Eriksson thinks that moral disagreements are intuitively faulty whereas disagreements about taste are intuitively faultless. He attempts to account for this difference by arguing, first, that moral judgements and taste judgements differ with regard to the presence of a disposition to challenge conflicting judgements and, second, that the intuition that a judgement is mistaken consists in the disposition to challenge it. In this article, I focus on the reasons given to support the first claim and argue that they are not (...) sufficient. First, I assess the thesis that a taste judgement is only contingently connected with a disposition to challenge conflicting judgements. Second, I focus on the claim that a moral judgement is in part a disposition to challenge conflicting judgements. In both cases, I argue that the reasons given fail to disclose any substantial difference between the two domains. (shrink)

It is common to distinguish between disagreement in the state sense (being in disagreement) and disagreement in the activity sense (having a disagreement). This paper deals with the question of what it is for two people to have a disagreement. First, I present and reject the thesis according to which having a disagreement is a matter of expressing conflicting attitudes. I argue that this is not sufficient for having a disagreement: two people can express conflicting attitudes without having a disagreement. (...) Second, I present and reject the thesis according to which having a disagreement involves not only the expression of conflicting attitudes, but also the persuasive attempt to bring the other around to one’s view. I argue that this is not necessary for having a disagreement: two people can have a disagreement without trying to change each other’s minds. Finally, I put forward an alternative account that goes beyond the mere expression of conflicting attitudes, but that does not go as far as to posit the attempt to change someone’s mind. Having a disagreement, I submit, is a matter of expressing conflicting attitudes and demanding agreement, that is, advancing the normative claim that the other should share one’s attitude. (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)

Microhabitable is a study program resulting from the collaboration between Matadero Madrid, Serpentine Galleries and INLAND--Campo Adentro. It spans a monthly seminar from September to December 2019, a publication, a radio station and a residency program articulated around reflections focused on the scale factor from the fields of art and the politics of ecology.

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 present article considers Giulio Racah’s contributions to general physical theory and his establishment of theoretical physics as a discipline in Israel. Racah developed mathematical methods that are based on tensor operators and continuous groups. These methods revolutionized spectroscopy. Currently, these are essential research tools in atomic, nuclear and elementary particle physics. He himself applied them to modernizing theoretical atomic spectroscopy. Racah laid the foundations of theoretical physics in Israel. He educated several generations of Israeli physicists, and put Israel (...) on the world map of physics. (shrink)

Integrated information theory (IIT) starts from the essential properties of experience and translates them into requirements that any physical system must satisfy to be conscious. It argues that the physical substrate of consciousness (PSC) must constitute a maximum of irreducible, internal cause‐effect power of a specific form, and provides a calculus to determine, in principle, both the quality and the quantity of an experience. Applied to the brain, IIT predicts that the spatio‐temporal grain of the neural units constituting the PSC, (...) and the relevant neural states, are those that maximize cause‐effect power. Moreover, the PSC can shrink, move, split and disintegrate depending on various anatomical and physiological parameters. These predictions are testable with brain stimulation and recording experiments. The theory can explain parsimoniously many known facts about the relationship between consciousness and the brain, including its association with certain cortical structures, its breakdown in deep sleep, anesthesia and seizures, and its return in dreams. (shrink)

The target article misrepresents the foundations of integrated information theory and ignores many essential publications. It, thus, falls to this lead commentary to outline the axioms and postulates of IIT and correct major misconceptions. The commentary also explains why IIT starts from phenomenology and why it predicts that only select physical substrates can support consciousness. Finally, it highlights that IIT's account of experience – a cause–effect structure quantified by integrated information – has nothing to do with “information transfer.”.

Integrated information theory (IIT) starts from the essential properties of experience (axioms) and translates them into requirements that any physical system must satisfy to be conscious (postulates; see Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness: An Outline, this volume). The postulates of IIT can be seen as a list of requirements for something to exist ‘for itself’, as an intrinsic entity, and thus have relevance for ontology and metaphysics. Some implications of the theory include the divide between intrinsic and extrinsic entities, the (...) incoherence of ontological reductionism, and the intrinsic nature of meaning. (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)

The paper focuses on Giulio Preti’s idea of discourse. According to Preti, everyday speech is the basis for scientific and logical research. The logical signs are not linguistic signs, are not a language, are not able to substitute the human language. Common speech contains historical presuppositions and fleeting figures of truth.

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)

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)

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)

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 propose that sleep is linked to synaptic homeostasis. Specifically, we propose that: (1) Wakefulness is associated with synaptic potentiation in cortical circuits; (2) synaptic potentiation is tied to the homeostatic regulation of slow wave activity; (3) slow wave activity is associated with synaptic downscaling; and (4) synaptic downscaling is tied to several beneficial effects of sleep, including performance enhancement.

Rights proclamations are often alleged to be meaningless – ‘nonsense upon stilts’. But what makes a rights proclamation meaningful? In general, I argue, meaningful rights proclamations presuppose the existence of both a duty – directed from some party to another – and an interest whose protection is at least a non-redundant element in the justification of why the duty exists. Further conditions of meaningfulness apply for specifically moral rights proclamations. Here, the interest must be of such moral relevance to ground, (...) by itself, the duty and the duty must be demonstrably compatible with other mandatory components of morality. Neither of these conditions applies to rights proclamations in the legal realm. For a legal right proclamation to be meaningful, it is sufficient that there is or there ought to be, in the legal community at stake, a legal obligation whose justification includes, as a non-redundant element, the interest of some party. (shrink)

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.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Giulio Castellani (1528-1586): A Sixteenth-Century Opponent of Scepticism CHARLES B. SCH1VHTT THE PROBLEMOF THE ORIGINS of scepticism in early modern philosophy has been a much debated issue. Sanches, Montaigne, Charron, and Bayle all contributed to the milieu which made it possible for the sceptical direction of thought to develop into such a potent force by the time of David Hume. The actual origins of modern scepticism, which seem (...) to go back to a slightly earlier date, lie in the confluence of several different intellectual movements during the early years of the sixteenth century: Christian anti-intellectualism, the reintroduction of the literary remains of the ancient sceptical tradition, the epistemological developments of scholastic nominalism, and certain inherent tendencies of Renaissance humanism. It is in the early decades of the sixteenth century that the seeds which later blossomed forth at the time of Hume originally took root. Hume himself merely reaped the harvest of several hundred years of sceptical preparation? Aside from certain manifestations of doubt which developed out of the epistemological theories of fourteenth-century nominalism, the origins of modern scepticism are generally held to date from the first publication of Sextus Empiricus' ancient summaries of Pyrrhonism during the decade of the 1560's. While it has previously been recognized that at least hints of scepticism were current in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the implications to be derived from this fact do not seem to have been adequately exploredT I shall not here go into these early manifestations of scepticism in a detailed way. Rather, I shall briefly touch upon a few little-known examples of the influence of ancient scepticism during the Reniassance and, then, I shall focus upon an early and practically neglected attack upon scepticism published before the first printings of Sextus Empiricus' writings. I shall discuss the circumstances of the composition of Giulio Castellani's anti-sceptical work, Adversus Marci TuIlii Ciceronis academicas questiones disi For a recent survey of early modem scepticism see Richard H. Popkin, The History o] Scepticism /tom Erasmus to Descartes (Assen: 1960). Of the large literature which connects scepticism with religious doubt during this period see especially Henri Busson, Les sources et le dgveloppement du rati~nalizme dar~ la litt~rature ]ran~aise de la Renaissance (Paris: 1957) and Don Cameron Allen, Doubt's Boundless Sea (Baltimore: 1964). The di.~cussionof this period seems to be the weakest part of Popkin's excellent book, particularly with regard to the treatment which he gives to Italian thought. See, also, his other articles, especially,"Skepticismand the Counter-Reformation in France," Archiv/fir Re/armationsgeschichte, LI (1960),58-86and "The High Road to Pyrrhonism," American Philosophical Quarterly, II (1965),18--32.In my forthcoming study, Gian]rancesco Pico (1469-1533) and His Critique o/Aristotle, I give a detailed analysis of the major representative of early sixteenthcentury scepticism. [151 16 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY putatio (1558), which antedates the first printing of Sextus Empiricus by four years, indicating that scepticism was already widespread enough to provoke an attack from the camp of the dogmatists. Furthermore, I shall analyze Castellani 's arguments in the context of the philosophical views of the mid-sixteenth century. Scepticism in the Early Renaissance Direct knowledge of the major ancient source of scepticism, the already mentioned writings of Sextus Empiricus, was rare throughout the Middle Ages. There are but two known extant Latin manuscripts which date before 1400. s From the fifteenth century we know of two more manuscripts, neither complete in itself, but together containing a significant portion of the extant writings of Sextus. 4 This evidence indicates that Sextus' works were not well known in translation before the first Latin editions of The Oulines o] Pyrrhonism (1562) and of Against the Mathematicians (1569). With the advent of an increased interest in and knowledge of Greek in Western Europe in the fifteenth century, we find a corresponding increase in the number of Greek manuscripts of Sextus Empiricus. Consequently, by the time of the first printings, an appreciable number of copies of his writings were available. Some were brought from the East, but a large number also are attributable to European scribes. 5 We also know that in... (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)

Thierry Meynard and Dawei Pan offer a highly detailed annotated translation of one of the major works of Giulio Aleni, a Jesuit missionary in China. Referred to by his followers as "Confucius from the West", Aleni made his presence felt in the early modern encounter between China and Europe. The two translators outline the complexity of the intellectual challenges that Aleni faced and the extensive conceptual resources on which he built up a fine-grained framework with the aim of bridging (...) the Chinese and Christian spiritual traditions. (shrink)

Late Lowe’s metaphysics of material objects is an interesting multi-thingist theory that still attracts interest from various authors. The core idea is that if x materially constitutes y, the x is a proper part of y. I discuss some mereological issues that arise from the approach and propose a revision of the mereology associated. Particularly, I examine the tenability of a number of supplementation principles and conclude that just one may serve the theory adequately. Still, the endorsement of such a (...) principle does not come for free. Successively, I address the derivability of an important extensionality theorem and conclude that the theorem must be taken as an axiom in the mereology at stake. Lastly, I discuss two notable definitions of mereological fusions to assess which one best suits the present theory. The result is that authors sharing Lowe’s multi-thingist conception of material objects can still enjoy a moderately strong mereology. (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)