§ 74. Giulio Bertoni and linguistics. In view of the attitudes expressed in his latest writing, a critique easily could be written that cuts the legs out from under Bertoni's linguistics. It could be easily demonstrated that Bertoni has succeeded neither in providing a general reformulation of Bartoli's innovations in linguistics, nor has he understood these innovations along with their practical and theoretical import. In an article published some years age dealing with linguistic studies in Italy, Bertoni completely fails (...) to distinguish Bartoli from the run of the mill linguists. Instead, by subde ambiguities, he relegates him to a secondary position, unlike Casella who emphasizes Bartoli originality. (shrink)

Tra le figure più importanti del dibattito filosofico italiano del Novecento, Antonio Banfi ha svolto nell'Italia del secondo dopoguerra anche un ruolo politico di rilievo come senatore del PCI. La sua interpretazione del marxismo ha presentato una forte accentuazione umanistica. Tra i suoi scolari filosofi e storici della filosofia come Giulio Preti, Enzo Paci, Remo Cantoni, Paolo Rossi. Il saggio prende in esame la prima fase della riflessione filosofica di Banfi, nella quale ha una importanza decisiva la conoscenza (...) diretta del dibattito tedesco tra le due guerre mondiali, in primo luogo della fenomenologia di Husserl e della ontologia di N. Hartmann. I Principi di una teoria della ragione - libro apparso alla fine degli anni '20 - e poi una serie di incisivi saggi degli anni '30 documentano una conoscenza approfondita e critica di un dibattito di cui mostrerà di nutrirsi in misura decisiva l'interpretazione di Banfi non solo di Hegel, ma anche di Marx. Among the leading philosophers in Italy during the 20th century, Antonio Banfi played an important role not only in the cultural debate during the 1930s and the 1940s, but also in the political scene of post-war Italy, advocating - as a representative of the Italian Communist Party in Italian Senate - a liberal, humanist view of Marxism. Among his students were influential philosophers and historians of philosophy such as Giulio Preti, Enzo Paci, Remo Cantoni and Paolo Rossi. This paper investigates the first phase of Banfi's philosophical development, an analysis of which must include a scrutiny of Banfi's deep indebtedness to German debate between the two World Wars, primarily Husserl's phenomenology and Hartmann's critical ontology. Banfi's phenomenological apprenticeship at the school of Husserl, and the sensitive and critical attitude of his presentation of the German debate in his Principi di una teoria della ragione, are of substantial importance in nourishing his later interpretation of Hegel and Marx. (shrink)

Two problems about rights have received so far little attention. One is the problem of identifying a general value in the practice of rights. The second is to see when, if at all, rights violations wrong the right-holder, in a morally significant sense. In the present essay, I address the first question by investigating the second. I first show that if we commit to the two ideas, common in the contemporary philosophy of rights, that claim-rights always correlate with directed duties (...) and that rights aspire to protect interests of the right-holder, we make it hard to explain why rights violations, in general, wrong right-holders. In the final section, I present what I see as a promising solution to the puzzle. I describe a particular social environment (the society of equals) where interacting with others through rights is indeed valuable because respecting rights communicates that one takes seriously others’ equal moral status. In such a society and only in such a society, I conclude, moral agents are required to treat all rights violations as wrongs perpetrated against the right-holder. (shrink)

In this paper, in line with the general framework of value-sensitive design, we aim to operationalize the general concept of “Meaningful Human Control” in order to pave the way for its translation into more specific design requirements. In particular, we focus on the operationalization of the first of the two conditions investigated: the so-called ‘tracking’ condition. Our investigation is led in relation to one specific subcase of automated system: dual-mode driving systems. First, we connect and compare meaningful human control with (...) a concept of control very popular in engineering and traffic psychology, and we explain to what extent tracking resembles and differs from it. This will help clarifying the extent to which the idea of meaningful human control is connected to, but also goes beyond, current notions of control in engineering and psychology. Second, we take the systematic analysis of practical reasoning as traditionally presented in the philosophy of human action and we adapt it to offer a general framework where different types of reasons and agents are identified according to their relation to an automated system’s behaviour. This framework is meant to help explaining what reasons and what agents play a role in controlling a given system, thereby enabling policy makers to produce usable guidelines and engineers to design systems that properly respond to selected human reasons. In the final part, we discuss a practical example of how our framework could be employed in designing automated driving systems. (shrink)

There are two main meanings in Kant’s concept of moral certainty (moralische Gewissheit, certitudo moralis): first, it applies to the kind of certainty embodied in rational faith in the existence of God and a future life; second, it applies to the conscientiousness (Gewissenhaftigkeit) required of an agent in the practice of moral judgement. Despite the growing attention to Kant’s theory of conscience and his concept of conscientiousness, this article is the first to discuss ‘moral certainty’ as the aim of ‘conscientiousness’ (...) and to highlight the relevance of both notions in regard to moral education and the purposes of Kant’s ethical doctrines of method. (shrink)

Contemporary brain reading technologies promise to provide the possibility to decode and interpret mental states and processes. Brain reading could have numerous societally relevant implications. In particular, the private character of mind might be affected, generating ethical and legal concerns. This paper aims at equipping ethicists and policy makers with conceptual tools to support an evaluation of the potential applicability and the implications of current and near future brain reading technology. We start with clarifying the concepts of mind reading and (...) brain reading, and the different kinds of mental states that could in principle be read. Subsequently, we devise an evaluative framework that is composed of five criteria-accuracy, reliability, informativity, concealability and enforceability-aimed at enabling a clearer estimation of the degree to which brain reading might be realistically deployed in contexts where mental privacy could be at stake. While accuracy and reliability capture how well a certain method can access mental content, informativity indicates the relevance the obtainable data have for practical purposes. Concealability and enforceability are particularly important for the evaluation of concerns about potential violations of mental privacy and civil rights. The former concerns the degree with which a brain reading method can be concealed from an individual’s perception or awareness. The latter regards the extent to which a method can be used against somebody’s will. With the help of these criteria, stakeholders can orient themselves in the rapidly developing field of brain reading. (shrink)

Columbia University Press's multivolume _Prison Notebooks_ is the only complete critical edition of Antonio Gramsci's seminal writings in English. Based on the authoritative Italian edition of Gramsci's work, _Quaderni del Carcere_, this comprehensive translation presents the intellectual as he ought to be read and understood, with critical notes that clarify Gramsci's history, culture, and sources; an index of names; and a contextualization of the thinker's ideas against his earlier writings and letters. This set includes notebooks 1 through 8 with (...) all attendant notes and materials and is an indispensible resource for scholars in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

We propose a nonmonotonic Description Logic of typicality able to account for the phenomenon of combining prototypical concepts, an open problem in the fields of AI and cognitive modelling. Our logic extends the logic of typicality ALC + TR, based on the notion of rational closure, by inclusions p :: T(C) v D (“we have probability p that typical Cs are Ds”), coming from the distributed semantics of probabilistic Description Logics. Additionally, it embeds a set of cognitive heuristics for concept (...) combination. We show that the complexity of reasoning in our logic is EXPTIME-complete as in ALC. (shrink)

The term ‘recalcitrant emotions’ refers to those cases where we feel an emotion that apparently contradicts our better judgements. For instance, one may be afraid of flying while claiming not to believe that it is dangerous. This phenomenon is commonly conceived as an objection to cognitivism, according to which emotions are based on the subject's beliefs, insofar as it would force us to ascribe to the subject who feels them an excessive degree of irrationality, comparing recalcitrant emotions to contradictory beliefs. (...) For this reason, many philosophers have developed perceptual theories which describe emotions as forms of perception, allowing us to explain recalcitrant emotions without attributing to the subject contradictory beliefs, treating them as perceptual illusions. Facing the most compelling of these attempts, the article shows that perceptual accounts fail to explain in what sense recalcitrant emotions (and people who feel them) are irrational, keeping the comparison with optical illusions, which are not. Having rebutted three popular perceptual proposals, I conclude that the analogy between emotions and perceptions is flawed and that the appeal of these theories lies on a surreptitious shift in the meaning of the term ‘perceive’. (shrink)

It is argued that, of the three distinct approaches usually adhered to in discussions of this controversy, none will produce an adequate reconstruction of the episode. The philosophical-methodological type of approach leads to a glossing over of the intricacies of deductive and inductive procedures inhering in the writings of both antagonists (§ 1). The metaphysical approach leads to oversimplification as to the thinking of either scientist on the problem of the continuous or discontinuous character of Nature(§ 2). The epistemological (theory (...) of knowledge) type of approach, finally, leads authors to posit a Linnaean realism vs. a Buffonian nominalism, whereas the true position was much more complex than what transpires(§ 3). The paper proceeds, therefore, to provide a novel reconstruction of this wellknown controversy (§ 4-5), concentrating on the differing choices made by the two naturalists in their work of botanical or zoological classification : thus seeking to show that the clash came about because Buffon rejected the rigid principle of character subordination put forward by Linnaeus, and, on a more general level, because the two protagonists were proceeding from deeply diverging views of what natural history, and what the naturalist's function, should be. (shrink)

In the proem of the “Theogony” Hesiod describes the conception and birth of the Muses. At ll. 58-60 he specifies that Mnemosyne’s pregnancy lasted one entire year, ένιαντός. This unusual one-year pregnancy puzzles Hesiod’s commentators; West, for example, translates ένιαντός as ‘due time’ rather than ‘year’. The purpose of this article is to argue that Hesiod intended ένιαντός to mean ‘year’.

This paper argues that in Silvae 3.3, written to console Claudius Etruscus on the death of his beloved father, Statius reverses his own account of the contentious relationship between Tisiphone and Pietas in Thebaid Books 1 and 11 to present his patron's affectionate bond with his father as antithetical to Oedipus’ resentful relationship with his sons. In the Thebaid, Oedipus summons Tisiphone from the Underworld to punish his own children by stirring up civil war, and the Fury promptly obeys, banishing (...) Pietas from earth to prevent her from stopping the conflict. In Silvae 3.3, on the other hand, the poet asks Pietas to come back to earth, and urges the Furies to stay away from the deceased. The return of Pietas, also portrayed in Silvae 5.2, shows that in his collection of occasional poetry Statius rewrites his own epic to restore cosmos: while in the chaotic narrative universe of the Thebaid all fundamental values, including filial devotion, are turned upside down, the Silvae describe a more conventional and reassuring world, founded on virtue rather than vengeance. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article analyses the abbé de Saint-Pierre as a mediator of ideas between France and England. The political proposal of the Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe circulated in Great Britain just before the signing of the peace treaties of Utrecht and Aachen, attesting the influence that Saint-Pierre’s proposal exerted on British thought and politics. The abbé was engaged in dialogue with Quaker pacifists and, in particular, with the projects put forward by William Penn and John Bellers, (...) both theorists of a ‘European State’. After examining the relationship between Penn’s Essay and Saint-Pierre’s ideas, the article will demonstrate how elements of Bellers’s Some Reasons found their way into the Projet with numerous convergences of lexicon and content suggesting that the abbé had drawn inspiration from Bellers. Quaker ideas on politics had a greater effect on Saint-Pierre’s conception of peace and international relations than is commonly recognized. In fact, there was a constant intellectual exchange between the abbé and British political, economic and philosophical thought. (shrink)

We study how to postpone the application of the reductio ad absurdum rule (RAA) in classical natural deduction. This technique is connected with two normalization strategies for classical logic, due to Prawitz and Seldin, respectively. We introduce a variant of Seldin’s strategy for the postponement of RAA, which induces a negative translation from classical to intuitionistic and minimal logic. Through this translation, Glivenko’s theorem from classical to intuitionistic and minimal logic is proven.

We study how to postpone the application of the reductio ad absurdum rule ) in classical natural deduction. This technique is connected with two normalization strategies for classical logic, due to Prawitz and Seldin, respectively. We introduce a variant of Seldin’s strategy for the postponement of \, which induces a negative translation from classical to intuitionistic and minimal logic. Through this translation, Glivenko’s theorem from classical to intuitionistic and minimal logic is proven.

This work investigates the relationship between goals and mitigation behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. Study 1 identified goals ascribed to following and violating mitigation-related indications. Study 2 investigated the structure of and link between COVID-related goals and behaviors in a large community sample. Our results showed substantial relationships between goals and behaviors. Goals were best described by a bi-dimensional structure, whereas behaviors clustered into a three-component structure. Hierarchical multiple regressions demonstrated the incremental validity of goals in the prediction (...) of behaviors. Network analysis suggested that goals imbued with social content were more directly related to both risky and preventive behaviors. Motivational aspects emerged as important contributors to the organization of behaviors in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Through the prism of iconography, we may be able to better understand Vecchietta's stylistic choices towards the end of his career. His last known bronze sculpture, a gaunt and pathetic Christ, executed in 1476, is widely agreed to represent the Risen Christ. Today, the sculpture stands atop the high altar of the Santissima Annunziata, the Hospital Church in Siena, but this was neither its original nor intended location. In fact, the figure was meant to be part of a larger ensemble (...) which, together, constituted Vecchietta's funerary chapel. This article demonstrates unequivocally that the present setting of the statue has fostered an iconographical misunderstanding: naturally, the subject of the statue is Christ; but he represents the Man of Sorrows, not the Risen Christ. An exploration of the significance of the iconography of the Man of Sorrows in mid-fifteenth-century Siena, and its possible antecedents, reveals connections especially with Northern European artefacts circulating in central Italy at the time. The result of these findings is to set Vecchietta's sculpture free from previous preconceptions, shedding new light on a famous artwork and triggering new questions about the artist who made it. (shrink)

Recent Libet-style experiments are of limited relevance to the debate about free action and free will, and should be understood as investigations of arbitrary actions or guesses. In Libet-style experiments, the concept of 'free action' is commonly taken to refer to a 'self-initiated voluntary act', where the self prompts an action without being prompted. However, this idea is based on the problematic assumption that the conscious self needs to be free from every constraint in order to be actually free. We (...) maintain that a fundamental condition for free action is the presence of reasons to act responsibly. By analyzing a recent neuroscientific experiment, we indicate how its results could be interpreted as indicating how free action operationalization is inappropriately focusing on arbitrary actions. Hence, the way free action has been experimentally studied may have had a misleading influence on the debate about free will. (shrink)

The paper introduces an extension of the proposal according to which conceptual representations in cognitive agents should be intended as heterogeneous proxytypes. The main contribution of this paper is in that it details how to reconcile, under a heterogeneous representational perspective, different theories of typicality about conceptual representation and reasoning. In particular, it provides a novel theoretical hypothesis - as well as a novel categorization algorithm called DELTA - showing how to integrate the representational and reasoning assumptions of the theory-theory (...) of concepts with the those ascribed to the prototype and exemplars-based theories. (shrink)

The brains of higher mammals are extraordinary integrative devices. Signals from large numbers of functionally specialized groups of neurons distributed over many brain regions are integrated to generate a coherent, multimodal scene. Signals from the environment are integrated with ongoing, patterned neural activity that provides them with a meaningful context. We review recent advances in neurophysiology and neuroimaging that are beginning to reveal the neural mechanisms of integration. In addition, we discuss concepts and measures derived from information theory that lend (...) a theoretical basis to the notion of complexity as integration of information and suggest new experimental tests of these concepts. (shrink)

The capabilities approach is the theory according to which, in order to assess people's quality of life and reflect on the basic political entitlements, we should consider what people are capable of doing and being. Focusing mostly on Nussbaum's account, a number of scholars analysed the metaethical structure underlying the approach, showing her Aristotelian and Kantian sources. This article explores another aspect of Nussbaum's theory which has so far been somewhat overlooked: the role of emotions in the justification and motivational (...) support of the approach. After showing the importance Nussbaum places on compassion (and other benevolent emotions) to warrant her moral theory, I argue that – assuming her own cognitive account of compassion – her argument begs the question. I will then contend that Nussbaum's case does not have the inner tools to overcome such a circularity, trying to suggest, in conclusion, a possible way out which is consistent with it. (shrink)

The philosophy of emotions has long been dominated by the view called «cognitivism». According to it, emotions are characterized not by mere physical impulses but by a cognitive evaluation of their object. However, despite their success, cognitive theories have to deal with various objections and are divided on how to answer to them. In this essay I want to defend the form of cognitivism claimed by Martha Nussbaum from the most common criticisms. After a brief summary of her account, I (...) confront some of the objections that have been raised against it. In Section 2 I deal with the classic problem of emotions in infants and animals, which lack linguistic abilities. Later, I confront the potential problem represented by cases in which one’s emotion and reasoned judgment seem to differ: in paragraph 3 I consider irrational phobias and fears, to show how they can be accounted for in terms of judgments and thoughts, and not only of perceptions; in paragraph 4 I deal with the objection that «judgementalist» theories violate the «principle of charity», for they ascribe an excessive irrationality to people. I argue that experimental evidence suggest that it is not implausible to assume that people have contradictory beliefs under conditions of uncertainty, and that perceptual theories of emotion fail to account for some fundamental aspects of these phenomena. Finally, in paragraph 5, I deal with the objection according to which a cognitive-evaluative theory cannot explain the sense of passivity that we commonly experience in emotions. (shrink)

In juxtaposition with the myth and tragedy of Ovid’s Medea, this paper investigates the possibility within the Kantian conception of agency of understanding moral evil as acting against one’s better judgment. It defends the thesis that in Kant self-deception, i. e. the intentional untruthfulness to oneself, provides the fundamental structure for choosing against the moral law. I argue that, as Kant’s thought progresses, self-deception slowly proceeds to become the paradigmatic case of moral evil. This is discussed with regard to two (...) important topics in his later moral philosophy: the doctrine of radical evil and the crucial role of the duty of truthfulness in ethics. The inquiry into Kant’s theory of conscience unfolds both against this theoretical background and in light of its historical roots in the polemic against casuistry and probabilism. This contribution closes with a brief look at the tools Kant implements to counter this tendency to self-deception in moral judgment and particularly at the role casuistry plays within his conception of moral education. (shrink)

Is it possible to compose a history of images? It is obvious that history can be composed only from that which is intrinsically historical; history has an order of its own because it interprets and clarifies an order which already exists in the facts. But is there an order in the birth, multiplication, combination, dissolution and re-synthesis of images? Mannerism had discredited or demystified form with its pretense of reproducing an order which does not exist in reality. But is the (...) world of existence, like the world of images, chaos or cosmos? Erwin Panofsky's1 great merit consists in having understood that, in spite of its confused appearance, the world of images is an ordered world and that it is possible to do the history of art as the history of images. In order to do this, he had to begin, as indeed he did, with the demonstration that classical art, in spite of the deep-rooted theoretical certitude, is also an art of the image; its forms are nothing if not images to which one tries to attribute the consistency of concepts, with the sole result of the demonstrating that even concepts are images and that the intellect is still another sector or segment of the image. · 1. See, e.g., Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Art: Papers in and on Art History ; Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance ; Problems in Titian, Mostly Iconographic ; Idea: Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeshicte der älteren Kunsttheorie [Idea: a concept in art theory, trans. Joseph J. S. Peake ]. Giulio Carlo Argan, who has seriously influenced the course of art history and criticism in postwar Italy, is professor of modern art at the University of Rome. He has written on Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Borromini, Brunelleschi, and Gropius and three volumes of critical essays on modern art. His Skira volume on Baroque art, Europe of the Capitals, is his only major work published in English. "Ideology and Iconology" originally appeared in Italian in the journal Storia dell'arte, which he edits, and in Psicon. Rebecca West, translator of this article and assistant professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago, presently is collaborating on a translation of Dario Fo's theater. She has translated "Narrative Structures and Literary History" by Cesare Segre, for the Winter 1976 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

This paper discusses a recent puzzle concerning the notions of boundary parthood and dependence, and offers a new solution. The puzzle was originally presented by Jeroen Smid and successively elaborated upon by Claudio Calosi. I first reformulate some of the troublesome premises. Particularly, whereas Smid and Calosi discuss the puzzle in terms of an underspecified notion of dependence, I propose to construe it in terms of the notion of grounding. In this manner, the dependence relation inherently carries an asymmetry, and (...) we can effectively utilize its four places. The solution I advance precisely takes advantage of this feature of dependence. My proposal avoids the contradiction while still respecting the intuitions driving the original premises. It is also fully compatible with boundaries being only generically dependent on their wholes. (shrink)