This essay discusses the main contentions of The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci by Perry Anderson in a critical reading of both the positions of the British historian, and of his critics among ‘Togliattian Gramscianists’.

The paper investigates the distinctly Chinese intertwining of expertise and state & financial capital to enrich the current understanding of neoliberalism as a hegemonic governing rationale. Since the summer of 2015, China has been experiencing one of its most severe financial crises since the adoption of a ‘socialist market economy’ in 1978. However, globally circulating narratives have failed to look beyond a Western-centric corollary, rehashing a critique of the Chinese one-party system and its lack of a ‘genuine’ free market. By (...) exploring the specific genealogy of Chinese capitalism, and the distinctive Chinese financial-market structure, the article will show how the scientific authority of experts formulated amongst neoliberal thinkers never permeated the Chinese idea of knowledge. In the Chinese variety of financial capitalism, expertise is seen to lie not so much in the wisdom of individual experts as in their socio-political support, which legitimises their economic interventions. (shrink)

In recent years, companies receive pressure to release environmental, social, and governance disclosure, since these are perceived as critical issues by society. Despite this pressure, ESG disclosure practices considerably vary by firm. Prior academic literature investigated country- and firm-level factors determining such variation, alternatively adopting the institutional and legitimacy theory. By combining these theories in a unique framework, this study investigates the extent to which social structures and social legitimization influence ESG disclosure practices and each pillar. Results obtained using a (...) cross-country sample of 14,174 firm-year observations during 2005–2012 provide evidence that country-level characteristics such as a political system, labor system, and cultural system significantly affect firms’ ESG disclosure practices. However, their impact is heterogeneous in that they either reduce or enhance disclosure levels and may differ by pillar. Results for firm-level characteristics related to a firm’s visibility demonstrate a positive and homogeneous effect on ESG disclosure and each pillar. These results inform policy makers and regulators aiming to enhance ESG disclosure levels of the risk they incur when managing variables related to social structure and the benefits of exposing firms to higher visibility. (shrink)

In this introduction the coordinators of the First Congress of Postcolonial Studies (Buenos Aires, 5th, 6th, 7th December 2012) review some of the main questions and guidelines which characterized the workshops. Starting from a heated debate on the categories and the epistemological proposals developed by postcolonial studies and decolonial feminism, the Congress accepted the challenge of producing a South/South dialogue through the consolidation of a space of interdisciplinary discussion in the different theorical fields inquiring post-colonial experience.

If the ancient Stoics conceived passion as a judgment or the consequence of a judgment referring to external reality, it is correct to define their conception of the psyche as ‘monistic’; it is very different if we consider that passion is due to another faculty independent of reason. In this second case, a scenario opens up in which a realistic and ‘reified’ conception of passion emerges. With reference to this, in theLetter113 Seneca discusses the paradoxical thesis of the ancient Stoic (...) scholars according to whom “the soul is an animal”, just as virtues and passions are. Through a series of close logical arguments, he shows the absurdities that can be reached in this way. By comparing this letter with theDe irawe can define the position of Seneca as a type of practical/operational imaginary dualism: the development of an original coherent form of monism. Not to give in to passion (for example to anger or libido) will not be just or not so much a psychological exercise of reason and will, but certainly a physical experience of resistance. (shrink)

The dialogue Bruno of 1802 is arguably the natural starting point for any investigation on the concepts of finitude, evil and human freedom in Schelling’s middle metaphysics. In this dialogue the author elaborates for the first time in his system a concept of freedom and independence of the finite, which extends via his reformulation in Philosophy and Religion of 1804 to the Freedom Essay of 1809 and beyond to the works of 1810 and 1811 – Stuttgart Private Lectures and The (...) Ages of the World. The central ontological problem of the dialogue relates to the possibility of a separation between the absolute and the world as space of finite beings, which, according to the system of identity first presented in 1801, cannot exist as such. The question we will then address concerns the status of the finite as such and how would it be possible to admit both its existence for consciousness and the positing of an absolute and infinite principle of philosophy. We will show how Schelling’s interest shifts, almost unintentionally, from the infinite principle to the finite as such, as a principle of freedom and self-initiation independent of the real. (shrink)

The use of black box algorithms in medicine has raised scholarly concerns due to their opaqueness and lack of trustworthiness. Concerns about potential bias, accountability and responsibility, patient autonomy and compromised trust transpire with black box algorithms. These worries connect epistemic concerns with normative issues. In this paper, we outline that black box algorithms are less problematic for epistemic reasons than many scholars seem to believe. By outlining that more transparency in algorithms is not always necessary, and by explaining that (...) computational processes are indeed methodologically opaque to humans, we argue that the reliability of algorithms provides reasons for trusting the outcomes of medical artificial intelligence. To this end, we explain how computational reliabilism, which does not require transparency and supports the reliability of algorithms, justifies the belief that results of medical AI are to be trusted. We also argue that several ethical concerns remain with black box algorithms, even when the results are trustworthy. Having justified knowledge from reliable indicators is, therefore, necessary but not sufficient for normatively justifying physicians to act. This means that deliberation about the results of reliable algorithms is required to find out what is a desirable action. Thus understood, we argue that such challenges should not dismiss the use of black box algorithms altogether but should inform the way in which these algorithms are designed and implemented. When physicians are trained to acquire the necessary skills and expertise, and collaborate with medical informatics and data scientists, black box algorithms can contribute to improving medical care. (shrink)

Este artículo es una discusión con el concepto platónico de diálogo entendido como comedia, Plato’s Cratylus: The Comedy of Language (Ewegen, 2014. No hay traducción al español) fue usado como el recurso central de este artículo, el cual provee la base para diferentes interpretaciones en América Latina como las que defiende la profesora Buarque (2011) en nuestra región y, de manera mucho más general Gregorio Lury et al. (2018) en Ibero America. Sumado a ello, a diferencia del trabajo mencionado, este (...) trabajo lleva a cabo una comparación con la obra de Platón usando una metodología de carácter hermenéutico basado en los escritos de Platón y sus múltiples referencias a la risa a través de su reflexión escrita; se toma como punto de referencia la consigna hermenéutica de tomar la clara interpretación como un todo. El presente trabajo tiende entonces, a diferencia de la propuesta de Ewegen, a establecer el esfuerzo platónico mucho más próximo a a la tragedia que a la comedia como género de interpretación. Aunque existan secciones referidas enteramente a asuntos graciosos en los cuales el humor se aprecia, esta no puede ser la clave para la interpretación platónica como lo sostiene el enfoque de Ewegen. La forma del diálogo platónico debe ser entendida en un proyecto educativo, es decir de transformación. (shrink)

«En nuestros días la situación respecto de los valores y la ética fundada en ellos resulta realmente sorprendente. Ya no se habla tan sólo de valores bursátiles. Ahora también los pedagogos ensayan desde sus tarimas la educación en valores, los políticos apelan desde sus escaños a los valores constitucionales, los comités de ética disciernen en los hospitales los valores que han de respetarse en la actividad clínica, los filósofos de la ciencia se reúnen en sus institutos para cavilar sobre la (...) relación de ésta con los valores, los colectivos feministas reivindican en sus foros la consideración de la dependencia entre valores y 'género', hasta los sacerdotes exhortan desde sus ambones a la realización de los valores del Reino... Y, sin embargo, esta ubicua y recurrente alusión a los valores y a sus exigencias va acompañada a la vez de un clamoroso y tenaz silencio filosófico acerca de la naturaleza y el conocimiento de esos singulares objetos, al parecer tan importantes y omnipresentes. Las páginas que dan cuerpo a este libro han nacido de la necesidad de poner esas cosas de que tanto se habla en la tela de juicio de la filosofía.». (shrink)

Plato tries to explain the becoming of the cosmos by referring to the concepts of order and disorder. Scholars have usually focused on the relationship between the cosmos and the demiurge that Plato puts forward to explain the reasonable development. Along these lines, scholarship has examined the providential role played by both the demiurge and the soul of the world. Yet, an interesting prob­lem still remains open: what exactly is the function of disorder? What is the sense of the concept (...) of a perfectly established order if we do not know the manner in which it is achieved, since we have no understand­ing of the conditions that make it possible? Pursuing this line of thought, one may point to a providential role of the disorder given the balance of forces that operates in Plato’s cosmic becoming. (shrink)

In the first section of this contribution, three conditions for scientific research into answers to fundamental, existential questions are discussed. However, because these conditions seem to violate concepts such as 'intersubjectivity' and 'truth', the second section deals with the question in which way a scientific approach that satisfies these three conditions can still be called scientific. The 'possibilistic scientific view' that results from this investigation, will in the third section be exemplified by qualitative research. It will be demonstrated that this (...) social scientific approach can meet the three aforementioned conditions. In the last section, one of the features of such a qualitative approach will be emphasized. 'Radical subjectivity' will be presented as a way to fully satisfy the third condition of research into questions of meaning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:So Close and Other EssaysOn Hélène Cixous’s writingJoana Masóce n’est jamaispar l’intérieurni par le centreque je passe—Antonin Artaud, Cahiers d’Ivry, (1947–1948)At the end of the sixteenth century, the genre of the essay transformed the relationship between the subject and object of writing, since the essay emerged as a reaction against other literary forms—such as the commentary, the gloss or the treatise—in which the object of study is not problematized. (...) The gloss, the commentary, or the treatise deal with disciplines or thematic topics—astronomy, agronomy, theology, physics, history—in the proper sense, whereas the essay tends to focus on the approach to those issues. To put it differently, the essay is not strictly concerned with these issues or topics in themselves, but with the approach to them by means of writing.With Michel de Montaigne, specifically in his Essays published between 1580 and 1595, we are faced with writing where the knowledge of the object is no longer the sole center of the text. Despite being actually concerned with the Greek philosophical tradition, sixteenth-century religious wars, and, among many other topics, European colonialism in America, Montaigne’s Essays try to contest the privilege of the object, the privilege of the referent of writing, in [End Page 131] favor of its subject: the subject of writing and the writing itself, what we call in French une écriture de soi.As is well known, in his Essays Montaigne’s writing conveys neither message nor knowledge regarding things and topics, but what he calls “la continuelle mutation et branle” des êtres [“nostre estre”] et des objects [“ des objects”]: “the continual and perpetual mutation” of “beings” and “objects” (257).This epistemological crisis of the essay—abandoning the privilege of the object or theme for an emphasis on questioning the subject of writing and the modalities of the approach to the object—is explicit in the etymology of the word essay. Beyond the notion of attempt—in French, essayer means “to try,” “to attempt to do something”—essayer, from the Latin verb ex-agere, is a compound word of the verb agere, “to act,” in French agir. In Latin, the meaning of agere—“to act”—differs from facere, as agir does in French from faire, “to do”; it is in this way that these two verbs designate a different relationship between the subject and the object of the action. Although agere and facere both refer to action, the verb agere at the origin of the word essay designates an action accomplished by a subject, whereas facere is a transitive verb whose emphasis is placed on the object.While, on the one hand, facere is to be read in the register of transitivity—as is explicit in the following Latin phrases: facere litteram, “to write a letter,” or facere furtum, “to commit theft”—on the other hand, agere, although a transitive verb in Latin, underscores and anticipates the kind of intransitivity of action we will later find in Roman languages. In these Latin phrases, one can see that in Latin, at the same time that, the syntactic construction of agere requires an object, this object is not, strictly speaking, the real object produced by the verb, because in the phrases agere vitam, agere aetatem, or agere aevum, “to spend time or to live,” time is not the real object produced by the verb “to spend.” In Latin, “life,” vitam, “age,” aetatem, or “lifetime,” aevum, are not the real objects produced by the verb agere. This perhaps explains the evolution of the verb in French, or in English, where “to act” and agir have become intransitive verbs, reinforcing the idea that the essay appears to be a genre where whatever has to be done or said is not simply presented as an object.Moreover, instead of the conclusive verb facere, which designates the action as a result or an achievement—the letter is already written, or the theft is already commited—the temporality of agere, in Latin, is a durative one, as in the phrases agere vitam, aetatem, or aevum, “to live.” By its emphasis, not on the object... (shrink)

Typically, existentialist analyses of “America” have been limited to North America (more specifically, the United States). I argue that developing an adequate framework for existentially analyzing America requires a turn to Mexican existentialism. In Emilio Uranga’s and Jorge Portilla’s writings, we discover new conceptual tools for understanding Americanness as such. These thinkers help us imagine an account of American being that does not restrict itself to the United States by using the concepts of existentialism to describe the crises their neighbors (...) to the north as well as they themselves face. American existence has been historically characterized by a convergence (oftentimes clash) of disparate races, ethnicities, languages, cultures, religions, and identities. As history unfolded, this convergence led to various existential crises across the Americas. Whereas the US American way of life is marred by a blustering, naïve, and purposeless misuse of freedom that disregards the other, the existential crisis the Mexican lives is characterized by “accidentality” and “zozobra.” Despite these important differences, all existentialists, and the Mexican existentialists of the Hyperion Group especially, remind us that there is a common way to overcome the various existential crises plaguing the Americas, and that is to exercise freedom in a purposeful, communally conscious manner. (shrink)

The general objective of this essay is to systematize Jean-Luc Nancy’s post- deconstructive reflections on the concept of evidence. A general claim of this paper is that the post-deconstructive concept of evidence is genuinely an epistemic concept of evidence insofar as it refers to structures involved in verification processes. Evidence is the presentation of a state of affairs that relates the presentation not only to what we claim about this state of affairs but also to the singular circumstances of its (...) production. Verification (the production of a claim’s truth) results directly from the singularities involved in the production or presentation of evidence. This means that evidence is never exhausted in the truth it produces or the knowledge it validates but remains a priori exposed or available to produce and validate unknown knowledge about unknown states of affairs. (shrink)

The volume contains 11 contributions of the best experts on the topics of fate, fortune and free will, in reference to Ancient Philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Plotinus.

This article presents a follow-up examination of 10 iterations of a blended course on educational psychology and e-learning carried out at the University of Bari. All iterations of the course considered in this study were designed using the Constructive and Collaborative Participation (CCP) model. Our main research questions are: What are the students’ long lasting memories of this course? How do the students use the skills and the competences acquired through the course across an extended period of time? In line (...) with these research questions, the aims of this investigation can be summarized as follows: i) to understand the students’ perceptions and long lasting memories of the course and (ii) to investigate the transfer of skills and knowledge across an extended period of time, based on a self-reported survey. The analysis was carried out by administering the survey to all 196 students who took part in the course in the 2005-2015 decade. 96 participants responded to the survey. The survey is designed to collect data in two areas. First, the memories related to the course and second, the way skills and content knowledge acquired during the course have been transferred to and used in other contexts after the course ended. The data were analyzed using a mixed methods approach, which revealed trends in the responses across the decade. In general, participants remembered the teaching methodology and often recalled specific activities such as Role Taking and the creation of products through group-work. These activities and approaches seemed to provide significant learning opportunities for the students. Several students also recalled key concepts and content knowledge acquired during the course. In relation to transfer of skills, participants tended to reuse mostly transversal skills, such as communicative and organizational skills, especially in work contexts. Further, about half of the respondents reused the content knowledge of the course. This analysis is valuable because it allows us to understand the aspects of the model that are significant for the students in the long term, and to discover and interrogate the acquisition and transfer of skills useful for the students’ personal and professional lives beyond the academy. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that, contrary to scholarly consensus, Antonio Caso draws inspiration from important principles and ideas from Kant’s philosophy in his critique of positivism. I first examine the prima facie textual reasons why someone might believe that Caso and Kant are philosophical enemies. To contradict this notion, I proceed by noting and developing three core ideas that the two share in common. First, Caso and Kant are both ardent critics of dogmatic philosophizing. Second, both Caso and Kant (...) carve out special room for intuition in their respective accounts of cognition, resisting the idea that the understanding has a more prominent role in the formation of knowledge. Third, Kant’s doctrine of aesthetic judgment paves the way for Caso’s de-intellectualized aesthetics. In the end, we see that Kant and Caso are closer to being philosophical friends than enemies. (shrink)

The present study is an analysis of the distinctive characteristics of Cicero’s philosophical training. In particular, and for the first time in Ciceronian scholarship, the Roman philosopher’s relation with Epicurean philosophy is made the focus of a specific, thorough investigation. Cicero’s philosophical competence in the Academic school is well known. What is less acknowledged is Cicero being an expert in Epicurus ’s philosophy. The research presented in this volume will, as somewhat expected, prove that Cicero is a fierce opponent of (...) Epicureanism – an intelligent adversary, capable of studiose dicere contra Epicurum. In understanding and criticizing Epicurus, however, Cicero also offers an acute and insightful rendering of the opposing party’s thought. (shrink)

This article aims to develop a new account of scientific explanation for computer simulations. To this end, two questions are answered: what is the explanatory relation for computer simulations? And what kind of epistemic gain should be expected? For several reasons tailored to the benefits and needs of computer simulations, these questions are better answered within the unificationist model of scientific explanation. Unlike previous efforts in the literature, I submit that the explanatory relation is between the simulation model and the (...) results of the simulation. I also argue that our epistemic gain goes beyond the unificationist account, encompassing a practical dimension as well. (shrink)

For more than 25 years, research misconduct is defined as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism —although other research misbehaviors have been also added in codes of cond...

To his pupil Nero and to Lucilius (friend and, as metonymy, representative of the entire mankind), Seneca testifies to his pedagogic vocation. With conviction he applies himself to demonstrate the perfect correspondence between the Stoic doctrine and the edu¬cational strategy that he proposes. Firstly, the reciprocity of the relationship between educator and pupil appears fundamental; both further their individual knowledge. Secondly, the limitations of an ethical precept that is not anchored in the intensity and concreteness of human life becomes clearly (...) apparent. Furthermore, it brings to question the weakness of a world vision not inspired by an innovative and original path. The starting point is therefore a rigorous examination of conscience to ultimately reach the revolutionary experience of risk in the moment of the last decision. In the name of truth the wise man must have the courage to embrace fate in order to really understand who he is (in a process of oikeiosis both as experience and as target), and he must instil in his pupils the courage to take risks along their own independent journey. In so doing, self-scrutiny and politics can become intertwined. It is herein that the educator’s risk and responsibilities lie. (shrink)

We propose a view of identity beyond the individual in what we call interpersonal interidentities (IIIs). Within this approach, IIIs comprise collections of entangled stabilities that emerge in recurrent social interaction and manifest for those who instantiate them as relatively invariant though ever-evolving patterns of being (or more accurately, becoming) together. Herein, we consider the processes responsible for the emergence of these IIIs from the perspective of an enactive cognitive science. Our proposal hinges primarily on the development of two related (...) notions: enhabiting and coenhabiting. First, we introduce the notion of enhabiting, a set of processes at the individual level whereby structural interdependencies stabilise and thereafter undergird the habits, networks of habits, and personal identities through which we make sense of our experience. Articulating this position we lean on the notion of a tendency towards an optimal grip, though offering it a developmental framing, whereby iterative states of selective openness help realise relatively stable autonomous personal identities with their own norms of self-regulation. We then extend many of the notions found applicable here to an account of social coenhabiting, in particular, we introduce the notion of tending towards a co-optimal grip as central to the development of social habits, networks of habits, and ultimately IIIs. Such structures, we propose, also emerge as autonomous structures with their own norms of self-regulation. We wind down our account with some reflections on the implications of these structures outside of the interactions wherein they come into being and offer some thoughts about the complex animations of the individual embodied subjects that instantiate them. (shrink)

Does self-control require willpower? The question cuts to the heart of a debate about whether self-control is identical with some psychological process internal to the agents or not. Noticeably absent from these debates is systematic evidence about the folk-psychological category of self-control. Here, we present the results of two behavioral studies (N = 296) that indicate the structure of everyday use of the concept. In Study 1, participants rated the degree to which different strategies to respond to motivational conflict exemplify (...) self-control. Participants distinguished between intra-psychic and externally-scaffolded strategies and judged that the former exemplified self-control more than the latter. In Study 2, participants provided various solutions to manage motivational conflict and rated their proposals on effectiveness. Participants produced substantially more intra-psychic strategies, rated them as more effective, and advised them at a higher rate than externally-scaffolded strategies. Taken together, these results suggest that while people recognize a plurality of strategies as genuine instances of self-control, purely internal exercises of self-control are considered more prototypical than their externally-scaffolded counterparts. This implies a hierarchical structure for the folk psychological category of self-control. The concept encompasses a variety of regulatory strategies and organizes these strategies along a hierarchical continuum, with purely intra-psychic strategies at the center and scaffolded strategies in the periphery. (shrink)

Many philosophical accounts of scientific models fail to distinguish between a simulation model and other forms of models. This failure is unfortunate because there are important differences pertaining to their methodology and epistemology that favor their philosophical understanding. The core claim presented here is that simulation models are rich and complex units of analysis in their own right, that they depart from known forms of scientific models in significant ways, and that a proper understanding of the type of model simulations (...) are fundamental for their philosophical assessment. I argue that simulation models can be distinguished from other forms of models by the many algorithmic structures, representation relations, and new semantic connections involved in their architecture. In this article, I reconstruct a general architecture for a simulation model, one that faithfully captures the complexities involved in most scientific research with computer simulations. Furthermore, I submit that a new methodology capable of conforming such architecture into a fully functional, computationally tractable computer simulation must be in place. I discuss this methodology—what I call recasting—and argue for its philosophical novelty. If these efforts are heading towards the right interpretation of simulation models, then one can show that computer simulations shed new light on the philosophy of science. To illustrate the potential of my interpretation of simulation models, I briefly discuss simulation-based explanations as a novel approach to questions about scientific explanation. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that McDowell's brand of disjunctivism about perceptual knowledge is ill‐motivated. First, I present a reconstruction of one main motivation for disjunctivism, in the form of an argument that theories that posit a “highest common factor” between veridical and non‐veridical experiences must be wrong. Then I show that the argument owes its plausibility to a failure to distinguish between justification and warrant (where “warrant” is understood as whatever has to be added to true belief to yield (...) knowledge). (shrink)

From our everyday commuting to the gold medalist’s world-class performance, skillful actions are characterized by fine-grained, online agentive control. What is the proper explanation of such control? There are two traditional candidates: intellectualism explains skillful agentive control by reference to the agent’s propositional mental states; anti-intellectualism holds that propositional mental states or reflective processes are unnecessary since skillful action is fully accounted for by automatic coping processes. I examine the evidence for three psychological phenomena recently held to support anti-intellectualism and (...) argue that it supports neither traditional candidate, but an intermediate attention-control account, according to which the top-down, intention-directed control of attention is a necessary component of skillful action. Only this account recognizes both the role of automatic control in skilled action and the need for higher-order cognition to thread automatic processes together into a unified, skillful performance. This applies to bodily skillful action in general, from the world-class performance of experts to mundane, habitual action. The attention-control account stresses that, for intentions to play their role as top-down modulators of attention, agents must sustain the intention’s activation; hence, the need for reflecting throughout performance. (shrink)

The book includes 13 contributions that deal with the first attempts of opposition to the of Aristotle's thought. From Theophrastus to Epicurus, and to Plotinus. The best specialists have collaborated (among others: M. Mignucci, E. Berti, K. Ierodiakonou, C. Natali, S. Maso, F. Ferrari, D. Taormina, A. Falcon, A. Schiaparelli).