22 APhEx num 22, anno 2020

L’aggregazione di opinioni individuali per formare una decisione collettiva è l’oggetto di studio di Judgment Aggregation, una disciplina che coinvolge logica, economia, filosofia politica ed informatica. Il problema della presa di decisione collettiva a partire da posizioni individuali è comune nella vita di tutti i giorni e, sebbene la procedura da seguire sembri evidente, i risultati possono nascondere paradossi sorprendenti. La formalizzazione del problema dell’aggregazione di giudizi individuali ha permesso di portare un buon numero di risposte, di evidenziare legami con la teoria della scelta sociale e l’aggregazione di credenze, e di aprire la strada a nuove ricerche che permettono di applicare buona parte dei risultati ad altri paradigmi della decisione collettiva. Obiettivo di questo lavoro è di introdurre il problema dell’aggregazione di giudizi, motivare l’interesse per tali questioni, presentando i risultati principali ottenuti e indicando alcune delle piste di ricerca attuali.

Science and democracy are unanimously considered the cornerstone of Western civilization. For this reason, one may assert that science and democracy are perfectly compatible. However, antiscientific movements are common both in the academic world and in public opinion; the most radical constructivists maintain that the alleged scientific truths are nothing but the outcome of social negotiations and power relations, while many people accuse scientific communities of being at the service of big corporations and established powers. The relationship between science and democracy has consequently become a much-debated issue. In recent years, we have even seen an exponential growth in literature on the subject. Pierluigi Barrotta’s book – Scienza e democrazia. Verità, fatti e valori in una prospettiva pragmatista – takes part in the actual debate, arguing that in a liberal democracy scientists and laypeople should be considered as members of a single community of inquirers whose objective is the truth.

In this essay, I propose a profile of Bernard Williams focusing on themes related to his moral philosophy. More specifically, the profile I shall propose aims at reconstructing Williams's fragmented discussions about the idea of moral objectivity. After examining his criticisms against the very idea of moral theory, I offer a metaethical framing of his position and then conclude by showing some of his relevant affinities with the ethical thought of the Greeks and, in particular, of Aristotle.

Topics such as privacy, freedom of speech, responsibility, digital divide, distributed morality and pornography online are some of the most new and challenging fields of ethics. They are usually dealt with bottom-up solutions. Luciano Floridi’s book, on the contrary, has the ambition to develop a general ethics to provide good answers with a new conceptual design. Floridi developes a patient oriented informational perspective and a ontocentric ethics. The book is a must for those interested in Floridi’s Principia Philosophiae Informationis, since it constitutes its second part.

The debate around the perception of temporal properties, or Temporal Perception, is about explaining how it is possible to perceive unfolding events, like motion, change and rest, given that perceptual contents seem to be about single instants. This is indeed the heart of the Paradox of Temporal Experience, whose solutions (the snapshot theories, retentionalism and extensionalism) will be here assessed. Finally, our perceptive acts themselves enjoy temporal properties, and these play a role at solving the Paradox.