15 APhEx num 15, anno 2017

Philippa Foot (1920-2010) is one of most prominent Twentieth century ethicists, and an influence extending from metaethics, to normative and applied ethics. In response to her time's orthodoxies, she is among the promoters of the retrieval of Aristotelian and Thomistic virtue ethics, which culminates in a radical form of ethical naturalism. This profile aims to highlight the most significant steps of Foot's philosophical path, to discuss them and to draw a brief history of their effects.

The Australian philosopher Philip Gerrans ambitiously tries to provide a general theory about the formation of delusions that should enclose neuronal, cognitive and phenomenological levels of description. His theory is defined as narrative and it is grounded on the so called “default thoughts”, that consist in simulations, autobiographical narrative fragments produced by the Default Mode Network (DMN). The DMN is a powerful simulation system that evolved to allow humans to simulate and imagine experiences in the absence of an eliciting stimulus. Such imaginative/simulative process is precariously disciplined by the Self’s demands of narrative coherence. The Author’s aim is to waive the notion of belief and the causal role played by the impairments of fixation-beliefs system in the onset of delusions, as predicted by the principle doxastic theories.

In this article I will show the basic ideas and current discussions in philosophy of chemistry, a relatively new field of philosophy of science. I will begin from the typical contraposition between reductionism and emergentism and then I will show how scientists and philosophers take into account chemical conceptual problems. This will be our guideline for an overview starting from atoms and ending up to macroscopic substances. Finally, I will show how the question of the natural kinds, few discussed up to now in philosophy of chemistry, is crucial for epistemological and ontological characterization of the different concepts of chemistry, and, thus, of the whole chemical science.

What are presuppositions? Proposition given for granted in communication. In this introduction wi will provide a short historical assessment that show the path from the idea of presupposition as semantic phenomenon to the definition of presuppositions as pragmatic phenomenon. We will analyse lexical components or syntactic structures that, if used in a sentence, work as presuppositional triggers. we shall describe the main linguistic properties of presuppositions in simple sentence and the problem of presupposition projection in complex sentences.We will descrive eventually the accomodation process of presuppositions in local and global contests. We will conclude with a short summary of the main experimental results on cognitive processing and cognitive load of presuppositions.

The purpose of my contribution is to provide a critical reading of G. Origgi & G. Piredda, Filosofia (Egea 2016). The book is a compelling philosophical “compass” for those approaching the discipline for the first time. It is divided into five chapters. While the first plays the role of a prelude, the others focuses on truth, knowledge, mind, and values, respectively. The volume has the virtue of drawing attention on how concepts and ideas developed centuries ago are still the bedrock of contemporary philosophy. In comparison to other introductory books on philosophy, Filosofia is particularly short – and this is, unavoidably, detrimental to in-depth analysis as well as to the intelligibility of certain theories taken into account by the authors.