El artículo examina un aspecto relevantede la interpretación heideggeriana deltiempo como temporeidad del Dasein: sudeterminación como horizonte trascendentalde la comprensión del ser en general. Sibien es cierto que Heidegger abandonael proyecto ontológico, diseñado en Sery tiempo, de una interpretación temporariadel sentido del ser, el artículo intentamostrar que, en textos posteriores, mantieney profundiza su concepción de latemporeidad como horizonte trascenden-tal de comprensión. Para ello, ofrece unareconstrucción de la noción de esquemahorizontal de los éxtasis tempóreos, a fin deaclarar en qué sentido el (...) tiempo constituyeel origen ontológico del ser-en-el-mundo como ámbito abierto demanifestación significativa.This article examines a eminent aspect ofthe Heideggerian interpretation of the timeas temporality of Dasein: its determinationas transcendental horizon of the comprehensionofBeingingeneral.InspiteofthefactthatHeidegger abandons the on Beingand Time designed ontological project ofa temporal interpretation of the meaningof Being, the article tries to show that inposterior texts maintains and deepenshis conception of the temporality as tran-scendental horizon of comprehension. Inorder to do so, it offers a reconstruction ofnotion horizontal schema of the temporalEcstases, in order to explain how the timeis the ontological origin of the being-inthe-world as open spacefor the sense apparition. (shrink)

This article examines the Heideggerian interpretation of intentionality as documented in some university lessons related to Being and Time. In his interpretation, Heidegger determines the phenomenological sense of intentionality as the universal structure of the lived experiences and in terms of the mutual correspondence of intentio and intentum. He also understands the concept of intentum as related to "entity in itself", in the strict phenomenological sense that refers to an "entity in its mode of being intended". Besides, he offers indications (...) wich allow us to understand the connection of the phenomenological concept of intentum with the ontological question about the mode of being of entities and with the origin of the ontological difference. (shrink)

Neste trabalho buscamos apresentar argumentos a favor da reavaliação da significância moral dos danos naturais para a ética. Em outras palavras, objetivamos problematizar e refutar a visão idílica sobre a situação dos animais silvestres e os processos envolvidos, de modo a demonstrar que o sofrimento vivenciado por esses seres deve ser levado em considerações em nossas avaliações morais. Para tanto, realizaremos uma análise conceitual aprofundada de alguns dos termos centrais empregados nessa discussão. Em seguida, apresentaremos alguns exemplos do que realmente (...) ocorre na natureza em termos de sofrimento diário contínuo. Por último, abordaremos os deveres relativos à intervenção no meio natural. (shrink)

Quantum gravity poses the problem of merging quantum mechanics and general relativity, the two great conceptual revolutions in the physics of the twentieth century. The loop and spinfoam approach, presented in this book, is one of the leading research programs in the field. The first part of the book discusses the reformulation of the basis of classical and quantum Hamiltonian physics required by general relativity. The second part covers the basic technical research directions. Appendices include a detailed history of the (...) subject of quantum gravity, hard-to-find mathematical material, and a discussion of some philosophical issues raised by the subject. This fascinating text is ideal for graduate students entering the field, as well as researchers already working in quantum gravity. It will also appeal to philosophers and other scholars interested in the nature of space and time. (shrink)

Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to "flow"? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. For most readers this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it remains. We think of it (...) as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. He explains how the theory of quantum gravity attempts to understand and give meaning to the resulting extreme landscape of this timeless world. Weaving together ideas from philosophy, science and literature, he suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe. (shrink)

This is a profound study of Aristotle's concept of phronesis, or practical wisdom. Carlo Natali critically reconsiders Aristotle's famous doctrine of contemplations, relating it to contemporary theories of the good life.

Following a line of research that I have developed for several years, I argue that the best strategy for understanding quantum gravity is to build a picture of the physical world where the notion of time plays no role at all. I summarize here this point of view, explaining why I think that in a fundamental description of nature we must “forget time”, and how this can be done in the classical and in the quantum theory. The idea is to (...) develop a formalism that treats dependent and independent variables on the same footing. In short, I propose to interpret mechanics as a theory of relations between variables, rather than the theory of the evolution of variables in time. (shrink)

Testable predictions of quantum mechanics are invariant under time reversal. But the evolution of the quantum state in time is not so, neither in the collapse nor in the no-collapse interpretations of the theory. This is a fact that challenges any realistic interpretation of the quantum state. On the other hand, this fact raises no difficulty if we interpret the quantum state as a mere calculation device, bookkeeping past real quantum events.

The world appears to be well described by gauge theories; why? I suggest that gauge is more than mathematical redundancy. Gauge-dependent quantities can not be predicted, but there is a sense in which they can be measured. They describe “handles” though which systems couple: they represent real relational structures to which the experimentalist has access in measurement by supplying one of the relata in the measurement procedure itself. This observation leads to a physical interpretation for the ubiquity of gauge: it (...) is a consequence of a relational structure of physical quantities. (shrink)

Science progresses through debate and disagreement, and scientific controversies play a crucial role in the growth of scientific knowledge. However, not all controversies and disagreements are progressive in science. Sometimes, controversies can be pseudoscientific; in fact, bogus controversies, and what seem like genuine scientific disagreements, can be a distortion of science set up by non-scientific actors. Bogus controversies are detrimental to science because they can hinder scientific progress and eventually bias science-based decisions. The first goal of this paper is to (...) elucidate the distinction between bogus and genuine scientific controversies and provide a qualitative methodology, based on the literature on expertise, for distinguishing between the two. We will illustrate six epistemic criteria for distinguishing bogus from genuine scientific debates in science and medicine. This heuristic strategy applies directly to scientific reports, and it relies mostly on the social structure of science. We will then apply the above criteria to a case study: the controversy over statins, which are widely prescribed drugs for reducing the level of cholesterol and preventing cardiovascular disease. (shrink)

Facts happen at every interaction, but they are not absolute: they are relative to the systems involved in the interaction. Stable facts are those whose relativity can effectively be ignored. In this work, we describe how stable facts emerge in a world of relative facts and discuss their respective roles in connecting quantum theory and the world. The distinction between relative and stable facts resolves the difficulties pointed out by the no-go theorem of Frauchiger and Renner, and is consistent with (...) the experimental violation of the Local Friendliness inequalities of Bong et al.. Basing the ontology of the theory on relative facts clarifies the role of decoherence in bringing about the classical world and solves the apparent incompatibility between the ‘linear evolution’ and ‘projection’ postulates. (shrink)

A distinguished international team of scholars under the editorship of Carlo Natali have collaborated to produce a systematic, chapter-by-chapter study of one of the most influential texts in the history of moral philosophy. The seventh book of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics discusses weakness of will in its first ten chapters, then turns in the last four chapters to pleasure and its relation to the supreme human good.

Franz Brentano is not usually associated with mathematics. Generally, only Brentano’s discussion of the continuum and his critique of the mathematical accounts of it is treated in the literature. It is this detailed critique which suggests that Brentano had more than a superficial familiarity with mathematics. Indeed, considering the authors and works quoted in his lectures, Brentano appears well-informed and quite interested in the mathematical research of his time. I specifically address his lectures here as there is much less to (...) be found about mathematics in his published works. Besides Brentano’s own work, it is quite remarkable to see that practically all of his better-known students sooner or later produced a work on the philosophy of mathematics. This also encourages the supposition not just of a common interest in the matter, but of a common theoretical core. All this prompts the question: Can we speak of a Brentanist philosophy of mathematics? (shrink)

Is reality three-dimensional and becoming real (Presentism), or is reality four-dimensional and becoming illusory (Eternalism)? Both options raise difficulties. I argue that we do not need to be trapped by this dilemma. There is a third possibility: reality has a more complex temporal structure than either of these two naive options. Fundamental becoming is real, but local and unoriented. A notion of present is well defined, but only locally and in the context of approximations.

In this paper I will discuss Edmund Husserl’s critique of Franz Brentano’s interpretation of categorical judgments as Double Judgments (Doppelurteile). This will be developed mostly as an internal critique, within the framework of the school of Brentano, and not through a direct contrast with Husserl’s own theory of judgment, as presented e.g. in the Fifth Investigation. Already during the 1890s Husserl overcame the psychologistic aspects of Brentano’s approach, advocating the importance of analysing the logical structure underlying language independently from psychology. (...) Moreover, Husserl’s critique seems to be also applicable to Bertrand Russell’s analysis, which shares an important aspect of Brentano’s theory. I will try to avoid going too deep into the various theories of judgment and keep mostly to the issue of double judgments. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics is not about 'quantum states': it is about values of physical variables. I give a short fresh presentation and update on the *relational* perspective on the theory, and a comment on its philosophical implications.

Contrary to claims about the irrelevance of philosophy for science, I argue that philosophy has had, and still has, far more influence on physics than is commonly assumed. I maintain that the current anti-philosophical ideology has had damaging effects on the fertility of science. I also suggest that recent important empirical results, such as the detection of the Higgs particle and gravitational waves, and the failure to detect supersymmetry where many expected to find it, question the validity of certain philosophical (...) assumptions common among theoretical physicists, inviting us to engage in a clearer philosophical reflection on scientific method. (shrink)

Franz Brentano is not usually associated with mathematics. Generally, only Brentano’s discussion of the continuum and his critique of the mathematical accounts of it is treated in the literature. It is this detailed critique which suggests that Brentano had more than a superficial familiarity with mathematics. Indeed, considering the authors and works quoted in his lectures, Brentano appears well-informed and quite interested in the mathematical research of his time. I specifically address his lectures here as there is much less to (...) be found about mathematics in his published works. Besides Brentano’s own work, it is quite remarkable to see that practically all of his better-known students sooner or later produced a work on the philosophy of mathematics. This also encourages the supposition not just of a common interest in the matter, but of a common theoretical core. All this prompts the question: Can we speak of a Brentanist philosophy of mathematics? (shrink)

We introduce and study some local versions of o-minimality, requiring that every definable set decomposes as the union of finitely many isolated points and intervals in a suitable neighbourhood of every point. Motivating examples are the expansions of the ordered reals by sine, cosine and other periodic functions.

We observe entropy decrease towards the past. Does this imply that in the past the world was in a non-generic microstate? I point out an alternative. The subsystem to which we belong interacts with the universe via a relatively small number of quantities, which define a coarse graining. Entropy happens to depends on coarse-graining. Therefore the entropy we ascribe to the universe depends on the peculiar coupling between us and the rest of the universe. Low past entropy may be due (...) to the fact that this coupling is non-generic. I argue that for any generic microstate of a sufficiently rich system there are always special subsystems defining a coarse graining for which the entropy of the rest is low in one time direction. These are the subsystems allowing creatures that “live in time” —such as those in the biosphere— to exist. I reply to some objections raised to an earlier presentation of this idea, in particular by Bob Wald, David Albert and Jim Hartle. (shrink)

ABSTRACT ABSTRACT: I show that Aristotelian physics is a correct and nonintuitive approximation of Newtonian physics in the suitable domain in the same technical sense in which Newton’s theory is an approximation of Einstein’s theory. Aristotelian physics lasted long not because it became dogma, but because it is a very good, empirically grounded theory. This observation suggests some general considerations on intertheoretical relationships.

This paper challenges the ‘Standard Account’ of the so-called endoxic method that Aristotle articulates in a well-known passage from book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics. That account is problematic because it misreads what Aristotle says and thereby attributes to him an unusually rigid and conservative method that he himself does not seem to employ. This paper carefully analyzes the semantics and syntax of the book VII passage in order to present a novel and improved understanding of the endoxic method. This (...) improved account helps adjudicate scholarly debates about the method’s purpose and scope. (shrink)

The book presents the life and personality, the scientific and philosophical work of Ludwig Boltzmann, one of the great scientists who marked the passage from 19th to 20th century physics. His rich and tragic life, ending by suicide at the age of 62, is described in detail. A substantial part of the book is devoted to discussing his scientific and philosophical ideas and placing them in the context of the second half of the 19th century. The fact that Boltzmann was (...) the man who did most to establish that there is a microscopic, atomic structure underlying macroscopic bodies is documented, as is Boltzmann's influence on modern physics, especially through the work of Planck on light quanta and of Einstein on Brownian motion. Boltzmann was the centre of a scientific revolution, and he has been proved right on many crucial issues. He anticipated Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions and proposed a theory of knowledge based on Darwin. His basic results, when properly understood, can also be stated as mathematical theorems. Some of these have been proved; others are still at the level of likely but unproven conjectures. The main text of this biography is written almost entirely without equations. Mathematical appendices deepen knowledge of some technical aspects of the subject. (shrink)

Ethical veganism is the view that raising animals for food is an immoral practice that must be stopped because of the harm it causes to the animals, the environment, and our health. Carlo Alvaro argues the only way to stop that harm is to acquire the virtues that enable us to act justly and benevolently toward animals.

The Conventionality of Simultaneity espoused by Reichenbach, Grunbaum, Edwards, and Winnie is herein extended to mechanics and electrodynamics. The extension is seen to be a special case of a generally covariant formulation of physics, and therefore consistent with Special Relativity as the geometry of flat space-time. Many of the quantities of classical physics, such as mass, charge density, and force, are found to be synchronization dependent in this formulation and, therefore, in Reichenbach's terminology, "metrogenic." The relationship of these quantities to (...) 4-vectors and their physical significance is discussed. (shrink)

O'Brien & Opie argue that (1) only explicit representations give rise to conscious experience, and (2) explicit representations depend on stable patterns of activation. In neglect patients, the stimuli presented to the neglected hemifield are not consciously experienced but exert causal effects on the processing of other stimuli presented to the intact hemifield. We argue that O'Brien & Opie cannot account for a nonconscious representation that is stable, as attested by the fact that it affects behavior, but is neither potentially (...) explicit nor tacit. (shrink)

The difference between common and proper names seems to derive from specific semantic characteristics of proper names. In particular, proper names refer to specific individual entities or events, and unlike common names, rarely map onto more general semantic characteristics (attributes, concepts, categories). This fact makes the link proper names have with their reference particularly fragile. Processing proper names seems, as a consequence, to require special cognitive and neural resources. Neuropsychological findings show that proper names and common names follow functionally distinct (...) processing pathways. These pathways are neurally distinct and differently sensitive to focal or generalized brain damage, cognitive changes with age or lack of organic resources. Their precise location, depending on specific tasks, is still partly unknown. (shrink)

Carlo Levi was a painter, writer, and antifascist Italian from a Jewish family, and his political activism forced him into exile for most of the Second World War. While in exile, he wrote _Christ Stopped at Eboli_, a memoir, and _Fear of Freedom_, a philosophical meditation on humanity's flight from moral and spiritual autonomy and our resulting loss of self and creativity. Brooding on what surely appeared to be the decline, if not the fall of Europe, Levi locates the (...) human abdication of responsibility in organized religion and its ability to turn the sacred into the sacrificial. In doing so, he references the entire intellectual and cultural estate of Western civilization, from the Bible and Greek mythology to Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. This edition features newly published pieces of Levi's artwork and the first English translation of his essay "Fear of Painting," which was appended to a later publication of the work. It also includes an introduction that discusses Levi's life and enduring legacy. Written as war clouds were gathering over Europe, _Fear of Freedom_ not only addresses a specific moment in history and a universal, timeless condition, but it is also a powerful indictment of our contemporary moral and political failures. (shrink)

This paper explores the scope and limits of rational consensus through mutual respect, with the primary focus on the best known formal model of consensus: the Lehrer–Wagner model. We consider various arguments against the rationality of the Lehrer–Wagner model as a model of consensus about factual matters. We conclude that models such as this face problems in achieving rational consensus on disagreements about unknown factual matters, but that they hold considerable promise as models of how to rationally resolve non-factual disagreements.

Truth-theoretic deflationism holds that truth is simple, and yet that it can fulfil many useful logico-linguistic roles. Deflationism focuses on axioms for truth: there is no reduction of the notion of truth to more fundamental ones such as sets or higher-order quantifiers. In this paper I argue that the fundamental properties of reasonable, primitive truth predicates are at odds with the core tenets of classical truth-theoretic deflationism that I call fix, express, and quantify. Truth may be regarded as a broadly (...) logical, sui generis notion. However, this has little to do with the original aims of the deflationary theory of truth. (shrink)

The article introduces and discusses an unpublished manuscript by Edmund Husserl, conserved at the Husserl-Archives Leuven with signature K I 26, pp. 73a–73b. The article is followed by the text of the manuscript in German and in an English translation. The manuscript, titled “The Transition through the Impossible” ( Der Durchgang durch das Unmögliche ), was part of the material Husserl used for his 1901 Doppelvortrag in Göttingen. In the manuscript, the impossible is characterized as the “sphere of objectlessness” ( (...) Sphäre der Gegenstandslosigkeit ) and Husserl addresses the question whether and when it is warranted to perform a transition through the impossible to obtain valid results for the sphere of objectivity. (shrink)

The fragment 140 a S.-M. = G 8 Ruth. is likely to deal with two different feats of Herakles. The lines b 21–b 33 seem to concern Cycnus, an impious hero killed by Herakles by order of Apollo. The rest of the fragment seems to concern the beginning of Herakles’ expedition against Laomedon. I think Pindarus presupposes a legend according to which Herakles spent the most part of his life in Thebes; such an interpretation might explain both the obscure expression (...) πέραν ἰσϑμὸν διαβαίς and other details. The opinion the fragment belonged to the Paianes is in my view right. (shrink)

The article analyzes the ethical and political stakes in Giorgio Agamben's The Coming Community. The book was first published in Italian in 1990 and was translated into English in 1993. It was then republished in Italian in 2001, with a short new apostil by the author that reaffirms its persistent and actual “inactuality.” In this text Agamben establishes the philosophical foundations of the long-lasting project started with the publication of Homo sacer. Its republication in 2001 seems thus to reaffirm the (...) politics of his analysis of the past fifteen years. The argument revolves around the analysis of the “whatever singularity” as the subject of the “coming community,” a singularity that presents an “inessential commonality, a solidarity that in no way concerns an essence.” Whatever must not be understood as “indifference” but, rather, as “being such that it always matters.” The ethical and political proposal consists in the call to adhere to this singularity without identity and representation in order to construe a community without postulates and thus also without “subjects.” The paradigm of this politics is identified in Nancy's term inoperativeness, a messianic “de-creation.” The inoperative whatever is directed toward a politics che viene, à-venir as distinct from futura, future: It implies in fact the renunciation of construing images of the future—“utopia is the very topicality of things.”. (shrink)

In what follows I consider the apparent contrast between two kinds of theories of context: a theory of objective context - exemplified in the works of Kaplan and Lewis - and a theory of subjective context -exemplified in the works of McCarthy and Giunchiglia. I consider then some difficulties for the objective theory. I don't give any formalization; instead I give some theoretical points about the problem. A possible result could be the abandon of the double indexing for a development (...) a multi-context theory (I give an example of a case). However other results could be possible and a challenge is posed to solve problems using the best results from each tradition of research. (shrink)