In mainstream economic theory money functions as an instrument for the circulation of commodities or for keeping a stock of liquid wealth. In neither case is it considered fundamental to the production of goods or the distribution of income. Augusto Graziani challenges traditional theories of monetary production, arguing that a modern economy based on credit cannot be understood without a focus on the administration of credit flows. He argues that market asset configuration depends not upon consumer preferences and (...) available technologies but on how money and credit are managed. A strong exponent of the circulation theory of monetary production, Graziani presents an original and perhaps controversial argument that will stimulate debate on the topic. (shrink)

This thought-provoking book discusses the concept of progress in economics and investigates whether any advance has been made in its different spheres of research. The authors look back at the history, successes and failures of their respective fields and thoroughly examine the notion of progress from an epistemological and methodological perspective. The idea of progress is particularly significant as the authors regard it as an essentially contested concept which can be defined in many ways – theoretically or empirically; locally or (...) globally; or as encouraging or impeding the existence of other research traditions. The authors discuss the idea that for progress to make any sense there must be an accumulation of knowledge built up over time rather than the replacement of ideas by each successive generation. Accordingly, they are not concerned with estimating the price of progress, reminiscing in the past, or assessing what has been lost. Instead they apply the complex mechanisms and machinery of the discipline to sub-fields such as normative economics, monetary economics, trade and location theory, Austrian economics and classical economics to critically assess whether progress has been made in these areas of research. -/- Bringing together authoritative and wide-ranging contributions by leading scholars, this book will challenge and engage those interested in philosophy, economic methodology and the history of economic thought. It will also appeal to economists in general who are interested in the advancement of their profession. (shrink)

One question in moral psychology concerns the role of emotions to motivate moral action. This question has recently become more urgent, because it is now clearer that cognitive developmental theories cannot offer a complete explanation of moral functioning. This paper suggests that emotion, as is typically understood in psychology, cannot be seen as the basis for an acceptable explanation of moral behaviour and motivation. However, it is argued that it is possible to understand emotions as embedded in agentic processes, and (...) regulated by conscious concerns. So understood, emotions acquire an important role in the person's moral life. These conclusions are reached through an extensive review of psychological and philosophical conceptions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Presentism is, roughly, the ontological view that only the present exists. Among the philosophers engaged in the metaphysics of time there is wide agreement that presentism is intuitive (or commonsensical) and that its intuitiveness counts as evidence in its favour. My contribution has two purposes: first, defending the view that presentism is intuitive from some recent criticisms; second, putting forth a genealogical (or debunking) argument aimed at depriving presentism’s intuitiveness of the evidential value commonly granted to it.

In a series of recent papers Francesco Orilia has presented an argument for the moral desirability of presentism. It goes, in brief, as follows: since the existence of painful events is morally undesirable, presentism, which denies that past painful events (tenselessly) exist, is morally more desirable than non-presentism, which instead affirms that past painful events (tenselessly) exist. An objection against this argument, which has already been taken into consideration by Orilia, is the ugly history objection or radical objection: what really (...) matters in the moral appraisal of a world is the history of it, and since the presentist and the non-presentist versions of our world share the same ugly history, they are morally on a par. This paper aims at corroborating this objection and defending it from Orilia’s criticisms. This will be done by bringing into play various thought experiments and a distinction between relevance (of an event or a fact about the occurrence of an event) to the moral evaluation of a world and moral (and psychological) involvement (in an event or in a fact about the occurrence of an event). (shrink)

I temi discussi all’interno del volume sono il frutto di una intensa attività seminariale svolta all’interno dei corsi di Filosofia politica e di Storia delle dottrine politiche presso il Dipartimento di Scienze politiche dell’Università di Roma Sapienza. Ha tra i suoi obiettivi quello di introdurre allo studio e alla comprensione di alcuni argomenti che sono al centro della politica e sono volti al compimento del grande progetto politico che vede nella libertà i luoghi della felicità e della solidarietà. Dalla riflessione (...) che ne è scaturita è emersa la convinzione che alla base di questo progetto la democrazia continua ad essere, nonostante le sue criticità, un valore attuale e uno strumento fondamentale per la convivenza pacifica tra i popoli, in un epoca in cui la libertà si è riconciliata con l’uguaglianza assumendo il significato di fonte di legittimazione democratica che oggi si ripropone a tutela delle differenze che fanno «di ciascuno di noi un individuo unico». (shrink)

In filosofia spesso si segue un metodo stando al quale una tesi o teoria che sia più in sintonia con il senso comune deve essere preferita alle posizioni meno in sintonia con esso, per lo meno fino a quando non si mostri che quella tesi o teoria è inadeguata e che una delle posizioni avverse costituisce un adeguato sostituto. Nel presente contributo si vuole offrire una caratterizzazione della nozione di senso comune generalmente in uso nei dibattiti filosofici contemporanei; illustrare criticamente (...) i principali metodi impiegabili per determinare contenuti filosoficamente rilevanti del senso comune; chiarire e giustificare il metodo filosofico dell'appello al senso comune; presentare, d'altro canto, alcune delle strategie argomentative attuabili da chi si trovi a sostenere una tesi o teoria contrastante con il senso comune. (shrink)

In the logical context, ignorance is traditionally defined recurring to epistemic logic. In particular, ignorance is essentially interpreted as “lack of knowledge”. This received view has - as we point out - some problems, in particular we will highlight how it does not allow to express a type of content-theoretic ignorance, i.e. an ignorance of φ that stems from an unfamiliarity with its meaning. Contrarily to this trend, in this paper, we introduce and investigate a modal logic having a primitive (...) epistemic operator I, modeling ignorance. Our modal logic is essentially constructed on the modal logics based on weak Kleene three-valued logic introduced by Segerberg (Theoria, 33(1):53–71, 1997). Such non-classical propositional basis allows to define a Kripke-style semantics with the following, very intuitive, interpretation: a formula φ is ignored by an agent if φ is neither true nor false in every world accessible to the agent. As a consequence of this choice, we obtain a type of content-theoretic notion of ignorance, which is essentially different from the traditional approach. We dub it severe ignorance. We axiomatize, prove completeness and decidability for the logic of reflexive (three-valued) Kripke frames, which we find the most suitable candidate for our novel proposal and, finally, compare our approach with the most traditional one. (shrink)

Contemporary studies in unconscious cognition are essentially founded on dissociation, i.e., on how it dissociates with respect to conscious mental processes and representations. This is claimed to be in so many and diverse ways that one is often lost in dissociation. In order to reduce this state of confusion we here carry out two major tasks: based on the central distinction between cognitive processes and representations, we identify and isolate the main dissociation paradigms; we then critically analyze their key tenets (...) and reported findings. (shrink)

Since Freud and his co-author Breuer spoke of dissociation in 1895, a scientific paradigm was painstakingly established in the field of unconscious cognition. This is the dissociation paradigm. However, recent critical analysis of the many and various reported dissociations reveals their blurred, or unveridical, character. Moreover, we remain ignorant with respect to the ways cognitive phenomena transition from consciousness to an unconscious mode. This hinders us from filling in the puzzle of the unified mind. We conclude that we have reached (...) a Kuhnian crisis in the field of unconscious cognition, and we predict that new models, incorporating partly the relevant findings of the dissociation paradigm—but also of dynamic psychology—, will soon be established. We further predict that some of these models will be largely based on the pairs representation–process and analog–digital. (shrink)

Este artículo trata sobre la postura práctica de Aquino ante dos grandes dificultades filosóficas actuales que se encuentran en la base del debate ético contemporáneo. Como son la Is-ought thesis de Hume y la síntesis radical de Moore, la Open question. La posible solución tomista se puede encontrar en la triple función del intelecto humano, teórico y práctico a la vez: a) Aprehender las nociones ontológicas e intelectas ens, verum y bonum; b) Formular los primeros principios teóricos y prácticos; c) (...) E imperar que se haga el bien ontológico e intelecto y se evite lo contrario. (shrink)

Le stanze del canto. La musica e l'indicibile ; Il linguaggio degli angeli ; Musica e utopia ; Musica e prassi analitica ; Un sogno musicale -- Variazioni sul tema. Musica, mistero e mondo femminile in E.T.A. Hoffmann ; Thomas Bernhard e l'estetica del narcisismo ; I tragitti di Orfeo -- Coda : Dialogo di Eusebio e Florestano -- Appendice : La principessa nascosta : psicoterapia e fare poetico.

This article concerns Aquinas’s practical doctrine on two philosophical difficulties underlying much contemporary ethical debate. One is Hume’s Is-ought thesis and the other is its radical consequence, Moore’s Open-question argument. These ethical paradoxes appear to have their roots in epistemological scepticism and in a deficient anthropology. Possible response to them can be found in that Aquinas’s human intellect (essentially theoretical and practical at the same time) naturally performs three main operations: 1º) To apprehend the intellecta and universal notions ens, verum (...) and bonum. 2º) To formulate the first theoretical and practical principles. 3º) To order that the intellectum and universal good be done and the opposite avoided. Thomistic philosophical response to both predicaments will not be exclusively ethical, but will harmonically embrace ontology, anthropology and epistemology. (shrink)

Temporal ontology is the philosophical debate on the existence of the past and the future. It features a three-way confrontation between supporters of presentism (the present exists, the past and the future do not), pastism (the past and the present exist, the future does not), and eternalism (the past, the present, and the future all exist). Most philosophers engaged in this debate believe that presentism is much more in agreement with common sense than the rival views; moreover, most of them (...) believe that being in agreement with common sense is epistemically valuable for a philosophical view. We studied experimentally non-experts’ ideas pertaining to the domain of temporal ontology, i.e., as we called it, common-sense temporal ontology, focusing on the Italian population. We found that a non-overwhelming majority of participants (~64%) favoured presentism, while two significant minorities favoured pastism (~19%) and eternalism (~17%). We think that our findings provide some support, albeit weaker than expected, for the view that presentism is more in agreement with common sense than the rival positions. (shrink)

O trabalho pretende, a partir da publicação das “Confissões da Carne”, analisar o impasse que diz respeito a sua não publicação em vida por Foucault, em especial em função da entrada do sujeito como terceiro componente do triângulo arqueológico-genealógico, impondo uma reviravolta decisiva em sua pesquisa. A força aletúrgica do sujeito implica uma definitiva dessoberanização do dispositivo de poder. Por um lado, se a forma moderna prevê a sua transferência de um poder sobre si próprio aos outros, o complexo de (...) estratégias governamentais, que «orientam» a direção da consciência, não implica a abdicação da liberdade por parte da pessoa a qual foi dirigida; por outro, uma segunda operação surge da diferenciação específica entre o modelo antigo e o modelo cristão, quer dizer, se o antigo modelo de direção funciona com vistas à autonomização do sujeito, aquele exame de consciência cristão estabelece como eixo a dependência e desenvolve uma racionalidade pastoral. Assim Foucault chega a uma estética da existência que é puro exercício de liberdade e perfeita atitude, que se oferece aos outros como prova do seu próprio valor. É com isso que o volume quarto da história da sexualidade é confrontado. O que muda drasticamente na experiência cristã da carne é a relação do sujeito com a verdade. A confissão, mais do que expiação dos pecados, neste quadro intervém como atestado e como testemunho de si próprio. Em conclusão, para Foucault, conotado pela imperfeição que o domina, o sujeito cristão liga-se a uma interminável direção de consciência cujo preço é uma perda de identidade indefinida. Assim, a partir deste recorte, o problema que passa a enfrentar é como encontrar uma forma de fundamentar a hermenêutica de si, não no sacrifício, mas numa “emergência positiva”, teórica e prática, de si, expondo tanto o momento transicional das “Confissões da Carne” quanto a própria razão pela qual renuncia à sua publicação. (shrink)

Este livro é o resultado de um estudo sobre a teoria da montagem cinematográfica.

The representational nature of human cognition and thought in general has been a source of controversies. This is particularly so in the context of studies of unconscious cognition, in which representations tend to be ontologically and structurally segregated with regard to their conscious status. However, it appears evolutionarily and developmentally unwarranted to posit such segregations, as,otherwise, artifact structures and ontologies must be concocted to explain them from the viewpoint of the human cognitive architecture. Here, from a by-and-large Classical cognitivist viewpoint, (...) I show why this segregation is wrong, and elaborate on the need to postulate an ontological and structural continuity between unconscious and conscious representations. Specifically, I hypothesize that this continuity is to be found in the symbolic-based interplay between the syntax and the semantics of thought, and I propose a model of human information processing characterized by the integration of syntactic and semantic representations. (shrink)

O presente estudo tem como tema o surveillance e a sociedade do controle biopolítico, sendo dada ênfase à conexão com o sistema penal e as tecnologias dispostas nas práticas de segurança. Tem-se como problema de pesquisa como e de que forma operam os “novos” mecanismos de surveillance em prol da segurança no modelo biopolítico do Estado penal? Conclui-se que o modelo de controle atual baseado em riscos e algoritmos emprega o surveillance em uma atuação securitária seletiva, adotando o discurso “científico/tecnológico” (...) como escusa para manutenção discriminatória de uma biopolítica da atuação penal voltada para morte de sujeitos e grupos sociais específicos. Por fim, a metodologia empregada compreende uma abordagem fenomenológico-hermenêutica, um método de procedimento monográfico e técnica de pesquisa por documentação indireta. (shrink)

The traditional model of human cognition (TMHC) postulates an ontological and/or structural gap between conscious and unconscious mental representations. By and large, it sees higher-level mental processes as commonly conceptual or symbolic in nature and therefore conscious, whereas unconscious, lower-level representations are conceived as non-conceptual or sub-symbolic. However, experimental evidence belies this model, suggesting that higher-level mental processes can be, and often are, carried out in a wholly unconscious way and/or without conceptual representations, and that these can be processed unconsciously. (...) This entails that the TMHC, as well as the theories on mental representation it motivates and that in turn support it, is wrong. (shrink)

This volume is the first systematic and thorough attempt to investigate the relation and the possible applications of mereology to contemporary science. It gathers contributions from leading scholars in the field and covers a wide range of scientific theories and practices such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, computer science and engineering. Throughout the volume, a variety of foundational issues are investigated both from the formal and the empirical point of view. The first section looks at the topic as it applies (...) to physics. The section addresses questions of persistence and composition within quantum and relativistic physics and concludes by scrutinizing the possibility to capture continuity of motion as described by our best physical theories within gunky space times. The second part tackles mathematics and shows how to provide a foundation for point-free geometry of space switching to fuzzy-logic. The relation between mereological sums and set-theoretic suprema is investigated and issues about different mereological perspectives such as classical and natural Mereology are thoroughly discussed. The third section in the volume looks at natural science. Several questions from biology, medicine and chemistry are investigated. From the perspective of biology, there is an attempt to provide axioms for inferring statements about part hood between two biological entities from statements about their spatial relation. From the perspective of chemistry, it is argued that classical mereological frameworks are not adequate to capture the practices of chemistry in that they consider neither temporal nor modal parameters. The final part introduces computer science and engineering. A new formal mereological framework in which an indeterminate relation of part hood is taken as a primitive notion is constructed and then applied to a wide variety of disciplines from robotics to knowledge engineering. A formal framework for discrete mereotopology and its applications is developed and finally, the importance of mereology for the relatively new science of domain engineering is also discussed. (shrink)

El artículo pretende discutir, a la luz del debate contemporáneo entremoralidad y eticidad, los modelos de comportamiento moral en el Perú. Lacrítica a la moralidad (moral moderna) se desarrolla contrastando los ideales y la práctica de los liberales independentistas del S. XIX. A pesar deexistir una mezcla de contenidos morales, las alternativas que se buscanposteriormente implican un retorno a la moral aristotélica y cristiana ( eticidad). Esto es lo que se observa en filósofos como Alejandro Deustua, en políticos como Víctor (...) Andrés Belaunde y José Carlos Mariátegui, y particularmente en la narrativa de José María Arguedas. (shrink)

Vol. 1 -- Los autores y sus circunstancias.

The Dead Past Growing Block theory of time—DPGB-theory—is the metaphysical view that the past and the present tenselessly exist, whereas the future does not, and that only the present hosts mentality, whereas the past lacks it and is, in this sense, dead. One main reason in favour of this view is that it is immune to the now-now objection or epistemic objection (which aims at undermining the certainty, within an A-theoretical universe, of being currently experiencing the objective present time). In (...) this paper, I examine the additional arguments offered by P. Forrest and G. A. Forbes to back the DPGB-theory and show that they do not work. I also examine a proposal to rescue the DPGB-theory suggested by an anonymous reviewer for this journal and argue that it does not work either. Moreover, in line with D. Braddon-Mitchell and against Forbes, I argue that the DPGB-theory is indeed committed to the existence of zombies in the past. Being ad hoc and burdened by a very odd and counterintuitive ontological commitment, the DPGB-theory turns out to be rather unpalatable. (shrink)

Given the evidence available today, we know that the later Middle Ages knew strong forms of idealism. However, Plato alone will not do to explain some of its features. Aristotle was the most important philosophical authority in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but until now no one dared explore in his thought the roots of this idealism because of the dogma of realism surrounding him. I challenge this dogma, showing that the Stagirite contained in his thought the roots of idealist (...) aspects that will be developed, namely by Dietrich of Freiberg and Eckhart of Hochheim, into a fully idealist epistemology. (shrink)

Este ensayo provee una visión general de la obra de la pintora mexicana María Izquierdo y ubica sus imágenes e ideas dentro de los debates sobre el rol del arte en la sociedad mexicana entre 1930 y 1950. En la primera década de su carrera ella estaba tangencialmente afiliada al grupo vanguardista literario conocido como los Contemporáneos, que abogaba por el arte puro. Después de 1939, cambió los temas y el estilo de su obra y enfatizó la mexicanidad, acercándose a (...) algunas de las ideas -aunque no a todas- propugnadas por los muralistas y otros artistas que compartieron su agenda. A través de su carrera, Izquierdo creó obras que abordaron cuestiones de género y promovieron una presencia positiva de las mujeres. Las representaciones de las protagonistas femeninas de Izquierdo contrastan con las de los muralistas, quienes generalmente las presentaron en papeles secundarios. (shrink)

Foundational ontologies, central constructs in ontological investigations and engineering alike, are based on ontological categories. Firstly proposed by Aristotle as the very ur- elements from which the whole of reality can be derived, they are not easy to identify, let alone partition and/or hierarchize; in particular, the question of their number poses serious challenges. The late medieval philosopher Dietrich of Freiberg wrote around 1286 a tutorial that can help us today with this exceedingly difficult task. In this paper, I discuss (...) ontological categories and their importance for foundational ontologies from both the contemporary perspective and the original Aristotelian viewpoint, I provide the translation from the Latin into English of Dietrich's De origine II with an introductory elaboration, and I extract a foundational ontology–that is in fact a single-category one–from this text rooted in Dietrich's specification of types of subjecthood and his conception of intentionality as causal operation. (shrink)

Ontologies are some of the most central constructs in today's large plethora of knowledge technologies, namely in the context of the semantic web. As their coinage indicates, they are direct heirs to the ontological investigations in the long Western philosophical tradition, but it is not easy to make bridges between them. Contemporary ontological commitments often take causality as a central aspect for the ur-segregation of entities, especially in scientific upper ontologies; theories of causality and philosophical ontological investigations often go hand-in-hand, (...) and were essentially inseparable in medieval thought. This constitutes the foundation for a bridge, and this article analyzes the causality-based ontology of the late medieval philosopher Dietrich of Freiberg from the viewpoint of today's upper-ontology engineering. In this bridging attempt, it offers a translation into English of the first part of Dietrich's De origine (abbreviated title) that is a compromise between traditional scholarly translations of medieval Latin philosophical texts and contemporary ontology. (shrink)

This article discusses the controversy between Schelling and Eschenmayer regarding the Freiheitsschrift of 1809. Eschenmayer, a follower of the ideas of Jacobi, accuses Schelling of degrading God in applying to Him human concepts. Schelling, on the contrary, thinks that the faith needs the understanding.

The van Wijngaarden grammars are two-level grammars that present many interesting properties. In the present article I elaborate on six of these properties, to wit, (i) their being constituted by two grammars, (ii) their ability to generate (possibly infinitely many) strict languages and their own metalanguage, (iii) their context-sensitivity, (iv) their high descriptive power, (v) their productivity, or the ability to generate an infinite number of production rules, and (vi) their equivalence with the unrestricted, or Type-0, Chomsky grammars.

The Dunning–Kruger effect focuses our attention on the notion of invisibility of ignorance, i.e., the ignorance of ignorance. Such a phenomenon is not only important for everyday life, but also, above all, for some philosophical disciplines, such as epistemology of sciences. When someone tries to understand formally the phenomenon of ignorance of ignorance, they usually end up with a nested epistemic operator highly resistant to proper regimentation. In this paper, we argue that to understand adequately the ignorance of ignorance phenomenon (...) we have to understand satisfactorily the concept of disbelief and, as we call it, the concept of “radical ignorance”. We propose also prerequisites that a notion of radical ignorance useful for the philosophy of science ought to fulfill, and we sketch a possible formalization of this notion. Finally, we propose some comments on the problem of propagation of ignorance proposed by Fine. (shrink)

La crisis de la fé.--Teoría de la expansión.--Nuestra América.--Dinámica numinal.--La inmortalidad.

O poeta francês Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) foi também tradutor, ensaísta e crítico de arte. Em relação à produção poética, é considerado o precursor do simbolismo, a partir da sua obra LesFleursdu mal, de 1857; na figura do ensaísta, elaborou o conceito de modernidade, referência para a criação artística, os Estudos Literários e a Filosofia. O presente trabalho explora a influência da linguagem poética no seu trabalho de ensaísta e crítico, e vice-versa, buscando compreender a noção das "Correspondências" exposta no poema (...) homônimo do livro de 1857. Analisaremos, com ênfase nos textos sobre a obra do pintor EugèneDelacroix (1798-1863), de que maneira as correspondências e transposições entre pintura, poesia e música já estavam presentes no olhar do jovem crítico de arte.Palavras-chave: Poesia. Pintura. Correspondências. Sinestesia. (shrink)

This article explains how Aquinas understood: a) apprehension of the first intellectual concepts: ens, verum et bonum simpliciter (Ens is understood metaphysically as composed of human nature and the act of being, ordered according to the bonum); b) establishment of the first and the second practical commandments in a genuinely human or rational person; c) ethics and natural law as essentially derived from ontology. Therefore, natural law only makes sense from a metaphysical point of view, not merely a physical or (...) material one. (shrink)

The definition of knowledge as justified true belief is the best we presently have. However, the canonical tripartite analysis of knowledge does not do justice to it due to a Platonic conception of a priori truth that puts the cart before the horse. Within a pragmatic approach, I argue that by doing away with a priori truth, namely by submitting truth to justification, and by accordingly altering the canonical analysis of knowledge, this is a fruitful definition. So fruitful indeed that (...) it renders the Gettier counterexamples vacuous, allowing positive work in epistemology and related disciplines. (shrink)

3rd ed, 2021. A circumscription of the classical theory of computation building up from the Chomsky hierarchy. With the usual topics in formal language and automata theory.

RESUMO A partir do exame da tradição heraclitiana e platônica sobre a transitoriedade e a imortalidade - conceitos compreendidos como universais - este artigo defende a seguinte antinomia como tese: para haver temporalidade é preciso haver eternidade. Essa tese é demonstrada por meio do estudo e atualização das noções de alma, espírito, ideia e memória, as quais estão conectadas invariavelmente ao tempo passado como princípio ontológico do fenômeno histórico. Para além do ponto de vista filosófico, portanto, da perspectiva específica do (...) conhecimento histórico, este estudo expõe algumas implicações teóricas acerca das condições de possibilidade da história, que são discutidas, finalmente, em diálogo com Friedrich Nietzsche e Jacob Burckhardt. ABSTRACT From the analysis of the Heraclitian and Platonic tradition on transience and immortality - understood as universal concepts - this essay defends the following antinomy as its thesis: if there is temporality there must be eternity. This thesis is demonstrated through the study and updating of the notions of soul, spirit, idea and memory, which are invariably connected to the past as the ontological principle of the historical phenomenon. Beyond the philosophical point of view, therefore, from the specific perspective of historical knowledge, this study exposes some theoretical implications about the conditions of possibility of history, which are finally discussed in dialogue with Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacob Burckhardt. (shrink)