This is one more edition of Voltaire's "Candide", meant to highlight the wealth of philosophical and theological discussions hidden behind the apparently innocent veil of the most renowned fable of modernity. The rather extended apparatus accordingly consists of a series of short chapters by Filippo Bruni on the Enlightenment and Metaphysics, and in more detail, on theology, Free choice, the problem of evil, and happiness in an imperfect world and another by Sergio Cremaschi on the Enlightenment and morality, (...) and in more detail on moral universalism, religion without metaphysics, toleration, and pacifism. -/- Table of contents I. Before the text A trick for priests A scandalous book Garden with view -/- II. Text Candide or optimism -/- III. Context Biography 1. The seven years war 2. Calvinists and Socinians 3. Jiansenists and Gesuits 4. Marranos and inquisitors 5. Conquistadores and slave-traders 6. Paraguay under the Jesuits -/- IV. Co-text 1. Enlightenment and Metaphysics 1.1. Theology 1.2. Free choice 1.3. The problem of evil 1.4. Being happy in an imperfect world -/- 2. Enlightenment and morality 2.1. Universal morality 2.2. Religion without Metaphysics 2.3. Toleration 2.4. Pacifism -/- 3. Enlightenment and the images of other places 3.1. The image of Eldorado 3.2. The image of Paraguay 3.3 The image of the Islamic world 3.4. The image of the Jew -/- 4. The conte philosophique -/- Bibliography Lexicon Index of names and concepts -/- V. Reader’s guide. (shrink)

In recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to the underrepresentation, exclusion or outright discrimination experienced by women and members of other visible minority groups in academic philosophy. Much of this debate has focused on the state of contemporary Anglophone philosophy, which is dominated by the tradition of analytic philosophy. Moreover, there is growing interest in academia and society more generally for issues revolving around linguistic justice and linguistic discrimination (sometimes called ‘linguicism’ or ‘languagism’) (see e.g. Van Parijs 2011). Globalization (...) and the increasing adoption of English as global linguistic vehicle or lingua franca push these issues at the forefront of much of the world’s attention. The convergence of these two trends suggests the appropriateness of an analysis of the condition of non-native speakers of English in analytic philosophy. (shrink)

According to the form of logical pluralism elaborated by Beall and Restall there is more than one relation of logical consequence. Since they take the relation of logical consequence to reside at the very heart of a logical system, different relations of logical consequence yield different logics. In this paper, we are especially interested in understanding what are the consequences of endorsing Beall and Restall’s version of logical pluralism vis-à-vis the normative guidance that logic is taken to provide to reasoners. (...) In particular, the aim of this paper is threefold. First, in Sections 2 and 3, we offer an exegesis of Beall and Restall’s logical pluralism as a thesis of semantic indeterminacy of our concept of logical consequence – i.e. understood as indeterminacy logical pluralism. Second, in Sections 4 and 5, we elaborate and critically scrutinize three models of semantic indeterminacy that we think are fit to capture Beall and Restall’s indeterminacy logical pluralism. Third, in Section 6, following Beall and Restall’s assumption that the notion of logical consequence has normative significance for deductive reasoning, we raise a series of normative problems for indeterminacy logical pluralism. The overall conclusion that we aim to establish is that Beall and Restall’s indeterminate logical pluralism cannot offer an adequate account of the normative guidance that logic is taken to provide us with in ordinary contexts of reasoning. (shrink)

We hypothesize that heritable epigenetic changes can affect rates of fitness increase as well as patterns of genotypic and phenotypic change during adaptation. In particular, we suggest that when natural selection acts on pure epigenetic variation in addition to genetic variation, populations adapt faster, and adaptive phenotypes can arise before any genetic changes. This may make it difficult to reconcile the timing of adaptive events detected using conventional population genetics tools based on DNA sequence data with environmental drivers of adaptation, (...) such as changes in climate. Epigenetic modifications are frequently associated with somatic cell differentiation, but recently epigenetic changes have been found that can be transmitted over many generations. Here, we show how the interplay of these heritable epigenetic changes with genetic changes can affect adaptive evolution, and how epigenetic changes affect the signature of selection in the genetic record. (shrink)

In this book Luigino Bruni analyses the market and its ethos, illuminating the history of capitalism and highlighting the need for a new ethical direction.

Existence Since Thales fell into the well while gazing at the stars, philosophers have invested considerable effort in trying to understand what, how and why things exist. Even though much ink has been spilled about those questions, this article focuses on the following three questions: What is the nature of existence? Are there … Continue reading Existence →.

_Sunto_ __L’obiettivo di questo studio è di riflettere su alcune questioni che ruotano intorno alla rappresentazione dell’Intelligenza artificiale, e che riguardano l’impatto della tecnologia sulla sfera esistenziale e sulla condizione umana. In questo quadro mi soffermerò, attraverso un close reading, sul film Her di Spike Jonze, analizzandone in particolare i dialoghi, con l’intento di evidenziare anche la presenza di quei fili che tracciano una continuità con le questioni poste da Alan Turing nel celebre articolo “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” pubblicato sulla (...) rivista Mind nel 1950. Se la domanda al centro dello studio di Turing è Can Machines Think?, e viene ripresa in seguito da Asimov e Dick con la variante Can Machines Lie?, nel film di Spike Jonze la declinazione più stringente dell’interrogativo è Can Machines Feel? Parole chiave: Intelligenza artificiale; solitudine; emozioni; reale/virtuale; modi di amare; trascendenza. _Abstract_ The purpose of this study is to tackle some of the issues that revolve around the representation of Artificial Intelligence and that concern the impact of technology on the existential sphere and the human condition. Within this framework, I will focus on Spike Jonze’s film Her, in particular through a close reading of its dialogues. The aim is also to highlight the presence of threads tracing a continuity with the issues raised by Alan Turing in the famous article “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” published in the journal Mind in 1950. If the question at the heart of Turing’s study is ‘Can Machines Think?’ – later turned into ‘Can Machines Lie?’ in Asimov and Dick’s variant – in Spike Jonze’s film the point at issue becomes ‘Can Machines Feel?’. (shrink)

Does adherence to the principles of logic commit us to a particular way of viewing the world? Or are there ways of being – ways of behaving in the world, including ways of thinking, feeling, and speaking – that ground the normative constraints that logic imposes? Does the fact that assertions, the traditional elements of logic, are typically made about beings present a problem for metaphysical prospects of making assertions meaningfully about being? Does thinking about being accordingly require revising or (...) restricting logic's reach – and, if so, how is this possible? Or is there something precious about the very idea of thinking the limits of thinking? Contemporary scholars have become increasing sensitive to how Heidegger, much like Wittgenstein, instructively poses such questions. Heidegger on Logic is a collection of new essays by leading scholars who critically ponder the efficacy of his responses to them. (shrink)

In this book Luigino Bruni analyses the market and its ethos, illuminating the history of capitalism and highlighting the need for a new ethical direction. In the last two centuries, the present vision of the market economy that can be called capitalism has produced remarkable economic, technological and civic results; but today, in these times of crisis, it has become obsolete, because it is about to exhaust its innovative and civilising force. The historical and theoretical analysis of this book (...) aims to show that a new ethos of market would come from a reconsideration of some of the ideas that were at the foundation of modern political and civil economy. The ideas of Adam Smith and Antonio Genovesi see markets as a vehicle for mutual advantage, public happiness and civic virtues; and it is these concepts that are necessary for a reconfiguring the market towards a great cooperative enterprise aimed directly at the mutual advantage of the subjects involved in the exchange and, indirectly, at the common good of society. (shrink)

Even though metaphysical dependence has been a subject of a lively debate in contemporary metaphysics, it is rare in such a debate to seriously consider the possibility that the metaphysical dependence relations among the things in the reality is inconsistent. This paper focuses on two philosophers of the Kyoto School, Kitaro Nishida and Keiji Nishitani, who challenge the common supposition that the structure of reality is consistent. In this paper, we show that Nishida’s logic of place is a version of (...) inconsistent foundationalism, according to which absolute nothingness as a foundational element does not depend on anything but depends on itself, and that Nishtani’s theory of the field of emptiness is a version of inconsistent coherentism, according to which emptiness does not depend on anything but depends on everything else (and possibly on itself). (shrink)

Il presente volume raccoglie diversi articoli, relazioni e conferenze, fatti in circostanze diverse e in vari luoghi durante il decennio 1953-1962. I saggi qui presentati sono stati quindi gia pubblicati tutti, eccetto pochi. Tuttavia essi vengono qui non solo organicamente riuniti, ma anche in molti punti rimaneggiati, completati e in qualche caso fusi insieme. La grande attualita di argomenti di filosofia della scienza ci hanno spinto a curare la presente raccolta, come modesto contributo ad una delle piu urgenti problematiche della (...) cultura moderna. In essa, infatti, se occorre evitare il pericolo che la scienza nel senso stretto subordini a se ogni altro valore, bisogna pero anche riconoscere ad essa il suo reale valore teoretico e pratico ed evitare quindi che la filosofia si isoli in un piano puramente concettuale ed astratto, avulso dalla vera realta dei nostri tempi. (shrink)

The practical consequence of such a methodological stance is that it forces the scholar of NPOs who is unsympathetic to the homo oeconomicus model to work ...

Potentialities of attention and distraction with respect to images are critically reprised by Neapolitan artist Domenico Antonio Mancini. In Landscapes (2019), Google Street View addresses painted on canvases take the place of outlying areas of Italian cities, and of canonical oil ‘vedute’ paintings, obliging the viewer to switch from aesthetic absorption to a multitasking, reflexive attention enabled by the tools of mobile devices and the operative agency between the displayed and depicted images. Attracted by the ephemeral, geo-localized vistas displayed on (...) their smartphones, spectator-users must deal with the dynamis of the on-line GSV images: rhetorical and predictable, though, at the same time, and perhaps unintentionally, serendipitous and figural. (shrink)

« The destiny of Art—a revenant». « The object of Art might be to seek to eliminate the necessity of the object ». This book’s theme and method stand halfway between these two assertions—the first by the German romantic poet Novalis, the second by the Californian post-minimalist artists Robert Irwin and James Turrell about a research program on art and technology in the late 1960s. Neither of these statements declares that art is dead. On the contrary, they announce that art (...) is not yet present, that it has not yet happened. According to its destiny or to its project, art is always future, and for this very reason it keeps returning from the past and repeating itself in various shapes and embodying itself in diverse media, perhaps not in the expected places but elsewhere—unrecognizable as art, anachronistic and fashionable. Like a revenant going through a wall, the untimely future of art will come across words, things and artworks, subjectiles and gestures, either in the world of art or in ordinary life. Using the tools of aesthetics, visual studies and mediology, the present book seeks to capture some of these ghosts and hauntings. (shrink)

Presuppositions and Appropriateness of Assertions In this paper I aim to compare and evaluate two theoretic approaches to pragmatic presuppositions: the Common Ground account and Propositional Context account. According to the Common Ground account proposed by Stalnaker, it is appropriate to assert a sentence p that requires a presupposition q only if q is mutually believed as accepted as true and taken for granted by the interlocutors. Otherwise, Gauker claims that the ground of propositions taken for granted coincides with what (...) he calls the objective propositional context, that is the set of objectively relevant propositional elements that speakers ought to share in order to evaluate the appropriateness of utterances so as to reach the goal of a conversation.The main purpose of my paper is to show that, according to the Propositional Context account, a theory of presupposition has to take into account a normative-objective notion of context. Secondly, I aim to develop a criticism of Gauker's point of view claiming that the Propositional Context account does not account for the number of ways in which a proposition can be taken for granted by the speakers depending on the context. Finally, I propose to integrate Gauker's account with a further condition for appropriateness of assertion which states that: in order to appropriately assert a sentence p that requires a presupposition q, speakers ought to recognize how they should justify q in a specific communicative context. (shrink)

COVID-19 has brought to light the severity of economic inequalities by testing the capacity of the poorest families to make ends meet. Food insecurity has in fact soared all over the UK, with many people forced to rely on food support providers to not go hungry. This paper uses a unique dataset on 55 food support organizations active in Greater Manchester during the first COVID-19 wave, and 41 semi-structured interviews with food aid spokespersons and stakeholders, to shed light on what (...) they overcame, the complications and drawbacks of the food emergency response plan put in place. The results indicate that food aid organizations that remained open were surprisingly effective despite the growth in user demand and the decrease in volunteers. However, the necessity to maintain a timely supply food at all costs came with important drawbacks. The lockdown measures that followed COVID-19 not only affected the financial stability and management of the organizations, and the availability of food, but undermined the ways in which food support providers used to operate. Owing to physical distancing measures and to the increasing numbers of users, more or less intangible forms of support such as financial advice, empathic listening and human warmth were partially lost, probably when they were needed more than ever. (shrink)

Spesso ha luogo un confronto tra varie concezioni della filosofia della natura, diverse tra loro per il metodo ed il contenuto, ed e bene che la corrente aristotelicotomista, spesso criticata ma non sostituita, vi sia adeguatamente rappresentata. Il libro e diviso in due parti: la conoscenza del mondo e la natura del mondo. Abbondanti sono i riferimenti e le citazioni in varie lingue di filosofi e scienziati dell'antichita fino ad oggi. Filippo Selvaggi e stato professore di logica e di (...) filosofia della natura e della scienza presso la Pontificia Universita Gregoriana. (shrink)