This book is about nature considered as the totality of physical existence, the universe, and our present day attempts to understand it.

In the ambit of the debate on “personal autonomy”, we propose to intend “personal autonomy” in a social sense. We undertake this move because we think that autonomy is compatible with socialization and we’ll give reasons for this claim. Moreover, we must consider the role of the wide variety of informational sources we are exposed to, which influence our behavior. Social background represents the ontological ground from which we develop the capacity for autonomy; at the same time, interaction with others (...) (real or virtual) enlarges the possibility for autonomous judgements. Our attempt is, first, to try to sketch a social notion of personal autonomy and, second, to elucidate the connection between autonomy and the exposition to informational and social diversity. -/- . (shrink)

The aim of my contribution is to investigate the ground of habits and rituals; they are based on the same processes even though they have different functions depending on the context (personal or social). My discussion will mostly centered on the nature and function of rituals, as necessary practices in human social life (but also in animal life). After a brief introduction of different perspectives on the notions of “habit” and “ritual”, I propose an interpretation of rituals as collective activity, (...) which is based on the same mechanisms of habits formation but it is expressed in a “we-form”, from which is created and institutionalized. (shrink)

After explaining the interdisciplinary aspect of the series of events organized around the square of opposition since 2007, we discuss papers related to the 4th World Congress on the Square of Opposition which was organized in the Vatican at the Pontifical Lateran University in 2014. We distinguish three categories of work: those dealing with the evolution and development of the theory of opposition, those using the square as a metalogical tool to give a better understanding of various systems of logic (...) and those related with applications of the theory of opposition to conceptual analysis and pedagogy. (shrink)

This text presents the research field of natural/unconventional computing as it appears in the book COMPUTING NATURE. The articles discussed consist a selection of works from the Symposium on Natural Computing at AISB-IACAP (British Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour and The International Association for Computing and Philosophy) World Congress 2012, held at the University of Birmingham, celebrating Turing centenary. The COMPUTING NATURE is about nature considered as the totality of physical existence, the universe. (...) By physical we mean all phenomena, objects and processes, that are possible to detect either directly by our senses or via instruments. Historically, there have been many ways of describing the universe (cosmic egg, cosmic tree, theistic universe, mechanistic universe) while a particularly prominent contemporary approach is computational universe, as discussed in this article. See more: http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.7784. (shrink)

This chapter deals with the relationship between representation and language, which becomes more relevant if we do not intend the process of forming internal representations of reality but rather the representative function of language. Starting from some Fregean ideas, we present the notion of representation theorized by Searle. According to Searle, a belief is a “representation” that has a propositional content and a psychological mode: the propositional content or intentional content determines a set of conditions of satisfaction under certain aspects (...) and the psychological mode determines the direction of fit of the propositional content. We draw attention to some very interesting ideas proposed by Brandom in response to the challenge of Searle to AI, as they propose formal aspects of representation that rely on the use of ordinary language while avoiding the psychological order of explanation. (shrink)

The articles in this volume present a selection of works from the Symposium on Natu-ral/Unconventional Computing at AISB/IACAP (British Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour and The International Association for Computing and Philosophy) World Congress 2012, held at the University of Birmingham, celebrating Turing centenary. This book is about nature considered as the totality of physical existence, the universe. By physical we mean all phenomena - objects and processes - that are possible to detect (...) either directly by our senses or via instruments. Historically, there have been many ways of describ-ing the universe (cosmic egg, cosmic tree, theistic universe, mechanistic universe) and a par-ticularly prominent contemporary approach is computational universe. (shrink)

Our contribution aims at individuating a valid philosophical strategy for a fruitful confrontation between human and artificial representation. The ground for this theoretical option resides in the necessity to find a solution that overcomes, on the one side, strong AI (i.e. Haugeland) and, on the other side, the view that rules out AI as explanation of human capacities (i.e. Dreyfus). We try to argue for Analytic Pragmatism (AP) as a valid strategy to present arguments for a form of weak AI (...) and to explain a notion of representation common to human and artificial agents. (shrink)

We’ll sketch the debate on testimony in social epistemology by reference to the contemporary debate on reductionism/anti-reductionism, communitarian epistemology and inferentialism. Testimony is a fundamental source of knowledge we share and it is worthy to be considered in the ambit of a dialogical perspective, which requires a description of a formal structure which entails deontic statuses and deontic attitudes. In particular, we’ll argue for a social reformulation of the “space of reasons”, which establishes a fruitful relationship with the epistemological view (...) of Wilfrid Sellars. (shrink)

The present contribution describes the nature of social practices based on habitual behavior. The first part concerns the notion of “habit” from a perspective that crosses philosophy and science. Habits structure our daily life and possess a social nature, as shown by informally shared habits and institutionalized rituals. After a brief reference to the philosophical debate, we point out the fundamental dimensions of habitual behavior, i.e., routine and goal-directed behavior. They also characterize shared social habits like rituals because we need (...) to: simply follow social institutional practices and actively cooperate to reach a certain goal. Our descriptive strategy aims at promoting the aspect of “control” in habitual behavior, namely, the possibility of accepting or refusing to do something. This control does not work in many pathological cases and cases of auto-illusion. The second part of the article will illustrate the interesting but disregarded case of the epistemic and moral embubblement, explaining it as an individual cognitive process and as a specific social practice that once followed or institutionalized becomes a shared practice routinely performed. The main features of an epistemic bubble concern the widespread situation in which the cognitive agents always resolve the tension between their thinking that they know _P _and their knowing _P_ in favor of knowing that _P_”. The related case of the moral bubble indicates the situation in which agents are potentially or actually violent and unaware of it. This cognitive process expresses how difficulties in recognizing one’s own violence leads to disregarding the possible or actual inflicted harm: in this case, a process of what can be called “autoimmunity” is at play. We will contend that the concept of moral bubble can provide an integrated and unified perspective able to interpret in a novel way many social practices in which morality and violence are intertwined. (shrink)

In this book the editors invited prominent researchers with different perspectives and deep insights into the various facets of the relationship between reality and representation in the following three classes of agent: in humans, in other living beings, and in machines. -/- The book enriches our views on representation and deepens our understanding of its different aspects, a question that connects philosophy, computer science, logic, anthropology, psychology, sociology, neuroscience, linguistics, information and communication science, systems theory and engineering, computability, cybernetics, synthetic (...) biology, and bioinformatics biosemiotics. This book will be relevant to researchers in these fields. (shrink)

My contribution is a review of the Proceedings of the V Meeting of Italian-American Philosophy Autonomy of Reason? Autonomie der Vernunft? that toke place in Rome . American and European philosophers established a fruitful dialog aiming to show the complexity of the notion of “Reason” and, in particular, the possibility of its “Autonomy”. As we will see in the following discussion, human reason seems to be characterized by somewhat vague borders.

Abstract: Collective Intentionality is essential to the understanding of how we act as a "team". We will offer an overview on the contemporary debate on the sense of acting together. There are some theories which focus on unconscious processes and on the capabilities we share with animals (Tomasello, Walther, Hudin) and others which concentrate on the voluntary, conscious processes of acting together (Searle, Tuomela, Bratman, Gilbert). Collective intentionality represents also a relevant issue for economic theories. The theories of team reasoning (...) move from the assumption that agents can sometimes behave according to beliefs and preferences attributed to a group or a team. We will point out the role of institutions as created by collective intentionality (Searle) for understanding coordination and cooperation. (shrink)

In my contribution I want to describe a notion of autonomy in social terms namely in discursive practices. I already presented autonomy as grounded on the Sellarsian “metaphor” of the game of giving and asking for reasons reinterpreted by Robert Brandom. The model was centered mostly on practices of justification starting from an inferentialist view of the propositional content. However, I think that together with speech acts in ordinary language we must provide a description of the role of prelinguistic practices (...) for autonomy. This further step is implied by the fact that it is important to clarify the dimension of “readiness” to give or ask for reasons on which Swindler rightly insists in his Introduction to my book Autonomy. A Matter of Content. Autonomy develops in a language game that is connected with cooperation. The language game I want to point out is similar to the functional approach of Wittgenstein but starts from a Fregean perspective and takes into consideration neurobiological processes which bridge the gap between brain and world and represent the “motor” of our activity in the world. (shrink)

The present contribution aims to establish a connection between the notion of “autonomous discursive practice” recently introduced by Robert Brandom and the notion of personal autonomy. The Locke Lectures underscore some central points to be considered in this context. There are basic capacities which ground human rationality and are sufficient to develop an autonomous discursive practice. These capacities are not logical in a formal sense but reveal a notion of material incompatibility that allow the agents to recognize and rectify doxastic (...) commitments as well as practical commitments. The practice of recognition and rectification of commitments implies a social dimension because only through the undertaking of specific deontic attitudes in intersubjective contexts of justification we can isolate the complete structure of expressive rationality. We need both the objective pole and the subjective pole . My conclusion is that the Brandomian analysis of autonomous linguistic practice puts to much emphasis on the recognition of contents according to modal vocabulary. Moreover, personal autonomy requires the consideration of the role of the deontic attitudes in the practices of justification of our validity claims. (shrink)

This book reports on cutting edge research concerning social practices. Merging perspectives from various disciplines, it discusses theoretical aspects of social behavior along with models to investigate them, and also presents key case studies. Further, it describes concepts related to habits, routines and rituals and examines important features of human action such as intentionality and choice, exploring the influence of specific social practices in different situations.

The contemporary philosophical debate on autonomy shows several interesting perspectives that emphasize the role of social contexts for developing this human capacity. There is a shift from the classical notion of “moral” autonomy to the wider notion of “personal autonomy”, and we underscore the “substantive view” that helps to provide arguments that support a plausible notion strictly connected with socialization and language use. In this article, we consider the source of autonomy that is represented by a communicative life-world in its (...) ordinary and extra-ordinary dimensions to discuss the role of personal autonomy in a post-secular society. Moreover, we propose to adopt a pragmatic account to describe the social role of the autonomous agent in discursive contexts. (shrink)