In questo contributo vengono indagati alcuni concetti della teologia aristotelica (il concetto di divino e quello di trascendenza) a partire da un’espressione emblematica utilizzata dallo storico francese Étienne Gilson per descrivere il Primo Motore Immobile aristotelico: “centrale elettrica della natura”. L’espressione del noto studioso non è soltanto particolarmente accattivante, ma risulta essere filosoficamente assai significativa poiché veicola perfettamente il significato che assume il Dio di Aristotele nell’economia complessiva del cosmo, più in particolare nel ciclo eterno delle corruzioni e delle generazioni. (...) La ricostruzione storica è finalizzata a mostrare la novità del messaggio cristiano contenuto nella Rivelazione e che trova nelle pagine di Tommaso d’Aquino una chiarezza concettuale, filosofico-metafisica, di eccezionale valore. In esse è possibile osservare la piena maturazione della nuova visione di tipo creazionista (basata sulla Metafisica dell’Esodo 3,14) che, pur in continuità con la visione aristotelica, ne approfondisce smisuratamente i presupposti metafisici. (shrink)

Thaler and Sunstein justify nudge policies from welfaristic premises: nudges are acceptable because they benefit the individuals who are nudged. A tacit assumption behind this strategy is that we can identify the true preferences of decision-makers. We argue that this assumption is often unwarranted, and that as a consequence nudge policies must be justified in a different way. A possible strategy is to abandon welfarism and endorse genuine paternalism. Another one is to argue that the biases of decision that choice (...) architects attempt to eliminate create externalities. For example, in the case of intertemporal discounting, the costs of preference reversals are not always paid by the discounters, because they are transferred onto other individuals. But if this is the case, then nudges are best justified from a political rather than welfaristic standpoint. (shrink)

(2013). On the meaning of statements in psychophysics characterizing conditional indeterminacy of percepts. Philosophical Psychology: Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 234-262. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2012.663715.

Driving behaviours and fitness to drive have been assessed using different tools over time: standardized neuropsychological, on-road and driving simulation testing. Nowadays, the great variability of topics related to driving simulation has elicited a high number of reviews. The present work aims to perform a scientometric analysis on driving simulation reviews and to propose a selective review of reviews focusing on critical issues related to validity and fidelity. A scientometric analysis of driving simulation reviews published from 1988 to 2019 was (...) conducted. Bibliographic data from 298 reviews were extracted from Scopus and WoS. Performance analysis was conducted to investigate most prolific Countries, Journals, Institutes and Authors. A cluster analysis on authors’ keywords was performed to identify relevant associations between different research topics. Based on reviews extracted from cluster analysis, a selective review of reviews was conducted to answer questions regarding validity, fidelity and critical issues. USA and Germany are the first two Countries for number of driving simulation reviews. USA is the leading Country with 5 Institutes in the top-ten. Top Authors wrote from 3 to 7 reviews each and belong to Institutes located in North America and Europe. Cluster analysis identified three clusters and eight keywords. The selective review of reviews showed a substantial agreement for supporting validity of driving simulation with respect to neuropsychological and on-road testing, while for fidelity with respect to real-world driving experience a blurred representation emerged. The most relevant critical issues were the a) lack of a common set of standards, b) phenomenon of simulation sickness, c) need for psychometric properties, lack of studies investigating d) predictive validity with respect to collision rates and e) ecological validity. Driving simulation represent a cross-cutting topic in scientific literature on driving, and there are several evidences for considering it as a valid alternative to neuropsychological and on-road testing. Further research efforts could be aimed at establishing a consensus statement for protocols assessing fitness to drive, in order to a) use standardized systems, b) compare systematically driving simulators with regard to their validity and fidelity, and c) employ shared criteria for conducting studies in a given sub-topic. (shrink)

The automated identification of national implementations of European directives by text similarity techniques has shown promising preliminary results. Previous works have proposed and utilized unsupervised lexical and semantic similarity techniques based on vector space models, latent semantic analysis and topic models. However, these techniques were evaluated on a small multilingual corpus of directives and NIMs. In this paper, we utilize word and paragraph embedding models learned by shallow neural networks from a multilingual legal corpus of European directives and national legislation (...) to develop unsupervised semantic similarity systems to identify transpositions. We evaluate these models and compare their results with the previous unsupervised methods on a multilingual test corpus of 43 Directives and their corresponding NIMs. We also develop supervised machine learning models to identify transpositions and compare their performance with different feature sets. (shrink)

The automated identification of national implementations of European directives by text similarity techniques has shown promising preliminary results. Previous works have proposed and utilized unsupervised lexical and semantic similarity techniques based on vector space models, latent semantic analysis and topic models. However, these techniques were evaluated on a small multilingual corpus of directives and NIMs. In this paper, we utilize word and paragraph embedding models learned by shallow neural networks from a multilingual legal corpus of European directives and national legislation (...) to develop unsupervised semantic similarity systems to identify transpositions. We evaluate these models and compare their results with the previous unsupervised methods on a multilingual test corpus of 43 Directives and their corresponding NIMs. We also develop supervised machine learning models to identify transpositions and compare their performance with different feature sets. (shrink)

Is the material world opaque to its Meaning or it guest in itself a Sense that somehow is manifest in its own concrete appearance? Here, also following Teilhard de Chardin, Von Balthasar and Luigi Giussani, this second thesis is supported.

CONTENTS: -/- SEZIONE I IL TUTTO E' UNO? IL RISVEGLIO DI UN PROBLEMA TRA SCOLASTICA E RINASCIMENTO Il principio omne causatum est compositum fra Tommaso e Cajetano Igor Agostini, p. 25 Parti e tutto in Montaigne. La natura e l'individuo tra frammentazione e integrazione Raffaele Carbone 45 Le minuzzarie e il tutto. Giordano bruno e la conoscenza universale Maurizio Cambi 75 -/- SEZIONE II A PARTIRE DA CARTESIO. COME PUO' ESSERE UN TUTTO L'UOMO? -/- Mente/Corpo in Cartesio. Spunti per un'interpretazione (...) mereologica Stefano Di Bella 93 Nos sumus ex Deo et pertinemus ad Deum. Appartenenza, dipendenza e relazione nel pensiero e nel lessico di Arnold Guelincx Cristina Santinelli 115 L'integrità di corpo e mente nell'"invenire" terapeutico di E. W. von Tschirnhaus Manuela Sanna 133 L'indivisibilità della natura umana e della società in Francesco Longano. Un episodio della ricezione di Locke in Italia Roberto Evangelista 147 -/- SEZIONE III L'IRROMPERE DELL'ORGANICO. LA BIOLOGIA FILOSOFICA TRA SEI E SETTECENTO -/- Convenienza e discrepanza. Parti e tutto nella Lettera 32 di Baruch Spinoza Francesco Toto 169 Mereologia della sostanza e mereologia del vivente in Leibniz Enrico Pasini 197 Teleologia e mereologia dell’organismo da Leibniz a Bonnet Francesco Piro 209 Il nesso delle parti: mereologia e scienza secondo Christian Wolff Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero 239 Il problema del tutto e delle parti. il caso del vitalismo di Montpellier Charles T. Wolfe 257 -/- SEZIONE 4 TOTALITA' CRITICHE: DALLA CRISI DEL NATURALISMO ILLUMINISTICO ALLA FILOSOFIA DELLE CULTURE -/- La logica del tutto (e delle parti di tutto, vale a dire niente) in Dom Deschamps Jean-Claude Bourdin 273 l’(in)afferabile forma. Totalità e contingenza nel pensiero di Kant tra Critica della ragion pura e Critica del giudizio Luigi Imperato 303 la relazione Parte-Tutto nel primo Schelling Giuseppe D’Anna 327 Hegel o della totalizzazione dello spazio di interiorità Vittorio Morfino 343 A partire da Kant: Begriffsbiìldung teleologica e relazione Parti-Tutto nelle indagini di Rickert sulla logica delle scienze storiche della cultura Edoardo Massimilla 359 . (shrink)

In line with much current literature, Bradley’s regress is here discussed as an argument that casts doubt on the existence of states of affairs or facts, understood as complex entities working as truthmakers for true sentences or propositions. One should distinguish two versions of Bradley’s regress, which stem from two different tentative explanations of the unity of states of affairs. The first version actually shows that the corresponding explanation is incoherent; the second one merely points to some prima facie implausible (...) consequences of the explanation it stems from, e.g., that there are infinite explanatory chains and that, for any given fact, there are infinitely many facts involving exemplification relations of increasing levels. But these consequences can be swal- lowed after all, thereby leading to the acceptance of a doctrine which may be called fact infinitism, a doctrine adumbrated in a well-known discussion of relations by Meinong. (shrink)

The guise of the good is the thesis that an agent can only want, or intentionally do or pursue something, if and because this seems good to the agent in some respect or other. Bernard Williams criticizes the guise of the good in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. In this paper I reconstruct and assess his hitherto unnoticed critical remarks. Williams's opposition is based on the idea that it takes an “extra step” to go from desiring or pursuing something (...) to thinking of it as good. To show this, he employs an argument from elimination (with two strands: an argument from personal ends and an argument from immediate ends), and a separate argument which I call the one‐desire argument. I review and reject two types of answers to Williams's objections: answers that explore different varieties of what it can mean to “think of as good,” and answers that focus on different varieties of goodness under the guise of which one can desire something. I then consider whether a different, but nearby thesis, namely the guise of normative reasons, can accommodate Williams's objections, concluding that this alternative also fails. I end by looking at how this debate might move forward. (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)

Starting from the ‘Dewey Lectures’, Rawls presents his conception of justice within a contextualist framework, as an elaboration of the basic ideas embedded in the political culture of liberal-democratic societies. But how are these basic ideas to be justified? In this article, I reconstruct and criticize Rawls’s strategy to answer this question. I explore an alternative strategy, consisting of a genealogical argument of a pragmatic kind – the kind of argument provided by authors like Bernard Williams, Edward Craig and Miranda (...) Fricker. I outline this genealogical argument drawing on Rawls’s reconstruction of the origins of liberalism. Then, I clarify the conditions under which this kind of argument maintains vindicatory power. I claim that the argument satisfies these conditions and that pragmatic genealogy can thus partially vindicate the basic ideas of liberal-democratic societies. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that one approach to normative political theory, namely contextualism, can benefit from a specific kind of historical inquiry, namely genealogy, because the latter provides a solution to a deep-seated problem for the former. This problem consists in a lack of critical distance and originates from the justificatory role that contextualist approaches attribute to contextual facts. I compare two approaches to genealogical reconstruction, namely the historiographical method pioneered by Foucault and the hybrid method of pragmatic genealogy (...) as practiced by Bernard Williams, arguing that they both ensure an increase in critical distance while preserving contextualism’s distinctiveness. I also show, however, that only the latter provides normative action-guidance and can thus assist the contextualist theorist in the crucial task of discerning how far certain contextual facts deserve their justificatory role. I prove this point by showing how a pragmatic genealogy of the practice of punishment can inform the contextualist’s reflection about the role this practice should play in a transitional scenario, i.e. in the set of circumstances societies go through in the aftermath of large-scale violence and human rights violations. (shrink)

The guise of the good is the claim that whatever I desire or intentionally do is seen by me as good in some respect. Historical scholarship has so far predominantly focused on ancient and medieval...

According to the doctrine of the guise of the good, all that is desired is seen by the subject as good to some extent. As a claim about action, the idea is that intentional action, or acting for a reason, is action that is seen as good by the agent. I explore the thesis' main attractions: it provides an account of intentional behavior as something that makes sense to the agent, it paves the way for various views in meta-ethics and (...) normative ethics, and it offers a unified account of practical and theoretical reason. In response to common objections, I examine points of current debate: what is it for something to appear as good? Is value or normative reasons the basic concept at work? How to explain akrasia, perversity in action, and expressive action? I conclude with an overview of alternatives to the guise of the good. (shrink)