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)

Central to the legal positivism of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century was the dogma of the Ideal Legislator. Legal materials were to be interpreted as the work of an omniscient, coherent, consistent legislator. We argue that this dogma persists in the different guise of the competent speaker model, on which legal materials are the work of a competent speaker, who follows all the pertinent semantic and pragmatic rules. We will first lay out the Ideal Legislator (...) dogma as applied in legal interpretation, arguing that this dogma does not limit interpretive discretion but rather amplifies it by hiding it under the veil of an inexistent, purely instrumental rationality. We will then turn to the competent speaker model, showing that, despite its apparent neutrality, it proves to be a reincarnation of the Ideal Legislator dogma, for it, too, amplifies interpretive discretion, only it hides it under the veil of an inexistent, purely linguistic rationality. Finally, we will inquire into the different types of rationality and their relations, arguing that there is always a choice and value judgment involved in ascribing rationality to legislators, and that these choices and judgments need to be carefully inspected and normatively justified. (shrink)

Non si prenda questo lavoro come un saggio specializzato di orientalistica. Anche se vi abbiamo messo in opera tutto quanto abbiamo appreso faticosamente di quel dominio. Il primo lavoro e stato tradurre integralmente il testo arabo Mungid basandoci su due edizioni. Siamo convinti che una religione non vada studiata soltanto nei suoi testi sacri, ma va osservata negli individui che la professano tant'e che l'Islam rimane un'astrazione se non si passa a studiare direttamente i Musulmani. Questo libro non e una (...) difesa del Cristianesimo nei riguardi dell'Islam, ma abbiamo voluto conoscere da vicino un'opera breve ma importante del piu famoso teologo musulmano. (shrink)

Italian political thinker Paolo Virno argues that the category of "multitude" is a far better tool to analyze contemporary issues than the Hobbesian concept of "people." Globalization is forcing us to rethink some of the categories—such as "the people"—that traditionally have been associated with the now eroding state. Italian political thinker Paolo Virno argues that the category of "multitude," elaborated by Spinoza and for the most part left fallow since the seventeenth century, is a far better tool to (...) analyze contemporary issues than the Hobbesian concept of "people," favored by classical political philosophy. Hobbes, who detested the notion of multitude, defined it as shunning political unity, resisting authority, and never entering into lasting agreements. "When they rebel against the state," Hobbes wrote, "the citizens are the multitude against the people." But the multitude isn't just a negative notion, it is a rich concept that allows us to examine anew plural experiences and forms of nonrepresentative democracy. Drawing from philosophy of language, political economics, and ethics, Virno shows that being foreign, "not-feeling-at-home-anywhere," is a condition that forces the multitude to place its trust in the intellect. In conclusion, Virno suggests that the metamorphosis of the social systems in the West during the last twenty years is leading to a paradoxical "Communism of the Capital.". (shrink)

This volume is the second part of a project which hosts an interdisciplinary discussion about the relationship among law and language, legal practice and ordinary conversation, legal philosophy and the linguistics sciences. An international group of authors, from cognitive science, philosophy of language and philosophy of law question about how legal theory and pragmatics can enrich each other. In particular, the first part is devoted to the analysis of how pragmatics can solve problems related to legal theory: What can pragmatics (...) teach about the concept of law and its relationship with moral, and, in particular, about the eternal dispute between legal positivism and legal naturalism? What can pragmatics teach about the concept of law and/or legal disagreements? The second part is focused on legal adjudication: it aims to construct a pragmatic apparatus appropriate to legal trial and/or to test the tenure of the traditional pragmatics tools in the field. The authors face questions such as: Which interesting pragmatic features emerge from legal adjudication? What pragmatic theories are better suited to account for the practice of judgment or its particular aspects? Which pragmatic and socio-linguistic problems are highlighted by this practice? (shrink)

The philosophical analysis of mathematical explanations concerns itself with two different, although connected, areas of investigation. The first area addresses the problem of whether mathematics can play an explanatory role in the natural and social sciences. The second deals with the problem of whether mathematical explanations occur within mathematics itself. Accordingly, this entry surveys the contributions to both areas, it shows their relevance to the history of philosophy and science, it articulates their connection, and points to the philosophical pay-offs to (...) be expected by deepening our understanding of the topic. (shrink)

At the same time, the book is a contribution to recent philosophical debates, in particular on the prospects for a successful nominalist reconstruction of .

The period from 1900 to 1935 was particularly fruitful and important for the development of logic and logical metatheory. This survey is organized along eight "itineraries" concentrating on historically and conceptually linked strands in this development. Itinerary I deals with the evolution of conceptions of axiomatics. Itinerary II centers on the logical work of Bertrand Russell. Itinerary III presents the development of set theory from Zermelo onward. Itinerary IV discusses the contributions of the algebra of logic tradition, in particular, Löwenheim (...) and Skolem. Itinerary V surveys the work in logic connected to the Hilbert school, and itinerary V deals specifically with consistency proofs and metamathematics, including the incompleteness theorems. Itinerary VII traces the development of intuitionistic and many-valued logics. Itinerary VIII surveys the development of semantical notions from the early work on axiomatics up to Tarski's work on truth. (shrink)

The temporality of intentions and actions in situations of social interaction can sometimes be paradoxical. I argue that in these situations it may sometimes be possible to conceive of individual acts that can, in a strong sense, be intended retroactively. This could happen when the relational patterns in social interaction literally alter the virtual structure of a participant's past corporeal intentions resulting in an odd experience of having intended something all along without knowing it. I propose that this possibility should (...) be interpreted as more than just a narrowly epistemic phenomenon. Examining this claim involves clarifying the enactive perspective on intentionality, which I do here. The enactive approach rejects the model of a causal relation between intention and action for one of an intrinsic qualitative relation between the two as facets of sense-making. I develop this idea and compare it with Merleau-Ponty's Fundierung model of the mutual relation between corporeal and reflexive intentionality to show that co-regulated moves/affections during social interaction may modulate both arcs of this relation, creating the possibility of a re-signification that alters not the actuality but the virtual tendencies that preceded the social act. (shrink)

This paper presents a model of persuasion in terms of goals and beliefs. Among the various ways to influence people, that is, to raise or lower the likelihood for them to pursue some goal, ranging from threat to suggestion, persuasion is viewed as a case of communicative non-coercive goal hooking. A persuader leads a persuadee to pursue some goal out of a free choice, i.e., by convincing him/her that the proposed goal is useful for some other goal that the persuadee (...) already has. It is argued that the Aristotelian persuasive strategies of logos, ethos and pathos are always present in every persuasive discourse, and that they are exploited to raise the value of the goal proposed and to strengthen the believability of the link between it and the persuadee's previous goals. The paper proposes an analysis of discourse in terms of a hierarchy of goals as a tool to single out these strategies within the discourse structure. By applying this model to different kinds of persuasive messages, it shows how, in the fragments presented, this kind of analysis allows to clarify the relationships between the persuader's and the persuadee's goals and to elucidate how much and how directly the persuader appeals to logos, ethos and pathos in his/her discourse. (shrink)

This paper explores the epistemology of extrapolation from model organisms to humans in molecular medicine. We take into account two common views on the issue, the homology view and the disanalogy view. In response to both interpretations, we argue that the foundational basis of extrapolations cannot simply be provided by homology and that relevant disanalogies can, thanks to the techniques of molecular biology, be experimentally controlled and exploited to allow useful and reliable extrapolations. The case of "humanised mice" in the (...) context of cancer stem cell research provides evidence of how animal models can be construed to approximate bona fide causal analogue models of human diseases. To supplement this view we show how the epistemology of model organisms needs to take into account the engineering side of molecular medicine. Model organisms are often manipulated to create analogies or remove disanalogies with the target system. We maintain that highlighting this feature is fundamental to explain what warrants extrapolation in the search for the molecular causes of disease. (shrink)

Bringing together contributors from philosophy, international relations, security studies, and strategic studies, New Wars and New Soldiers offers a truly interdisciplinary analysis reflective of the nature of modern warfare. This comprehensive approach allows the reader to see the broad scope of modern military ethics, and to understand the numerous questions about modern conflict that require critical scrutiny. Aimed at both military and academic audiences, this paperback will be of significant interest to researchers and students in philosophy, sociology, military and strategic (...) studies, international relations, politics, and security studies, acting as an ideal course text or as supplementary reading. (shrink)

Summary This article presents three hitherto unpublished letters by Frank Plumpton Ramsey on the foundations of mathematics with commentary. One of the letters was sent to Abraham Fraenkel and the other two letters to Heinrich Behmann. The transcription of the letters is preceded by an account that details the extent of Ramsey's known contacts with mathematical logicians on the Continent.

In Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, the year of 2020 marked a dramatic escalation of military activities of the Islamist insurgent group locally known as Al-Shabab or mashababe. This intensification was accompanied by a more immaterial phenomenon: the rise in prominence of social media, both as battleground and as public forum. While the insurgents sacked and occupied major towns and district headquarters, the Web 2.0 networks - Facebook and WhatsApp especially - became the central arena in which the war was apprehended and (...) discussed. This essay is an exploration of the entwining of social media with the 'new war' in Cabo Delgado, focussing on the events that surround the conquest of the Makonde plateau, mythical cradle of the Mozambican liberation struggle. Building on a budding literature on digital militarism, the essay dwells especially on orality and the use of the voice note as a medium to convey information deemed to be more trustworthy and stable than images. Tracking these media and their interrelations, the essay establishes a narrative, however fragmentary, of the downfall of the Makonde plateau; highlights recurring features of violence in the Cabo Delgado conflict; and provides fresh insight into the formation of the Local Force (Força Local), a State-sponsored militia largely constituted by war veterans. (shrink)

The literature on indicative conditionals contains two appealing views. The first is the selectional view: on this view, conditionals operate by selecting a single possibility, which is used to evaluate the consequent. The second is the informational view: on this view, conditionals don’t express propositions, but rather impose constraints on information states of speakers. Both views are supported by strong arguments, but they are incompatible on their standard formulations. Hence it appears that we have to choose between mutually exclusive options. (...) But the options are not exclusive. This paper develops a theory of the semantics and assertability of conditionals that is both selectional and informational. The theory vindicates the signature inferences of both selectional and informational theories, including so-called Conditionals Excluded Middle and principles about the interplay between conditionals and ‘might’. It also predicts some interesting and puzzling facts about the assertion of conditionals. (shrink)

Heinrich Behmann (1891-1970) obtained his Habilitation under David Hilbert in Göttingen in 1921 with a thesis on the decision problem. In his thesis, he solved - independently of Löwenheim and Skolem's earlier work - the decision problem for monadic second-order logic in a framework that combined elements of the algebra of logic and the newer axiomatic approach to logic then being developed in Göttingen. In a talk given in 1921, he outlined this solution, but also presented important programmatic remarks on (...) the significance of the decision problem and of decision procedures more generally. The text of this talk as well as a partial English translation are included. (shrink)