1,721,025 research outputs found
Why we should not look for a definition of "mental disorder"
No full textDo we need a definition of the concept of mental disorder in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions? In this paper I agree for a negative answer, after providing a brief account of the debate in the philosophy of medicine and psychiatry, and examining the practical and conceptual reasons that have brought philosophers and psychiatrists for having one in the DSM-5
Reference, Knowledge, and Skepticism about Meaning
No full textThis paper explores the possibility of resisting meaning scepticism --
the thesis that there are many alternative incompatible assignments of
reference to each of our terms -- by appealing to the idea that the
nature of reference is to maximize knowledge. If the reference
relation is a knowledge maximizing-relation, then some candidate
referents are privileged among the others -- i.e., those referents we
are in a position to know about -- and a positive reason against
meaning scepticism is thus individuated. A knowledge-maximizing
principle on the nature of reference was proposed by Williamson in a
recent paper (Williamson 2004). According to Williamson, such a
principle would count as a defeasible reason for thinking that most of
our beliefs tend to be true. My paper reverses Williamson's dialectic,
and argues that reference is knowledge-maximizing from the premise
that most of our beliefs tend to be true. I will therefore defend such
premise on different grounds than Williamson's, and precisely by
revisiting a Naturalist argument he rejected, centred on the role of
true beliefs in successful action. In the conclusion, an opposition to
meaning-scepticism comes out as motivated by the knowledge-maximizing
nature of reference, and backed by the plausibility of the claim that
beliefs tend to be true
Concepts exist. More about Eliminativism
No full textAccording to the recent trend of concept eliminativism in cognitive science, the term ‘concept’ is of no explanatory value and should be banned from scientific use. I argue that the version of eliminativism due to Edouard Machery does not individuate the referent of ‘concept’ at the right level of abstraction; in other words, it confuses concepts with their realizers. I recommend is that concepts are individuated at the level of functional kinds, and suggest some of their explanatory functions
Resistenza alla vaccinazione: Riflessioni filosofiche su cause, legittimità e prospettive di intervento
No full textIn spite of its well-established scientific credentials, pediatric vaccination in high-income countries has always been controversial, and no it is especially so in the Italian context. Vaccine hesitancy is a range of attitude that goes from the explicit refusal of any shot and anti-vax campaigning to skepticism and vaccine cherry-picking. This group of essays tackles the phenomenon from different angles. The first two essays indagate its origins, and point to neurocognitive facts, social facts, and diminished trust in the healthcare system. The third one focuses on the role of linguistic metaphors in pro-vax and anti-vax campaigns. The last two contributions analyse the various possible institutional responses (mandatory vaccination, obligation with exemptions, recommendation, and nudging), and on the concept freedom of choice, from the point of view of ethics and legal philosophy
Normatività
No full textLe norme sono standard di valutazione e guidano il nostro comportamento razionale. Tutte le aree della filosofia trattano di norme e concetti normativi. Il presente contributo illustra in breve le principali
questioni discusse oggi in filosofia analitica sulla norme e i concetti normativi: la domanda metafisica, la
questione epistemologica, il problema della motivazione e l'estensione dell'ambito del normativo dai domini tradizionali dell'etica e teoria dell'azione, allo studio del significato e della mente
Concepts as abilities and concepts as representations
No full textThe debate on the nature of concepts has been very lively in Analytic philosophy for the last two decades. Concepts inherit some traditional issues from the philosophy of language, such as the nature of reference and the compositionality requirement, but also lie at the intersection between philosophy and cognitive psychology. In his latest book Hume Variations, Jerry Fodor frames the contemporary debate in terms of an opposition between Pragmatist theories, which describe concepts as categorization capacities, and Cartesian theories, according to which concepts are representations of objects and properties. According to Fodor's definition, the category of conceptual pragmatists is both large and variegated, including conceptual role semantics, but also prototype theories, exemplar theories, theory-theories and, in general, any psychological model that has been discussed so far in cognitive psychology. Amomg Atomists, Fodor enlists William of Ockham, David Hume and himself. According to Pragmatism, concepts are structured entities, carrying the information needed for categorization and inferential tasks. Atomism is the view that the components of thoughts are simple, unstructured symbols, and their unique function is to stand for some (generally) extra-mental entity. Thus, the opposition mirrors the long-standing debate between Fregean theories and direct-reference theories in the philosophy of language. I argue that the opposition is spurious when applied to theories of concepts - though it was genuine for theories of meaning. Concepts can be, and should be, both representations and capacities, once the notion of capacity is spelled out without ambiguities. Capacities need not be reduced to their behavioural manifestations. In fact, psychologists today tend to assume that capacities are represented in the mind-brain, they take the form of encoded knowledge - take, for example, Chomsky's account of the faculty of language. In this sense, there is no genuine theoretical choice to make between capacities and representations. Rather, the genuine issue about concepts is what kind of representation they are, and whether we should go on to assume that a single unified model will be able to account for the variety of concepts
Ricostruire la fiducia nel dibattito pubblico in materia di sanità
Full text linkL'articolo ricostruisce la crisi di fiducia tra i cittadini e le istituzioni sanitarie che precede la pandemia e suggerisce alcune strategie per contrastarla
- …
