Although experimental philosophy is now over a decade old, it has only recently been introduced to the domain of philosophical aesthetics. So why is there already a need to defend it? Because, as I argue in this paper, we can anticipate the three main types of objection generally addressed to experimental philosophy and show that none of them concern experimental philosophers in aesthetics. I begin with some general considerations about experimental philosophy and its, sometimes conflicting, characteristics. This framework is designed (...) to help me situate the experimental practice in aesthetics within the general movement. I then present the objections and respond to them in turn. Their failure should convince aestheticians to embrace the practice early on and opponents of experimental philosophy to revise their usual objections before addressing them to experimental philosophers in aesthetics. (shrink)

Experimental Philosophy (X-Phi) is now a fully-fledged methodological project with applications in almost all areas of analytic philosophy, including, as of recently, aesthetics. Another methodological project which has been attracting attention in the last few years is conceptual engineering (CE). Its areas of implementation are now diverse, but as was the case initially with experimental philosophy, aesthetics has unfortunately been left out (or perhaps aestheticians have failed to pay attention to CE) until now. In this paper, I argue that if (...) conceptual engineers are interested in expanding their project to the field of aesthetics, which would greatly benefit the field, then they should rely on the existing experimental work of aestheticians. Experimental philosophers have only recently started to join forces with conceptual engineers in various fields, as well as to explore the methodological implications of such an alliance. This paper goes a step further by not only arguing that CE has potential in aesthetics, but that the way to realize this potential is to piggyback, so to speak, on the work of experimental aestheticians. In other words, instead of building a CE project in aesthetics from the ground up, this paper describes the support that CE can and should derive from current experimental aesthetics, thereby making the former’s development more efficiently realizable. Furthermore, I argue that doing so would also be beneficial to experimental aesthetics. Currently, the integration of X-Phi to the wider field of aesthetics is losing ground because certain objections—notably, the objection that X-Phi cannot be of relevance to normative questions—have not been properly refuted. By pairing up with a normative programme like CE, though, experimental aestheticians should finally be able to put these objections to rest. (shrink)

What do we see in a mirror? There is an ongoing debate whether mirrors present us with images of objects or whether we see, through the mirror, the objects themselves. Roberto Casati has recently argued that there is a categorical difference between images and mirror-reflections. His argument depends on the observation that mirrors, but not paintings, are sensitive to changes in the observer’s prospective. In our paper we scrutinize Casati’s argument and present a modal argument that shows that it cannot (...) establish this conclusion. We suggest that Casati’s line of reasoning suffers from the fact that he does not take dynamic images, i.e., images that change over time, into account. (shrink)

This article serves as an introduction to the special issue discussing the usefulness of philosophy in managerial practice. We present the papers included in this special issue and identify keynote directions for further research. The initial intention of the call for papers was to promote this topic on research agendas by offering a platform for discussing if, why, and how philosophy can complement and enhance management practice. Now that this special issue has been published, we see a broader significance: the (...) arguments explored here are a starting point for more in-depth studies of the connections that can occur between specific philosophical concepts, theories, methods on the one hand, and concrete managerial practices on the other. (shrink)

Cet article revient sur la notion de « sujet » chez Lacan en la distinguant de toute référence à l’identité. Il reprend la question « Qui parle? » posée par Michel Foucault en 1969 et y répond avec Lacan. En psychanalyse, il ne s’agit pas de négation du sujet, mais de dépendance du sujet par rapport au signifiant. Lacan a remis en question les « privilèges du moi », mais a sauvé la dimension du sujet en concevant un sujet de (...) l’inconscient. L’identité en psychanalyse n’est pas une identité déterminée par des normes sociales. C’est une identité au niveau du dire du sujet et de sa souffrance. Cet article montre finalement que le sujet lacanien est à la fois un sujet marqué par le signifiant et un sujet articulé à la pulsion. L’expérience de la psychanalyse conduit à une remise en question des identifications, permettant d’appréhender la marque traumatique au niveau du réel. (shrink)

Medium specificity is a theory, or rather a cluster of arguments, in aesthetics that rests on the idea that media are the physical material that makes up artworks, and that this material contains specific and unique features capable of 1) differentiating media from one another, and 2) determining the aesthetic potential and goals of each medium. As such, medium specificity is essential for aestheticians interested in matters of aesthetic ontology and value. However, as Noël Carroll has vehemently and convincingly argued, (...) the theory of medium specificity is inherently flawed and its many applications in art history ill-motivated. Famously, he concluded that we should ‘forget the medium’ entirely. In this thesis, I reject his conclusion and argue that reconstructing a theory of medium specificity, while taking Carroll’s objections into account, is possible. To do so, I offer a reconceptualization of the main theoretical components of medium specificity and ground this new theory in empirical research. I first redefine the medium not as the physical material that makes up artworks but as sets of practices – not the material itself but how one uses the material. I then show that what makes media specific and unique is not certain physical features, but the human responses, which can be empirically investigated, to the combination of practices that constitute media. This relation is one of response-dependence, albeit of a novel kind, which I develop by appealing to social metaphysics. The resulting theory is more complex but also much more flexible and fine-grained than the original and provides insight into a variety of current aesthetic theories. (shrink)

Reasons motivate our intentions and thus our actions, justify our beliefs, ground our hopes and connect our feelings of shame and pride to our thoughts. Given that intentions, beliefs and emotions are intentional states, intentionality is strongly connected with normativity. Yet what is more precisely their relationship? Some philosophers, notably Brandom and McDowell, contend at places that intentionality is intrinsically normative. In this paper, we discuss Brandom and McDowell’s thesis and the arguments they provide for its defence. In contrast to (...) what they hold, we argue that neither reference intentionality nor content intentionality are intrinsically normative, although at least content intentionality has normative implications. More precisely, we argue that neither species of intentionality are normative from a semantical viewpoint, because being in an intentional state is not being in a state that is semantically correct or incorrect. Nevertheless, being in a state endowed with content may be a reason for believing or acting. Thus, we argue that content intentionality has normative implications. More precisely, we argue that any content is such that, if it is the content of a state that is sensitive to reasons - as judging paradigmatically is – then it entitles the subject of that state to have further states or to act in certain ways. (shrink)

Tip-of-the-tongue experiences have an intriguing and insidious character. Some philosophers have tried to reduce them to more common states, with some considering these experiences to be beliefs about one’s state of knowledge, and still others considering them feelings about one’s state of knowledge. These two latter views are not mutually exclusive; indeed, one might hold a mixed theory, according to which the TOT is a feeling that depends constitutively on a belief. In the paper I first argue against the idea (...) that beliefs are a constitutive feature of TOTs and hence against both the pure and the mixed belief theories; next I address the feeling theory; finally, I defend a pluralist theory. (shrink)

It is an important issue for economic and finance applications to determine whether individuals exhibit a behavioral bias toward pessimism in their beliefs, in a lottery or more generally in an investment opportunities framework. In this paper, we analyze the answers of a sample of 1,540 individuals to the following question: Imagine that a coin will be flipped 10 times. Each time, if heads, you win 10 Euros. How many times do you think that you will win? The average answer (...) is surprisingly about 3.9 which is below the average 5, and we interpret this as a pessimistic bias. We find that women are more 'pessimistic' than men, as are old people relative to young. We also analyze how our notion of pessimism is related to more general notions of pessimism previously introduced in psychology. (shrink)

Comment comprendre la thèse selon laquelle la liberté d’expression constitue l’un des fondements d’une société démocratique, comme cela a pu être invoqué dans de nombreuses décisions constitutionnelles, en particulier en Allemagne? L’article se propose d’éclairer la nature du lien entre liberté d’expression et démocratie en s’inscrivant dans une réflexion sur les concepts de liberté que nous mobilisons lorsque nous cherchons à penser la liberté d’expression. En s’appuyant sur les contributions de Habermas et de Honneth à ce débat, il s’attache à (...) en décliner les différentes facettes : liberté privée, communicationnelle, droit de participation politique ou liberté sociale. Sur la base d’une compréhension de la liberté d’expression comme un droit et une pratique sociale constitutifs d’un espace public démocratique, il s’agit de poser la question de sa régulation à nouveaux frais. (shrink)

From November 5 to November 22, 2019, the University of Milan hosts an exhibition in which philosophy and its problems are staged in playful and interactive forms. Like any catalog, this volume also intends to document the objects and themes proposed to the visitor. But it also has a more ambitious goal: to imagine and design the spaces of that Museum of Philosophy which, we are sure, will be created here in Milan, starting from the experience of this exhibition--Translated, via (...) Google, from page 2 of cover. (shrink)

Although current debates in epistemology and philosophy of mind show a renewed interest in perceptual illusions, there is no systematic work in the philosophy of perception and in the psychology of perception with respect to the concept of illusion and the relation between illusion and error. This book aims to fill that gap.

Dans le cadre d'une analyse de la vie mentale selon laquelle, à certains égards, la "vie pratique" constitue le fondement de la "vie théorétique" et dans laquelle les émotions jouent un rôle central.

In the last twenty years, beginning with a seminal paper by Dagfinn Follesdal published in 1969,1 analytic philosophy has shown a renewed and increasing interest in Husserl's phenomenology. 2 In Husserl and Inten- tionality, David Woodruff Smith and Ronald Mclntyre give an important contribution to this line of research. The book is written in the analytic tradition, and represents in part an attempt at making phenomenology palatable to those who look suspiciously at 'continental philosophy'. Thus it provides a double service: (...) it introduces phenomenology to an analytic public, and it shows to those raised in the opposite tradition what kind of reception their tradition has overseas. (shrink)

There is currently no consensus regarding what measures are most valid to demonstrate perceptual processing without awareness. Likewise, whether conscious perception and unconscious processing rely on independent mechanisms or lie on a continuum remains a matter of debate. Here, we addressed these issues by comparing the time courses of subjective reports, objective discrimination performance and response priming during meta-contrast masking, under similar attentional demands. We found these to be strikingly similar, suggesting that conscious perception and unconscious processing cannot be dissociated (...) by their time course. Our results also demonstrate that unconscious processing, indexed by response priming, occurs, and that objective discrimination performance indexes the same conscious processes as subjective visibility reports. Finally, our results underscore the role of attention by showing that how much attention the stimulus receives relative to the mask, rather than whether processing is measured by conscious discrimination or by priming, determines the time course of meta-contrast masking. (shrink)

Although expressions of facial emotion hold a special status in attention relative to other complex objects, whether they summon our attention automatically and against our intentions remains a debated issue. Studies supporting the strong view that attentional capture by facial expressions of emotion is entirely automatic reported that a unique emotional face distractor interfered with search for a target that was also unique on a different dimension. Participants could therefore search for the odd-one out face to locate the target and (...) attentional capture by irrelevant emotional faces might be contingent on the adoption of an implicit set for singletons. Here, confirming this hypothesis, an irrelevant emotional face captured attention when the target was the unique face with a discrepant orientation, both when this orientation was unpredictable and when it remained constant. By contrast, no such capture was observed when the target could not be found by monitoring displays for a discrepant face and participants had to search for a face with a specific orientation. Our findings show that attentional capture by emotional faces is not purely stimulus driven and thereby resolve the apparent inconsistency that prevails in the literature on the automaticity of attentional capture by emotional faces. (shrink)

Les vingt-quatre contributions qui composent ce volume collectif se donnent pour objectif de fournir au lecteur un ensemble de repères historiques et conceptuels permettant de s'orienter dans le vaste territoire des théories contemporaines de l'imagination, de 1918 à aujourd'hui. Cet ouvrage présente ainsi, grâce à une enquête pluraliste et interdisciplinaire, un point de vue privilégié pour apprécier les différentes stratégies qui, au cours des cent dernières années, en réhabilitant l'importance et la puissance féconde de la "folle du logis", repensent la (...) valeur du savoir littéraire et humaniste."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

For over 20 years, the Schmid Training Course (STC) has offered unique opportunities for marine biology students from European universities to learn about marine model organisms. While the topics of the course have continuously changed over the years with the advent of new research techniques and discoveries, the pedagogical approach has remained largely the same – a combination of lectures, lab practicals, and field excursions. Several life science researchers, who have taught in the STC for many years, sought to bring (...) the course's pedagogical approach into the 21st century, and with the support of Erasmus+ Programme of the European Community funding, the Digital Marine project was developed. Digital Marine began in 2018 as an international partnership between the six research centers from which the STC instructors hail, and its main objective was to introduce a flipped, blended approach to learning and teaching with respect to established and emerging marine biological model systems. The Digital Marine platform, which covers 12 marine model organisms, is now publicly available. (shrink)