Parlare del fallimento delle primavere arabe come di una sconfitta, che ha favorito, da un lato, la restaurazione di regimi autoritari e, dall’altro, il rafforzamento dei movimenti fondamentalisti, è riduttivo. L’articolo si propone di mostrare come i movimenti collettivi, che hanno animato le proteste nelle maggiori piazze delle capitali di molti Paesi arabi, hanno interpretato il bisogno di cambiamento politico ed economico che da troppi anni è stato ignorato o represso dai regimi al potere. Tali movimenti sono l’espressione di un (...) contro-movimento politico alternativo a quanti, in questi anni, inneggiando all’islam, hanno teorizzato e messo in pratica la lotta armata rivoluzionaria. La differenza fra questi due tipi di movimenti collettivi sta nella diversa posta in gioco che essi pongono al centro della loro azione. Per i movimenti di rivolta, la battaglia politica è per l’avvento della democrazia, per i movimenti fondamentalisti è, invece, in buona sostanza, la costituzione di un ferreo regime della verità religiosa, ancor più autoritario dei regimi politico-militari che si sono ripresi il potere dopo il 2012. (shrink)

We offer a proof of the duality theorem for finitely presented MV-algebras and rational polyhedra, a folklore and yet fundamental result. Our approach develops first a general dual adjunction between MV-algebras and subspaces of Tychonoff cubes, endowed with the transformations that are definable in the language of MV-algebras. We then show that this dual adjunction restricts to a duality between semisimple MV-algebras and closed subspaces of Tychonoff cubes. The duality theorem for finitely presented objects is obtained by a further specialisation. (...) Our treatment is aimed at showing exactly which parts of the basic theory of MV-algebras are needed in order to establish these results, with an eye towards future generalisations. (shrink)

A user is a system capable of creating and pursuing individual goals. Is it possible to design and implement an artificial user? Traditional artificial systems focus on how achieving a given goal. Most learning algorithms look for an optimal solution of a problem, given a set of optimization criteria and a goal (or a set of goals). However, real agents and real users have to develop new goals in order to cope with their environment. They must find “what” they want (...) to achieve and not only “how”. The development of completely new goals on the basis of the interaction with the environment is here defined the “what” problem. In this paper we will try to define it and we will propose an architecture capable of addressing it. Such an architecture is proposed as the foundation for an artificial user. (shrink)

This paper outlines an account of conditionals, the evidential account, which rests on the idea that a conditional is true just in case its antecedent supports its consequent. As we will show, the evidential account exhibits some distinctive logical features that deserve careful consideration. On the one hand, it departs from the material reading of ‘if then’ exactly in the way we would like it to depart from that reading. On the other, it significantly differs from the non-material accounts which (...) hinge on the Ramsey Test, advocated by Adams, Stalnaker, Lewis, and others. (shrink)

In his late years, Thomas Kuhn became interested in the process of scientific specialization, which does not seem to possess the destructive element that is characteristic of scientific revolutions. It therefore makes sense to investigate whether and how Kuhn’s insights about specialization are consistent with, and actually fit, his model of scientific progress through revolutions. In this paper, I argue that the transition toward a new specialty corresponds to a revolutionary change for the group of scientists involved in such a (...) transition. I will clarify the role of the scientific community in revolutionary changes and characterize the incommensurability across specialties as possessing both semantic and methodological aspects. The discussion of the discovery of the structure of DNA will serve both as an illustration of my main argument and as reply to one criticism raised against Kuhn—namely, that his model cannot capture cases of revolutionary yet non-disruptive episodes of scientific progress. Revisiting Kuhn’s ideas on specialization will shed new light on some often overlooked features of scientific change. (shrink)

A moral-pragmatic argument for a proposition is an argument intended to establish that believing the proposition would be morally beneficial. Since such arguments do not adduce epistemic reasons, i.e., reasons that support the truth of a proposition, they can seem at best to be irrelevant epistemically. At worst, believing on the basis of such reasoning can seem to involve wishful thinking and intellectual dishonesty of a sort that that precludes such beliefs from being epistemically unjustified. Inspired by an argument from (...) William James’ classic, “The Will to Believe”, I argue that there is a way of making sense of moral-pragmatic arguments such that they are epistemically relevant. I develop and argue for a theory of epistemic justification that I dub the “moral encroachment theory” (emphasizing its connection to recent pragmatic encroachment views). According to the theory, moral considerations can raise or lower epistemic standards from where they would be in morally neutral settings. The moral encroachment theory, I contend, denotes a normative property that is at once distinctively epistemic and valuable. The theory also allows a legitimate role for moral-pragmatic reasoning under certain conditions. The upshot is that moral-pragmatic reasoning can be epistemically as well as morally appropriate. (shrink)

This paper develops a probabilistic analysis of conditionals which hinges on a quantitative measure of evidential support. In order to spell out the interpreta- tion of ‘if’ suggested, we will compare it with two more familiar interpretations, the suppositional interpretation and the strict interpretation, within a formal framework which rests on fairly uncontroversial assumptions. As it will emerge, each of the three interpretations considered exhibits specific logical features that deserve separate consideration.

This book discusses a range of crimes of the powerless as well as crimes of the powerful. Against conventional analysis of criminal behaviour as a result of social disadvantage, unemployment, or lack of resources, the author argues that abundance of opportunities and resources may lead to specific forms of criminality. The originality of this book lies in its joint analysis of `crimes in the street' and `crimes of the elite'.

The three languages employed by the scientist, the artist, and the objective observer are interpreted in terms of each other using the latest developments in neuroscience and psychoanalysis in an attempt to create a meta-language with sufficient depth to comprehend the nature of the human mind.

The Dunning–Kruger effect focuses our attention on the notion of invisibility of ignorance, i.e., the ignorance of ignorance. Such a phenomenon is not only important for everyday life, but also, above all, for some philosophical disciplines, such as epistemology of sciences. When someone tries to understand formally the phenomenon of ignorance of ignorance, they usually end up with a nested epistemic operator highly resistant to proper regimentation. In this paper, we argue that to understand adequately the ignorance of ignorance phenomenon (...) we have to understand satisfactorily the concept of disbelief and, as we call it, the concept of “radical ignorance”. We propose also prerequisites that a notion of radical ignorance useful for the philosophy of science ought to fulfill, and we sketch a possible formalization of this notion. Finally, we propose some comments on the problem of propagation of ignorance proposed by Fine. (shrink)

This paper investigates the logic of reasons. Its aim is to provide an analysis of the sentences of the form ‘p is a reason for q’ that yields a coherent account of their logical properties. The idea that we will develop is that ‘p is a reason for q’ is acceptable just in case a suitably defined relation of incompatibility obtains between p and ¬q. As we will suggest, a theory of reasons based on this idea can solve three challenging (...) puzzles that concern, respectively, contraposing reasons, conflicting reasons, and supererogatory reasons, and opens a new perspective on some classical issues concerning non-deductive inferences. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the work of Paolo Prodi (1932–2016), which is characterised by a constant reflection on secularisation. As a democratic Catholic, he explored the relationship between the Roman Church and the modern world starting from the Council of Trent and from the dual figure of the pope as a temporal ruler and spiritual guide. His original contribution concerned the conflict between law and conscience: a problem that led him to design a triptych of books on the foundations of the (...) western world. He was influenced not only by Verfassungsgeschichte (German constitutional history), but also by Harold Berman. If for Weber the modern world was born from the Reformation, for Berman it was the ‘Gregorian revolution’ that changed the fate of Latin Europe. For Prodi, too, the medieval conflict between canon and civil law introduced a peculiar structure in Europe that would last until the triumph of the nation states and the so-called ‘political religions’. In his three books (the first dedicated to the oath, the second to justice, the last to economics), Prodi placed at the centre of his analysis the notion of forum; the history of moral theology and casuistry and the relationship between penitence and justice. (shrink)

Harrigan and Spekkens, introduced the influential notion of an ontological model of operational quantum theory. Ontological models can be either “epistemic” or “ontic.” According to the two scholars, Einstein would have been one of the first to propose an epistemic interpretation of quantum mechanics. Pusey et al. showed that an epistemic interpretation of quantum theory is impossible, so implying that Einstein had been refuted. We discuss in detail Einstein’s arguments against the standard interpretation of QM, proving that there is a (...) misunderstanding in Harrigan and Spekkens’ attribution of an epistemic perspective to Einstein, whose point of view was actually statistical, but in a quasi-classical sense. (shrink)

The use of Drosophila chromosomal rearrangements and transposon constructs involving the white gene reveals the existence of repressive chromatin domains that can spread over considerable genomic distances. One such type of domain is found in heterochromatin and is responsible for classical position‐effect variegation. Another type of repressive domain is established, beginning at specific sequences, by complexes of Polycomb Group proteins. Such complexes, which normally regulate the expression of many genes, including the homeotic loci, are responsible for silencing, white gene variegation, (...) pairing‐dependent effects and insertional targeting. (shrink)

The bioeconomy is becoming increasingly prominent in policy and scholarly literature, but critical examination of the concept is lacking. We argue that the bioeconomy should be understood as a political project, not simply or primarily as a technoscientific or economic one. We use a conceptual framework derived from the work of Karl Polanyi to elucidate the politically performative nature of the bioeconomy through an analysis of an influential Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development initiative, The Bioeconomy to 2030. We argue (...) that this initiative is a response to some of the most acute challenges facing the current neoliberal-capitalist accumulation regime, which seeks to protect and extend that regime, through both what it occludes and what it promotes. Rather than taking the bioeconomy as a description of some subset of economic activity, we regard it as a promissory construct that is meant to induce and facilitate some actions while deterring others; most explicitly, it is meant to bring about a particular set of political–institutional changes that will shape the parameters of possible future action. The bioeconomy concept highlights the potential dangers of failing to situate ethnographic examinations of horizontal micro-relations within a political–economic macro-context that enables and constrains. Scholarly work in science and technology studies and elsewhere that does not recognize the wider politics of the bioeconomy risks unintentionally contributing to the legitimation of this political project. (shrink)

The paper lists several editions of Euclid’s Elements in the Early Modern Age, giving for each of them the axioms and postulates employed to ground elementary mathematics.

This paper outlines an account of concessive conditionals that rests on two main ideas. One is that the logical form of a sentence as used in a given context is determined by the content expressed by the sentence in that context. The other is that a coherent distinction can be drawn between a reading of ‘if’ according to which a conditional is true when its consequent holds on the supposition that its antecedent holds, and a stronger reading according to which (...) a conditional is true when its antecedent supports its consequent. As we will suggest, the logical form of concessive conditionals can be elucidated by relying on this distinction. (shrink)

In his mature works, Kuhn abandons the concept of a paradigm and becomes more interested in the analysis of the conceptual structure of scientific theories. These changes are interpreted as resulting from a ‘linguistic turn’ that Kuhn underwent sometimes around the 1980s. Much of the philosophical discussions about Kuhn’s post-‘linguistic turn’ philosophy revolves around his views on taxonomic concepts. Apart from taxonomy, however, the mature Kuhn introduces other concepts, such as conceptual networks and lexicons. This article distinguishes these three concepts (...) and shows that adopting each one of them has different impacts on Kuhn’s model of science. After distinguishing and assessing the concepts of taxonomy, network, and lexicon, it will be argued that the latter not only fits the Kuhnian model of science better, but it also helps capture the wide sense of Kuhn’s early concept of a paradigm. (shrink)

Searching for information is critical in many situations. In medicine, for instance, careful choice of a diagnostic test can help narrow down the range of plausible diseases that the patient might have. In a probabilistic framework, test selection is often modeled by assuming that people's goal is to reduce uncertainty about possible states of the world. In cognitive science, psychology, and medical decision making, Shannon entropy is the most prominent and most widely used model to formalize probabilistic uncertainty and the (...) reduction thereof. However, a variety of alternative entropy metrics (Hartley, Quadratic, Tsallis, Rényi, and more) are popular in the social and the natural sciences, computer science, and philosophy of science. Particular entropy measures have been predominant in particular research areas, and it is often an open issue whether these divergences emerge from different theoretical and practical goals or are merely due to historical accident. Cutting across disciplinary boundaries, we show that several entropy and entropy reduction measures arise as special cases in a unified formalism, the Sharma–Mittal framework. Using mathematical results, computer simulations, and analyses of published behavioral data, we discuss four key questions: How do various entropy models relate to each other? What insights can be obtained by considering diverse entropy models within a unified framework? What is the psychological plausibility of different entropy models? What new questions and insights for research on human information acquisition follow? Our work provides several new pathways for theoretical and empirical research, reconciling apparently conflicting approaches and empirical findings within a comprehensive and unified information-theoretic formalism. (shrink)

This paper investigates the effects of Buddhist ethics on consumers’ materialism, that is, the propensity to attach a fundamental role to possessions. The literature shows that religion and religiosity influence various attitudes and behaviors of consumers, including their ethical beliefs and ethical decisions. However, most studies focus on general religiosity rather than on the specific doctrinal ethical tenets of religions. The current research focuses on Buddhism and argues that it can tame materialism directly, similar to other religions, and through the (...) specific Buddhist ethical doctrines of the Four Immeasurables: compassion, loving kindness, empathetic joy, and equanimity. The empirical results show the following: (1) Buddhism reduces materialism directly and through some of the Four Immeasurables, and (2) despite the doctrine of non-existence of the self, positive emotions toward the self are still present, and the self absorbs the effects of Buddhist ethics on materialism. The latter finding suggests a “resistance of the self” that is coherent with the idea of a consumer who leverages the self to go beyond it. (shrink)

This article aims at sketching a philosophical theory of sound based on the perspective of sound designers: unique agents blurring the boundaries between engineering, music, acoustics and sound-based art. After having introduced the general framing in Section 1, focusing on a short history of the theory and practice of sound design, in Section 2 we propose a reading of sound as monad. We derive such intuition from the technology of digital sampling of audio signals, based on the decomposition of complex (...) sound waves in a number of elementary sinusoidal waves. Thus, in Section 3, we attempt at grounding the resulting “sound-atom” on Leibniz’s notion of monad, intended both as a “simple substance without parts” and as a “nucleus of forces in statu possibilitatis.” The insight is resumed and further discussed in Section 4, where we draw our conclusions by demonstrating the fitness of such framing with regards to the standpoint of sound design, while accounting for the work of sound artists Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda. (shrink)

Qu’elles soient d’Église ou d’État, les archives italiennes recèlent une documentation rapportant des cas de violences perpétrées par des clercs sur des pueri, c’est-à-dire des enfants ou des préadolescents. Bien que ce crime n’ait pas été inhérent au milieu clérical, de nombreux membres du clergé furent impliqués dans des affaires de crimes « odieux », délits « énormes » et agissements violents à l’époque moderne. Dans les procès, c’est la formation des enfants et des jeunes et leur proximit...

1. Tra i propositi di riforma che Giustiniani e Querini caldeggiarono nella lettera al nuovo pontefice Leone X vi era l’intento non secondario di sradicare gli atti, i riti e le credenze che gli autori definirono con il termine di ‘superstizione.’1 Come si legge nel Libellus, si trattava di un flagello terribile che, associato con l’ignoranza, comportava gravi rischi di peccato mortale che avevano una precisa scaturigine: lo stato deplorevole del clero regolare e secolare, dal quale il popolo dei fedeli (...) traeva cattivi esempi come “da una fonte” o da una “radice”; dall’alto al basso, per così dire.2 La superstizione è “generatrice di tutti i mali,”3 avversaria della vera fede, peccato capitale contro la religione:.. (shrink)

Pobreza, igualdade e justiça social voltaram à linha da frente do léxico político, econômico e social contemporâneo, embora de formas diferentes e com intensidade variável. A embriaguez do liberalismo e o entusiasmo injustificado pela dinâmica do mercado tinham projetado um mundo em que o bem-estar e a felicidade pareciam estar ao alcance de todos e totalmente disponíveis. Mas o despertar que se seguiu à folia das finanças criativas nos entregou um cenário muito mais dramático e repleto de conflitos. Desse ponto (...) de vista, a filosofia política não pode se eximir da tarefa de analisar esses fenômenos e definir um sentido e uma direção para a agenda política em tempos complicados como os atuais. É necessário, portanto, refletir novamente sobre conceitos e perspectivas que talvez tenham sido descartados muito apressadamente. Neste artigo, pretendo examinar esses conceitos utilizando a relação controversa entre a filosofia kantiana e o contratualismo de John Rawls como um fio condutor. (shrink)

Is the ubiquity of contemporary popular music akin to a deliberate aggression to the hearing, making the listening experience devoid of any sense? If so, is there any strategy to morph this supposed confusion into meaningful stimuli? Relying on epistemology, we attempt at promoting the act of listening as a proper way of world-making and refer to Mark Reybrouck, Bruno Nettl, Steven Brown and Joseph Jordania—among others—to gather appropriate heuristic tools. In the last part of the essay, we advance the (...) concept of timbral quotation as an additional means to grasp meaningful cues in the timbrical richness of contemporary popular compositions. We shall sustain the particular fitness of this tool especially with regard to nowadays’ Western popular music, more and more timbre-centered rather than harmony-centered. (shrink)

In his mature writings, Kuhn describes the process of specialisation as driven by a form of incommensurability, defined as a conceptual/linguistic barrier which promotes and guarantees the insularity of specialties. In this paper, we reject the idea that the incommensurability among scientific specialties is a linguistic barrier. We argue that the problem with Kuhn’s characterisation of the incommensurability among specialties is that he presupposes a rather abstract theory of semantic incommensurability, which he then tries to apply to his description of (...) the process of specialisation. By contrast, this paper follows a different strategy: after criticising Kuhn’s view, it takes a further look at how new scientific specialties emerge. As a result, a different way of understanding incommensurability among specialties will be proposed. (shrink)

The enormous increasing of connections between people and the noteworthy enlargement of domains and methods in sciences have augmented extraordinarily the cardinality of the set of meaningful human symbols. We know that complexity is always on the way to become complication, i.e. a non-tractable topic. For this reason scholars engage themselves more and more in attempting to tame plurality and chaos. In this book distinguished scientists, philosophers and historians of science reflect on the topic from a multidisciplinary point of view. (...) Is it possible to dominate complexity through reductionism? Are there other conceptual instruments useful to take account of complexity? What is complexity in biology, mathematics, physics and philosophy of mind? These are some of the questions which are faced in this volume. (shrink)

To believe that every single scientist ought to be individually engaged in ethical thinking in order for science to be responsible at a collective level may be too demanding, if not plainly unrealistic. In fact, ethical labor is typically distributed across different kinds of scientists within the scientific community. Based on the empirical data collected within the Horizon 2020 ‘RRI-Practice’ project, we propose a classification of the members of the scientific community depending on their engagement in this collective activity. Our (...) classification offers, on the one hand, a model of how the ethical aspects of science are taken into consideration by scientists and, on the other, some indications on how to institutionalize ethics in science. (shrink)