During the twentieth century, the view that assertions and norms are valid insofar as they respond to principles independent of all local and temporal contexts came under attack from two perspectives: the partiality of translation and the intersubjective constitution of the self, understood as responsive to recognition. Defenses of universalism have by and large taken the form of a thinning out of substantive universalism into various forms of proceduralism. Alessandro Ferrara instead launches an entirely different strategy for transcending the (...) particularity of context without contradicting our pluralistic intuitions: a strategy centered on the exemplary universalism of judgment. Whereas exemplarity has long been thought to belong to the domain of aesthetics, this book explores the _other_ uses to which it can be put in our philosophical predicament, especially in the field of politics. After defining exemplarity and describing how something unique can possess universal significance, Ferrara addresses the force exerted by exemplarity, the nature of the judgment that discloses exemplarity, and the way in which the force of the example can bridge the difference between various contexts. Drawing not only on Kant's _Critique of the Power of Judgment_ but also on the work of Hannah Arendt, John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Jürgen Habermas, Ferrara outlines a view of exemplary validity that is applicable to today's central philosophical issues, including public reason, human rights, radical evil, sovereignty, republicanism and liberalism, and religion in the public sphere. (shrink)

Ce livre aborde une question qu'on ne trouve pas telle quelle, explicitement thématisée, chez Merleau-Ponty lui-même, mais qui travaille en profondeur toute sa pensée, à savoir l'expérience de la création. Il s'efforce de respecter la manière dont elle se profile dans les textes du philosophe, le style indirect selon lequel elle émerge chez lui. L'exploration s'en déploie entre quatre grandes régions : " nature ", " histoire ", " langage ", " art ". Chacun de ces domaines, qui interfère sans (...) cesse dans la pensée merleau-pontienne avec les autres, permet de faire ressortir les opérateurs de création qui s'entre-éclairent souvent et demeurent néanmoins irréductibles les uns aux autres. Qu'il s'agisse de spontanéité aveugle ou de " reprise " d'une situation contingente, de différentiel langagier ou de geste pictural relançant l'autophanie du visible même, chaque fois c'est à un autre schème singulier que l'on a affaire. Le phénoménologue vise toujours à élucider la même expérience, c'est-à-dire la manière dont se formule l'ouverture d'un monde. Il essaie de comprendre ce qui se passe entre ou avant les formes - l'effraction de l'événement, l'improbable nuance, le fugitif de l'idée, l'essence qui se met à rayonner. Ainsi apparaît la contribution de la " philosophie d'aujourd'hui " à des enjeux majeurs de l'esthétique. (shrink)

As people look for a way to ground their judgments of moral, political, aesthetic claims in the face of the postmodernists who claim nothing can be grounded, Reflective Authenticity attempts to rescue some of the critical ideals of the Enlightenment without falling prey to those who say that the Enlightenment's tenets of objectivity, reason, liberalism makes this impossible and in the face of multiculturalism, difference, and the death of subject, are outdated. Alessandro Ferrara suggests that the notion of reflective (...) authenticity offers the key to a new kind of exemplary universalism which, different from the generalizing universalism typical of modern thought, does not fall under the critique of foundationalism articulated by postmodernist thinkers. (shrink)

We group the existing variants of the familiar set-theoretical and truth-theoretical paradoxes into two classes: connective paradoxes, which can in principle be ascribed to the presence of a contracting connective of some sort, and structural paradoxes, where at most the faulty use of a structural inference rule can possibly be blamed. We impute the former to an equivocation over the meaning of logical constants, and the latter to an equivocation over the notion of consequence. Both equivocation sources are tightly related, (...) and can be cleared up by adopting a particular substructural logic in place of classical logic. We then argue that our perspective can be justified via an informational semantics of contraction-free substructural logics. (shrink)

The field of AI safety aims to prevent increasingly capable artificially intelligent systems from causing humans harm. Research on moral alignment is widely thought to offer a promising safety strategy: if we can equip AI systems with appropriate ethical rules, according to this line of thought, they'll be unlikely to disempower, destroy or otherwise seriously harm us. Deontological morality looks like a particularly attractive candidate for an alignment target, given its popularity, relative technical tractability and commitment to harm-avoidance principles. I (...) argue that the connection between moral alignment and safe behavior is more tenuous than many have hoped. In general, AI systems can possess either of these properties in the absence of the other, and we should favor safety when the two conflict. In particular, advanced AI systems governed by standard versions of deontology need not be especially safe. (shrink)

Qu’a donc « voulu dire » l’artiste? Qu’a-t-il recherché? Cette question peut sembler dépassée ou naïve, comme si l’œuvre se suffisait à elle-même. Pour Alessandro Pignocchi, il est impossible de comprendre nos relations aux œuvres d’art sans s’interroger sur les intentions de l’artiste. Les avancées récentes en sciences cognitives suggèrent en effet que chaque aspect de notre expérience d’une œuvre est façonné par les intentions que nous attribuons, pour la plupart inconsciemment, à l’artiste. Nous percevons par exemple, à notre (...) insu, de nombreuses propriétés des œuvres d’art – les traits d’un dessin, certains aspects de la structure des films ou des phrases d’un roman – comme le fruit d’intentions et d’actions que nous aurions nous-mêmes pu produire. Réflexion pluridisciplinaire, cet ouvrage revisite des thèmes classiques de la philosophie de l’art – le concept d’œuvre, la place de l’auteur, du contexte, le rapport de l’œuvre au temps, le statut du jugement artistique – et élabore une série d’outils de pensée visant à enrichir nos relations aux œuvres d’art. Alessandro Pignocchi est docteur de l’EHESS en philosophie et en sciences cognitives, membre de l’Institut Jean-Nicod. Il est aussi illustrateur. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the role of punishment as a critical social mechanism for cheating prevention in MMORPGs. The role of punishment is empirically investigated in a case study of the MMORPG Tibia and by focusing on the use of bots to cheat. We describe the failure of punishment in Tibia, which is perceived by players as one of the elements facilitating the proliferation of bots. In this process some players act as a moral enterprising group contributing to the reform (...) of the game rules and in particular to the reform of the Tibia punishment system by the game company. In the conclusion we consider the ethical issues raised by our findings and we propose some general reflections on the role of punishment and social mechanisms for the governance of online worlds more generally. (shrink)

Evaluativists hold that psychiatric disorders have a factual and evaluative dimension and recognize that psychiatric patients have an active role in shaping their symptoms, influencing the development of their disorders, and the outcome of psychiatric therapy. This is reflected in person-centered approaches that explicitly consider the role of values in psychiatric conceptualization, classification, and decision-making. In this respect, in light of the recent partnership between Fulford’s value-based practice (VBP), and Stanghellini’s phenomenological-hermeneutic-dynamical (P.H.D) psychotherapy method, this paper presents a comparative analysis (...) of two person-centered approaches to psychiatric care currently discussed within the literature. I claim that while these approaches share some core ideas, they also present important divergences concerning their axiological underpinnings, which could potentially compromise their partnership. In particular, by exploring their theoretical, practical, and ethical dimensions, I show that these models have different conceptions of what values are, which, in turn, affect their understanding of how values relate to the person and how clinicians can identify them. Finally, I argue that although Fulford’s and Stanghellini’s approaches are prima facie compatible and complementary, developing a “combined analytic-plus-phenomenological form of values-based practice” should address fundamental conceptual issues if it is to become a consistent and coherent method for psychiatric care. (shrink)

Philosophers have rightly condemned lookism—that is, discrimination in favor of attractive people or against unattractive people—in education, the justice system, the workplace and elsewhere. Surprisingly, however, the almost universal preference for attractive romantic and sexual partners has rarely received serious ethical scrutiny. On its face, it’s unclear whether this is a form of discrimination we should reject or tolerate. I consider arguments for both views. On the one hand, a strong case can be made that preferring attractive partners is bad. (...) The idea is that choosing partners based on looks seems essentially similar to other objectionable forms of discrimination. (In particular, the preference for attractive partners is arguably both unfair and harmful to a significant degree.) One can try to resist this conclusion in several ways. I consider three possible replies. The first has to do with the possibility of controlling our partner preferences. The second pertains to attractiveness and “good genes”. The last attempts to link certain aspects of attractiveness to a prospective partner’s personality and values. I argue that the first two replies fail conclusively, while the third only amounts to a limited defense of a particular kind of attractiveness preference. So the idea that we should often avoid preferring attractive partners is compelling. (shrink)

Es innegable que la noción de epoché fue crucial para el surgimiento y el posterior desarrollo de la tradición fenomenológica. Si bien la resignificación que Husserl hace de ésta es sumamente original, él mismo se detiene a reconocer en la filosofía antigua el mérito de haber encontrado el camino idóneo para acceder a la subjetividad trascendental. En el siguiente trabajo buscaré, por un lado, definir la epoché tal como se origina en el pensamiento de los sofistas para luego pasar a (...) analizar el modo en el que Husserl logra reversionar dicha noción hasta convertirla en el método predilecto que nos permite arribar a la esfera trascendental. Por otro lado, continuaré rastreando la evolución de la epoché para llegar a su abandono en la filosofía de Sartre. En relación con esto último, me interesa preguntarme si el existencialismo reniega de la suspensión del juicio por considerarla inapropiada o si, más bien, se trata de una supresión parcial del método fenomenológico. Me propongo defender esta segunda tesis, alegando que, en realidad, la epoché no es una noción que esté totalmente ausente en la filosofía de Sartre sino que se mantiene vigente en términos de angustia existencial. (shrink)

Portuguese translation of Aristotle’s _Prophecy in Sleep_, preceded by a short presentation of the text and accompanied by explanatory notes.

A great deal of work in analytic philosophy of art is related to defining what counts as art. So far, cognitive approaches to art have almost entirely ignored this literature. In this paper I discuss the role of intuition in analytic philosophy of art, to show how an empirical research program on art could take advantage of existing work in analytic philosophy. I suggest that the first step of this research program should be to understand how people intuitively categorize something (...) as art. Drawing on results from cognitive science and analytic philosophy, I show that the intuitive categorization of an artifact as art rests on the intentions attributed (frequently implicitly) to the creator of the artifact based both on its appearance and on background knowledge. I discuss how the issue of categorization is related to other empirical issues concerning our relationship to works of art, such as perception, appreciation, interpretation and evaluation. (shrink)

This contributed volume aims to reconsider the concept of individuation, clarifying its articulation with respect to contemporary problems in perceptual, neural, developmental, semiotic and social morphogenesis. The authors approach the ontogenetical issue by taking into account the morphogenetical process, involving the concept of individuation proposed by Gilbert Simondon and Gilles Deleuze. The target audience primarily comprises experts in the field but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students. The challenge of the genesis and constitution of "units" has always (...) been at the center of philosophical and scientific research. This ontogenetical issue is common to every discipline but it is articulated in different ways: in phenomenology of perception the constitution of perceptual units is at the base of gestalt field theories, in theoretical neuroscience synchronized neural assemblies are considered as correlates of conscious processes, in developmental embryogenesis the constitution of organs is the principle outcome of morphodynamic evolution while in social morphogenesis the constitution of coherent units is common to segmentary, gerarchic and functional differentiation. (shrink)

According to a widespread view in metaphysics and philosophy of science, all explanations involve relations of ontic dependence between the items appearing in the explanandum and the items appearing in the explanans. I argue that a family of mathematical cases, which I call “viewing-as explanations”, are incompatible with the Dependence Thesis. These cases, I claim, feature genuine explanations that aren’t supported by ontic dependence relations. Hence the thesis isn’t true in general. The first part of the paper defends this claim (...) and discusses its significance. The second part of the paper considers whether viewing-as explanations occur in the empirical sciences, focusing on the case of so-called fictional models. It’s sometimes suggested that fictional models can be explanatory even though they fail to represent actual worldly dependence relations. Whether or not such models explain, I suggest, depends on whether we think scientific explanations necessarily give information relevant to intervention and control. Finally, I argue that counterfactual approaches to explanation also have trouble accommodating viewing-as cases. (shrink)

We discuss potential biorisks from large language models (LLMs). AI assistants based on LLMs such as ChatGPT have been shown to significantly reduce barriers to entry for actors wishing to synthesize dangerous, potentially novel pathogens and chemical weapons. The harms from deploying such bioagents could be further magnified by AI-assisted misinformation. We endorse several policy responses to these dangers, including prerelease evaluations of biomedical AIs by subject-matter experts, enhanced surveillance and lab screening procedures, restrictions on AI training data, and access (...) controls on biomedical AI. We conclude with a suggestion about future research directions in bioethics. (shrink)

The problem of truth in fiction concerns how to tell whether a given proposition is true in a given fiction. Thus far, the nearly universal consensus has been that some propositions are ‘implicitly true’ in some fictions: such propositions are not expressed by any explicit statements in the relevant work, but are nevertheless held to be true in those works on the basis of some other set of criteria. I call this family of views ‘implicitism’. I argue that implicitism faces (...) serious problems, whereas the opposite view is much more plausible than has previously been thought. After mounting a limited defence of explicitism, I explore a difficult problem for the view and discuss some possible responses. (shrink)

Here, we discuss historical, philosophical and technical problems associated with relating logic and relating semantics. To do so, we proceed in three steps. First, Section 1 is devoted to providing an introduction to both relating logic and relating semantics. Second, we address the history of relating semantics and some of the main research directions and their philosophical applications. Third, we discuss some technical problems related to relating semantics, particularly whether the direct incorporation of the relation into the language of relating (...) logic is needed. The starting point for our considerations presented here is the 1st Workshop On Relating Logic and the selected papers for this issue. (shrink)

The role of personal background knowledge—in particular knowledge about the context of production of an artwork—has been only marginally taken into account in cognitive approaches to art. Addressing this issue is crucial to enhancing these approaches’ explanatory power and framing their collaboration with the humanities (Bullot and Reber 2012). This paper sketches a model of the experience of artworks based on the mechanisms of intention attribution, and shows how this model makes it possible to address the issue of personal background (...) knowledge empirically. I claim that the role of intention attribution in art experience has been incorrectly accounted in the literature because of an overly narrow definition of “intention.” I suggest that the observer can recover not only the artist’s abstract projects, but any kind of mental states that have played a causal role during the production of the work. In addition, I suggest that this recovery occurs in large part unconsciously and/or implicitly. I provide support for these claims by distinguishing three families of psychological mechanisms of intention attribution that are activated by artworks: one involved in the cognition of artifacts, one devoted to communication, and one involved in action perception. (shrink)

The following is an attempt to read Anselm’s treatise De veritate in accordance with its immanent intention by considering the question: to what extent and in which sense does it, in unfolding the concept of truth, more concretely determine the concept of God—and accordingly also the concept of man and his relationship to God? The question of whether and to what extent Anselm argues sola ratione will not be raised, but instead in what way his ratio is capable of developing (...) out of the data of belief a conceptuality that is binding for the intellectus credens. (shrink)

How and to what extent do people take into account the intentions of others? Alessandro Duranti sets out to answer this question, showing that the role of intentions in human interaction is variable across cultures and contexts. Through careful analysis of data collected over three decades in US and Pacific societies, Duranti demonstrates that, in some communities, social actors avoid intentional discourse, focusing on the consequences of actions rather than on their alleged original goals. In other cases, he argues, (...) people do speculate about their own intentions or guess the intentions of others, including in some societies where it was previously assumed they avoid doing so. To account for such variation, Duranti proposes an 'intentional continuum', a concept that draws from phenomenology and the detailed analysis of face-to-face interaction. A combination of new essays and classic re-evaluations, the book draws together findings from anthropology, linguistics and philosophy to offer a penetrating account of the role of intentions in defining human action. (shrink)

The aim of the present book is to give a comprehensive account of the ‘state of the art’ of substructural logics, focusing both on their proof theory and on their semantics (both algebraic and relational. It is for graduate students in either philosophy, mathematics, theoretical computer science or theoretical linguistics as well as specialists and researchers.

semantic minimalism and moderte contextualism.

Much recent work on mathematical explanation has presupposed that the phenomenon involves explanatory proofs in an essential way. I argue that this view, ‘proof chauvinism’, is false. I then look in some detail at the explanation of the solvability of polynomial equations provided by Galois theory, which has often been thought to revolve around an explanatory proof. The article concludes with some general worries about the effects of chauvinism on the theory of mathematical explanation. 1Introduction 2Why I Am Not a (...) Proof Chauvinist 2.1Proof chauvinism and mathematical practice 2.2Proof chauvinism and philosophy 3An Example: Galois Theory and Explanatory Proof 4Conclusion. (shrink)

Keenan (1987) observed that trivial determiners built from basic existential determiners (e.g.,either zero or else more than zero) are allowed inthere-insertion contexts, and that trivial determiners built from basic non-existential determiners (e.g.,either all or else not all) are not. This result is unexpected under the analyses ofthere-sentences proposed in Barwise and Cooper (1981), Higginbotham (1987), and Keenan (1987). I argue that the class of NPs barred from the postverbal position ofthere-sentences (strong NPs) is correctly characterized in presuppositional terms, as suggested (...) in de Jong and Verkuyl (1985) and Lumsden (1988). According to this characterization, strong NPs share one of the defining components of definiteness proposed in Heim (1982), namely the Descriptive Content Condition (DCC). How to derive the prohibition against strong NPs inthere-insertion contexts (definiteness effect) from the fact that strong NPs meet the DCC is not obvious, however. I argue that accounting for this prohibition involves regarding the XP-coda in [there be NP XP] as providing the contextual domain for the interpretation of the postverbal NP. (shrink)

Philosophers of science since Nagel have been interested in the links between intertheoretic reduction and explanation, understanding and other forms of epistemic progress. Although intertheoretic reduction is widely agreed to occur in pure mathematics as well as empirical science, the relationship between reduction and explanation in the mathematical setting has rarely been investigated in a similarly serious way. This paper examines an important particular case: the reduction of arithmetic to set theory. I claim that the reduction is unexplanatory. In defense (...) of this claim, I offer evidence from mathematical practice, and I respond to contrary suggestions due to Steinhart, Maddy, Kitcher and Quine. I then show how, even if set-theoretic reductions are generally not explanatory, set theory can nevertheless serve as a legitimate foundation for mathematics. Finally, some implications of my thesis for philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science are discussed. In particular, I suggest that some reductions in mathematics are probably explanatory, and I propose that differing standards of theory acceptance might account for the apparent lack of unexplanatory reductions in the empirical sciences. (shrink)

Gauss’s quadratic reciprocity theorem is among the most important results in the history of number theory. It’s also among the most mysterious: since its discovery in the late 18th century, mathematicians have regarded reciprocity as a deeply surprising fact in need of explanation. Intriguingly, though, there’s little agreement on how the theorem is best explained. Two quite different kinds of proof are most often praised as explanatory: an elementary argument that gives the theorem an intuitive geometric interpretation, due to Gauss (...) and Eisenstein, and a sophisticated proof using algebraic number theory, due to Hilbert. Philosophers have yet to look carefully at such explanatory disagreements in mathematics. I do so here. According to the view I defend, there are two important explanatory virtues—depth and transparency—which different proofs (and other potential explanations) possess to different degrees. Although not mutually exclusive in principle, the packages of features associated with the two stand in some tension with one another, so that very deep explanations are rarely transparent, and vice versa. After developing the theory of depth and transparency and applying it to the case of quadratic reciprocity, I draw some morals about the nature of mathematical explanation. (shrink)

In this paper we introduce a new natural deduction system for the logic of lattices, and a number of extensions of lattice logic with different negation connectives. We provide the class of natural deduction proofs with both a standard inductive definition and a global graph-theoretical criterion for correctness, and we show how normalisation in this system corresponds to cut elimination in the sequent calculus for lattice logic. This natural deduction system is inspired both by Shoesmith and Smiley's multiple conclusion systems (...) for classical logic and Girard's proofnets for linear logic. (shrink)

Mathematicians distinguish between proofs that explain their results and those that merely prove. This paper explores the nature of explanatory proofs, their role in mathematical practice, and some of the reasons why philosophers should care about them. Among the questions addressed are the following: what kinds of proofs are generally explanatory (or not)? What makes a proof explanatory? Do all mathematical explanations involve proof in an essential way? Are there really such things as explanatory proofs, and if so, how do (...) they relate to the sorts of explanation encountered in philosophy of science and metaphysics? (shrink)

Alessandro Iorio untersucht Heideggers "Geschichte des Seins" unter den Voraussetzungen von verschiedenen Narrativitätstheorien. Einschlägige Arbeiten von Genette, Ricœur, Bachtin und Propp werden zum Ausgangspunkt einer narrativitätslogischen Analyse verschiedener Manuskripte gemacht (darunter auch die bisher veröffentlichten "Schwarzen Hefte"). Mit dieser Methode kann Iorio Momente von Heideggers Geschichts-Verständnis verdeutlichen, die in seinen bisherigen Interpretationen ausgespart wurden. Er zeigt ein Denken, das sich seiner erzählerischen Dynamik überlässt, ohne sich für reale historische Geschehnisse zu interessieren. Gerade in der "mytho-logischen" Überbietung real-historischer Ereignisse, betont (...) Heidegger, liege der eigentliche Anspruch der Philosophie. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to expatiate on the poetic function of language on the basis of considerations by Jakobson and Waugh. I try to bring in the consideration that pragmatics plays an important role in elucidating the poetic function of language. Contextualism allows us to interpret a poem: referents must be fixed or need not be fixed due to the requirements of the discourse; citations are brought in through pragmatic ways; polyphony is achieved by taking into account the context (...) of previous analyses of a poetic text; the vicinity of a certain word, or concept or line is likely to affect the interpretation of a certain expression; the poetic text can take different forms, from graffiti to discourse at the market place, to discourse between lovers. All these forms of poetic text would not exist if the notion of poetry did not include the idea of semantic/pragmatic compression which is matched, in interpretation, by expansions. (shrink)

Paraconsistent Weak Kleene Logic is the 3-valued propositional logic defined on the weak Kleene tables and with two designated values. Most of the existing proof systems for PWK are characterised by the presence of linguistic restrictions on some of their rules. This feature can be seen as a shortcoming. We provide a cut-free calculus for PWK that is devoid of such provisos. Moreover, we introduce a Priest-style tableaux calculus for PWK.

In a recent series of important papers, Søren Overgaard has defended a disjunctivist reading of Edmund Husserl’s theory of perception. According to Overgaard, Husserl commits to disjunctivism when arguing that hallucination intrinsically differs from perception because only experiences of the latter kind carry singular content and, thereby, pick out individuals. This paper rejects that interpretation by invoking the theory of intentionality developed by Husserl in the Logical Investigations. It is claimed that this theory not only lacks the notion of singular (...) content, but it also entails the idea that perceptions and hallucinations belong to the same kind of experience. If that is correct, a commitment to conjuctivism on Husserl’s end follows, pace Overgaard. (shrink)