Spinozza: Free Will and Freedom Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was a Dutch Jewish rationalist philosopher who is most famous for his Ethics and Theological-Political Treatise. Although influenced by Stoicism, Maimonides, Macchiavelli, Cartesio, and Hobbes, tra gli altri, he developed distinct and innovative positions on a number of issues in metaphysics, epistemologia, etica, politica, biblical hermeneutics, and theology. He is also known as a pivotal figure in the

Luce Irigaray (1930—) Luce Irigaray è un'autrice di spicco del femminismo francese contemporaneo e della filosofia continentale. È una pensatrice interdisciplinare che lavora tra la filosofia, psicoanalisi, e linguistica. Originariamente allievo del famoso analista Jacques Lacan, L’allontanamento di Irigaray da Lacan in Lo speculum dell’altra donna, dove critica l'esclusione delle donne sia dalla filosofia che dalla teoria psicoanalitica, le è valso il riconoscimento come

Conspiracy Theories The term “conspiracy theory” refers to a theory or explanation that features a conspiracy among a group of agents as a central ingredient. Popular examples are the theory that the first moon landing was a hoax staged by NASA, or the theory that the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center were not (exclusively) conducted by al-Qaeda, but that the US government conspired

Defeaters in Epistemology The concept of epistemic defeat or defeasibility has come to occupy an important place in contemporary epistemology, especially in relation to the closely allied concepts of justified belief, warrant, e conoscenza. These allied concepts signify positive epistemic appraisal or positive epistemic status. As a first approximation, defeasibility refers to a belief’s liability to lose some positive epistemic status, or to having this

Proper Functionalism ‘Proper Functionalism’ refers to a family of epistemological views according to which whether a belief (or some other doxastic state) was formed by way of properly functioning cognitive faculties plays a crucial role in whether it has a certain kind of positive epistemic status (such as being an item of knowledge, or a justified belief). Alvin Plantinga’s proper functionalist theory of knowledge has

Philosophy of Biology Philosophy of biology is the branch of philosophy of science that deals with biological knowledge. It can be practiced not only by philosophers, but also by scientists who reflect on their own work. The distinctive mark of philosophy of biology is the effort to achieve generalizations about biology, up to various degrees. Per esempio, philosophy of biology makes biology relevant to classic