Background The 2020-2021 coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is just the latest epidemic event that requires us to rethink and change our understanding of health. Health should no longer be conceived only in relation to human beings, but in unitary terms, as a dimension that connects humans, animals, plants, and the environment (holistic view, One Health). In general, alterations occurring in this articulated chain of life trigger a domino effect. Methodology In this paper, we review the One Health paradigm in the light (...) of the Covid-19 pandemic and distinguish two approaches within it that might be dubbed the Prudent one and the Radical one. Each approach is structured in three levels – epistemological, medical, and ethical. Results In this way, we show how we humans can better address the pandemic today and how, in the future, we can treat the whole living system better, by renouncing our anthropocentric perspective on health. Conclusion We hold that the Prudent approach can be very helpful, and we discuss the medical and ethical issues related to it. We also consider the Radical view and the epistemological turn it requires compared to the Prudent one. (shrink)

:The microbiome is proving to be increasingly important for human brain functioning. A series of recent studies have shown that the microbiome influences the central nervous system in various ways, and consequently acts on the psychological well-being of the individual by mediating, among others, the reactions of stress and anxiety. From a specifically neuroethical point of view, according to some scholars, the particular composition of the microbiome—qua microbial community—can have consequences on the traditional idea of human individuality. Another neuroethical aspect (...) concerns the reception of this new knowledge in relation to clinical applications. In fact, attention to the balance of the microbiome—which includes eating behavior, the use of psychobiotics and, in the treatment of certain diseases, the use of fecal microbiota transplantation—may be limited or even prevented by a biased negative attitude. This attitude derives from a prejudice related to everything that has to do with the organic processing of food and, in general, with the human stomach and intestine: the latter have traditionally been regarded as low, dirty, contaminated and opposed to what belongs to the mind and the brain. This biased attitude can lead one to fail to adequately consider the new anthropological conceptions related to the microbiome, resulting in a state of health, both physical and psychological, inferior to what one might have by paying the right attention to the knowledge available today. Shifting from the ubiquitous high-low metaphor to an inside-outside metaphor can thus be a neuroethical strategy to achieve a new and unbiased reception of the discoveries related to the microbiome. (shrink)

This study aimed at investigating depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms among healthcare workers and examine the role of expressive flexibility and context sensitivity as key components of resilience in understanding reported symptoms. We hypothesized a significant and different contribution of resilience components in explaining depression, anxiety, and stress. A total sample of 218 Italian healthcare workers participated in this study through an online survey during the lockdown, consequently to the COVID-19. The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 was used to measure depression, (...) anxiety, and stress; the Flexible Regulation of Emotional Expression scale was used to measure the ability to enhance and suppress emotional expression; the Context Sensitivity Index was used to measure the ability to accurately perceive contextual cues and determine cue absence. Demographic and work-related data were also collected. DASS-21 cut-off scores were used to verify the mental status among the respondents. Correlational analyses examined relationships between DASS-21, FREE, and CSI, followed by three regression analyses with depression, anxiety, and stress as dependent variables, controlling for age, gender, and work experience. Enhancement and suppression abilities, cue presence, and cue absence served as independent variables. The results showed a prevalence of moderate to extremely severe symptoms of 8% for depression, 9.8% for anxiety, and 8.9% for stress. Results of correlational analysis highlighted that enhance ability was inversely associated with depression and stress. Suppression ability was inversely associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The ability to perceive contextual cues was inversely associated with depression and anxiety. The regression analysis showed that the ability to enhance emotional expression was statistically significant to explain depression among healthcare workers. In predicting anxiety, age, and the ability to accurately perceive contextual cues and determine cue absence made substantial contributions as predictors. In the last regression model, age, work experience, and the ability to suppress emotional expression were significant predictors of stress. This study’s findings can help understand the specific contributions of enhancement and suppression abilities and sensitivity to stressor context cues in predicting depression, anxiety, and stress among healthcare workers. Psychological interventions to prevent burnout should consider these relationships. (shrink)

This collective paper on radicalization and violent extremism part of the ‘Philosophy of education in a new key’ initiative by Educational Philosophy and Theory brings together some of the leading contemporary scholars writing on the most pressing epistemological, ethical, political and educational issues facing post-9/11 scholarship on radicalization and violent extremism. Its overall aim is to move beyond the ‘conventional wisdom’ associated with this area of scholarly research best represented by its many slogans, metaphors and other thought-terminating clichés. By providing (...) conceptual lenses on issues previously compartmentalized primarily [or even exclusively] in security and intelligence studies or at the fringes of scholarly interest, radicalization and violent extremism turn out to be much more complex than ‘radicalization studies’ has been eager to acknowledge. (shrink)

In this article we provide a unifying neural hypothesis on how individuals understand the actions and emotions of others. Our main claim is that the fundamental mechanism at the basis of the experiential understanding of others' actions is the activation of the mirror neuron system. A similar mechanism, but involving the activation of viscero-motor centers, underlies the experiential understanding of the emotions of others.

The association of resilience-related factors with frailty is a recent research topic. Dispositional optimism and context sensitivity are two psychological factors that differently contribute to individual resilience. This study aimed at investigating whether dispositional optimism and context sensitivity might contribute to a multifactorial model of frailty, together with established relevant factors such as cognitive and physical factors. This cross-sectional study involved 141 elderly outpatients aged ≥65 years, who were referred to the Geriatrics and Multidimensional Evaluation Clinic of the University Hospital (...) of Messina. We used the following measures: the Mini-Mental State Examination to screen for global cognitive functioning; 4-m gait speed and handgrip strength to measure physical performance; a 35-item Frailty Index to evaluate patients’ frailty status; the revised Life Orientation Test to gauge dispositional optimism; and the Context Sensitivity Index to measure context sensitivity. We found that LOT-R, CSI, and MMSE were all significantly associated with FI. Gait speed was only marginally associated with FI. The present study showed a novel association of dispositional optimism and context sensitivity with frailty among elderly outpatients. These preliminary findings support a multidimensional approach to frailty in which even peculiar psychological features might provide a significant contribution. (shrink)

The idea of social injustice is pivotal to much contemporary moral and political philosophy. Starting from a comprehensive and engaging account of the idea of social injustice, this book covers a whole range of issues, including distributive justice, exploitation, torture, moral motivations, democratic theory, voting behavior, and market socialism.

A new class of visuomotor neuron has been recently discovered in the monkey’s premotor cortex: mirror neurons. These neurons respond both when a particular action is performed by the recorded monkey and when the same action, performed by another individual, is observed. Mirror neurons appear to form a cortical system matching observation and execution of goal-related motor actions. Experimental evidence suggests that a similar matching system also exists in humans. What might be the functional role of this matching system? One (...) possible function is to enable an organism to detect certain mental states of observed conspecifics. This function might be part of, or a precursor to, a more general mind-reading ability. Two different accounts of mind-reading have been suggested. According to “theory theory‘, mental states are represented as inferred posits of a naive theory. According to “simulation theory‘, other people’s mental states are represented by adopting their perspective: by tracking or matching their states with resonant states of one’s own. The activity of mirror neurons, and the fact that observers undergo motor facilitation in the same muscular groups as those utilized by target agents, are findings that accord well with simulation theory but would not be predicted by theory theory. (shrink)

abstract Much of the literature on torture in recent years takes the position of denouncing the barbarity of torture, while allowing for exceptions to this veto in extreme circumstances. The ticking‐bomb argument, where a terrorist is tortured in order to extract information of a primed bomb located in a civilian area, is often invoked as one of those extreme circumstances where torture becomes justified. As the War on Terrorism intensifies, the ticking‐bomb argument has become the dominant line of reasoning used (...) by both academics and policy advisers to justify a legalized, state‐sponsored program of torture. This paper argues for the unconditional refutation of any attempt to justify torture, without exceptions. We argue against the consequentialist reasoning of the ticking‐bomb argument not from a deontological position, but on consequentialist grounds. Empirical evidence suggests that the institutionalization of torture practices creates serious problems. Torture interrogation fails to fulfil its initial purpose as a low‐cost life saver, while its long‐term potential is the devastation of democratic institutions. (shrink)

This article rejects the received view that Post-Truth is a new, unprecedented political phenomenon. By showing that Truth and Post-Truth share the same genesis, this article will submit the idea of a Consensus Theory of Post-Truth. Part 1 looks at the difference between Post-Truth, lies and bullshit. Part 2 suggests reasons behind the current preoccupation with Post-Truth. Part 3 focuses on Habermas’s influential consensus theory of truth to suggest that truth and Post-Truth have more in common than is generally assumed. (...) Part 4 puts forward the Consensus Theory of Post-Truth. Part 5 suggests three ways to emasculate the potentially destructive effect of Post-Truth on democratic society. (shrink)

Concepts are the elementary units of reason and linguistic meaning. They are conventional and relatively stable. As such, they must somehow be the result of neural activity in the brain. The questions are: Where? and How? A common philosophical position is that all concepts—even concepts about action and perception—are symbolic and abstract, and therefore must be implemented outside the brain’s sensory-motor system. We will argue against this position using (1) neuroscientific evidence; (2) results from neural computation; and (3) results about (...) the nature of concepts from cognitive linguistics. We will propose that the sensory-motor system has the right kind of structure to characterise both sensory-motor and more abstract concepts. Central to this picture are the neural theory of language and the theory of cogs, according to which, brain structures in the sensory-motor regions are exploited to characterise the so-called “abstract” concepts that constitute the meanings of grammatical constructions and general inference patterns. (shrink)

My initial scope will be limited: starting from a neurobiological standpoint, I will analyse how actions are possibly represented and understood. The main aim of my arguments will be to show that, far from being exclusively dependent upon mentalistic/linguistic abilities, the capacity for understanding others as intentional agents is deeply grounded in the relational nature of action. Action is relational, and the relation holds both between the agent and the object target of the action , as between the agent of (...) the action and his/her observer . Agency constitutes a key issue for the understanding of intersubjectivity and for explaining how individuals can interpret their social world. This account of intersubjectivity, founded on the empirical findings of neuroscientific investigation, will be discussed and put in relation with a classical tenet of phenomenology: empathy. I will provide an 'enlarged' account of empathy that will be defined by means of a new conceptual tool: the shared manifold of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

In spite of their striking differences with real-life perception, films are perceived and understood without effort. Cognitive film theory attributes this to the system of continuity editing, a system of editing guidelines outlining the effect of different cuts and edits on spectators. A major principle in this framework is the 180° rule, a rule recommendation that, to avoid spectators’ attention to the editing, two edited shots of the same event or action should not be filmed from angles differing in a (...) way that expectations of spatial continuity are strongly violated. In the present study, we used high-density EEG to explore the neural underpinnings of this rule. In particular, our analysis shows that cuts and edits in general elicit early ERP component indicating the registration of syntactic violations as known from language, music, and action processing. However, continuity edits and cuts-across the line differ from each other regarding later components likely to be indicating the differences in spatial remapping as well as in the degree of conscious awareness of one's own perception. Interestingly, a time–frequency analysis of the occipital alpha rhythm did not support the hypothesis that such differences in processing routes are mainly linked to visual attention. On the contrary, our study found specific modulations of the central mu rhythm ERD as an indicator of sensorimotor activity, suggesting that sensorimotor networks might play an important role. We think that these findings shed new light on current discussions about the role of attention and embodied perception in film perception and should be considered when explaining spectators’ different experience of different kinds of cuts. (shrink)

According to Kanazawa (Psychol Rev 111:512–523, 2004), general intelligence, which he considers as a synonym of abstract thinking, evolved specifically to allow our ancestors to deal with evolutionary novel problems while conferring no advantage in solving evolutionary familiar ones. We present a study whereby the results contradict Kanazawa’s hypothesis by demonstrating that performance on an evolutionary novel problem (an abstract reasoning task) predicts performance on an evolutionary familiar problem (a social reasoning task).

Empathy is the phenomenal experience of mirroring ourselves into others. It can be explained in terms of simulations of actions, sensations, and emotions which constitute a shared manifold for intersubjectivity. Simulation, in turn, can be sustained at the subpersonal level by a series of neural mirror matching systems.

Discusses the possibility of reconciling different articulations of intentionality from a neurobiological perspective. The author analyzes the relationship between agency and representation and how representation is intrinsically related to action control. The author also presents a new account of action, arguing against what is still commonly held as its proper definition, namely the final outcome of a cascade-like process that starts from the analysis of sensory data, incorporates the result of decision processes, and ends up with responses (actions) to externally-or (...) internally-generated stimuli. The author discusses recent findings from the investigation of neural mechanisms that are at the basis of sensorimotor integration. (shrink)

de Bruin & Gallagher suggest that the view of embodied simulation put forward in our recent article lacks explanatory power. We argue that the notion of reuse of mental states represented with a bodily format provides a convincing simulational account of the mirroring mechanism and its role in mind -reading.

The essay analyses the importance and the limits of Evolutionary Epistemology (EE). Firstly, the history of EE is shortly described — especially its history in the last century. Secondly, its main arguments are reproduced. Thirdly, the points are treated in which EE really signifies a progress in comparison with traditional epistemology. Fourthly, however, it is shown that it does not solve at all the central problem of epistemology — the validity claim of knowledge. Only a broader philosophical framework — that (...) of objective idealism — could reconcile the validity dimension with the genetic insights of EE. (shrink)

The representational dynamics of the brain is a subsymbolic process, and it has to be conceived as an "agent-free" type of dynamical self-organization. However, in generating a coherent internal world-model, the brain decomposes target space in a certain way. In doing so, it defines an "ontology": to have an ontology is to interpret a world. In this paper we argue that the brain, viewed as a representational system aimed at interpreting the world, possesses an ontology too. It decomposes target space (...) in a way that exhibits certain invariances, which in turn are functionally significant. A challenge for empirical research is to determine which are the functional regularities guiding this decomposition process. What are the explicit and implicit assumptions about the structure of reality, which at the same time shape the causal profile of the brain's motor output and the representational deep structure of the conscious mind arising from it (its "phenomenal output")? How do they constrain high-level phenomena like conscious experience, the emergence of a first-person perspective, or social cognition? By reviewing a series of neuroscientific results, we focus on the contribution the motor system makes to this process. As it turns out, the motor system constructs goals, actions, and intending selves as basic constituents of the world it interprets. It does so by assigning a single, unified causal role to them. Empirical evidence now clearly shows how the brain actually codes movements and action goals in terms of multimodal representations of organism-object relations. Under a representationalist analysis, this process can be interpreted as an internal representation of the intentionality relation itself. We try to show how such a more complex form of representational content, once it is in place, can later function as the building block for social cognition and a for more complex, consciously experienced representation of the first-person perspective as well. The motor system may therefore play a decisive role in understanding how the functional ontology of the human brain could be gradually extended into the subjective and social domains. (shrink)

Summary Embodied simulation, a basic functional mechanism of our brain, and its neural underpinnings are discussed and connected to intersubjectivity and the reception of human cultural artefacts, like visual arts and film. Embodied simulation provides a unified account of both non-verbal and verbal aspects of interpersonal relations that likely play an important role in shaping not only the self and his/her relation to others, but also shared cultural practices. Embodied simulation sheds new light on aesthetic experience and is proposed as (...) a key element for the dialogue between neuroscience and the humanities within the biocultural paradigm. (shrink)

The ontological distinctiveness of a work of art, which consists, among other things, in the fact that it creates its own universe, does not preclude a work of art from occasionally pointing beyond the unity of this very universe. This may take place in a direct way, say, when a statement that occurs within the context of the aesthetic universe created by the author is intelligible if it is attributed to the author herself, but not within the aesthetic universe. The (...) parabases delivered by the chorus in Old Comedy are a well-known example, and, since the transgression of illusions has a special affinity to the nature of the comical and the direct contact with the audience was expected at this point, they are aesthetically warranted. (shrink)

In this article, I show that (i) from what I call a “Kripkean” account of the relations between conceivability and metaphysical necessities, (ii) an apparently plausible principle relating conceivability and epistemic modality, and (iii) the duality of epistemic modalities, one can show the utterly anti-Kripkean result that every metaphysical necessity is an epistemic necessity. My aim is to present and diagnose the problem and evaluate the costs of some possible Kripkean reactions. In particular, I will evaluate the consequences and theoretical (...) costs of rejecting the main ingredients of the argument, namely that we cannot genuinely conceive the negations of metaphysical necessities, that there is no postulated relation between conceivability and epistemic possibility (actually, between unconceivability and epistemic impossibility), and that epistemic possibility and necessity are not dualities. (shrink)

Simulation theories of social cognition abound in the literature, but it is often unclear what simulation means and how it works. The discovery of mirror neurons, responding both to action execution and observation, suggested an embodied approach to mental simulation. Over the last years this approach has been hotly debated and alternative accounts have been proposed. We discuss these accounts and argue that they fail to capture the uniqueness of embodied simulation (ES). ES theory provides a unitary account of basic (...) social cognition, demonstrating that people e their own mental states or processes represented with a bodily format in functionally attributing them to others. (shrink)

To have an ontology is to interpret a world. In this paper we argue that the brain, viewed as a representational system aimed at interpreting our world, possesses an ontology too. It creates primitives and makes existence assumptions. It decomposes target space in a way that exhibits a certain invariance, which in turn is functionally significant. We will investigate which are the functional regularities guiding this decomposition process, by answering to the following questions: What are the explicit and implicit assumptions (...) about the structure of reality, which at the same time shape the causal profile of the brain's motor output and its representational deep structure, in particular of the conscious mind arising from it (its ''phenomenal output'')? How do they constrain high-level phenomena like conscious experience, the emergence of a first-person perspective, or social cognition? By reviewing a series of neuroscientific results and integrating them with a wider philosophical perspective, we will emphasize the contribution the motor system makes to this process. As it will be shown, the motor system constructs goals, actions, and intending selves as basic constituents of the world it interprets. It does so by assigning a single, unified causal role to them. Empirical evidence demonstrates that the brain models movements and action goals in terms of multimodal representations of organism-object-relations. Under a representationalist analysis, this process can be conceived of as an internal, dynamic representation of the intentionality-relation itself. We will show how such a complex form of representational content, once it is in place, can later function as a functional building block for social cognition and for a more complex, consciously experienced representation of the first-person perspective as well. (shrink)

Aaccording to D. K. lewis (1973), would-couterfactuals and might-counterfactuals are duals. from this, it follows that the negation of a would-counterfactual is equiv- alent to the corresponding “might-not”-counterfactual and that the negation of a might-counterfactual is equivalent to the corresponding “would-not”- counterfactual. there are cases, however, where we seem to be entitled to accept the would- counterfactual and we are also equally entitled to accept the corresponding might-not-counterfactual and cases where we seem to be entitled to accept the might-counterfactual without (...) being equally entitled to reject the corresponding would-not-counterfactual. In this paper, I will show that a distinction between two types of rejections for counterfactuals (p-rejection and s-rejection) and the recognition that might-not-counterfactuals may play the role of p-rejections (by an application to counterfactuals of the lewisian approach to conversational scores) could explain why the problematic cases should not be seen as cases where the duality of would- and might-counterfactuals fails. (shrink)

Taking as our starting point Plato'smetaphor of the doctor as philosopher we reflect on some aspects of the epistemological status of medicine. The framework to this paper is the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer which shows the paradoxical nature of Western medicine in choosing the body-object as its investigative starting point, while in actual fact dealing with subjects. Gadamer proposes a model of medicine as the art of understanding and dialogue, which is capable of bringing together its various constituent parts, i.e. (...) knowledge, knowing how to do and knowing how to be, in medical practice and in the physician'straining. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the dyadic figure of the physician as Platonic master of the living totality and wounded healer, capable of activating the patient'sself-healing capacity. (shrink)

Taking as our starting point Plato'smetaphor of the doctor as philosopher we reflect on some aspects of the epistemological status of medicine. The framework to this paper is the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer which shows the paradoxical nature of Western medicine in choosing the body-object as its investigative starting point, while in actual fact dealing with subjects. Gadamer proposes a model of medicine as the art of understanding and dialogue, which is capable of bringing together its various constituent parts, i.e. (...) knowledge, knowing how to do and knowing how to be, in medical practice and in the physician'straining. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the dyadic figure of the physician as Platonic “master of the living totality” and wounded healer, capable of activating the patient'sself-healing capacity. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the notion of embodied simulation (ES), trying to show that a new understanding of intersubjectivity can benefit from a bottom‐up study and characterization of the nonpropositional and non meta‐representational aspects of social cognition. The chapter introduces some recent developments of ES in relation to language, proposing that ES instantiates a form of paradigmatic knowledge. For decades the main goal of the neurophysiological investigation of the cortical motor system was uniquely focused on the study of elementary physical features (...) of movement such as force, direction, and amplitude. A further element of novelty about the cognitive properties of the cortical motor system concerns its role in perception, since one can now know that many motor neurons are endowed with sensory properties. Mirror neurons (MNs) boosted a renewed interest in simulation theories and also suggested an embodied approach to simulation. (shrink)

The paper provides a reconstruction of the notion of material Apriori while exhibiting the anti-Kantian inspiration and factual grounding thereof. The attempt is made to show that a non-formal Apriori obtains because the sensuous has a normative character; further, that the difference between material and formal eidetic laws is rooted in the difference between sensuous contents, given in experience, and intellectual contents, originating in activities of judgement. The material Apriori is not independent of all experience, since it is grounded on (...) sensuous eidetic contents and thus depends on the latter’s givenness and characteristics. It is thanks precisely to this ,contingency‘ that it has an ontological significance. (shrink)

Trata-se de investigar a tese marxiana acerca do papel da violência na história, tal como enunciada em O Capital, analisando sua sintaxe de matriz hegeliana e o modo como Engels articula tal tese, para então defender uma interpretação não-teleológica da violência, segundo a qual esta apresenta uma pluralidade de formas, um caráter totalmente difuso e uma pesada materialidade.

Positing the importance of sensorimotor contingencies for perception is by no means denying the presence and importance of representations. Using the evidence of mirror neurons we will show the intrinsic relationship between action control and representation within the logic of forward models.

According to Williamson, our knowledge of metaphysical necessities and possibilities is just a “special case” of our knowledge of counterfactual conditionals. This subsumption of modal under counterfactual thinking mainly serves a methodological role: to sign the end of “philosophical exceptionalism” in modal epistemology, namely the view that our knowledge of metaphysical modalities is obtained by means of a special, dedicated, possibly a priori, capacity. In this paper, I show that a counterfactual approach to modal epistemology is structurally similar to more (...) traditional “conceivability-based” approaches. On this basis, I then show that the counterfactual approach suffers some of the same problems and I conclude that it is still based on a quite exceptional capacity to determine the truth of modal metaphysical claims. Given that, for Williamson, the epistemology of thought experiments should also be subsumed under the counterfactual approach, the problem I raise in this paper has consequences for his approach to thought experiments. (shrink)

Who was Max Weber? How did he live? What were his dreams, desires and designs? What relationship existed between his life, his illness and his work? Why are his studies of capitalism and China still so important today? This book throws light on a problem-riddled Weber, a man lacerated by tragic contradictions, a great intellectual, nationalistic yet cosmopolitan. This investigation of his private life reveals a tender, impassioned man, who, at a time of overwhelming conflict, sought true life in love. (...) Whether Confucianism impeded the birth of modern capitalism in China remains a controversial issue. Equally problematic is the theory of the Calvinistic origins of European capitalism. Weber, however, answers both questions in an original manner, while also providing a lesson in methodology which remains unparalleled to date. A century after his death, Max Weber remains a controversial figure of political and social sciences. (shrink)

Um dos mal-entendidos mais persistentes que cercam a filosofia leibniziana consiste, sem dúvida, em querer ver nela uma forma de espinosismo. Por outro lado, toda oposição que se faz entre Leibniz e Espinosa no plano teórico aparentemente não ultrapassa a visão hegeliana da relação entre os dois filósofos como oposição entre universalidade e individualidade. Pretende-se aqui, diferentemente, confrontar os dois filósofos em relação à questão da individualidade confrontando os seus prolongamentos teóricos do século XX. De um lado, a intersubjetividade husserliana (...) como prolongamento teórico da monadologia; de outro, o conceito simondoniano de transindividualidade que, com Balibar, permite-nos prolongar o pensamento espinosano na contemporaneidade. Tentar-se-á marcar toda a distância que separa estes dois sistemas segundo uma abordagem que não se limita a repetir o velho refrão hegeliano. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is that of putting intoquestion the dichotomy between fact-judgments andvalue judgments in the legal domain, with its epistemologicalpresuppositions (descriptivist image of knowledge) andits methodological implications for legal knowledge (valuefreedom principle and neutrality thesis). The basicquestion that I will try to answer is whether and on whatconditions strong ethical value-judgments belong withinlegal knowledge.I criticize the traditional positivist positionsthat have fully accepted the value-freedom principle andvalue-neutrality thesis, but I also submit to critical scrutinythe new post-positivist views, that, (...) even if they showinteresting conceptual developments on the matter, end up,nevertheless, by presupposing the same epistemologicalimage, while I call descriptivism. I stress that only by giving updescriptivism and accepting constructivism as a generalimage of knowledge is it possible to see the problem ofvalue-ladenness of legal knowledge in a new light.On the basis of the constructivist image, I present two theses:firstly, at a much broader epistemological level, I advance theminimalist thesis on value-judgments, which simply removes thegeneral ban on treating values as present withinknowledge; secondly, I advance the strong thesis on legalvalue-judgments, which consists in arguing for thenecessary presence of ethical value-judgments in legal knowledge.I draw, in the end, some important implications from acceptanceof the strong thesis. One of these implications isa new distinction that replaces the traditional distinctionbetween fact-judgments and value judgments, namely, thedistinction between value-judgments exhibiting a cognitivefunction and value-judgments exhibiting a creativefunction. (shrink)

O autor estabelece uma comparação entre Althusser e Derrida a partir da questão da temporalidade, por meio da leitura que os dois autores propõem de Marx sub specie theatri. A partir disso emerge uma teoria da temporalidade em Althusser que está além tanto da teleologia da tradição hegeliano-marxista, quanto do messianismo sem messias proposto por Derrida em sua releitura benjaminiana de Marx. Nesse sentido, a escatologia em Althusser só é pensável à la cantonade.

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The complex organization of syntax in hierarchical structures is one of the core design features of human language. Duality of patterning refers, for instance, to the organization of the meaningful elements in a language at two distinct levels: a combinatorial level, where meaningless forms are combined into meaningful forms; and a compositional level, where meaningful forms are composed into larger lexical units. The question remains wide open regarding how such structures could have emerged. The aim of this paper is to (...) address these two aspects in a self-consistent way. First, we introduce suitable measures to quantify the level of combinatoriality and compositionality in a language, and we present a framework to estimate these observables in human natural languages. Second, we show that a recently introduced multi-agent modeling scheme, namely the Blending Game, provides a mathematical framework to address the problem of how a population of individuals can bootstrap combinatoriality and compositionality. Theoretical predictions based on this model turn out to be in good agreement with empirical data. It is remarkable that the two sides of duality of patterning emerge simultaneously as a consequence of a pure cultural dynamics in a simulated environment that contains meaningful relations, provided a simple constraint on message transmission fidelity is also considered. (shrink)