In recent times, phenomena of conversational asymmetry have become a lively object of study for linguists, philosophers of language and moral philosophers—under various labels: illocutionary disablement and silencing, discursive injustice :440–457, 2014; Lance and Kukla in Ethics 123:456–478, 2013), illocutionary distortion. The common idea is that members of underprivileged groups sometimes have trouble performing particular speech acts that they are entitled to perform: in certain contexts, their performative potential is somehow undermined, and their capacity to do things with words is (...) distorted or even annulled. In this paper I will assess this idea, focusing on Rebecca Kukla’s and Rae Langton’s accounts; in particular, I will criticize the role the notion of uptake plays in their accounts, and claim that it may ultimately undermine the very idea of discursive injustice. While, according to Kukla and Langton, members of disadvantaged groups are victims of a kind of uptake failure, leading to illocutionary disablement and even silencing, in the account I present they are victims of a kind of communicative disablement. My overall aim is to develop a notion of discursive injustice that is more plausible and more effective for our broader purposes of criticising the structures of power and oppression. (shrink)

Sex and dementia is becoming an increasingly important topic in applied ethics. By the year 2030, more than 74.7 million people are expected to be diagnosed with dementia worldwide; many of these people may want to engage in sex. The question of how to manage cases of sex and dementia is occurring more frequently in practical cases because of our aging population. The primary reason that sex and dementia is ethically complex is because sexual consent is both legally and morally (...) significant, yet many people with dementia may be unable to consent in accordance with current standards. In this dissertation, I introduce three frameworks that could be used to approach cases of sex and dementia. The first framework is that of relational autonomy and supported decision-making; this framework tries to enable people with dementia to make autonomous sexual decisions with support. The next approach is a framework of advance sexual consent, which considers the relevance of prior autonomous sexual decisions. The third framework focuses on prioritizing well-being above a person’s capacity to make autonomous decisions and to consent to sex. I assess each framework and consider their positive and negative nuances. The overall goal is to balance the right to sexuality while at the same time protecting people with dementia from undue harm. Ultimately, this dissertation shows that cases of sex and dementia ought to be managed on a case-by-case basis; one framework will not work for every context. In order to approach situations on a case-by-case basis, I contend that a process of weighing and balancing norms and principles is necessary. I use Beauchamp and Childress’s method of weighing and balancing to propose a systematic procedure. This process takes various factors into account in order to determine how to proceed in an ethically defensible manner. According to an approach of weighing and balancing, sexual acts would not be immediately barred based on a person’s inability to consent; rather, a person’s present convictions, the sexual activity to which they want to participate, the possibility of experiencing undue harm, their prior wishes and values, their capacity to make autonomous decisions with support, etc. would all be considered. Overall, this dissertation contributes to the complex topic of sex and dementia and offers a starting point for further discussion on how to approach these cases in practice. (shrink)

In the second lecture of "Naming and Necessity," Saul Kripke presented a new and quite convincing picture of the reference of proper names. At the same time, however, he expressed some skepticism towards the possibility of developing it into a full-blown theory by offering “more exact conditions for reference to take place.” In this paper, after discussing the reasons for his skepticism, I hint at how I think Kripke’s picture could be developed and offer an outline of a theory of (...) reference based on it. One of the key notions my ‘theory’ makes use of is that of repetition, which I take from Kaplan’s “Words.”. (shrink)

In The Explanatory Dispensability of Idealizations, Sam Baron suggests a possible strategy enabling the indispensability argument to break the symmetry between mathematical claims and idealization assumptions in scientific models. Baron’s distinction between mathematical and non-mathematical idealization, I claim, is in need of a more compelling criterion, because in scientific models idealization assumptions are expressed through mathematical claims. In this paper I argue that this mutual dependence of idealization and mathematics cannot be read in terms of symmetry and that Baron’s non-causal (...) notion of mathematical difference-making is not effective in justifying any symmetry-breaking between mathematics and idealization. The function of making a difference that Baron attributes to mathematics cannot be referred to physical facts, but to the features of quantities, such as step lengths or time intervals taken into account in the models. It appears, indeed, that it does not follow from Baron’s argument that idealizations do not help to carry the explanatory load at least for two reasons: mathematics is not independent of idealizations in modelling and idealizations help mathematics to carry the explanatory load of a model in different degrees. (shrink)

By exploring the nature of scientific representative practices, I shall define a methodology that relates the use of symmetry to specific practical functions. In order to expound this approach, I shall investigate the role played by the conception of symmetry in representative practices from a philosophical and epistemological perspective. The paper proceeds as follows. In the first part, I introduce the reasons why our conception of representative practices should consider the aims and the objectives towards which they direct their interest. (...) Secondly, by using symmetry as a case study, I try to show that philosophy can find fruitful pathways of interaction with sciences, as it is the case when it deals with the practical implications of the employment of symmetry in modeling. In the third section of the paper I shall refer to other examples that highlight the use of symmetry in scientific representative practices. I shall conclude with some remarks on the implications that this approach involves in epistemology, especially on our conception of objectivity and symmetry. (shrink)

Questo primo volume degli "Scritti di Ugo Bianchi" - "Religions in Antiquity" - raccoglie contributi relativi a temi e problemi del cristianesimo antico. Con esso si realizza un progetto, formulato in anni lontani (1983) dallo stesso autore, che contemplava varie sezioni di cui l'ultima - "Christiana" comprendeva i saggi che costituiscono la prima metà del volume; a questi ne sono stati aggiunti altri, sulle medesime tematiche, che risalgono ad anni successivi. Precede i saggi un contributo di carattere metodologico ("Tipologia (...) storica delle religioni e comparazione: il caso del dualismo"). "Ugo Bianchi, nel suo lungo itinerario scientifico che abbraccia alcune delle più significative aree del vasto panorama delle esperienze religiose della storia umana, non ha mai proposto una "teoria" interpretativa generale e onnicomprensiva di esse, quale molto spesso - con esiti e fortune diversi hanno fatto tanti storici delle religioni. Egli, al contrario, ha mostrato riserbo o vera e propria diffidenza nei confronti di tali "teorie" che il progresso della ricerca e la riflessione critica hanno sempre in varia misura smentito o ridimensionato. Di fatto, lo studioso ha costantemente riconosciuto la debolezza intrinseca di tali tentativi alla luce delle mobili e differenziate realtà che la storia ci consegna e che solo a prezzo di un'analisi comparativa condotta con duttilità e rigore..." (dall'Introduzione Giulia Sfameni Gasparro). (shrink)

After briefly introducing the topic of reference, which has a long tradition but did not become a major issue until the last century, when language started to occupy center-stage in philosophy, and after mentioning some of the open problems that the semantic revolution promoted by Saul Kripke and others in the late 1960s and early 1970s left us, which are dealt with in the volume, I offer a preview of the papers collected in the latter, explaining how the volume is (...) organized and how the papers relate to one another. (shrink)

a relação entre razão e natureza envolve um dos principais aspectos da crítica da teleologia de Kant. Visando destacar esta relação, investigarei o conceito de técnica da natureza, tal como introduzida na Crítica da faculdade de julgar. De acordo com Kant, a técnica da natureza permite as leis da razão a representarem o acordo dos princípios transcendentais da razão com a natureza. Deste modo, o conceito da técnica da natureza assume um papel prolífico ao expor, através de uma analogia com (...) as faculdades humanas, a atividade produtiva da natureza, como se sua atividade fosse orientada a fins.The relationship between reason and nature embodies one of the main aspects of Kant‟s critique of teleology. In order to highlight this relation, I shall investigate the concept of the technique of nature, as it has been introduced in Critique of the Power of Judgment. According to Kant, the technique of nature allows the laws of reason to represent the agreement of the transcendental principles of reason with nature. Thus, the concept of the technique of nature assumes a fruitful role by exposing, through an analogy with human faculties, the productive activity of nature, as if its activity were oriented towards ends. (shrink)

This paper considers whether transgender women should be permitted to compete in female categories in sports. Trans* women are often criticized for competing in female categories because they are seen as having an unfair advantage. Specifically, they are seen as having high levels of testosterone that unfairly enhance their performance in comparison to cisgender competitors. In this paper, I argue that trans* women should be permitted to compete in female categories. I suggest that if we want to maintain the skill (...) thesis as a guiding principle of sports and allow trans* women to compete in female categories, then we need to take relevant genetic advantages into consideration by introducing a handicap system. I claim that a handicap system should consider both cisgender and transgender women’s effective testosterone levels. (shrink)

This contribution sheds light on the role of infinite idealization in structural analysis, by exploring how infinite elements and finite element methods are combined in civil engineering models. This combination, I claim, should be read in terms of a ‘complementarity function’ through which the representational ideal of completeness is reached in engineering model-building. Taking a cue from Weisberg’s definition of multiple-model idealization, I highlight how infinite idealizations are primarily meant to contribute to the prediction of structural behavior in Multiphysics approaches.

How can we explain the strange behavior of quantum and relativistic entities? Why do they behave in ways that defy our intuition about how physical entities should behave, considering our ordinary experience of the world around us? In this article, we address these questions by showing that the comportment of quantum and relativistic entities is not that strange after all, if we only consider what their nature might possibly be: not an objectual one, but a conceptual one. This not in (...) the sense that quantum and relativistic entities would be human concepts, but in the sense that they would share with the latter a same conceptual nature, similarly to how electromagnetic and sound waves, although very different entities, can share a same undulatory nature. When this hypothesis is adopted, i.e., when a conceptuality interpretation about the deep nature of physical entities is taken seriously, many of the interpretational difficulties disappear and our physical world is back making sense, though our view of it becomes radically different from what our classical prejudice made us believe in the first place. (shrink)

The question of whether transgender athletes should be permitted to compete in accordance with their gender identity is an evolving debate. Most competitive sports have male and female categories. One of the primary challenges with this categorization system, however, is that some transgender athletes (and especially transgender women) may be prevented from competing in accordance with their gender identity. The reason for this restriction is because of the idea that transgender women have an unfair advantage over their cisgender counterparts; this (...) is seen as a problem since sports are typically guided a principle called ‘the skill thesis’, which suggests that sports are supposed to determine who is most skillful by maintaining a fair starting point. In this paper, I argue that if the skill thesis ought to be maintained and there continues to exist no conclusive evidence in support of unfair advantages possessed by trans women, then we may want to re-consider the gender binary in sport. Rather than having male/female categories, it may make more sense to categorize athletes based other sport-specific factors (e.g., height, weight, etc.). This may help to maintain the skill thesis while at the same time removing potentially unfair and discriminatory barriers against transgender athletes. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to outline what I take to be Naming and Necessity’s fundamental legacy to my generation and those that follow, and the new perspectives it has opened up for twenty-first century philosophy. The discussion is subdivided into three sections, concerning respectively philosophy of language, metaphysics, and metaphilosophy. The general unifying theme is that Naming and Necessity is helping philosophy to recover a Golden Age, by freeing it from the strictures coming from the empiricist and Kantian traditions (...) and reconnecting it to the world and the objects that populate it. Because of this, in the concluding paragraph I tentatively suggest that Kripke’s philosophy may be seen as a sui generis form of naturalism. (shrink)

Determining whether and/or how to enable older persons with disabilities to engage in sex raises several ethical considerations. With the goal of enabling the sexual functioning of older adults with disabilities, Jecker argues that sex robots could be used as a helpful tool. In her article, ‘Nothing to be Ashamed of: Sex Robots for Older Adults with Disabilities’, Jecker acknowledges the importance of sexual functioning and the fact that ageist assumptions incorrectly classify older persons as asexual. Additionally, older adults may (...) experience disabilities that negatively influence their sexual functioning, which is problematic since sex may be linked to the following capabilities: developing a meaningful life narrative; being healthy; experiencing bodily integrity; feeling and communicating emotions; affiliating with others and reflecting on and choosing a life plan.1 In accordance with Nussbaum’s capabilities approach,2 Jecker says that society has a duty to support these capabilities at a minimal threshold. And insofar as sexual functioning may be relevant to the capabilities for older adults with disabilities, then we need to respond accordingly. One way of achieving this aim is by providing access to sex robots. I agree that sex robots ought to be made available for older adults with disabilities. Nevertheless, the article inspires several areas for further exploration. As Jecker rightfully mentions, older adults are often incorrectly labelled as non-sexual. For instance, in their analysis of older individuals’ views on sex and quality of life, Gott …. (shrink)

In the last twenty years, recorded messages and written notes have become a significant test and an intriguing puzzle for the semantics of indexical expressions (see Smith 1989, Predelli 1996, 1998a,1998b, 2002, Corazza et al. 2002, Romdenh-Romluc 2002). In particular, the intention-based approach proposed by Stefano Predelli has proven to bear interesting relations to several major questions in philosophy of language. In a recent paper (Saul 2006), Jennifer Saul draws on the literature on indexicals and recorded messages in order to (...) criticize Rae Langton's claim that works of pornography can be understood as illocutionary acts – in particular acts of subordinating women or acts of silencing women. Saul argues that it does not make sense to understand works of pornography as speech acts, because only utterances in contexts can be speech acts. More precisely, works of pornography such as a film may be seen as recordings that can be used in many different contexts – exactly like a written note or an answering machine message. According to Saul, bringing contexts into the picture undermines Langton's radical thesis – which must be reformulated in much weaker terms. In this paper, I accept Saul's claim that only utterances in contexts can be speech acts, and that therefore only works of pornography in contexts may be seen as illocutionary acts of silencing women. I will, nonetheless, show that Saul's reformulation doesn't undermine Langton's thesis. To this aim, I will use the distinction Predelli proposes in order to account for the semantic behaviour of indexical expressions in recorded messages – namely the distinction between context of utterance and context of interpretation. (shrink)

In “Is semantics possible?” Putnam connected two themes: the very possibility of semantics (as opposed to formal model theory) for natural languages and the proper semantic treatment of common nouns. Putnam observed that abstract semantic accounts are modeled on formal languages model theory: the substantial contribution is rules for logical connectives (given outside the models), whereas the lexicon (individual constants and predicates) is treated merely schematically by the models. This schematic treatment may be all that is needed for an account (...) of validity in a formal setting, but it does not help to understand how proper and common nouns function in reality (not in models). Putnam then initiated the empirical study of such nouns to indicate, (i), that the popular Frege-Carnap account of them as (“disguised” compound) predicates is empirically incorrect, and, (ii), that they offer a new paradigm for a naturalistic semantics of natural languages. We take Putnam’s program a couple of steps further. First, we investigate the semantics of common nouns and argue that they refer (to kinds), rather than apply by satisfaction/truth to a designation/denotation. Second, we point to general results about semantics as a theory whose fulcrum is the reference relation rather than satisfaction in models and validity across them. (shrink)

Since Saul Kripke’s and Hilary Putnam’s groundbreaking work in the Seventies, the idea has emerged that natural kind terms are semantically special among common nouns. Stephen P. Schwartz, for example, has argued that an artifactual kind term like “pencil” functions very differently from a natural kind term like “tiger.” This, however, blatantly violates a principle that I call Semantic Uniformity. In this paper, I defend the principle. In particular, I outline a picture of how natural kind terms function based on (...) Kripke’s and Putnam’s considerations, and I use it to rebut Schwartz’s arguments, showing that if it works for natural kind terms, it can work for artifactual kind terms too, or at least that Schwartz did not provide good enough reasons to the contrary. (shrink)

The main assumption of this presentation is that networking can be conceived in terms of an effect of apparatuses. It is characterized by hierarchical observations, normalizing judgements, examinations. From this point of view, networking is not an inter-disciplinary system or – even – a-disciplinary, but it is in fact a discipline. Then, given that one of the main aspects of networking is that we are completely merged with it, it is quite difficult to consider it as a discipline with a (...) critical eye; and we can perceive its consequences mainly within the educational system. The aim of this presentation is, first, to describe networking as a contemporary practice, coextensive with a specific disciplinary system. In this case, I would like to demonstrate how networking (specifically its most massive and less ingenuous branch, social networking) is one of the most powerful apparatus for contemporary subjectivation processes. Following Deleuze, it will be pointed out how networking is based on a peculiar regime of signs that reduces drastically the processes of subjectivation it determines, to the scarce possibilities offered by the apparatus. Second, some exit strategies from the (social) networking apparatus are suggested, built on three keywords: anomie, anonymity and untimeliness. They are based on the assumption that – against a continual push towards the presence or the telepresence – the absence can be a concrete contemporary kind of process of subjectivation. (shrink)

Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) legislation changed in 2021; persons without a reasonably foreseeable natural death (RFND) could now be eligible for MAID and would have to wait at least 90 days before their intervention. This legislative change caused a new ethically complex question to arise, which we explore in this commentary, namely: Where should individuals without a RFND wait (for 90 days) in a publicly funded health system?

Everyone knows what David Lewis' possible worlds are, what role they play in his account of possibility and necessity, and Saul Kripke's criticisms. But what, instead, are Kripke's possible worlds, and what role do they play in his account of possibility and necessity? The answers are not so obvious. Recently, it has even been claimed that, contrary to what is standardly assumed, Kripke's approach to modality has not always been consistently metaphysical. In particular, an interpretation of the famous passage in (...) the preface to Naming and Necessity with Kripke's discussion of the dice example has been put forward, according to which he purports there to clarify the modal notions in terms of that of possible world, model-theoretically construed, in a way which is reminiscent of Carnap's. In this paper, I shall point out some internal difficulties of this interpretation, and offer a different one, according to which in the dice passage Kripke is trying, consistently with his metaphysical approach, to legitimize the technically useful notion of possible world starting from modal notions, to be accounted for in another way (arguably, in an essentialistic framework). My final goal, however, will be philosophical elucidation rather than mere exegesis. Indeed, I am interested in shedding some light on what possible worlds might possibly be, if something like Kripke's metaphysical approach is on the right track. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to evaluate which context determines the illocutionary force of written or recorded utterances—those involved in written texts, films and images, conceived as recordings that can be seen or heard in different occasions. More precisely, my paper deals with the “metaphysical” or constitutive role of context—as opposed to its epistemic or evidential role: my goal is to determine which context is semantically relevant in order to fix the illocutionary force of a speech act, as distinct (...) from the information the addressee uses to ascertain the semantically relevant context. In particular I will try to assess two different perspectives on this problem, a Conventionalist Perspective and an Intentionalist Perspective. Drawing on the literature on indexicals in written texts and recorded messages, I will argue in favor of the Intentionalist Perspective: the relevant context is the one intended by the speaker. Bringing intentions into the picture, however, requires qualification; in particular, I will distinguish my Weak Intentionalist proposal from a Strong Intentionalist one. I will show that the Weak Intentionalist Perspective is flexible enough to deal with cases of delayed communication, but not so unrestricted as to yield counter-intuitive consequences. (shrink)

This article seek to highlight the aspects — explicit or implicit — that indicate the close attention paid by much American musicology of this century to the phenomenological level of musical events or, more generally, of the sound event. Starting from general considerations on American music and some of its protagonists, the article focuses on Elliott Carter, on his poetics, and on his theories expressed in his writings.Carter's compositional choices and his consciousness of the intrinsic complexity they assume theoretically provide (...) a starting point for a phenomenological study of many aspects of compositional experience: from consideration of instrumental language with its structural phenomenological (and historical) implications, to more global evaluation of the centrality of temporal and rhythmic subjects. (shrink)

In my paper, I present two competing perspectives on the foundational problem (as opposed to the descriptive problem) of quantifier domain restriction: the objective perspective on context (OPC) and the intentional perspective on context (IPC). According to OPC, the relevant domain for a quantified sentence is determined by objective facts of the context of utterance. In contrast, according to IPC, we must consider certain features of the speaker’s intention in order to determine the proposition expressed. My goal is to offer (...) a plausible and fair reconstruction of IPC. Drawing a parallel between quantifier domain restriction and standard cases of context dependence as indexicality, I argue that the speaker’s intentions can play a semantic role only if they satisfy an Availability Constraint: an intention must be made available or communicated to the addressee, and for that purpose the speaker can exploit any feature of the objective context (words, gestures, relevance or uniqueness of either the quantificational domain or of the referent in the context of utterance). An intention satisfying the Availability Constraint must be something that a hearer in normal circumstances is able to work out by relying on the physical surroundings of the utterance situation, on utterances exchanged during the previous conversation, and on background knowledge shared by speaker and addressee. (shrink)

Is a naturalistic account of reference possible? Here is a simple argument to the effect that it is not: Let R be the relation that allegedly naturalizes reference, and consider the predicate "being an object that does not stand in the relation R to this expression". Call this predicate "P". On the face of it, P is a counterexample to the alleged naturalization, since it appears to refer to all and only those objects that do not stand in the relation (...) R to it. Actually, an argument like this was advanced more than twenty years ago by the late Paolo Casalegno. Although for various reasons it has not been given due attention by the philosophical community, the argument is interesting in its structure and remarkable in its conclusion. In this paper I shall reconstruct it in detail and discuss it. Then, I shall show that the argument fails, since, contrary to what Casalegno claimed, under certain conditions P is paradoxical, hence not a referring expression. My rejection builds on the fundamental distinction between simple and compound expressions, namely on the compositional structure of natural languages. If I am right, whether any attempt at naturalizing reference that takes care of this distinction will succeed remains an open empirical question. (shrink)

In the field of many-valued logics, Hájek’s Basic Logic BL was introduced in Hájek (Metamathematics of fuzzy logic, trends in logic. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Berlin, 1998). In this paper we will study four families of n-contractive (i.e. that satisfy the axiom \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\phi^n\rightarrow\phi^{n+1}}$$\end{document}, for some \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${n\in\mathbb{N}^+}$$\end{document}) axiomatic extensions of BL and their corresponding varieties: BLn, SBLn, BLn and SBLn. Concerning BLn we have that (...) every BLn-chain is isomorphic to an ordinal sum of MV-chains of at most n + 1 elements, whilst every BLn-chain is isomorphic to an ordinal sum of MVn-chains (for SBLn and SBLn a similar property holds, with the difference that the first component must be the two elements boolean algebra); all these varieties are locally finite. Moving to the content of the paper, after a preliminary section, we will study generic and k-generic algebras, completeness and computational complexity results, amalgamation and interpolation properties. Finally, we will analyze the first-order versions of these logics, from the point of view of completeness and arithmetical complexity. (shrink)

In The Explanatory Dispensability of Idealizations, Sam Baron suggests a possible strategy enabling the indispensability argument to break the symmetry between mathematical claims and idealization assumptions in scientific models. Baron’s distinction between mathematical and non-mathematical idealization, I claim, is in need of a more compelling criterion, because in scientific models idealization assumptions are expressed through mathematical claims. In this paper I argue that this mutual dependence of idealization and mathematics cannot be read in terms of symmetry and that Baron’s non-causal (...) notion of mathematical difference-making is not effective in justifying any symmetry-breaking between mathematics and idealization. The function of making a difference that Baron attributes to mathematics cannot be referred to physical facts, but to the features of quantities, such as step lengths or time intervals taken into account in the models. It appears, indeed, that it does not follow from Baron’s argument that idealizations do not help to carry the explanatory load at least for two reasons: mathematics is not independent of idealizations in modelling and idealizations help mathematics to carry the explanatory load of a model in different degrees. (shrink)

Respect for autonomy grounds common ethical judgments about why people should be allowed to make decisions for themselves. Under this assumption, it is concerning that a number of feminist conceptions of autonomy present challenges for people with intellectual disabilities. This paper explores some of the most philosophically influential feminist accounts of autonomy and demonstrates how these accounts exclude persons with intellectual disabilities. As a possible solution to these accounts, Laura Davy’s inclusive design approach is presented, which is a revised conception (...) of autonomy that accommodates intellectual disabilities. While Davy’s approach to autonomy views people with intellectual disabilities as autonomous, it encounters limitations in regard to sexual autonomy, which incorporates certain judgments that are intuitively at odds with her recommendations. The remainder of this paper describes some complexities of sexual autonomy and determines why these are problematic for Davy’s account. After analyzing some of the challenges that sexual autonomy presents, I suggest a potential modification for consideration. This modification will allow Davy’s account to address the topic of sexual autonomy for persons with intellectual disabilities. My proposal is a matter of theory following practice. (shrink)

This contribution sheds light on the role of infinite idealization in structural analysis, by exploring how infinite elements and finite element methods are combined in civil engineering models. This combination, I claim, should be read in terms of a ‘complementarity function’ through which the representational ideal of completeness is reached in engineering model-building. Taking a cue from Weisberg’s definition of multiple-model idealization, I highlight how infinite idealizations are primarily meant to contribute to the prediction of structural behavior in Multiphysics approaches.

Reflections are interesting perceptual phenomena, which have inspired both scientific research in the psychology of perception and research in the visual arts. The paper discusses one of the most peculiar aspect of mirror images, i.e. the fact that they are characterized by identity and opposition at the same time. The discussion encompasses not only the experimental literature, but it also relies on considerations from a series of artworks – which are based on the manipulation of the structure of mirror images. (...) Both art and science can make us aware of some of the processes involved in seeing. (shrink)

Drawing on Austin’s speech act theory, many influential scholars view hate speech in terms of speech acts, namely acts of subordination (MacKinnon 1987; Langton 1993, 2012, 2014; Hornsby and Langton 1998; McGowan 2003, 2004; Kukla and Lance 2009; Langton, Haslanger and Anderson 2012; Maitra 2012; Kukla 2014). Austin’s distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts offers a way to set apart speech that constitutes subordination, and speech that merely causes subordination. The aim of my paper is to address the main objection (...) to accounts of hate speech in terms of illocutionary speech acts, that is the Authority Problem. In particular I will claim that what is missing from previous proposals is attention to the broader social context in which ordinary instances of hate speech are embedded, and in particular, attention to the social status of both the speaker and the audience. While the social position of the speaker has been examined by several approaches, the social position of the audience has too often been neglected. I will show that not only must the speaker have a certain kind of standing or social position in order to perform speech acts of subordination, but also the audience must have a certain kind of standing or social position in order to either license or object to the speaker’s authority, and her acts of subordination. (shrink)

_Abstract_: This paper aims to propose a relational approach to the study of cognition that can offer a perspective on the cognitive behaviours of plants – sessile organisms without a nervous system – when considered in the reciprocal interrogation of philosophy and the cognitive and ecological sciences. When leveraging the inspiring, clarifying, and occasionally heuristic potential of different epistemic tools, plant cognition can be understood as the result of processes constantly shaped by multiple co-constructive relationships between organisms and their ecological (...) niches. Organisms and niches are conceivable as dense multi-functional systems of resources and information interchange. The concepts of network and ramification are fruitful keys to frame forms of dynamic relationships between elements. In their alternatively iconical, metaphorical, and conceptual-modelling potentialities, networks and ramifications have been used to identify different types of relationships and transmitted information. The explanatory and heuristic scope of these two concepts needs to be further investigated when linked to cognitive aspects, especially with regard the concept of ramification. Looking at the plant world, whilst much has been written about networks, relatively little has been said explicitly about ramifications (branching capacity, branching characteristics and habits) and their relationship with aspects related to plant behaviour and cognition. _Keywords_: Plant Cognition; Ramifications; Networks; Ecology; Cognitive Science _Reti e ramificazioni: prospettive relazionali nello studio della cognizione vegetale _ _Riassunto_: Questo lavoro intende proporre un approccio relazionale allo studio della cognizione che possa offrire una prospettiva sui comportamenti cognitivi delle piante – organismi sessili privi di sistema nervoso – considerati dalla prospettiva filosofica e delle scienze cognitive ed ecologiche. Dato il potenziale ispiratore, chiarificatore e a volte euristico dei diversi strumenti epistemici, la cognizione delle piante può essere vista come risultato di processi costantemente plasmati da molteplici relazioni co-costruttive tra gli organismi e le loro nicchie ecologiche. Organismi e nicchie sono infatti concepibili come un denso sistema multi-funzionale di scambio di risorse e informazioni. I concetti di rete e ramificazione sono utili chiavi di lettura per inquadrare forme di relazione dinamica tra elementi. Nelle loro potenzialità iconiche, metaforiche e concettuali, le reti e le ramificazioni sono state usate per identificare diversi tipi di relazioni e informazioni trasmesse. Lo scopo esplicativo ed euristico di questi due concetti necessita di essere ulteriormente indagato, quando legato agli aspetti cognitivi, specialmente per quanto riguarda il concetto di ramificazione. Guardando il mondo vegetale, mentre molto è stato scritto sulle reti relativamente poco si è detto esplicitamente sulle ramificazioni (capacità di ramificazione, caratteristiche e abitudini di ramificazione) e sulle loro relazioni con aspetti legati al comportamento e alla cognizione. _Parole chiave_: Cognizione vegetale; Ramificazioni; Reti; Ecologia; Scienza cognitiva. (shrink)

In this article, I investigate a hypothesis concerning the supposed influence of Spinoza on Marx’s works. Setting out from a comment made by Althusser – ‘[Spinoza] is the only direct ancestor of Marx’ – I try to demonstrate that even though the relationship between Spinoza and Marx has limited support at a historiographical level, a determined set of ideas of Spinoza can be connected to some of Marx’s political objectives in the period prior to 1845. This argument is supported through (...) Marx’s notebooks devoted to studying Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, written in 1841, and his refutation of Spinoza in The Holy Family. However, contrary to what could be expected, when Marx abandoned his most pronounced idealistic phase, within which Spinoza played a certain role, he rebelled against Spinozism at the same time. Nonetheless, it is one thing to repudiate Spinoza’s name, and a very different thing to repudiate Spinoza’s ideas. (shrink)

We present the fundamentals of the quantum theoretical approach we have developed in the last decade to model cognitive phenomena that resisted modeling by means of classical logical and probabilistic structures, like Boolean, Kolmogorovian and, more generally, set theoretical structures. We firstly sketch the operational-realistic foundations of conceptual entities, i.e. concepts, conceptual combinations, propositions, decision-making entities, etc. Then, we briefly illustrate the application of the quantum formalism in Hilbert space to represent combinations of natural concepts, discussing its success in modeling (...) a wide range of empirical data on concepts and their conjunction, disjunction and negation. Next, we naturally extend the quantum theoretical approach to model some long-standing ‘fallacies of human reasoning’, namely, the ‘conjunction fallacy’ and the ‘disjunction effect’. Finally, we put forward an explanatory hypothesis according to which human reasoning is a defined superposition of ‘emergent reasoning’ and ‘logical reasoning’, where the former generally prevails over the latter. The quantum theoretical approach explains human fallacies as the consequence of genuine quantum structures in human reasoning, i.e. ‘contextuality’, ‘emergence’, ‘entanglement’, ‘interference’ and ‘superposition’. As such, it is alternative to the Kahneman–Tversky research programme, which instead aims to explain human fallacies in terms of ‘individual heuristics and biases’. (shrink)

We present the fundamentals of the quantum theoretical approach we have developed in the last decade to model cognitive phenomena that resisted modeling by means of classical logical and probabilistic structures, like Boolean, Kolmogorovian and, more generally, set theoretical structures. We firstly sketch the operational-realistic foundations of conceptual entities, i.e. concepts, conceptual combinations, propositions, decision-making entities, etc. Then, we briefly illustrate the application of the quantum formalism in Hilbert space to represent combinations of natural concepts, discussing its success in modeling (...) a wide range of empirical data on concepts and their conjunction, disjunction and negation. Next, we naturally extend the quantum theoretical approach to model some long-standing ‘fallacies of human reasoning’, namely, the ‘conjunction fallacy’ and the ‘disjunction effect’. Finally, we put forward an explanatory hypothesis according to which human reasoning is a defined superposition of ‘emergent reasoning’ and ‘logical reasoning’, where the former generally prevails over the latter. The quantum theoretical approach explains human fallacies as the consequence of genuine quantum structures in human reasoning, i.e. ‘contextuality’, ‘emergence’, ‘entanglement’, ‘interference’ and ‘superposition’. As such, it is alternative to the Kahneman–Tversky research programme, which instead aims to explain human fallacies in terms of ‘individual heuristics and biases’. (shrink)

This article discusses the relationship between archery and aesthetics, developing two central claims. First, in order to deliver successful results, the archer should attend not only to efficiency, technique and equipment tuning but also to the aesthetic experience; second, archery shooting methods embody and express ‘life-issue’ statements and desires concerning our relationship with the world. Depending on the archer’s shooting style, i.e., depending on the way in which a shot is executed and performed, the archer’s ‘sportive philosophy’ is, so to (...) speak, unfolded and made apparent. Specifically, I will argue that instinctive archery strives for flexibility and versatility toward the environment and with respect to one’s own body, whereas non-instinctive approaches sharpen effectuality and results by flattening the surroundings and limiting one’s own performative freedom. Exploring this idea, I will discuss the aesthetic underpinnings of archery, also showing in which ways different shooting methods lay the ground for irreducible aesthetic experiences of self-expression. (shrink)

The debate about the determination of the illocutionary force of a speech act revolves around the notion of uptake and the role played by the audience: many scholars consider the hearer’s recognition of the force of the locution a necessary condition for the performance of an illocution. A variety of theories has been put forward. According to Langton (Philosophy and Public Affairs 22: 293–330, 1993), the hearer’s uptake determines whether a successful act has been performed. According to Kukla (Hypatia 29(2): (...) 440–457, 2014), the hearer’s uptake constitutes the nature of the act performed. According to McDonald (The Philosophical Quarterly 72(4), 918–939, 2022), the illocutionary force of a speech act is the result of a process of negotiation between hearer and speaker. Drawing on the theoretical tools provided by Marina Sbisà’s work, I will show how the theories giving the audience a central role in fixing the illocutionary force of a speech act fall short. The topic proves relevant not only for theoretical reasons, but also for social and political ones. In particular, it has a bearing on debates about pragmatic phenomena of illocutionary distortion such as discursive injustice and silencing, where marginalized speakers have trouble performing particular speech acts they are entitled to perform. (shrink)

Summary My paper aims to clarify the subsequent steps of Rome’s encroachment on Etruria in the aftermath of the Pyrrhic War. As is well known, the Latin colony of Cosa was founded in 273 BC on the Tyrrhenian coast to the north of Vulci; moreover, in the years 264–245 BC, four citizen colonies were founded on the Caeretan coast, namely Castrum Novum, Pyrgi, Alsium and Fregenae. Unfortunately, it is not easy to reconstruct precisely what the Roman movements in Etruria were, (...) or how the Etruscans reacted to them. Above all, it is difficult to determine whether a colonial foundation like Cosa – which was contemporary with the establishment of Paestum in Lucania – was part of a broader and coherent strategy that the Romans had been following in their expansion into the Italian peninsula. By evaluating all the available evidence, I will try to demonstrate that the foundation of Cosa depended more upon particular contingencies than upon any preconceived plan for the conquest of Italy. (shrink)

The Disputation or Cathechesis of Tortosa with its sixty-nine sessions (February 7, 1413-November 12, 1413) was the longest of the Jewish Christian encounters in the Middle Age. Stirred by the Avignonesian Pope Benedict XIII, Geronimo de Sancta Fide, olim Yehoshua ha-Lorki, summoned a group of Catalan and Aragonese rabbis to inform them that the Messiah was already came. Not only the Papal notaries recorded the excruciating debates, but also two Hebrew sources: the anonymous and fragmentary letter published by Halberstam in (...) 1868 and the chapter 40 of the Shebet Yehuda. They encompass the first nine sessions carried out orally, before the Pope requested for written texts to be debated lately. Since these sources disagree on many details, this paper aims at examining them anew. That examination has shown that the anonymous account is more accurate than the fictional report of the Shebet Yehuda as far as the internal chronology of the sessions, the speeches of the Jewish delegates and their identities are concerned. The internal evidence leads us to subscribe with Riera i Sans in ascribing its authorship to Bonastruc Desmestre from Girona, who was at Tortosa on request of the Pope. He probably knew other Jewish chronicle and added some new materials from the Vikkuach Ramban, Salomon Ibn Verga, the author of Shebet Yehuda, built upon this chronicle and created a fictional account around Vidal Benveniste or the ‘ideal’ portrait of the Pope and added some materials from the Latin Protocols or from unknown Jewish sources. (shrink)

Around 1970, both Keith Donnellan and Saul Kripke produced powerful arguments against description theories of proper names. They also offered sketches of positive accounts of proper name reference, highlighting the crucial role played by historical facts that might be unknown to the speaker. Building on these sketches, in the following years Michael Devitt elaborated his well-known causal theory of proper names. As I have argued elsewhere, however, contrary to what is commonly assumed, Donnellan’s and Kripke’s sketches point in two rather (...) different directions, by appealing to historical or causal facts of different sorts. In this paper, I shall discuss and criticize Devitt’s causal theory, which confuses things, I shall argue, by mixing, so to speak, Donnellan’s and Kripke’s sketches. (shrink)

We present a cognitive psychology experiment where participants were asked to select pairs of spatial directions that they considered to be the best example of Two different wind directions. Data are shown to violate the CHSH version of Bell’s inequality with the same magnitude as in typical Bell-test experiments with entangled spins. Wind directions thus appear to be conceptual entities connected through meaning, in human cognition, in a similar way as spins appear to be entangled in experiments conducted in physics (...) laboratories. This is the first part of a two-part article. In the second part we present a symmetrized version of the same experiment for which we provide a quantum modeling of the collected data in Hilbert space. (shrink)

Contextualism is a view about meaning, semantic content and truth-conditions, bearing significant consequences for the characterisation of explicit and implicit content, the decoding/inferring distinction and the semantics/pragmatics interface. According to the traditional perspective in semantics (called "literalism" or "semantic minimalism"), it is possible to attribute truth-conditions to a sentence independently of any context of utterance, i.e. in virtue of its meaning alone. We must then distinguish between the proposition literally expressed by a sentence ("what is said" by the sentence, its (...) literal truth-conditions) and the implicit meaning of the sentence ("what is implicated" by a speaker uttering the sentence). Over the past forty years, however, an increasing number of linguists and philosophers have begun to underline the phenomenon of semantic underdetermination: the encoded meaning of the sentence employed by a speaker underdetermines the proposition explicitly expressed by an utterance of that sentence. According to the extreme version of this perspective – labelled "radical contextualism" - no sentence of a natural language expresses a complete proposition, or has fixed truth-conditions, even when unambiguous and devoid of indexicals. A sentence expresses a proposition only when completed and enriched with pragmatic constituents that do not correspond to any syntactic element of the sentence and yet are part of its semantic interpretation. More broadly, "contextualism" may be used to refer to a family of views which includes moderate contextualism (also called "indexicalism"), radical contextualism and non-indexical contextualism – and which contrasts with semantic minimalism. (shrink)

Between the end of the nineteenth century and the first twenty years of the twentieth century, stimulated by the impetuous development of logical studies and taking inspiration from Leibniz's idea of a characteristica universalis, the three founding fathers of the analytic tradition in philosophy, i.e., Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein, started to talk of a logically perfect language, as opposed to natural languages, all feeling that the latter were inadequate to their (different) philosophical purposes. In the second half of the twentieth (...) century, however, the very idea of a logically perfect language ceased for various reasons to seem attractive to analytic philosophers. Thus, it might appear that this idea could be classified together with the many other bizarre ideas that from time to time surface in the history of philosophy-an idea that perhaps had a beneficial impact on the development of twentieth century logic, but which can now be put to rest. In this brief note, I contend that this conclusion may be too hasty. Indeed, if a well-known empirical hypothesis advanced in 1975 by Jerry Fodor turns out to be true, then there is a logically perfect language, after all. More precisely, I argue that, if it exists, Fodor's language of thought possesses the main characteristics a logically perfect language is required to have. (shrink)

This article investigates how different philosophical traditions and schools of thought have understood the practice and the discipline of archery. Whereas the scholarly literature on the history, the techniques and the uses of bows and arrows is diverse and extensive, my aim is to contribute to the less developed research on the relationship between philosophy and archery. Specifically, I will explore in what terms philosophers have employed the bow as a metaphor for both their standpoints and, more generally, significant aspects (...) of everyday life. (shrink)

In "Demonstratives" Kaplan claims that the occurrence of a demonstrative must be supplemented by an act of demonstration, like a pointing (a feature of the objective context). Conversely in "After-thoughts" Kaplan argues that the occurrence of a demonstrative must be supplemented by a directing intention (a feature of the intentional con-text). I present the two theories in competition and try to identify the constraints an intention must satisfy in order to have semantic rele-vance. My claim is that the analysis of (...) demonstrative reference pro-vides a reliable test for our intuitions on the relation between objective and intentional context. I argue that the speaker's intentions can play a semantic role only if they satisfy an Availability Constraint: an inten-tion must be made available or communicated to the addressee, and for that purpose the speaker can exploit any feature of the objective con-text. This thesis implies the reconciliation between "Demonstratives" and "Afterthoughts". (shrink)

We present a cognitive psychology experiment where participants were asked to select pairs of spatial directions that they considered to be the best example of Two different wind directions. Data are shown to violate the CHSH version of Bell’s inequality with the same magnitude as in typical Bell-test experiments with entangled spins. Wind directions thus appear to be conceptual entities connected through meaning, in human cognition, in a similar way as spins appear to be entangled in experiments conducted in physics (...) laboratories. This is the first part of a two-part article. In the second part (Aerts et al. in Found Sci, 2017) we present a symmetrized version of the same experiment for which we provide a quantum modeling of the collected data in Hilbert space. (shrink)

Two fish are swimming in a pond. "Do you know what?" the fish asks his friend. "No, tell me." "I was talking to a frog the other day. And he told me that we are surrounded by water!" His friend looks at him with great scepticism: "Water? What's that? Show me some water!"This book is an attempt to stir up 'the water' the two fish are swimming in. It analyses the different theoretical approaches to international law and invites readers to (...) engage with legal thinking in order to familiarize ourselves with the water all around us, of which we hardly have any perception.International lawyers and students of international law often find themselves focused on the practice of the law rather than the underlying theory. The main aim of this book is to provide interested scholars, practitioners, graduate, and postgraduate students in international law and other disciplines with an introduction to various international legal theories, their genealogies, and critique. By providing an analytical approach to international legal theory, the book encourages readers to sharpen their sensitivity to these different methodologies and to consider how the presuppositions behind each theory affect analysis, research, and practice in international law. Theories of International Law is intended to assist students, scholars, and practitioners in reflecting more generally how knowledge is formed in the field. (shrink)

Since 1976 Hilary Putnam has on many occasions proposed an argument, founded on some model-theoretic results, to the effect that any philosophical programme whose purpose is to naturalize semantics would fail to account for an important feature of every natural language, the determinacy of reference. Here, after having presented the argument, I will suggest that it does not work, because it simply assumes what it should prove, that is that we cannot extend the metatheory: Putnam appears to think that all (...) we may determinately say about the relations between words and entities in the world is what the model theory tells us, but he has never offered justifications for that. At the end of the article, I will discuss the apparently reliable intuition that seems to me to be at the root of the argument, that is that, given a formal theory, there is an infinite number of ways of connecting it to, or of projecting it onto, the world. I will suggest that we should resist this intuition, because it rests on a very doubtful notion of world, which assumes that for any class of objects there is a corresponding property. (shrink)