We provide an account of necessary a posteriori identity statements that relies upon Perry’s multipropositionalism. On our account an utterance of, e.g., ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’, semantically makes available several propositions, one of which is necessary (and a priori) and another of which is a posteriori (and contingent). Since our view resembles two-dimensionalism, one might assume that it is undermined by the sorts of nesting arguments that Soames and others have raised against two-dimensionalism. We demonstrate, however, that our account is immune (...) to such nesting arguments. (shrink)

Ontologia dell’arte L’ontologia dell’arte è la disciplina filosofica che si occupa di stabilire a quali categorie ontologiche appartengono determinate famiglie di opere d’arte. Si consideri innanzitutto la distinzione fra individui e tipi, che ricalca la distinzione aristotelica fra particolari e universali. Un individuo è qualcosa che ha una sua precisa localizzazione nello spazio e nel tempo, qualcosa che potremmo indicare con un gesto o con un dimostrativo come “questo” o “quello”: questa...

The main accounts of the documentary in contemporary analytic aesthetics have difficulties in dealing with the distinction between documentaries and docudramas. On the one hand, the assertion-based accounts proposed by Carroll, Ponech and Plantinga cannot properly differentiate documentaries from docudramas. On the other hand, Currie’s account can do so by relying on the notion of trace but this involves an undesirable side-effect, namely, the exclusion, from the documentary, of those documentaries that do not include traces of their subjects, as for (...) instance documentaries that resort to reenactments. Is there a way to exclude docudramas from the documentary without also excluding other films that we usually treat as documentaries? The paper affirmatively answers to this question by relying on the notion perceptual belief, that is, a belief that one can form by endorsing one's perception. Documentaries are defined as films that mandate us to form perceptual beliefs. Even if a docudrama mandates us to form beliefs, it does not mandate us to form perceptual beliefs, and thus does not count as a documentary. By contrast, a documentary that resorts to reenactments still mandates us to form perceptual beliefs and thus properly satisfies the definition proposed. (shrink)

This paper develops Richard Wollheim’s claim that the proper appreciation of a picture involves not only enjoying a seeing-in experience but also abiding by a standard of correctness. While scholars have so far focused on what fixes the standard, thereby discussing the alternative between intentions and causal mechanisms, the paper focuses on what the standard does, that is, establishing which kinds, individuals, features and standpoints are relevant to the understanding of pictures. It is argued that, while standards concerning kinds, individuals (...) and features can be relevant also to ordinary perception, standards concerning standpoints are specific to pictorial experience. Drawing on all this, the paper proposes an ontology of depiction according to which a picture is constituted by both its visual appearance and its standard of correctness. (shrink)

The main accounts of the documentary in contemporary analytic aesthetics have difficulties in dealing with the distinction between documentaries and docudramas. On the one hand, the assertion-based accounts proposed by Noël Carroll, Trevor Ponech, and Carl Plantinga cannot properly differentiate documentaries from docudramas. On the other hand, Gregory Currie's account can do so by relying on the notion of trace, but this involves an undesirable side effect, namely, the exclusion, from the documentary, of those documentaries that do not include traces (...) of their subjects, as, for instance, documentaries that resort to reenactment. Is there a way to exclude docudramas from the documentary without also excluding other films that we usually treat as documentaries? This article affirmatively answers by relying on the notion of perceptual belief, that is, a belief that one can form by endorsing the demonstrative content of one's perception. While documentaries primarily involve the formation of perceptual beliefs, docudramas invite us to form nonperceptual beliefs by primarily involving the formation of perceptual imaginings. That is why docudramas are not documentaries. By contrast, a documentary that resorts to reenactment primarily involves the formation of perceptual beliefs, namely, perceptual beliefs about the reenactment itself. (shrink)

Both perception and imagination seem to play a crucial role in our engagement with fiction films but whether they really do so, and which role they possibly play, is controversial. On the one hand, a fiction film, as film, is a depiction that invites us to perceive the events portrayed. On the other hand, as fiction, it invites us to imagine the story told. Thus, after watching the film Alien, one might say that one saw Ripley fighting the monster but (...) one might also say that one imagined Ripley fighting the monster. Are these two reports compatible? If they are, how can we combine them so to make sense of them? If, instead, they are not, which of them should we give up? (shrink)

This paper explores some phenomenological consequences of the ontological affinity between films and pop songs. Given the central place of the recording technology in both films and pop songs, one can wonder whether pop songs can elicit from their listeners the same kind of experience that films elicit from their spectators. In other words, one can wonder whether pop songs encourage us to play a ‘game of make-believe’ analogous to that we play when we engage with films. The main part (...) of the paper is meant to provide a positive answer to this question. The remaining sections illustrate and test the proposed account by contrasting paradigmatic pop songs with borderline cases. (shrink)

This paper considers two different kinds of philosophical interpretations of the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. On the one hand, Eternal Sunshine as a thought experiment that can function as an argument against utilitarianism. On the other hand, Eternal Sunshine as an instance of the genre of the remarriage comedy. I will argue that these two kinds of interpretations are in conflict. More specifically, Eternal Sunshine, understood as a comedy of remarriage, cannot function as an argument against utilitarianism, (...) at least in the sense specified by Grau and Wartenberg. Finally, I will suggest a different way in which Eternal Sunshine, understood as a comedy of remarriage, might function as an argument against utilitarianism. (shrink)

This article undertakes a deconstructive reading of astrobiology’s search for extraterrestrial life. Taking its lead from Derrida’s ‘White Mythology’, it explores ‘metaphor in the text of astrobiology’—and includes within the astrobiological ‘text’ not only scientific publications and work on astrobiology in the philosophy of science, but also ‘life detection technologies’. I situate astrobiology in the tradition of a metaphysical analogy that goes back through the enlightenment and early modern astronomy to the ancient Atomists’ notion of the ‘plurality of worlds’. This (...) analogy, which constitutes an identification of life with being and therefore serves as the conceptual basis for the notion that life must exist on other worlds, experiences a mutation in the middle of the twentieth century when molecular biology refigures life in terms of a scriptural metaphor as text. The result is an aporia whose logic Derrida formalised in ‘White Mythology’. (shrink)

Works of art are usually meant to elicit psychological effects from their audiences whereas paradigmatic technical artifacts such as hammers or cars are rather meant to produce physical effects when used. This suggests that works of art and technical artifacts are sharply different entities. However, recent developments in the cognitive sciences and the philosophy of technology have individuated special artifacts, namely cognitive and affective artifacts, which also generate psychological effects. In particular, affective artifacts, which have the capacity to alter the (...) affective condition of agents, seem to share crucial features with works of art. Can we subsume works of art under that kind? I will argue that we cannot. Still, comparing art with affective artifacts will help us to clarify the relationship between art and technology, and to introduce a new category, namely the experiential artifact, which can properly encompass works of art. (shrink)

The Venezuelan-Chilean humanist Andrés Bello has been recognized as one of the most distinguished intellectuals of the 19th century—one of the last polymaths of the stature of figures such as Athanasius Kircher, Gottfried Leibniz or Benjamin Franklin. Indeed, his numerous contributions span fields such as grammar, poetry, civil law, diplomacy, education, political theory, philology and philosophy. However, despite having composed one of the most important philosophical treatises ever written in Spanish, his philosophical proposals have not been engaged with a substantial (...) way by scholars of the Anglophone world. Only a few scholars such as... (shrink)

In this essay, a brief analysis of the diplomatic efforts to achieve an accord in re- lation to the climatic change process is made. Particularly, it will analyze the two past Climate Summits (Copenhagen and Cancun). It emphasizes the growing social articulation of climatic politics. Finally, it aims to the birth of a new global responsibility of societies in relation to the human relation towards the planet. Also, it explores the impact of this responsibility on the environment global changes.

A series of recent experimental studies have cast doubt on the existence of a traditional tension that aestheticians have noted in our aesthetic judgments and practices, viz. the problem of taste. The existence of the problem has been acknowledged since Hume and Kant, though not enough has been done to analyse it in depth. In this paper, we remedy this by proposing six possible conceptualizations of it. Drawing on our analysis of the problem of taste, we argue that the experimental (...) results in question are not a real challenge to its existence. By contrast, they provide empirical evidence in its support. (shrink)

Dal silenzio-assenso al subappalto, dagli acquisti di beni e servizi informatici alla transizione digitale e alle infrastrutture di telecomunicazione, passando per la nuova Cilas e dalle misure ambientali ed energetiche (cui è dedicato un inserto staccabile), la guida del Sole - In funzione della fondamentale accelerazione attuativa del PNRR - dettaglia tutte le novità del Dl Semplificazioni bis e quelle di recente introdotte in materia di rapporto di lavoro dai due decreti Sostegni e dal Green pass allargato (Dl 127/2021).

In recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to the underrepresentation, exclusion or outright discrimination experienced by women and members of other visible minority groups in academic philosophy. Much of this debate has focused on the state of contemporary Anglophone philosophy, which is dominated by the tradition of analytic philosophy. Moreover, there is growing interest in academia and society more generally for issues revolving around linguistic justice and linguistic discrimination (sometimes called ‘linguicism’ or ‘languagism’) (see e.g. Van Parijs 2011). Globalization (...) and the increasing adoption of English as global linguistic vehicle or lingua franca push these issues at the forefront of much of the world’s attention. The convergence of these two trends suggests the appropriateness of an analysis of the condition of non-native speakers of English in analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Desde un punto de vista interdisciplinar, esta investigación explora la forma en que la palabra miedo funciona en la novela de Miguel Ángel Oeste Vengo de ese miedo (2022). A partir de este análisis, el trabajo pretende dar cuenta de la problemática de la identidad y la búsqueda del sentido del ser humano en el mundo contemporáneo, esclarecer la importancia del cuerpo y las emociones en la sociedad posmoderna y arrojar más luz sobre una de las tendencias más importantes de (...) la literatura actual, como es la autoficción. (shrink)

Este artículo es un análisis de tres relatos periodísticos de la filtración de documentos de la Agencia Nacional de Seguridad de Estados Unidos, llevada a cabo por Edward Snowden: un libro, una película y una entrevista. El objetivo es sacar a la luz algunos dilemas éticos y políticos que subyacen al caso. Primero, una tensión paradójica entre la exigencia de transparencia frente al secreto estatal y la necesidad del secreto personal para el derecho a la privacidad, que refleja en nuestros (...) tiempos la dialéctica publicidad / secreto en la modernidad temprana. Segundo, la ética hack-activista enfrenta los conflictos entre anonimato y visibilidad. Tercero, los periodistas en que Snowden confía afrontan el dilema entre los deberes de la información y la protección de la confidencialidad de las fuentes. El asunto Snowden es, pues, una oportunidad para extraer algunas lecciones sobre la ética de la comunicación en la era digital. (shrink)

El texto propone una confrontación entre la fenomenología de la vita activa de Hannah Arendt y la ética del cuidado. Se trata, por una parte, de aplicar las distinciones arendtianas entre esferas pública y privada, y entre labor, trabajo y acción , a la actividad de cuidar, para reafirmar su relevancia; por otra parte, tomando el concepto de «mundo» como clave de la definición de cuidado, se ensaya una reinterpretación crítica de los conceptos de Arendt a partir de algunos análisis (...) feministas y de una fenomenología responsiva y del cuerpo, a fin de plantear una reivindicación matizada de las implicaciones públicas del cuidar, en línea con las propuestas de paso de una ética a una «política del cuidado». (shrink)

El artículo replantea, en confrontación con Reinhart Koselleck, la relación entre tiempos de crisis y esferas públicas, así como la «dialéctica», ahí implicada, entre «secreto» y «publicidad». Desde este marco interpreto la crisis contemporánea de modelos de comunicación y participación políticas, en parte por el impacto de las TIC, con referencia a fenómenos sociopolíticos recientes en España, como el movimiento 15M o el nuevo partido Podemos. La crítica genera o agudiza las crisis y éstas se expresan en aquella. El ideal (...) de la esfera pública se reconfigura con cada crisis, para confrontar a sociedad y política con el nivel de crisis su tiempo. Frente a Koselleck, reitero la exigencia normativa de esferas públicas como espacios críticos, ámbitos sociales, intermedios entre política y mundo de la vida. (shrink)

It is often said that television series are nowadays as good as films, or even better than them, but the philosophical inquiry into the former remains much less developed than the philosophy of film. A handful of recent books (e.g., Nannicelli 2016, Shuster 2017, Andrzejewski and Salwa 2018, Bandirali and Terrone 2021) have tried to fill the gap, but there is much work still to be done. Significant contributions to the aesthetics of television series are coming from television studies and (...) fil... (shrink)

A sociedade não se iniciou com a civilização grega, porém fundamentou a civilização ocidental. Pretende-se fazer uma reflexão sobre as questões econômicas do mundo antigo, quando Aristóteles anteviu crescente inserção mercantilista na sociedade e tratará a polis com uma grande autonomia humana. A sociedade grega clássica está centrada na cidade-estado, a polis, a qual era, para os gregos, o estágio final e completo da vida social, a única forma possível de existência civilizada. O conceito aristotélico de economia como ação/política do (...) “cuidar”, como a ciência que busca o melhor uso das riquezas destinadas a manutenção e aperfeiçoamento da vida social, auxilia o mundo moderno à construção de um pensamento econômico. (shrink)

This paper considers two issues raised by the claim that fictional characters are abstract artifacts. First, given that artifacts normally have functions, what is the function of a fictional character? Second, given that, in experiencing works of fictions, we usually treat fictional characters as concrete individuals, how can such a phenomenology fit with an ontology according to which fictional characters are abstract artifacts? I will indirectly address the second issue by directly addressing the first one. For this purpose, I will (...) rely on the notion of a mental file. I will argue that the function of fictional characters is the generation of mental files of a special kind. I will show that our experience of fictional characters as concrete individuals depends on the kind of mental files that are generated by fictional characters as abstract artifacts. I will conclude that an appreciator of a work of fiction can open two files about a certain fictional character; one about the character as an individual in the fictional world, and the other about the character as an abstract artifact in the actual world. In this sense, our relation to a fictional character is characterized by a duality of files or ‘twofileness’. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza la relación entre dos autores, Lord Acton y Balmes, en lo que entendemos que ha sido la gran cuestión de la política moderna: la nación y el problema del nacionalismo. Se citan los textos estrechamente relacionados con el tema y se han descartado aquellos más generales o, en el caso de Balmes, de carácter más dogmático o teológico. En el caso del autor español se han seleccionado sus escritos políticos aparecidos en los diferentes medios de prensa en (...) los que colaboró a lo largo de su prolífica carrera. Ambos autores trataron de superar por elevación la dialéctica absolutismo-liberalismo, y propusieron, cada uno a su manera, un modelo de Monarquía Constitucional que no cediese ni al nacionalismo, ni al autoritarismo. Asumieron como propias ideas renovadoras acerca de la libertad política, adaptaron a sus circunstancias las formas políticas propias del federalismo estadounidense, y defendieron la tradición, la religión y el Estado frente a los que ellos entendían que eran las dos grandes amenazas de su época que crecían al amparo del nacionalismo: el individualismo racionalista y el autoritarismo estatalista. (shrink)

Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with Stacie Friend’s claim that fiction is a genre, her notion of genre can be fruitfully applied to a paradigmatic genre such as science fiction. This article deploys Friend’s notion of genre in order to improve the influential characterization of science fiction proposed by Darko Suvin and to defend it from a criticism recently raised by Simon Evnine. According to Suvin, a work of science fiction must concern “a fictional ‘novum’ validated by cognitive (...) logic.” While Suvin conceives of his characterization as a necessary and sufficient condition for membership in the genre, I propose to cast the notions of “fictional novum” and “cognitive validation” as standard features of the genre, which works of science fiction should have but might lack. I argue that this amended version of Suvin’s characterization can better account for two basic properties of science fiction as a genre, namely its historicity and its relevance to appreciation. Lastly, I show that the amended version can shed some light on the affinity between works of science fiction and philosophical thought experiments. (shrink)

What aesthetic interest do we have in watching films? In a much debated paper, Roger Scruton argued that this interest typically comes down to the interest in the dramatic representations recorded by such films. Berys Gaut and Catharine Abell criticized Scruton’s argument by claiming that films can elicit an aesthetic interest also by virtue of their pictorial representation. In this article, we develop a different criticism of Scruton’s argument. In our view, a film can elicit an aesthetic interest that does (...) not come down to an interest in the dramatic representation or in the pictorial representation. We will argue that this is a distinctively cinematic interest. In section I we outline Scruton’s argument. In section II we point out an interest in how the cinematic medium presents the portrayed subject as detached from the spectator’s environment. In section III, by referring to Wittgenstein’s account of the contemplation from outside, we contend that the interest in films introduced in section II can count as an aesthetic interest. In section IV we argue that both documentaries and fiction films can elicit this kind of interest. In section V we compare the three different kinds of aesthetic interest that, in our view, a film can elicit. In section VI we describe the corresponding kinds of cinematic achievements. (shrink)

The political legacy of classical German philosophy can contribute in a crucial way to the most recent developments of contemporary political thought, thereby also making sense of the contradictions underlying the social practices and institutional values of our societies. What justifies this perspective is, in the first place, the complexity of contemporaneity, which holds within itself a doubleness that can be understood in the light of the conceptual tools of classical German philosophy. On the one hand, contemporary societies seem to (...) be facing relentless crises in the modern idea of democracy, the political subject of the nation-state, and capitalist economic structures. On the other hand, there is an ever-increasing demand for rights and new forms of recognition, not to mention the emergence of grassroots movements that strive for greater political participation and generate new collective subjectivities. By radically questioning traditional philosophical categories, Kant, Fichte and Hegel provide a new and insightful understanding of the crucial challenges of modernity. They outline a conception of practical rationality and its multiple manifestations that is irreplaceable for philosophically understanding our contemporary world. (shrink)