In this volume, we present a collection of writings each offering their own novel perspective with respect to question of realism. No doubt it has gathered much attention of recent philosophical debates; and one of its characteristic aspects, among those it has had a most notable impact, has been in blurring the more the rigid way of thinking the traditional demarcations between "continental" and "analytic" philosophy. This volume, then, offers a contribution to some of the many discussions on realism not (...) only in the spirit that there is still much more to be said on the matter, but also in the recognition that a renewal of the discussion is necessary and should bypass old divisions. This is not to say that this volume departs entirely from any "old" sort of realism, or uncritically treats its object of study as creatable ex nihilo. Far from that, it moves from a broadly shared conviction that, if we are to re-position realism and see its present or future as not yet set into stone--that is, a way in which reality "must be" more than just be--a certain historicism cannot be left out of the picture of realism. (shrink)

This essay investigates the dichotomy between appearance and reality. We will look into some emblematic examples, like the Müller-Lyer optical illusion and the Gelb effect, in order to show how a careful phenomenological analysis overcomes all forms of dualism about the experience of the external world. The aforementioned phenomenological approach is based on immediate experience and, more broadly, contributes to the methodology of experimental phenomenology.

This article is based on Gibson’s “experimental phenomenology” and ecological perspective. It aims to develop Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “incarnate” by relating it to the more general concept of “illusion” in order to apply it to digital environments and immersive virtual realities. First of all, we should clarify, from a phenomenological point of view, the notion of “world.” Although the concept of “world” is closely linked to that of “reality,” it cannot be superimposed on it. We will analyze this distinction by (...) focusing on specific cases of optical-geometric illusions and their ontological and epistemological implications. We will then extend them from the natural to the digital world. (shrink)

The following essay, perceptological in character, has a twofold goal: firstly, to show how the method devised by Magritte – which aims at making a thing visible – is grounded on the rules and the modalities of phenomenical giveness. Secondly, to suggest that the perceptual analysis of artworks sheds light on the nature of pictorial representation. Hence, the proposal is about the relationship between perception and image: one’s idea of perception guides the results of one’s theoretical enquiry. The present analysis (...) is based on a phenomenological (experimental) approach, with a special attention for the Gestalt tradition and the notion of immediate experience. In sight of this, Magritte’s theoretical thought will be reprised without any pretension of exhaustiveness: we are just interested in his praxis, in his methodology. For this reason, our reflection on the phenomenical appearance of the thing will not take into account the Magrittes’ underlying metaphysics. (shrink)

Summary In this essay we seek to clarify the meaning and theoretical implications of the statement by Merleau-Ponty contained in his 1953 course, Le Monde Sensible et le Monde de l’Expression, according to which movement is ‘revealing of being’. This analysis takes up and comments on chapter 7 of Koffka’s Principles of Gestalt Psychology (dedicated to the issue of movement) and related experiments in particular. We will show that Merleau-Ponty’s idea of ontology of movement emerges from his examination of several (...) exemplary cases. This method of analysis brings to light an idea of similar phenomenology compatible with an experimental phenomenology. (shrink)

Paolo Bozzi developed his «experimental phenomenology» from the Gestalt psychology tradition, particularly from Gaetano Kanizsa’s method. The distinction between «phenomenal description» and «causal explanation» of the «perception» springs up from the analysis of Bozzi’s «S-D psychophysical scheme». What Frege, who was well-known by Bozzi, deals with in paragraph 71 of The Thought theoretically mirrors what is outlined in the Scheme and could also be intended as its source. The juxtaposition between a «science of observable things» or «experimental phenomenology» – conceived (...) as a science which is autonomous from what happens in the brain – and logics, which is set up autonomously from the thinking processes, is a programmatic element that is openly indicated by the author. Frege’s anti-psychologism and realism are both widely shared by Bozzi. The realism and the «naïve physics» Bozzi was a pioneer of lie at the basis of the so-called «New Realism». The following essay aims to localize and highlight some theoretical implications – up to their phenomenological origins – which can be detected particularly in paragraph 71 of The Thought. The present work tries to sketch out the boundaries and the autonomy of the «first person» perceptive experience and to define the scientific explanation that we can give of it. The distinction between science and experience, and the autonomy of experience from science and of the immediate experience of the content of consciousness from neuroscience, entail the impossibility of a naturalization of the phenomenological experience. In the examples taken from Frege can be found a theoretical bridge which connects the Gestalt perceptological tradition, Wittgenstein’s investigations of the philosophy of psychology, and the so called «New Realism». (shrink)

The following essay, perceptological in character, has a twofold goal: firstly, to show how the method devised by Magritte – which aims at making a thing visible – is grounded on the rules and the modalities of phenomenical giveness. Secondly, to suggest that the perceptual analysis of artworks sheds light on the nature of pictorial representation. Hence, the proposal is about the relationship between perception and image: one’s idea of perception guides the results of one’s theoretical enquiry. The present analysis (...) is based on a phenomenological (experimental) approach, with a special attention for the Gestalt tradition and the notion of immediate experience. In sight of this, Magritte’s theoretical thought will be reprised without any pretension of exhaustiveness: we are just interested in his praxis, in his methodology. For this reason, our reflection on the phenomenical appearance of the thing will not take into account the Magrittes’ underlying metaphysics. (shrink)

This essay aims to show that the concept of landscape does not indicate something static or well-defined in the physical world but is rather the result of a process deriving from our being embodied in the world. Landscape is embodied cognition produced by our subjectivity, which, in turn, constantly hybridises the relationship between inside and outside. The key point, therefore, is to grasp and problematise the interaction between landscape and mindscape. However, this relationship would not be complete without also taking (...) into account the fact that we are integrated in an environment and analysing the fact that we live in an acted environment: our actions are decisive for understanding the environment beginning from the very perception we have of it. Indeed, this perception it itself a true founding act. The specific nature of the walkscape thus allows us to take this dynamic aspect of our relationship with the environment into account before grasping the last fundamental element for achieving a complete understanding of the problem: the currently ongoing transformation that brings us to be immersed not only in natural environments, but also in new digital environments. Taken together, therefore, the concepts of landscape, mindscape and walkscape allow us to clarify the theoretical implications of our being part of an integrated system together with the environment, be it natural or digital. (shrink)

This chapter has two main sections. In the first section I briefly sketch Immanuel Kant’s moral theory as laid out in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). I explain Kant’s claim that morality must be grounded on what he calls a categorical imperative and examine his three formulations of this categorical imperative. In the second section I explain the distinction between “deontological” and “teleological” ethical theories. Kantian ethics is often presented as the paradigm example of a deontological ethical (...) theory, but I question whether Kant’s ethics should be understood as purely deontological. (shrink)

This open access book investigates the role played by identity of proofs in proof-theoretic semantics. It develops a conception of proof-theoretic semantics as primarily concerned with the relationship between proofs (understood as abstract entities) and derivations (the linguistic representations of proofs). It demonstrates that identity of proof is a key both to clarify some —still not wholly understood— notions at the core of proof-theoretic semantics, such as harmony; and to broaden the range of the phenomena which can be analyzed using (...) the tools of this semantic paradigm, so as to include for instance paradoxes. The volume covers topics such as the philosophical significance of different criteria of identity of proofs, and adequacy conditions for an intensional account of the notion of harmony. The author also examines the Prawitz-Tennant analysis of paradoxes by investigating on the one hand the prospects of turning it into a theory of meaning for paradoxical languages, and on the other hand two distinct kinds of phenomena, first observed by Crabbe and Ekman, showing that the Tennant-Prawitz criterion for paradoxicality overgenerates. This volume is of interest to scholars in formal and philosophical logic. (shrink)

This book examines phenomenal conservatism, one of the most influential and promising internalist conceptions of non-inferential justification debated in current epistemology and philosophy of mind. It also explores the significance of the findings of this examination for the general debate on epistemic justification. According to phenomenal conservatism, non-inferential justification rests on seemings or appearances, conceived of as experiences provided with propositional content. Phenomenal conservatism states that if it appears to S that P, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has (...) some justification for believing that P. This view provides the basis for foundationalism and many ordinary epistemic practices. This book sheds new light on phenomenal conservatism by assessing objections to it and examining epistemological merits and advantages attributed to it. In a nutshell, phenomenal conservatism is actually compatible with Bayesian reasoning, and it is unaffected by bootstrapping problems and challenges that appeal to the cognitive penetrability of perception. Nevertheless, appearance-based justification proves unstable or elusive and its antisceptical bite is more limited than expected. These difficulties could be surmounted if phenomenal conservatism were integrated with a theory of inferential justification. The book appeals to scholars and postgraduates in the field of epistemology and philosophy of mind who are interested in the rational roles of appearances. (shrink)

In this paper we focus on transmission and failure of transmission of warrant. We identify three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for transmission of warrant, and we show that their satisfaction grounds a number of interesting epistemic phenomena that have not been sufficiently appreciated in the literature. We then scrutinise Wright’s analysis of transmission failure and improve on extant readings of it. Nonetheless, we present a Bayesian counterexample that shows that Wright’s analysis is partially incoherent with our analysis of (...) warrant transmission and prima facie defective. We conclude exploring three alternative lines of reply: developing a more satisfactory account of transmission failure, which we outline; dismissing the Bayesian counterexample by rejecting some of its assumptions; reinterpreting Wright’s analysis to make it immune to the counterexample. (shrink)

Transmission of justification across inference is a valuable and indeed ubiquitous epistemic phenomenon in everyday life and science. It is thanks to the phenomenon of epistemic transmission that inferential reasoning is a means for substantiating predictions of future events and, more generally, for expanding the sphere of our justified beliefs or reinforcing the justification of beliefs that we already entertain. However, transmission of justification is not without exceptions. As a few epistemologists have come to realise, more or less trivial forms (...) of circularity can prevent justification from transmitting from p to q even if one has justification for p and one is aware of the inferential link from p to q. In interesting cases this happens because one can acquire justification for p only if one has independent justification for q. In this case the justification for q cannot depend on the justification for p and the inferential link from p to q, as genuine transmission would require. The phenomenon of transmission failure seems to shed light on philosophical puzzles, such as Moore's proof of a material world and McKinsey's paradox, and it plays a central role in various philosophical debates. For this reason it is being granted continued and increasing attention. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an interpretation of Wittgenstein's remarks on the experience of wonder at the existence of the world. According to this interpretation, Wittgenstein's feeling of wonder stems from perceiving the existence of the world as an absolute miracle, that is, as a fact that is in principle beyond explanation. Based on this analysis, I will suggest that Wittgenstein's experience is akin to what has been described by other authors such as Coleridge, Pessoa, Heidegger, Scheler, Sartre, and Hadot, (...) among many others. Through a comparison between Wittgenstein and Coleridge on the experience of existence, I shall highlight some core features of this experience, chief among them the use of the notion of nothingness in clarifying what is understood in the experience, the role of intuition, and the presence of a specific pathos. As a whole, this paper aims to provide a contribution to the project of a phenomenology of the experience of existence and intends to create a bridge for a dialogue between Wittgenstein and the phenomenological tradition on the enigma of existence. (shrink)

The assumption that coercion is largely responsible for our legal systems’ efficacy is a common one. I argue that this assumption is false. But I do so indirectly, by objecting to a thesis I call “(Compliance)”, which holds that most citizens comply with most legal mandates most of the time at least partly in virtue of being motivated by legal systems’ threats of sanctions and other unwelcome consequences. The relationship between (Compliance) and the efficacy of legal systems is explained in (...) section 1. There I also show that (Compliance) must be rejected for it relies on unsubstantiated empirical assumptions. In section 2, I claim that an alternative, and more refined, formulation of (Compliance) also lacks adequate support. I conclude with a few general remarks about the centrality of coercion in our thought and talk about legal systems. (shrink)

L’epistemologia (detta anche filosofia della conoscenza o gnoseologia) è la disciplina filosofica che studia come gli esseri umani si rapportano da un punto di vista cognitivo alla realtà che li circonda. Le questioni fondamentali che la interessano sono principalmente di natura normativa. Riguardano il modo in cui dovremmo regolare le nostre credenze alla luce dell’informazione in nostro possesso, e la natura della conoscenza umana ed i suoi limiti. Questo capitolo è organizzato in modo corrispondente. La prima sezione tratta della nozione (...) di giustificazione epistemica, la seconda quella di conoscenza, e la terza introduce il problema filosofico dello scetticismo. (shrink)

This book explores the diverse understandings of the archaeological record in both historical and contemporary perspective, while also serving as a guide to reassessing current views. Gavin Lucas argues that archaeological theory has become both too fragmented and disconnected from the particular nature of archaeological evidence. The book examines three ways of understanding the archaeological record - as historical sources, through formation theory, and as material culture - then reveals ways to connect these three domains through a reconsideration of archaeological (...) entities and archaeological practice. Ultimately, Lucas calls for a rethinking of the nature of the archaeological record and the kind of history and narratives written from it. (shrink)

Phenomenal conservatism (PC) is the internalist view that non-inferential justification rests on appearances. PC’s advocates have recently argued that seemings are also required to explain inferential justification. The most general and developed view to this effect is Huemer (2016)’s theory of inferential seemings (ToIS). Moretti (2018) has shown that PC is affected by the problem of reflective awareness, which makes PC open to sceptical challenges. In this paper I argue that ToIS is afflicted by a version of the same problem (...) and it is thus hostage to inferential scepticism. I also suggest a possible response on behalf of ToIS’s advocates. (shrink)

Psychopaths have emotional and rational impairments that can be expressed in persistent criminal behaviour. UK and US law has not traditionally excused disordered individuals for their crimes citing these impairments as a cause for their criminal behaviour. Until now, the discussion of whether psychopaths are morally responsible for their behaviour has usually taken place in the realm of philosophy. However, in recent years, this debate has been informed by scientific and psychiatric advancements, fundamentally so with the development of Robert Hare's (...) diagnostic tool, the Psychopathy Checklist. Responsibility and Psychopathy explores the moral responsibility of psychopaths. It engages with problems at the interface between law, psychiatry, and philosophy, and is divided into three parts offering relevant interdisciplinary background information to address this main problem. The first part discusses the public policy and legal responses to psychopathy. It offers an introduction to the central practical issue of how public policy should respond to psychopathy, providing insights for those arguing about the responsibility of psychopaths. The second part introduces recent scientific advancements in the classification, description, explanation, and treatment of psychopathy. The third part of the volume includes chapters covering the most significant dimensions of philosophical debate on the moral and criminal responsibility of psychopaths. (shrink)

The central idea behind this paper is the claim that Kant's moral idea of a realm of ends is modeled on the category of community examined in his theoretical works, and that understanding Kant's account of the category of community helps us understand certain features of the idea of a realm of ends, and in particular the fact that a member of a realm of ends must be an autonomous agent. For Kant the idea of a community is essentially the (...) idea of a multitude of individuals in interaction and in this paper I will attempt to show why Kant believes that only autonomous individuals can interact. (shrink)

This paper intends to address social robotics from the Actor-network theory (ANT) perspective. Starting from the critique of Seibt’s approach and the distinction between anthropomorphing and sociomorphing, the paper proposes a new methodological approach based on ANT and negotiation concepts. This approach allows us to: a) assume a more symmetrical ontology in which robots are considered as social agents, like humans; b) consider all the interactional elements as of equal importance; and c) overcome the dualistic limit that is often imposed (...) on social robotics studies, i.e., the tendency to consider only the one-to-one relationship, one man-one robot, inside the laboratory. Anthropomorphing and sociomorphing are the results of a negotiation process that cannot be reduced to a series of degrees of simulation, but must be understood as a complex interactional process between many agents and material mediations. (shrink)

In this chapter I shall address the question as to whether there exists a universal and atemporal justification for the claims made by a community that adopts a particular style of reasoning. I shall present a case study in which a claim made in the laboratory style of reasoning has no universal and atemporal justification. As I shall explain, Hacking justifies his belief that unobservable entities exist on the ground that they can be regularly manipulated by experimenters in order to (...) find out and produce various phenomena (experimental realism); he also maintains that no belief that our theories are true is required in order to be realist about unobservable entities. I shall argue that his justification is relative to the laboratory style of reasoning. Ultimately, from this case study I shall draw the important conclusion that the styles of reasoning project implies epistemic relativism. In the first part of this chapter, I shall analyse Hacking’s experimental realism in the light of the styles of reasoning project. I shall start by making these points: Hacking’s theory anti-realism denies the possibility of ranking styles of reasoning in terms of their capacity to explain phenomena; furthermore, Hacking is not successful in showing that his entity realism is justified for a community that does not adopt the laboratory style of reasoning. It will follow that the styles of reasoning project is in conflict with the claim that we know about unobservable entities. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the debate on the question of whether a systematic connection obtains between one’s commitment to realism or antirealism and one’s attitude towards the possibility of radical theoretical novelty, namely, theory change affecting our best, most successful theories (see, e.g., Stanford in Synthese 196:3915–3932, 2019; Dellsén in Stud Hist Philos Sci 76:30–38, 2019). We argue that it is not allegiance to realism or antirealism as such that primarily dictates one’s response to the possibility of radical theoretical novelty: (...) what matters the most is, rather, the proposed alternative’s promise to realize one’s favored cognitive aim(s). Our argument tells not only against Stanford’s account of how adherence to realism or antirealism orients how one responds to possible radical theoretical novelty, but also against what we call the “natural pairing thesis.” According to such a thesis, which has kept resurfacing in the history of the philosophy of science, one-to-one pairings obtain between realism/antirealism, on the one hand, and theoretical conservatism/openness to radical theoretical novelty, on the other hand. As our argument suggests, however, when faced with the possibility of radical theoretical novelty, realists can respond either in a conservative way or by being open to theory change, not unlike antirealists. (shrink)

According to some Philosophy for Children theorists, the pedagogy of the Community of Inquiry hinges upon the acceptance of a pragmatist epistemology. The underlying idea is that it is possible to participate, and to justify participation, in a community of inquiry only if some pragmatist view of truth and knowledge is true and accepted by the participants engaged in dialogue. In this article we argue that this claim is false. In this way, we want to free the pedagogy of the (...) Community of Inquiry from some epistemological assumptions that we regard as unwarranted. To support our contention, we shall highlight two distinctions that are important in order to appreciate the connection between epistemology and education: first, the distinction between the disposition of intellectual humility and the belief in fallibilism; second, the belief in the existence of Cartesian certainties and the attitude of psychological certainty. Finally, we also argue that to vindicate dialogic inquiry it is neither necessary to adopt a pragmatist theory of truth, nor is it necessary to regard warranted judgement as the primary aim of inquiry. In contrast, we argue that truth is the aim of inquiry, and so is the aim of children when they participate in a dialogic inquiry. In this way we also suggest a justification of philosophy with children that does not instrumentalize it. (shrink)

In this contribution I will retrace the main stages of my research on the objectification problem in quantum mechanics by highlighting some personal memories of my supervisor, the theoretical physicist Giovanni Morchio. The central aim of my MSc thesis was to ask whether the hypothesis of objectification, which is currently added to the formalism, is not, at least in one case, deducible from it and in particular from the dynamics of the temporal evolution. The case study we were looking for (...) had to: 1) represent a situation similar to that in which a macroscopic system such as a measurement apparatus, following interaction with a system, assumes a well-defined state (which or for example represents the fact that the result of a measurement is a particular value), i.e becomes objective 2) represent a fact in nature in which it is not clear whether its explanation can be derived from the formalism of quantum mechanics or whether a hypothesis of objectification is necessary for its explanation. Proving that such a fact can be deduced from the time evolution of quantum mechanics allowed us to conclude that there are cases in which the hypothesis of objectification is superfluous or, in other words, obtainable from the formalism. (shrink)

Deflationists about truth hold that the function of the truth predicate is to enable us to make certain assertions we could not otherwise make. Pragmatists claim that the utility of negation lies in its role in registering incompatibility. The pragmatist insight about negation has been successfully incorporated into bilateral theories of content, which take the meaning of negation to be inferentially explained in terms of the speech act of rejection. We implement the deflationist insight in a bilateral theory by taking (...) the meaning of the truth predicate to be explained by its inferential relation to assertion. We combine this account of the meaning of the truth predicate with a new diagnosis of the liar paradox: its derivation requires the truth rules to preserve evidence, but these rules only preserve commitment. The result is a novel inferential deflationist theory of truth, which solves the liar paradox in a principled manner. We end by showing that our theory and simple extensions thereof have the resources to axiomatize the internal logic of several supervaluational hierarchies, including Cantini’s. This solves open problems of Halbach (2011) and Horsten (2011). (shrink)

In this article, I argue that desire-satisfaction theories of well-being face the problem of trivially satisfied desires. First, I motivate the claim that desire-satisfaction theories need an aggregation principle and reconstruct four possible principles desire-satisfactionists can adopt. Second, I contend that one of these principles seems implausible on numerous counts. Third, I argue that the other three principles, which hold that the creation and satisfaction of new desires is good for individuals and can be called proliferationist, are vulnerable to an (...) objection from trivially satisfied desires. They implausibly imply that forming desires that are trivially satisfied is good for individuals. Finally, I argue that trivially satisfied desires may also worsen desire-satisfactionism's classical problem of pointless desires. Together, these claims constitute a challenge to desire-satisfactionism. (shrink)