What is alike between aesthetic and linguistic? And what is basically unlike? This paper focuses on this ambiguous relation in order to point out how the aesthetic expressiveness is an original one. And it's from the point of view of the dialectical nexus between aesthetic experience and language that interesting suggestions are drawn here from different authors (Adorno, Borges and the Italian novelist Luigi Meneghello).

This paper focuses on the notion of experience, whose conceptual analysis seems to be often neglected or at least not sufficiently made explicit in the current discourse on Everyday Aesthetics. In our investigation this notion will be tackled, in particular, through the lens of such concepts as Erlebnis, Erfahrung, and Lebenswel t, which are drawn from the continental philosophical tradition. Purpose of the paper is to present a provisional framework aimed at clarifying that a more accurate conceptualization of experience allows (...) for a better contemporary reflection on the aesthetics of everyday life. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the notion of experience, whose conceptual analysis seems to be often neglected or at least not sufficiently made explicit in the current discourse on Everyday Aesthetics. In our investigation this notion will be tackled, in particular, through the lens of such concepts as _Erlebnis, Erfahrung_, and _Lebenswel_t, which are drawn from the continental philosophical tradition. Purpose of the paper is to present a provisional framework aimed at clarifying that a more accurate conceptualization of experience allows for (...) a better contemporary reflection on the aesthetics of everyday life. (shrink)

This papers aims at showing how Dewey’s legacy can contribute to better understand the correlation between the problem of meaning and the description of the aesthetic in the framework of a specifically enactivist approach to the model of the extended mind. My thesis is that Dewey’s characterization of this issue has a general theoretical import in that it makes it inappropriate to speak of “aesthetic meanings,” or even of “meanings of the aesthetic.” It instead highlights the aesthetic character of meaning (...) as such, that is, how an experiential phenomenon can be meaningful insofar as it is characterized in an aesthetic sense. Accordingly, we will speak here of “aesthetic meaningfulness.” To this extent, after a comparison between Dewey and Quine about the “praxis of meaning,” a dialogue will be established with two recent perspectives openly informed by Dewey’s work: Mark Johnson and Shaun Gallagher’s. (shrink)

The first Aisthesis’s Special Issue collects the contributions to the conference “Riconcepire l’estetica. Prospettive a confront” that have been held in Florence in February 2012, organized by “Aisthesis”, “Rivista di Estetica” and “Seminario permanente di estetica”(SPES) in the perspective to contribute to a radical reconfiguration of conceptual domain of aesthetics.

In order to investigate the possibility to develop Wittgenstein's suggestions about aesthetics, this paper will focus on the organic perspective elaborated by Richard Wollheim in «Art and Its Objects». In this regard we will try to emphasize how the concept of art as a "form of live" - explicit in Wollheim - involves the analysis of the practices embodied in the experience of art starting from those of representation. The inception modes of such practices of representation need to be described (...) in the use of specific anthropological abilities related to perception patterns that go beyond the mere statement of facts, in a fusion among aesthetic, cognitive and emotional levels. Deepening the relationships both between lived experience and expression, and expression and understanding, we will try to point out how Wollheim (and Wittgenstein) places any rhetoric of the ineffable out of the game, even regarding the analysis of the aesthetic experience. (shrink)

By taking seriously an Adornian suggestion, according to which art should be understood as something that “has become what it is”, the main purpose of this essay is to provide an essential reconstruction of Adorno’s aesthetic program. The latter places art within a curve, or constellation, that has the experience of the “shudder” as its anthropological beginning and an ending corresponding to the current context, characterized by the widespread diffusion of the aesthetic dimension (thanks to the “logic” of fashion). Our (...) reconstruction aims to suggest that critical theory is fatally inclined towards this aesthetic constellation as a whole, and therefore it deserves today special attention by virtue of a parallelism with the aestheticizing developments of late-capitalism. As a consequence, Adorno may be considered a (critical) philosopher of globalization, insofar as his theory is aesthetic in a pregnant sense. His aesthetic constellation might in fact encompass the constitutive elements, or at least some essential elements, which are useful to bring the “aesthetic form of life” to the fore. (shrink)

In order to grasp the link between the “natural” and the “historical” that characterizes the reality of art, this paper aims to an examination of the concept of “artistic field” in contrast with “art world”. The notion of field reflects the dynamical status of the reality of art as institutional process, that roots in the sociological and anthropological experience of human being in his interaction with his environment. The analysis of this interaction carried out by Pierre Bourdieu and Arnold Gehlen (...) shows how an institution such as art arises as stabilization of nature and “habitualization” of experience structures which are operating already at the level of perception and which culminate in the praxis of figuration. This means that an artistic field implies an historical and material (rather than formal) apriori, that the notion of “art world” tends to hide and to repress. (shrink)

1. Fino a qualche decennio fa l’estetica rappresentava l’approdo vagheggiato da filosofi insofferenti nei confronti del sistema socio-culturale vigente oppure nei confronti dell’intera metafisica occidentale. Penso a Marcuse e ad Adorno, ma anche a chi ha intravisto nel gioco nell’arte la matrice della rivelazione dei più essenziali misteri dell’essere. I tempi sono cambiati. Se siamo qui a interrogarci sul futuro dell’estetica, essa quanto meno non appare più l’approdo utopico di allora. epp...

This paper aims to outline the importance of Valéry with respect to some cornerstones of Adorno’s aesthetic theory as a negative-dialectical thought. Adorno’s concept of aesthetic experience finds in Valéry as an “Artist” (not simply as a “Künstler”) a sort of lieutenant: he helps to specify notions like “apparition”, “form”, “configuration”, and above all the idea of the aesthetic as a relation by which something happens in the field of human experience without being a determinate, or determinable, content of it.

Nicola Matteucci was an Italian political philosopher and historian of political thought. Having studied under Benedetto Croce and Federico Chabod, he combined historical approach with a theoretical investigation of liberalism. His first works were mostly historical in character, but his interest in constitutionalism, especially English and American, led him already in the 1960s to attack legal positivism, whose most famous exponents were Hans Kelsen and, in Italy, Norberto Bobbio: Matteucci argued that this doctrine, by seeing the constitution merely (...) as a tool to organize state powers and institutions, does not discriminate between liberal and totalitarian political arrangements. Matteucci instead argued that the constitution represents the choice of a political form and contains the fundamental norms for the protection of individual rights and liberties. In his later and more theoretical writings Matteucci developed a view of liberalism as “response to a challenge”: liberal authors developed a series of conceptual and legal tools to counter the challenges of their age -the absolutist state, the totalitarian state and so on. An original Tocqueville scholar, Matteucci was very critical of populism and considered the “tyranny of the majority”, the conformism typical of mass society, one of the subtlest and biggest threats to democracy. (shrink)

La raccolta di saggi di estetica analitica curata da Giovanni Matteucci è introdotta da un contributo di Paolo D’Angelo che conclude: “la reciproca ignoranza che caratterizza l’estetica analitica e quella ‘continentale’ (loro non ci leggono, noi non li leggiamo) è forse più di una stranezza: è uno scandalo che non sarebbe considerato tollerabile in qualsiasi settore della ricerca scientifica”. Per cominciare a rispondere allo “scandalo”, che è più italiano che d’Oltralpe, Elementi di estetica...

La raccolta di saggi di estetica analitica curata da Giovanni Matteucci è introdotta da un contributo di Paolo D’Angelo che conclude: «la reciproca ignoranza che caratterizza l’estetica analitica e quella “continentale” (loro non ci leggono, noi non li leggiamo) è forse più di una stranezza: è uno scandalo che non sarebbe considerato tollerabile in qualsiasi settore della ricerca scientifica». Per cominciare a rispondere allo “scandalo”, che è più italiano che d’Oltralpe, Elementi di estetica...

Humanity’s self-ordained mandate to subdue and dominate nature is part of the cognitive foundation of the modern world—a perspective that remains deeply ingrained in science and technology. Marine biology has not been immune to this anthropocentric bias. But this needs to change, and the gaps between basic scientific disciplines and the global conservation imperatives of our time need to be bridged. In the face of a looming ecological and climate crisis, marine biologists must upgrade their values and professional standards and (...) help foster the radical transformation needed to avert a climate and ecological breakdown. To prevent some of the damage, they must cross the imaginary line that separates science from science-based activism and consciously pursue the health and durability of human and natural communities. To this end, they can (1) develop compelling narratives that engage human society, with emphasis on care for the wild living world; (2) move beyond marine conservation on paper and avoid self-serving complaisance; (3) advocate constructive changes in market and human behaviour, not only by documenting damage but also by clarifying how the extraction, production and consumption system can be steered away from practices that harm nature; (4) push for systemic change in politics through individual and collective efforts, supporting environmental activism and those who demand biosphere-saving policies; and (5) endorse a more ecocentric and holistic world vision, relinquishing contempt for spiritual wisdom and liaising with (or at least not dismissing) spiritual traditions that encourage equality, self-restraint and environmental sustainability. (shrink)

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.

In the paper, after clarifying terms such as ‘identity’, ‘self’ and ‘personhood’, I propose an empirical account of identity based on the notion of “whole phenotype”. This move allows one to claim the persistence of the individuals before and after their being affected by dementia. Furthermore, I show how this account permits us to address significant questions related to demented individuals’ loss of the capacity of moral decisions.

Emotions and personhood are important notions within the field of mental health care. How they are related is less evident. This book provides a framework for understanding the important and complex relationship between our emotional wellbeing and our sense of self, drawing on psychopathology, philosophy, and phenomenology.

How can we better understand and treat those suffering from schizophrenia and manic-depressive illnesses? This important new book takes us into the world of those suffering from such disorders. Using self descriptions, its emphasis is not on how mental health professionals view sufferers, but on how the patients themselves experience their disorder. A new volume in the International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry series, this book will be of great interest to all those working with sufferers from such disorders - (...) helping them to better understand their mental lives, and providing important insights into how best to treat them. (shrink)

Much of the recent philosophical debate on causation and causal explanation in the biological and biomedical sciences has focused on the notion of mechanism. Mechanisms, their nature and epistemic roles have been tackled by a range of so-called neo-mechanistic theories, and widely discussed. Without denying the merits of this approach, our paper aims to show how lately it has failed to give proper credit to processes, which are central to the field, especially of contemporary molecular biology. Processes can be summed (...) up in the notion of ‘pathway’, which is far from being just equivalent to that of ‘mechanism’ and has a profound epistemological and explanatory relevance. It is argued that an adequate consideration of pathways impels some rethinking of scientific explanation in molecular biology, namely its functional and contextual features. A number of examples are given to suggest that the focus of philosophical attention in this disciplinary field should shift from the notion of mechanism to the notion of pathway. (shrink)

Two problems related to the biological identity of living beings are faced: the who-problem (which are the biological properties making that living being unique and different from the others?); the persistence-problem (what does it take for a living being to persist from a time to another?). They are discussed inside a molecular biology framework, which shows how epigenetics can be a good ground to provide plausible answers. That is, we propose an empirical solution to the who-problem and to the persistence-problem (...) on the basis of the new perspectives opened by a molecular understanding of epigenetic processes. In particular, concerning the former, we argue that any living being is the result of the epigenetic processes that have regulated the expression of its genome; concerning the latter, we defend the idea that the criterion for the persistence of its identity is to be indicated in the continuity of those epigenetic processes. We also counteract possible objections, in particular (1) whether our approach has something to say at a metaphysical level; (2) how it could account for the passage from the two phenotypes of the parental gametes to the single phenotype of the zygote; (3) how it could account for the identity of derivatives of one living being that continue to live disjoined from that original living being; (4) how it could account for higher mental functions. (shrink)

This paper examines the effectiveness of the use of executive compensation linked to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) goals across US firms. Empirical analysis of a cross-industry sample of 746 listed companies for the period 2002–2013 showed that the use of CSR-linked compensation contracts for Named Executive Officers (NEOs) promotes CSR performance. More specifically, we found that linking NEOs’ compensation to CSR goals produces positive effects in the 3rd year after adoption. As firms accumulate experience and learn how to use the (...) system over the following eight periods, CSR performance increases monotonically. Furthermore, experience accumulated over time affects the different specifications of CSR performance asymmetrically, by reducing both environmental and social CSR concerns and increasing only environmental CSR strengths. Interestingly, we also found that the simultaneous use of other CSR-focused governance systems moderates the effect of a firm’s accumulated experience in using CSR-linked executive compensation on CSR performance: the existence of a CSR committee at the board level and the public release of a CSR report are likely to have a positive moderating effect, while the purchase of a CSR audit has no moderating effect. (shrink)

The core of this article is a comparative analysis of the double movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with the double movement of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. In both periods the movement toward allegedly self-regulating markets called forth a countermovement of protection. Nevertheless, important differences exist due, first, to differences in the nature of the hegemonic state and, second, to the greater role of subordinate forces in constraining the movement toward self-regulating markets in the (...) late twentieth century. (shrink)

According to N. Goodman, the Carnapian notion of similarity is useless in science and without interest for philosophy. In our paper we suggest that, given the current role that the notion of similarity has in managing biomedical big data, this drastic position should be revised, and similarity should be provided a scientifically useful philosophical interpretation. With the advent of the new sequencing technologies, imaging technologies and with the improvements of health records, the number of genomics, post-genomics and clinical data has (...) exponentially increased. The deluge of data has urged, among others, to devise a new way of stratifying patients. A solution has been found and it is based exactly on the notion of similarity. By discussing two examples focusing on similarity among breast cancer patients, in the paper we illustrate such a use, and analyze it from a philosophical standpoint by resorting to A. Tversky’s features matching approach. We believe that the latter can foster some better understanding of the meaning and current use of similarity in the context of biomedical big data, and that, therefore, be the focus of further reflections in the philosophy of science, in particular in the philosophy of biomedicine. (shrink)

Following recent debate on the relations between philosophy of science and the sciences, we wish to draw attention to some actual ways of training both young philosophers of science and young life scientists and clinicians. First, we recall a successful case of training philosophers of the life sciences in a strictly scientific environment. Second, after a brief review of the reasons why life scientists and clinicians are currently asking for more ethics, more methodology of science, and more philosophy of science (...) in the training of life scientists and clinicians, we present two training models that could spur the discussion on how to meet the requests coming from the scientific community. We argue that in order to reflect on mutual relations between philosophy of science and the sciences and to foster proper interactions, issues regarding the topics considered, the features of educational curricula, and the institutional organizations should be addressed jointly. (shrink)

In this paper I will compare the concept of explication à la Carnap and the concept of explication à la Kant. This essay should primarily be seen as a comparison of two different philosophical styles, but it is also intended as a vindication of what Kant wrote and what Carnap forgot to read.

In this paper I will compare the concept of explication à la Carnap and the concept of explication à la Kant. This essay should primarily be seen as a comparison of two different philosophical styles, but it is also intended as a vindication of what Kant wrote and what Carnap forgot to read.