In this paper we analyse the connection between the contested ethno-cultural labelling of Gipsy-Travellers in Wales and their position of social marginalisation, with special reference to spatial issues, such as the provision of campsites and public housing. Our main aim is to show how the formal and informal (mis)labelling of minority groups leads to a number of morally and politically questionable outcomes in their treatment on the part of political authorities. Our approach combines a close reading of official policy documents, (...) government-commissioned and independent empirical research with a theoretical framework drawn mainly from contemporary political philosophy, and especially from the debate on redistribution and recognition. (shrink)

“There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, said the title of Richard Feynman’s 1959 seminal conference at the California Institute of Technology. Fifty years on, nanotechnologies have led computer scientists to pay close attention to the links between physical reality and information processing. Not all the physical requirements of optimal computation are captured by traditional models—one still largely missing is reversibility. The dynamic laws of physics are reversible at microphysical level, distinct initial states of a system leading to distinct final (...) states. On the other hand, as von Neumann already conjectured, irreversible information processing is expensive: to erase a single bit of information costs ~3 × 10−21 joules at room temperature. Information entropy is a thermodynamic cost, to be paid in non-computational energy dissipation. This paper addresses the problem drawing on Edward Fredkin’s Finite Nature hypothesis: the ultimate nature of the universe is discrete and finite, satisfying the axioms of classical, atomistic mereology. The chosen model is a cellular automaton with reversible dynamics, capable of retaining memory of the information present at the beginning of the universe. Such a CA can implement the Boolean logical operations and the other building bricks of computation: it can develop and host all-purpose computers. The model is a candidate for the realization of computational systems, capable of exploiting the resources of the physical world in an efficient way, for they can host logical circuits with negligible internal energy dissipation. (shrink)

The notion of grounding is usually conceived as an objective and explanatory relation. It connects two relata if one—the ground—determines or explains the other—the consequence. In the contemporary literature on grounding, much effort has been devoted to logically characterize the formal aspects of grounding, but a major hard problem remains: defining suitable grounding principles for universal and existential formulae. Indeed, several grounding principles for quantified formulae have been proposed, but all of them are exposed to paradoxes in some very natural (...) contexts of application. We introduce in this paper a first-order formal system that captures the notion of grounding and avoids the paradoxes in a novel and non-trivial way. The system we present formally develops Bolzano’s ideas on grounding by employing Hilbert’s ε-terms and an adapted version of Fine’s theory of arbitrary objects. (shrink)

[Multiple authors] In this paper, we propose a general architecture that is based on fast/slow solvers and a metacognitive component. We then present experimental results on the behavior of an instance of this architecture, for AI systems that make decisions about navigating in a constrained environment. We show how combining the fast and slow decision modalities allows the system to evolve over time and gradually pass from slow to fast thinking with enough experience, and that this greatly helps in decision (...) quality, resource consumption, and efficiency. (shrink)

BackgroundCerebral Visual Impairment is a very common finding in children affected by Cerebral Palsy. In this paper we studied the characteristics of CVI of a large group of children with CP and CVI, describing their neurovisual profiles according to three different age subgroups.MethodsWe enrolled 180 subjects with CP and CVI for the study. We carried out a demographic and clinical data collection, neurological examination, developmental or cognitive assessment, and a video-recorded visual function assessment including an evaluation of ophthalmological characteristics, oculomotor (...) functions, and basic visual functions. In school-aged children, we also performed an evaluation of their cognitive-visual profiles.ResultsThere were signs of CVI in all the three subgroups. Subgroup 1 and subgroup 2 were different for fixation, visual acuity and contrast sensitivity, being more frequently impaired in younger children. Comparing subgroup 2 with subgroup 3, the older children presented more frequently myopia while the younger ones esotropia and alteration in smooth pursuit and saccades. Furthermore, fixation, smooth pursuit, visual acuity, contrast sensitivity and visual filed were more frequently impaired in younger children compared to the older ones. Multiple correspondence analysis confirmed the different neurovisual profiles according to age: younger children with CP showed more signs of CVI compared to the older ones. 34 out of 68 children belonging to subgroup 3 underwent the cognitive visual evaluation; an impairment of cognitive visual skills was detected in 21 subjects.ConclusionYounger children with CP showed more signs of CVI compared to the older ones, likely for the physiological maturation of visual system and mechanisms of neuroplasticity. In this direction, we suggest an early neurovisual evaluation to detect any weak visual functions. (shrink)

This work is the first monograph devoted to the interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of chance in Physics II 4-6 and its implications and projections in other treatises, including an original and comprehensive account of the Aristotelian conception of chance, of accidental causality in the realm of nature, and of accidental causality in the realm of human action. One of the main interpretative issues around Aristotle’s discussion of chance is its relation to the four causes and to teleology. In this sense, (...) it is particularly difficult to find the common features which fortune (tyche) and spontaneity (automaton) share. This work, offers such an interpretation of Aristotle’s general concept of chance (i.e. common to fortune and spontaneity), which shows clearly its relation with his theory of causality (Phys. II 3), with teleology, and with the application of this theory to the study of nature. It also shows how fortune and spontaneity can be interpreted consistently with this general characterization of chance, and how the specific differences between them can be accounted for paying attention to the different structures of causality in the realm of nature and in the realm of human action. Regarding the specific concept of spontaneity (automaton), a crux interpretum, the book offers one of the few independent discussions this issue in Aristotelian literature, and proposes a sub-classification in two kinds of spontaneity based on an analysis of Aristotle’s different examples and characterizations: ‘mixed spontaneity’ (which shares some features with fortune), and ‘pure spontaneity’ (which takes place strictly in the realm of nature). These different structures had not been recognized in specialized literature before. The problem of chance has projections into Aristotle’s natural philosophy, as well as into Aristotle’s theory of action and practical philosophy. This ample perspective of Aristotle’s work, and of the different explanatory models and ontological structures therein involved, constitutes an interesting groundwork for future developments in some or many of these realms of investigation. (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a defence of Value Realism that relies on the unusual combination of Values Realism with Sentimentalism. What this account, which we call “Sentimental Realism”, holds, in a nutshell, is that what makes evaluative facts special is their relationship to emotions. More precisely, Sentimental Realism claims that evaluative facts are fully objective facts, but that such facts are picked out by concepts that are response-dependent, in the sense that they are essentially tied to emotions. Our plan (...) is as follows. We shall start with a presentation of Sentimental Realism and a discussion of its main virtues. On the basis of this, we shall discuss an objection to Value Realism that draws on evolutionary considerations, the Evolutionary Debunking Argument. We shall argue that Sentimental Realism safely escapes from this dilemma. (shrink)

Impossible Worlds focuses on an exciting new theory in philosophy, with applications in metaphysics, logic, and the theory of meaning. Its central topic is: how do we meaningfully talk and reason about situations which, unbeknownst to us, are impossible? This issue emerges as a central problem in contemporary philosophical accounts of meaning, information, knowledge, belief, fiction, conditionality, and counterfactual supposition. The book is written bytwo of the leading philosophers in the area and contains original research of relevance to professional philosophers (...) and logicians working in metaphysics, philosophy of language, formal logic, and adjacentareas. (shrink)

Economists and biologists have proposed a distinction between two mechanisms – “strong” and “weak” reciprocity – that may explain the evolution of human sociality. Weak reciprocity theorists emphasize the benefits of long-term cooperation and the use of low-cost strategies to deter free-riders. Strong reciprocity theorists, in contrast, claim that cooperation in social dilemma games can be sustained by costly punishment mechanisms, even in one-shot and finitely repeated games. To support this claim, they have generated a large body of evidence concerning (...) the willingness of experimental subjects to punish uncooperative free-riders at a cost to themselves. In this article, I distinguish between a “narrow” and a “wide” reading of the experimental evidence. Under the narrow reading, punishment experiments are just useful devices to measure psychological propensities in controlled laboratory conditions. Under the wide reading, they replicate a mechanism that supports cooperation also in “real-world” situations outside the laboratory. I argue that the wide interpretation must be tested using a combination of laboratory data and evidence about cooperation “in the wild.” In spite of some often-repeated claims, there is no evidence that cooperation in the small egalitarian societies studied by anthropologists is enforced by means of costly punishment. Moreover, studies by economic and social historians show that social dilemmas in the wild are typically solved by institutions that coordinate punishment, reduce its cost, and extend the horizon of cooperation. The lack of field evidence for costly punishment suggests important constraints about what forms of cooperation can or cannot be sustained by means of decentralised policing. (shrink)

Cécile Laborde has argued that the freedom we think of as ‘freedom of religion’ should be understood as a bundle of separate and relatively independent freedoms. I criticise that approach by pointing out that it is insufficiently sensitive to facts about the sorts of entities that liberal states are. I argue that states have good reasons to mould phenomena such as religion into easily governable monoliths. If this is a problem from the normative point of view, it is not due (...) to descriptively inadequate accounts of religion, but a problem with a lack of realism about the sort of institutions states are. My conclusion is a three-way disjunction: either one must reckon with liberal states’ historically determined limitations in the management of changing social phenomena, or one should direct one’s frustration at the marriage of liberalism and the state, or the very existence of states is normatively problematic. (shrink)

There is an intuitive connection between well-being and happiness. Accordingly, many theories of well-being hold that well-being consists in (either unqualified or properly qualified) happiness. Traditional happiness-based theories are subject, however, to several important objections. The goal in this chapter is to offer a new happiness-based theory that is immune to the main objections raised against traditional happiness-based theories. The authors’ own fitting happiness theory of well-being can be seen as the combination of the following claims. The first is that (...) happiness consists in a broadly positive balance of affective states such as emotions, moods, and sensory pleasures. The second is that emotions, moods, and sensory pleasures are different kinds of perceptual experiences of evaluative properties. The third claim is that, insofar as happiness is constituted by states that have fittingness conditions, it is possible to assess happiness itself as fitting or unfitting. The last claim is that well-being consists in fitting happiness thus defined. (shrink)

A hyperintensional epistemic logic would take the contents which can be known or believed as more fine-grained than sets of possible worlds. I consider one objection to the idea: Williamson’s Objection from Overfitting. I propose a hyperintensional account of propositions as sets of worlds enriched with topics: what those propositions, and so the attitudes having them as contents, are about. I show that the account captures the conditions under which sentences express the same content; that it can be pervasively applied (...) in formal and mainstream epistemology; and that it is left unscathed by the objection. (shrink)

Economists and biologists have proposed a distinction between two mechanisms – “strong” and “weak” reciprocity – that may explain the evolution of human sociality. Weak reciprocity theorists emphasize the benefits of long-term cooperation and the use of low-cost strategies to deter free-riders. Strong reciprocity theorists, in contrast, claim that cooperation in social dilemma games can be sustained by costly punishment mechanisms, even in one-shot and finitely repeated games. To support this claim, they have generated a large body of evidence concerning (...) the willingness of experimental subjects to punish uncooperative free-riders at a cost to themselves. In this article, I distinguish between a “narrow” and a “wide” reading of the experimental evidence. Under the narrow reading, punishment experiments are just useful devices to measure psychological propensities in controlled laboratory conditions. Under the wide reading, they replicate a mechanism that supports cooperation also in “real-world” situations outside the laboratory. I argue that the wide interpretation must be tested using a combination of laboratory data and evidence about cooperation “in the wild.” In spite of some often-repeated claims, there is no evidence that cooperation in the small egalitarian societies studied by anthropologists is enforced by means of costly punishment. Moreover, studies by economic and social historians show that social dilemmas in the wild are typically solved by institutions that coordinate punishment, reduce its cost, and extend the horizon of cooperation. The lack of field evidence for costly punishment suggests important constraints about what forms of cooperation can or cannot be sustained by means of decentralised policing. (shrink)

Ensayos-homenaje en el primer centenario del nacimiento del fil sofo espa ol, que abordan diversos aspectos de la obra de Ortega. Los cuatro trabajos dibujan con rigor algunos de los horizontes planteados por el maestro y respetan la debida modernidad conceptual. la compilaci n estuvo a cargo de Fernando Salmer n, Alejandro Rossi, Luis Villoro y Ram n Xirau.

Moving from a behavioral definition of intelligence, which describes it as the ability to adapt to the surrounding environment and deal effectively with new situations (Anastasi, 1986), this paper explains to what extent the performance obtained by ChatGPT in the linguistic domain can be considered as intelligent behavior and to what extent they cannot. It also explains in what sense the hypothesis of decoupling between cognitive and problem-solving abilities, proposed by Floridi (2017) and Floridi and Chiriatti (2020) should be interpreted. (...) The problem of symbolic grounding (Harnad, 1990) is then addressed to show the problematic relationship between ChatGPT and the natural environment, and thus the impossibility for it to understand the symbols it manipulates. To explain the reasons why ChatGPT does not succeed in this task, an investigation is carried out and a possible solution to the problem in the artificial domain is proposed by making a comparison with the natural ability of living beings to ground their own meanings from some basic cognitive-sensory aspects, which, it is explained, are directly related to the emergence of self-awareness in humans. Thus, the question is raised whether a possible and concrete solution to the Symbol Grounding Problem would involve in the artificial domain the development of cognitive abilities fully comparable to those of humans. Finally, I explain the difficulties that would have to be overcome before such a level could be reached, since human cognitive capacities are intimately linked to intersubjectivity and intercorporeality. (shrink)

Is there more to the recent surge in political realism than just a debate on how best to continue doing what political theorists are already doing? I use two recent books, by Michael Freeden and Matt Sleat, as a testing ground for realism’s claims about its import on the discipline. I argue that both book take realism beyond the Methodenstreit, though each in a different direction: Freeden’s takes us in the realm of meta-metatheory, Sleat’s is a genuine exercise in grounding (...) liberal normative theory in a non-moralistic way. I conclude with wider methodological observations. I argue that unlike communitarianism (the previous contender for the discipline’s renewal), realism has the potential to open new vistas, though their novelty is to a large extent relative to the last forty years or so: realism is best thought of as a return to a more traditional way of doing political philosophy. (shrink)

Do salient normative claims about politics require moral premises? Political moralists think they do, political realists think they do not. We defend the viability of realism in a two-pronged way. First, we show that a number of recent attacks on realism, as well as realist responses to those attacks, unduly conflate distinctively political normativity and non-moral political normativity. Second, we argue that Alex Worsnip and Jonathan Leader-Maynard’s recent attack on realist arguments for a distinctively political normativity depends on assuming moralism (...) as the default view, which places an excessive burden on the viability of realism, and so begs the question. Our discussion, though, does not address the relative merits of realism and moralism, so its upshot is relatively ecumenical: moralism need not be the view that all apt normative political judgments are moral judgments, and realism need not be the view that no apt normative political judgments are moral judgments. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se centra en identificar si, dentro del debate actual sobre el rol de la tecnología y sus implicancias en la vida de las personas, la filosofía de Langdon Winner indaga en la naturaleza y el significado de las construcciones artificiales desde una posición determinista. De modo que, buscaremos descubrir los caminos argumentales que propone Langdon Winner para explicar cómo se elige y se construye un sistema técnico que involucra a los humanos como partes de su funcionamiento. Entendiendo (...) que un sistema técnico es una forma de vida. En primer lugar, abordaremos el debate sobre sobre el papel de la tecnología y sus implicancias ético- políticas, para esto compararemos las principales teorías que son parte del debate antes mencionado: la teoría instrumental, la teoría sustantivista, la teoría crítica y el determinismo tecnológico. En segundo lugar, analizaremos el rol de la tecnología en el pensamiento de Langdon Winner. Podemos resaltar tres formas, que se relacionan entre sí, en que Winner considera a la tecnología como fenómeno político, como forma de vida y como técnica incontrolada. En tercer lugar, buscaremos demostrar que su teoría no pertenece al determinismo tecnológico. Para esto, abordaremos el determinismo como problema filosófico luego explicaremos en qué consiste el determinismo tecnológico y las condiciones que debe cumplir una teoría para ser enmarcada como determinista. Para, finalmente, contrastar estas condiciones con la teoría filosófica de Langdon Winner y definir si puede o no ser considerada determinista. (shrink)