well they explain the relevant evidence, so that the correct logical theory turns out to be the one that explains it best. Arguably, this view should be equally applied to both deductive and non-deductive logics, abduction included. But while there seems to be nothing wrong in principle in using abduction to determine the correct (...) logical theories of deduction and induction, things might be more complicated regarding logical theories of abduction. We may wonder whether allowing for an abductive justification of a theory of abduction is an epistemically legitimate move, since here circularity casts its shadow and makes the situation darker. This is the issue to which this work is devoted. I will defend that, to be effective, an abductive justification for a theory of abduction calls for a justification of abduction in advance, which we do not yet have. (shrink)

Existence Since Thales fell into the well while gazing at the stars, philosophers have invested considerable effort in trying to understand what, how and why things exist. Even though much ink has been spilled about those questions, this article focuses on the following three questions: What is the nature of existence? Are there … Continue reading Existence →.

In a recent article, I have explored the historical, mathematical, and philosophical issues related to the new theory of numerosities. The theory of numerosities provides a context in which to assign numerosities to infinite sets of natural numbers in such a way as to preserve the part-whole principle, namely if a set A is properly included in B then the numerosity of A is strictly less than the numerosity of B. Numerosities assignments differ from the standard assignment of size provided (...) by Cantor’s cardinality assignments. In this talk, I generalize some specific worries emerging from the theory of numerosities to a line of thought resulting in what I call a ‘good company’ objection to Hume’s Principle (HP). The talk has four main parts. The first takes a historical look at 19th-century attributions of equality of numbers in terms of one-one correlations and argues that there was no agreement as to how to extend such determinations to infinite sets of objects. This leads to the second part where I show that there are countably infinite many abstraction principles that are ‘good’, in the sense that they share the same virtues of HP and from which we can derive the axioms of second order arithmetic. The third part connects this material to a debate on Finite Hume Principle between Heck and MacBride and states the ‘good company’ objection. Finally, the last part gives a tentative taxonomy of possible neo-logicist responses to the ‘good company’ objection and makes a foray into the relevance of this material for the issue of cross-sortal identifications for abstractions. (shrink)

According to the form of logical pluralism elaborated by Beall and Restall there is more than one relation of logical consequence. Since they take the relation of logical consequence to reside at the very heart of a logical system, different relations of logical consequence yield different logics. In this paper, we are especially interested in understanding what are the consequences of endorsing Beall and Restall’s version of logical pluralism vis-à-vis the normative guidance that logic is taken to provide to reasoners. (...) In particular, the aim of this paper is threefold. First, in Sections 2 and 3, we offer an exegesis of Beall and Restall’s logical pluralism as a thesis of semantic indeterminacy of our concept of logical consequence – i.e. understood as indeterminacy logical pluralism. Second, in Sections 4 and 5, we elaborate and critically scrutinize three models of semantic indeterminacy that we think are fit to capture Beall and Restall’s indeterminacy logical pluralism. Third, in Section 6, following Beall and Restall’s assumption that the notion of logical consequence has normative significance for deductive reasoning, we raise a series of normative problems for indeterminacy logical pluralism. The overall conclusion that we aim to establish is that Beall and Restall’s indeterminate logical pluralism cannot offer an adequate account of the normative guidance that logic is taken to provide us with in ordinary contexts of reasoning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The "Thinking of Thinking" in MetaphysicsA.9 JOSEPH G. DE FILIPPO a+~6v &Qa voE[, e~eQ ~o~t ~6 XQ&~O~OV, xetl. I~o~tv ~1VdOloLgvo1]o~t0g v6"qotg. (A.9, 1o74b33-34) Therefore it thinks itself, if indeed it is most powerful, and its thinking is the thinking of thinking. Thus culminates Aristotle's treatment of God's activity in the twelfth book of the Metaphysics. The conclusion seems transparent. God is an intellect (vo~Sg); since he is also (...) the best thing, and it is absurd that he should think anything worse than himself, he therefore thinks himself. And since he is nothing other than a thinking (v6"qotg), what he thinks of is thinking (vo~loEe0g). "Thinking of thinking," however, is a notion that is as ambiguous in ancient Greek as it is in English. It is just not clear what sort of thing such a reflexively self-thinking mind would be, though it might seem natural to construe the activity of Aristotle's God as somehow an act of pure self-awareness, self-consciousness or self-knowledge. On such an understanding God would be a separately existing consciousness, with himself or his activity as the only object of that consciousness. In 196 9 R. Norman published a paper which disputed this sort of interpretation.' He argued that when one considers Aristotle's theory of, R. Norman, "Aristotle's Philosopher-God," Phronesis 14 (1969): 63-74 (reprinted in Articles on Aristotle, vol. 4, ed. J. Barnes, M. Schofield and R. Sorabji [London, 1979], 93-1o2). While I a-m indebted to Norman's basic approach, my treatment of God's self-thought differs substantially from his in two respects. First, although it isessential to recognize that in Aristotle human thought too thinks itself, this does not justify the conclusion that God's thinking is "of the same kind as our own normal abstract thought" (73). As 1shall argue below in section 4, the characterization of the Prime Mover as v6"qoLgvo~o~t0g is meant specifically to differentiate its activity from the selfthinking of human volSg;human thought could never be characterized as v6"qotgvofioEt0g.Secondly, Norman does not isolate the real source of A.9's argument, which, as l shall argue, is the potential conflict between Aristotle's own physical and psychological theories. M. Wedin, Mind and Imagination in Aristotle (New Haven, 1988), 229-45, also argues against Norman's thesis that human and divine thought are the same in kind. [543] 544 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:4 OCTOBER 1995 volSg from De Anima III.4-8, it is clear that the conception of God as a selfthinking mind does not entail that he engages in self-contemplation in the normal sense of the term. On Norman's interpretation, God thinks himself because he thinks a definite content with which he is numerically identical, according to the well-known Aristotelian doctrine of the unity of vo~g with its object of thought (vo~lx6v). To describe this act simply as self-contemplation belies the fact that its object must have an intelligible content, which in the case of God is not adequately described as his "self," for this self would indeed be nothing more than an act of self-contemplation. While many commentators have followed Norman in recognizing that the description of God as "thinking himself" is drawn from the De Anima's characterization of self-thinking, there has persisted a tendency to interpret Aristotle 's God as engaged in an act of pure self-awareness or under some similar description.' The reason for this persistence is due, I believe, to a crucial difference between chapters 7 and 9 of book A. Whereas both chapters characterize the Prime Mover (PM) as a self-thinker, in chapter 9 he is also said to be ~1 v61]otg vo~loec0g V6tlOtg (the thinking of thinking), which understandably appears to be a much more specific delineation of his thought content. A. 7 tells us that the PM is a vofJg that thinks itself (to72b18-3o); according to De Anima III. 4 that simply is what voa)g does at the highest level of actuality, since it... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The "Thinking of Thinking" in MetaphysicsA.9 JOSEPH G. DE FILIPPO a+~6v &Qa voE[, e~eQ ~o~t ~6 XQ&~O~OV, xetl. I~o~tv ~1VdOloLgvo1]o~t0g v6"qotg. (A.9, 1o74b33-34) Therefore it thinks itself, if indeed it is most powerful, and its thinking is the thinking of thinking. Thus culminates Aristotle's treatment of God's activity in the twelfth book of the Metaphysics. The conclusion seems transparent. God is an intellect (vo~Sg); since he is also (...) the best thing, and it is absurd that he should think anything worse than himself, he therefore thinks himself. And since he is nothing other than a thinking (v6"qotg), what he thinks of is thinking (vo~loEe0g). "Thinking of thinking," however, is a notion that is as ambiguous in ancient Greek as it is in English. It is just not clear what sort of thing such a reflexively self-thinking mind would be, though it might seem natural to construe the activity of Aristotle's God as somehow an act of pure self-awareness, self-consciousness or self-knowledge. On such an understanding God would be a separately existing consciousness, with himself or his activity as the only object of that consciousness. In 196 9 R. Norman published a paper which disputed this sort of interpretation.' He argued that when one considers Aristotle's theory of, R. Norman, "Aristotle's Philosopher-God," Phronesis 14 (1969): 63-74 (reprinted in Articles on Aristotle, vol. 4, ed. J. Barnes, M. Schofield and R. Sorabji [London, 1979], 93-1o2). While I a-m indebted to Norman's basic approach, my treatment of God's self-thought differs substantially from his in two respects. First, although it isessential to recognize that in Aristotle human thought too thinks itself, this does not justify the conclusion that God's thinking is "of the same kind as our own normal abstract thought" (73). As 1shall argue below in section 4, the characterization of the Prime Mover as v6"qoLgvo~o~t0g is meant specifically to differentiate its activity from the selfthinking of human volSg;human thought could never be characterized as v6"qotgvofioEt0g.Secondly, Norman does not isolate the real source of A.9's argument, which, as l shall argue, is the potential conflict between Aristotle's own physical and psychological theories. M. Wedin, Mind and Imagination in Aristotle (New Haven, 1988), 229-45, also argues against Norman's thesis that human and divine thought are the same in kind. [543] 544 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:4 OCTOBER 1995 volSg from De Anima III.4-8, it is clear that the conception of God as a selfthinking mind does not entail that he engages in self-contemplation in the normal sense of the term. On Norman's interpretation, God thinks himself because he thinks a definite content with which he is numerically identical, according to the well-known Aristotelian doctrine of the unity of vo~g with its object of thought (vo~lx6v). To describe this act simply as self-contemplation belies the fact that its object must have an intelligible content, which in the case of God is not adequately described as his "self," for this self would indeed be nothing more than an act of self-contemplation. While many commentators have followed Norman in recognizing that the description of God as "thinking himself" is drawn from the De Anima's characterization of self-thinking, there has persisted a tendency to interpret Aristotle 's God as engaged in an act of pure self-awareness or under some similar description.' The reason for this persistence is due, I believe, to a crucial difference between chapters 7 and 9 of book A. Whereas both chapters characterize the Prime Mover (PM) as a self-thinker, in chapter 9 he is also said to be ~1 v61]otg vo~loec0g V6tlOtg (the thinking of thinking), which understandably appears to be a much more specific delineation of his thought content. A. 7 tells us that the PM is a vofJg that thinks itself (to72b18-3o); according to De Anima III. 4 that simply is what voa)g does at the highest level of actuality, since it... (shrink)

I think it will be generally admitted that if Oxford philosophers have any claim to have added in recent years to the store of our philosophical ideas, it lies in their published works on the theory of conduct. I don’t think it can be claimed that, even in this sphere, they have given us many new and illuminating positive truths. After reading Mr. Ross, Professor Prichard, and Mr. Joseph, we are left, I think, with the impression that the whole subject (...) is much more intricate and puzzling than we should have thought possible. I intend in this paper to try and discover what is true in the theories of these three moralists on one of the most difficult and puzzling of ethical problems, viz., “What Renders a Right Act Right?” Professor Prichard and Mr. Ross, in the main, stand together; it is regrettable that Professor Prichard's published work is so very meagre. And if in quoting from his article in Mind , 1912, on “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake,” I am doing him an injustice in attributing to him any views which he no longer holds, I am sorry; but modesty in publishing has its penalties, and anyhow, the article is too guilty an offender to get off free, for its annoying subtleties started the whole trouble, and led indirectly to Some Problems in Ethics and the Right and the Good. (shrink)

From Brouwer To Hilbert: The Debate on the Foundations of Mathematics in the 1920s offers the first comprehensive introduction to the most exciting period in the foundation of mathematics in the twentieth century. The 1920s witnessed the seminal foundational work of Hilbert and Bernays in proof theory, Brouwer's refinement of intuitionistic mathematics, and Weyl's predicativist approach to the foundations of analysis. This impressive collection makes available the first English translations of twenty-five central articles by these important contributors and many others. (...) The articles have been translated for the first time from Dutch, French, and German, and the volume is divided into four sections devoted to Brouwer, Weyl, Bernays and Hilbert, and the emergence of intuitionistic logic. Each section opens with an introduction which provides the necessary historical and technical context for understanding the articles. Although most contemporary work in this field takes its start from the groundbreaking contributions of these major figures, a good, scholarly introduction to the area was not available until now. Unique and accessible, From Brouwer To Hilbert will serve as an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate courses in the philosophy of mathematics, and will also be an invaluable resource for philosophers, mathematicians, and interested non-specialists. (shrink)

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)

Wason’s selection task is a paramount experimental problem in the study of human reasoning, often connected with the celebrated ravens paradox in the philosophical literature. Various normative accounts of the selection task rely on a Bayesian approach. Some claim vindication of participants’ rationality. Others don’t, thus following Wason’s original intuition that observed responses are mistaken. In this article we argue that despite claims to the contrary, all these accounts actually speak to the same effect: Wason was right. First, we provide (...) a new accuracy-based analysis of the selection task that includes the existing proposals as special cases. We then show on this basis that none can actually vindicate participants’ rationality. We conclude that all normative renditions considered eventually concur: all in all, Bayesians should follow Wason in the selection task. (shrink)

Some time ago, the philosopher Luciano Floridi suggested that Western philosophy, and the mainstream contemporary approach to it traditionally called ‘analytic philosophy’, is in dire need of a reboot. The concern was that the discipline might be in a period of decadence. Analytic philosophy would be benefited by greater internationalization, wider and more transparent decision-making, and the reduction (as much as possible) of conflicts of interest as well as of its current habit of hiring and providing publication opportunities on the (...) basis of contacts, networking, and academic pedigree. If we are right, then we need a reconditioning of the institutional framework of analytic philosophy that adjusts it to the current global and interconnected world. (shrink)