Listeners can attend to and track instruments or singing voices in complex musical mixtures, even though the acoustical energy of sounds from individual instruments may overlap in time and frequency. In popular music, lead vocals are often accompanied by sound mixtures from a variety of instruments, such as drums, bass, keyboards, and guitars. However, little is known about how the perceptual organization of such musical scenes is affected by selective attention, and which acoustic features play the most important role. To (...) investigate these questions, we explored the role of auditory attention in a realistic musical scenario. We conducted three online experiments in which participants detected single cued instruments or voices in multi-track musical mixtures. Stimuli consisted of 2-s multi-track excerpts of popular music. In one condition, the target cue preceded the mixture, allowing listeners to selectively attend to the target. In another condition, the target was presented after the mixture, requiring a more “global” mode of listening. Performance differences between these two conditions were interpreted as effects of selective attention. In Experiment 1, results showed that detection performance was generally dependent on the target’s instrument category, but listeners were more accurate when the target was presented prior to the mixture rather than the opposite. Lead vocals appeared to be nearly unaffected by this change in presentation order and achieved the highest accuracy compared with the other instruments, which suggested a particular salience of vocal signals in musical mixtures. In Experiment 2, filtering was used to avoid potential spectral masking of target sounds. Although detection accuracy increased for all instruments, a similar pattern of results was observed regarding the instrument-specific differences between presentation orders. In Experiment 3, adjusting the sound level differences between the targets reduced the effect of presentation order, but did not affect the differences between instruments. While both acoustic manipulations facilitated the detection of targets, vocal signals remained particularly salient, which suggest that the manipulated features did not contribute to vocal salience. These findings demonstrate that lead vocals serve as robust attractor points of auditory attention regardless of the manipulation of low-level acoustical cues. (shrink)

Regulatory offences are a complex phenomenon, presenting problematic aspects both at the level of criminalisation and at the level of enforcement. The literature abounds in works that study the phenomenon. There is, however, an aspect that has remained largely unexplored. It concerns the relationship between the regulatory framework within which the crime occurs and the procedural safeguards that defendants normally enjoy at trial or at the pre-trial stage: defendants tried for regulatory offences are often denied safeguards that are generally considered (...) as important constituents of trial fairness. Relying on a new conceptualisation of regulatory offences, this paper advances a theory that justifies these exceptional rulings. (shrink)

Decision-makers in institutional and non-institutional contexts are sometimes confronted with the issue of whether to use generalisations expressing the statistical incidence of a negative trait in a disadvantaged and discriminated-against social group in order to draw an inference concerning a member of that group. If a criminal court were confronted with such a question, what answer should it give? First, the article argues that, our qualms notwithstanding, morality does not demand that these generalisations be disregarded. In doing so, the article (...) addresses the relationship between factual accuracy and the demands of morality in criminal trials. Second, the article considers the implications of this conclusion for the legal question as to whether the evidence at issue should be excluded, in particular, on grounds of unfairness — pursuant to section 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. (shrink)

This paper attempts to shed light on the dynamics of criminal adjudication. It starts by exploring some significant—and often ignored—similarities and dissimilarities between the practices and disciplines of, respectively, legal reasoning and fact finding. It then discusses the problem of defining the nature of these processes—legal reasoning, in particular—in terms of their being instances of practical or theoretical reasoning. Thus understood, the problem is shown to be distinct from two traditional questions of jurisprudence, namely whether law consists of facts and, (...) if so, whether these facts are social or moral. Two theses are proposed as solutions to the problem: 'in the majority of cases legal reasoning is theoretical', and 'when legal reasoning is practical it generally involves complex theoretical operations'. Finally, the paper shows how T1 and T2 can make sense of the phenomena presented at the outset. (shrink)

According to criminal law a person should not be punished for a bare intention to commit a crime. While theorists have provided consequentialist and epistemic justifications of this tenet, no convincing retributive justification thereof has yet been advanced. The present paper attempts to fill this lacuna through arguing that there is an important moral difference between a future-directed and a present-directed intention to act wrongfully. Such difference is due to the restraining influence exercised in the decisional process by the ‘now-belief’, (...) i.e. the belief that the time has come to act, which is exclusively involved in the latter type of intention. (shrink)

Scholars writing on theories of punishment generally try to answer two main questions: what human behaviour should be punished and why? Only cursorily do they concern themselves with the question as to how confident in the occurrence of criminal behaviour we must be prior to punishing—i.e., the question of the criminal standard of proof. Theories of punishment are ultimately theories about choices of action—in particular, about how to treat individuals. If this is correct, it seems that they should not overlook (...) one of the fundamental variables governing human decision-making: the uncertainty about the facts relevant to our acting. Now, the question as to whether existing theories of punishment require a standard of proof as high as ‘proof beyond a reasonable doubt’ is gaining increasing attention in the scholarship. However, scholars working on theories of punishment give little attention to a particular way in which human decision-making handles the problem of uncertainty. In our everyday lives, we often decide in a many-valued, rather than a binary, fashion. Instead of having a single evidential threshold, the satisfaction of which determines whether we act or stay put, we tend to adjust our actions to our degree of confidence in certain states of affairs. In other words, we decide based on a ladder of evidential thresholds: the features of our actions vary according to the evidential threshold that we have satisfied. Notably, criminal trials do not follow this structure and theorists generally take this departure for granted. Why shouldn’t trials work as ‘ex post facto bets,’ whereby the response that the state is willing to ‘wager’ correlates with the fact finder’s confidence in the defendant’s guilt? The paper explores this question; in particular, it assesses whether the main theories of punishment necessarily deliver a binary system of verdicts. The work is part of a long-term research project on the comparison between the binary and the many-valued models of the system of criminal verdicts. (shrink)

In this paper, we embark on the complicated discussion about the nature of vice in Virtue Ethics through a twofold approach: first, by taking seriously the claim that virtues (and certain flavours of vices) are genuinely dispositional features possessed by agents, and secondly, by employing a pluralistic attitude borrowed from Battaly’s pluralism (2008). Through these lenses, we identify three varieties of viciousness: incontinence, indifference, and malevolence. The upshot is that the notion of vice is not as categorically homogeneous as that (...) of virtue: some states of viciousness consist in interference of present virtuous dispositions, or mimicking of absent vicious ones, whereas others can be considered genuine dispositions themselves. Furthermore, this set-up can provide an interesting, albeit highly idealized story as to how, through the interference in one’s environment, one gets acquainted with vice in various degrees. Finally, this approach can be illuminating vis-à-vis Virtue Ethics in general; e.g. we can employ it to discuss more productively Johnston’s (2003) objection to Hursthouse’s (1999) account of moral conduct. Finally, this approach can be illuminating vis-a-vis Virtue Ethics in general; e.g. we can employ it to discuss more productively Johnston’s (2003) objection to Hursthouse’s (1999) account of moral conduct. (shrink)

This essay seeks to give a contractarian foundation to the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, meant as an extended model of corporate governance of the firm. Whereas, justificatory issues have been discussed in a related paper, in this essay I focus on the implementation of and compliance with this normative model. The theory of reputation games, with reference to the basic game of trust, is introduced in order to make sense of self-regulation as a way to implement the social contract (...) on the multi-fiduciary model of corporate governance. This affords understanding of why self-regulation, meant as mere recourse to a long-run strategy in a repeated trust game, fails. Two basic problems for the functioning of the reputation mechanism are examined: the cognitive fragility problem, and the motivational problem. As regards the cognitive fragilities of reputation, the paper develops the logic and the structure that self-regulatory norms must satisfy if they are to serve as gap-filling tools with which to remedy cognitive limitations in the reputation mechanism. The motivation problem then arises from the possibility of sophisticated abuse by the firm. Developed in this case is an entirely new application of the theory of conformism-and-reciprocity-based preferences, the result of which is that the stakeholders refuse to acquiesce to sophisticated abuse on the part of the firm. (shrink)

This essay seeks to give a contractarian foundation to the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, meant as an extended model of corporate governance of the firm. It focuses on justification according to the contractarian point of view. It begins by providing a definition of CSR as an extended model of corporate governance, based on the fiduciary duties owed to all the firm's stakeholders. Then, by establishing the basic context of incompleteness of contracts and abuse of authority, it analyses how the (...) extended view of corporate governance arises directly from criticism of the contemporary neo-institutional economic theory of the firm. Thereafter, an application of the theory of bargaining games is used to deduce the structure of a multi-stakeholder firm, on the basis of the idea of a constitutional contract, which satisfies basic requirements of impartial justification and accordance with intuitions of social justice. This is a sequential model of constitutional bargaining, whereby a constitution is first chosen, and then a post-constitutional coalition game is played. On the basis of the unique solution given to each step in the bargaining model, the quest for a prescriptive theory of governance and strategic management is accomplished, so that I am able to define an objective-function for the firm consistent with the idea of CSR. Finally, a contractarian potential explanation for the emergence of the multi-fiduciary firm is provided. (shrink)

Despite recent essentialist approaches to Kant’s laws of nature, it is unclear whether Kant’s critical philosophy is compatible with core tenets of essentialism. In this paper, I first reconstruct Kant’s position by identifying the key metaphysical and epistemological features of his notion of ‘nature’ or ‘essence’. Two theses about natures can be found in the literature, namely that they are noumenal in character (noumenal thesis) and that they guide scientific investigation as regulative ideas of reason (regulative thesis). I argue that (...) Kant’s notion of nature does not entail the noumenal thesis and, based on his model of causal explanation, I propose a novel, phenomenal thesis, that allows for a better understanding of the function of natures as regulative ideas. In the last part of the paper, I show that Kant’s ‘essentialism’ is a genuine form of essentialism committed to de re modality, although it differs in several respects from major contemporary essentialist accounts. I conclude by suggesting that Kant’s essentialism (if appropriately updated) can be relevant to the contemporary debate, which has so far been dominated by Humean and Aristotelian proposals. (shrink)

Philosophers have debated at length the epistemological status of scientific thought experiments. I contend that the literature on this topic still lacks a common conceptual framework, a lacuna that produces radical disagreement among the participants in this debate. To remedy this problem, I suggest focusing on the distinction between the internal and the external validity of an experiment, which is also crucial for thought experiments. I then develop an account of both kinds of validity in the context of thought experiments. (...) I show that we can naturally conceptualise internal validity in terms of games of make-believe. Then, I argue that external validity is best defined as accurate representation of a target system. Finally, I turn back to the current debate on thought experiments and show that my diarchic account provides a general framework that can be shared by the competing philosophical views, as well as a fruitful guide for their reconciliation. (shrink)

This paper attempts a reconstruction of reason’s contribution to empirical truth in connection with Kant’s definition of truth as the agreement of cognition with its object. I argue that Kant’s treatment of truth in the Transcendental Analytic gets completed in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic with an often neglected but compelling argument (what I shall call the Variety Argument). This argument postulates such a variety in the appearances as to undermine any attempt at formulating empirical truths. Crucially, I argue (...) that this variety does not depict an extreme-case scenario, but our own epistemic situation without reason. Reason completes Kant’s theory of truth by allowing the understanding (i.) to form empirical concepts and (ii.) approximate to empirical truth. (shrink)

Many important concepts of the calculus are difficult to grasp, and they may appear epistemologically unjustified. For example, how does a real function appear in “small” neighborhoods of its points? How does it appear at infinity? Diagrams allow us to overcome the difficulty in constructing representations of mathematical critical situations and objects. For example, they actually reveal the behavior of a real function not “close to” a point but “in” the point. We are interested in our research in the diagrams (...) which play an optical role –microscopes and “microscopes within microscopes”, telescopes, windows, a mirror role, and an unveiling role. In this paper we describe some examples of optical diagrams as a particular kind of epistemic mediator able to perform the explanatory abductive task of providing a better understanding of the calculus, through a non-standard model of analysis. We also maintain they can be used in many other different epistemological and cognitive situations. (shrink)

In today's world, the corporate image of the largest companies is closely linked to their performance in the field of corporate social responsibility and the disclosure of information on that topic, specifically, on climate change. Since the Board of Directors is the body responsible for this process, the aim of this article is to show the role that companies' Boards of Directors play in the accountability process vis-à-vis stakeholders in relation to one specific aspect which has enormous significance in environmental (...) information: practices used to monitor greenhouse gas emissions. In order to achieve this, we shall verify certain business characteristics, in addition to the size and activity of the Board of Directors, and we shall take different dependence models into consideration. These models will include variables related to the level of independence and diversity of the Board of Directors, which interact with dummy variables representing the company's litigation risks regarding environmental behavior and the institutional macro-context of the organization's country of origin. The results make it clear that Boards of Directors are basically focused on the traditional responsibility of creating economic value, instead of dealing with today's broader business world concepts, which include social responsibility. This focus, therefore, does not favor the accountability process before other stakeholders, if this makes it more difficult to protect the interests of shareholders. (shrink)

This book aims to develop the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics, the theoretical account of interpretive (as opposed to explanatory) understanding--the account of meanings and contexts rather than causes and predictions--usually restricted to the domain of literary and textual analysis, in new directions by exploiting its potential as an instrument of critique. It refutes commonly held claims that hermeneutic analyses are necessarily relativistic, Eurocentric, or critically impotent and demonstrates how hermeneutic procedures can inform analyses of urgent current and cross-cultural issues such (...) as the biology of race, female genital excision, and the so-called "culture of poverty" thesis. Lorenzo Simpson demonstrates that a robust methodology of philosophical hermeneutics is well positioned to intervene in critical political and social issues in global ethics and justice in concert with critical theory's emancipatory aims. (shrink)

As humanity becomes increasingly interconnected through globalization, the question of whether community is possible within culturally diverse societies has returned as a principal concern for contemporary thought. Lorenzo Simpson charges that the current discussion is stuck at an impasse-between postmodernism's fragmented notions of cultural difference and humanism's homogeneous versions of community. Simpson proposes an alternative-one that bridges cultural differences without erasing them. He argues that we must establish common aesthetic and ethical standards incorporating sensitivity to difference if we are (...) to achieve cross-cultural understanding. (shrink)

This article aims to justify the positive role in the empirical investigation of nature that Kant attributes to the idea of God in the Critique of Pure Reason. In particular, I propose to read the Transcendental Ideal section and the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic together to see whether they can reciprocally illuminate each other. I argue that it is only by looking at the transcendental deduction of the ideas of reason and the resulting analogical conception of God that a (...) fully legitimate positive use of the idea of God can be vindicated. (shrink)

The evolution of the concept of subjectivity in the works of Jacques Lacan.

In this paper, I offer a systematic account of Kant’s view on ‘phenomenal substance’. Several studies have recently analyzed Kant’s notion of substance. However, I submit that more needs to be said about how this notion is reconceptualized within the critical framework to vindicate a genuine and legitimate sense of substance in the phenomenal realm. More specifically, I show that Kant’s transcendental idealism does not commit him to a rejection of substantiality in phenomena. Rather, Kant isolates a general notion of (...) substance (as ultimate subject) and argues that (i) the relationality of phenomena is compatible with this notion; and that (ii) matter and all its parts are the ultimate subjects of everything existing in space (as what is independently movable in space). I suggest that vindicating a genuine and legitimate notion of phenomenal substance has far-ranging consequences for the interpretation of Kant’s empirical realism. (shrink)

According to most interpreters, Aristotle explains death as the result of material processes of the body going against the nature of the living being. Yet, this description is incomplete, for it does not clarify the relationship between the process of decay and the teleological system in which it occurs: this makes it impossible to distinguish between natural and violent death. In this paper, I try to fill this gap by looking at his so-called ‘biological works’ and mainly at the De (...) Juventute. I first introduce the specific concept of life at play in this treatise and prove its complementarity with the framework of the De Anima. Then, I illustrate in detail the process of dying and the reasons why a merely material description is insufficient to account for the distinction between natural and violent death. Finally, I show that for Aristotle natural death is a by-product of teleologically directed life activities: only against the background of this teleological structure is natural death fully explained in terms of essence and causes. To support this claim, I compare death to two analogous cases in Aristotle’s biology, namely dreams and the features of GA V. (shrink)

The sentences employed in semantic paradoxes display a wide range of semantic behaviours. However, the main theories of truth currently available either fail to provide a theory of paradox altogether, or can only account for some paradoxical phenomena by resorting to multiple interpretations of the language. In this paper, I explore the wide range of semantic behaviours displayed by paradoxical sentences, and I develop a unified theory of truth and paradox, that is a theory of truth that also provides a (...) unified account of paradoxical sentences. The theory I propose here yields a threefold classification of paradoxical sentences – liar-like sentences, truth-teller-like sentences, and revenge sentences. Unlike existing treatments of semantic paradox, the theory put forward in this paper yields a way of interpreting all three kinds of paradoxical sentences, as well as unparadoxical sentences, within a single model. (shrink)

Scientific models typically contain idealizations, or assumptions that are known not to be true. Philosophers have long questioned the nature of idealizations: Are they heuristic tools that will be abandoned? Or rather fictional representations of reality? And how can we reconcile them with realism about knowledge of nature? Immanuel Kant developed an account of scientific investigation that can inspire a new approach to the contemporary debate. Kant argued that scientific investigation is possible only if guided by ideal assumptions—what he calls (...) “regulative ideas”. These ideas are not true of objects of nature, and yet they are not heuristic tools or fictional represen- tations. They are necessary rules governing the construction and assessment of scientific explanations. In this paper, I suggest that some idealizations can be interpreted as having necessary regulative value and as being compatible with scientific realism. I first analyze the puzzle of the nature of idealization and present the main approaches to this topic in the literature. Second, I reconsider the puzzle vis-a-vis a restricted, Kantian definition of idealization and a novel characterization of the relation between idealization and truth. Finally, I discuss in detail an example of idealization (the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium) along the suggested Kantian lines. (shrink)

According to the most common interpretation of the simulation argument, we are very likely to live in an ancestor simulation. It is interesting to ask if some families of simulations are more likely than others inside the space of all simulations. We argue that a natural probability measure is given by computational complexity: easier simulations are more likely to be run. Remarkably this allows us to extract experimental predictions from the fact that we live in a simulation. For instance we (...) show that it is very likely that humanity will not achieve interstellar travel and that humanity will not meet other intelligent species in the universe, in turn explaining the Fermi's Paradox. On the opposite side, experimental falsification of any of these predictions would constitute evidence against our reality being a simulation. (shrink)

This article analyses a sceptical challenge resulting from metaphysical approaches to the problem of the necessity of empirical laws of nature in Kant’s critical philosophy (what I shall call ‘essentialist’ readings). I argue that this challenge may jeopardize the purpose of empirical enquiry (and therefore the plausibility of essentialist readings), but that Kant has internal resources to address it in the Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason. I show that reading this problem through the lens of the Dialectic allows (...) us to reconcile the metaphysical question of necessitation of laws with a robust sense of empirical cognition. (shrink)

The standard representation of the Central Dogma (CD) of Molecular Biology conspicuously ignores metabolism. However, both the metabolites and the biochemical fluxes behind any biological phenomenon are encrypted in the DNA sequence. Metabolism constrains and even changes the information flow when the DNA‐encoded instructions conflict with the homeostasis of the biochemical network. Inspection of adaptive virulence programs and emergence of xenobiotic‐biodegradation pathways in environmental bacteria suggest that their main evolutionary drive is the expansion of their metabolic networks towards new chemical (...) landscapes rather than perpetuation and spreading of their DNA sequences. Faulty enzymatic reactions on suboptimal substrates often produce reactive oxygen species (ROS), a process that fosters DNA diversification and ultimately couples catabolism of the new chemicals to growth. All this calls for a revision of the CD in which metabolism (rather than DNA) has the leading role. (shrink)

The present article argues for the non-authenticity of l. 38 in the first Horatian Epistle. Together with the allusions to avarice and pride at ll. 33 and 36, it contains a reference to the cardinal sins, a concept that did not yet exist at the time of Horace. In particular, the sins listed in the line at issue appear to coincide with those discussed by Gregory the Great in his Moralia in Iob (31.45) and eventually adopted by medieval thought. The (...) metrical pattern and a check of the main medieval commentaries support the suspected spuriousness of the line. (shrink)

This book deals with one of the most important issues of philosophy of law and constitutional thought: how to understand clashes of fundamental rights, such as the conflict between free speech and privacy. The main argument of this book is that much can be learned about the nature of fundamental legal rights by examining them through the lens of conflicts among such rights, and criticizing the views of scholars and jurists who have discussed both fundamental legal rights and the nature (...) of conflicts among them. -/- Theories of rights are necessarily abstract, aiming at providing the best possible answers to pressing social problems. Yet such theories must also respond to the real and changing dilemmas of the day.Taking up the problem of conflicting rights, Zucca seeks a theory of rights that can guide us to a richer, more responsive approach to rights discourse. -/- The idea of constitutional rights is one of the most powerful tools to advance justice in the Western tradition. But as this book demonstrates, even the most ambitious theory of rights cannot satisfactorily address questions of conflicting rights. How, for instance, can we fully secure privacy when it clashes with free speech? To what extent can our societies assist people in dying without compromising the protection of life? Exploring the limitations of the rights discourse in these areas, Zucca questions the role of law in settling ethical dilemmas helping to clarify thinking about the limitations of rights discourse. (shrink)

The book deals with one of the most important issues of philosophy of law and constitutional thought: how to understand clashes of fundamental rights, such as the conflict between free speech and privacy, and develops a framework for adjudication.

Nell'ultima decade la letteratura sugli effetti dei movimenti sociali ha conosciuto una notevole espansione. Questo sviluppo ha generato una domanda di miglioramento dei nostri approcci alla materia sia a livello teorico sia metodologico. Nonostante tutto questo, nel cercare di misurare l'impatto dei movimenti sociali, legando questi agli obiettivi che alcune componenti di un movimento dichiarano di avere, la ricerca scientifica sulla materia ha prodotto scarsi risultati. L'articolo suggerisce che per conoscere come i movimenti sociali producono cambiamento sociale bisogna guardare all'interrelazione (...) delle conseguenze e non limitarsi a studiare le conseguenze nel breve periodo ma estendere le analisi al lungo periodo. L'articolo vuole provocare una discussione sulla materia e identificare una nuova opportunitÀ d'investigazione empirica. (shrink)

The reasonable person standard is used in adjudicating claims of self-defence. In US law, an individual may use defensive force if her beliefs that a threat is imminent and that force is required are beliefs that a reasonable person would have. In English law, it is sufficient that beliefs in imminence and necessity are genuinely held; but the reasonableness of so believing is given an evidential role in establishing the genuineness of the beliefs. There is, of course, much contention over (...) how to spell out when, and in virtue of what, such beliefs are reasonable. In this chapter, we identify some distinctive issues that arise when we consider that implicit racial bias might be implicated in the beliefs in imminence and necessity. Considering two prominent interpretations of the reasonable person standard, we argue that neither is acceptable. On one interpretation, we risk unfairness to the defendant-who may non-culpably harbour bias. On another, the standard embeds racist stereotypes. Whilst there are formulations of the defence that may serve to mitigate these problems, we argue that they cannot be avoided in the presence of racist social structures. (shrink)

In this paper, I return to the well-known apparent inconsistencies in Hume’s treatment of personal identity in the three books of A Treatise of Human Nature, and try to defend a Humean narrative interpretation of the self. I argue that in Book 1 of the Treatise Hume is answering (to use Marya Schechtman’s expressions in The Constitution of Selves) a “reidentification” question concerning personal identity, which is different from the “characterization” question of Books 2 and 3. That is, I maintain (...) that whereas in Book 1 Hume is using his philosophical empiricism to provide his own version of the problem of how to recognize persons as the same at different times, in Books 2 and 3 he is presenting selves from a different, both sentimental and ethical standpoint, as the focus of people’s concerns. I start by discussing Hume’s notion of personal identity as presented in Book 1 and in the “Appendix.” I then specify the narrative conception of the self Hume relies on when dealing with passions and morality as the self-consciousness persons develop as bearers of characters of or about which they can be morally proud or humble. I finally conclude by distinguishing Hume’s narrative self from the idea of “the unity of human life” that Alasdair MacIntyre puts forward in After Virtue. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to propose a novel reading of the critical legitimacy of the regulative use of reason in the Transcendental Dialectic of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. After introducing some key terminology of the Dialectic, I analyse the shortcomings of two influential accounts of the regulative use of reason and identify their common problem in their commitment to the descriptivity of the ideas of reason. I then offer my rule‐based account of the regulative use of reason (...) by clarifying how Kant transforms reason's metaphysical inclinations into prescriptive rules of bottom‐up empirical research. Finally, I explain why such interpretation of reason is metaphysically innocent and thereby a promising approach to understand its role in Kant's scientific project. (shrink)

Revenge arguments purport to show that any proposed solution to the semantic paradoxes generates new paradoxes that prove that solution to be inadequate. In this paper, I focus on revenge arguments that employ the model-theoretic semantics of a target theory and I argue, contra the current revenge-theoretic wisdom, that they can constitute genuine expressive limitations. I consider the anti-revenge strategy elaborated by Field and argue that it does not offer a way out of the revenge problem. More generally, I argue (...) that the difference between ‘standard’ and ‘revenge’ paradoxes is ill-conceived and should be abandoned. This will contribute to show that the theories that provide a uniform account of truth and other semantic notions are the ones best equipped to avoid the paradoxes altogether—‘standard’ and ‘revenge’ alike. (shrink)

In recent years, the concept of “integrity” has been frequently discussed by scholars, and deployed by courts, in the domain of criminal procedure. In this paper, we are particularly concerned with how the concept has been employed in relation to the problem of the admissibility of evidence obtained improperly. In conceptualising and addressing this problem, the advocates of integrity rely on it as a standard of conduct for the criminal justice authorities and as a necessary condition for the state authority (...) to condemn and punish. We raise a series of challenges that need answering before integrity can perform these roles. Our aim is not to show that integrity is useless in normative theorising about the admissibility of evidence, and about the criminal process in general. Rather, it is to give guidance for the elaboration of a theory of integrity that is cogent, coherent, and has useful implications for the process of proof. (shrink)

In recent years, a new dispute has risen to prominence: the dispute between realists and anti-realists about causal powers. Albeit sometimes overlooked, the meta-ontological features of this “question of realism for powers” are quite peculiar. For friends and foes of causal powers have characterized their contrasting views in a variety of different ways; as existence claims, as semantic or truth-making claims, as fundamentality claims, as claims about the nature of certain properties. Not only does this multiplicity of interpretations make it (...) unclear what the genuine bone of contention is, if there is one; some of them appear to be mutually exclusive. Some light can be shed on this apparent yet widespread confusion by distinguishing three degrees of ontological involvement in dispositional truths; viz., three ways, of increasing robustness, to read ontological commitments from dispositional truths. Relatedly, by exploring the literature, and focusing on some selected examples of power realism and anti-realism, we can observe that power realists vastly disagree over the intrinsic nature ad make-up of dispositional properties. Such examples furthermore invite the thought that the question of realism for powers is best understood not as the debate around the existence of properties with a distinctive identity, but rather as a debate about metaphysical hierarchy. Finally, some anti-realists positions are indistinguishable from realist ones, using merely intensional resources: power realism is best appreciated by going hyperintensional. (shrink)

Arithmetic deals with numbers: but what is the nature of their existence, of their parts, and of their relationship with countable items? These questions nourished a lively debate between the Platonico-Pythagorean tradition (trying to answer them) and the Pyrrhonian tradition (trying to show that these answers were unsatisfactory). The debate lies at the heart of Sextus Empiricus' Against the Arithmeticians. The present book aims at facing the remarkable historical and philosophical questions raised by Sextus' treatise by offering a new translation (...) of it and the first dedicated commentary to it. (shrink)