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53Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2011.This handbook offers a deep analysis of the main forms of legal reasoning and argumentation from both a logical-philosophical and legal perspective. These forms are covered in an exhaustive and critical fashion, and the handbook accordingly divides in three parts: the first one introduces and discusses the basic concepts of practical reasoning. The second one discusses the main general forms of reasoning and argumentation relevant for legal discourse. The third one looks at their application in …Read more
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16278 Handbook ofresearch methods on trustIn Fergus Lyon, Guido Möllering & Mark Saunders (eds.), Handbook of research methods on trust, Edward Elgar. 2012.
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10Lying as Pretending to Give InformationIn Herman Parret (ed.), Pretending to Communicate, De Gruyter. pp. 276-291. 1994.
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8For a Science-oriented, Socially Responsible, and Self-aware AI: beyond Ethical IssuesLaboratorio Dell'ispf 2022. 2022.
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11Purposiveness of Human Behavior. Integrating Behaviorist and Cognitivist Processes/ModelsCroatian Journal of Philosophy 22 (66): 401-414. 2022.We try not just to reconcile but to “integrate” Cognitivism and Behaviorism by a theory of different forms of purposiveness in behavior and mind. This also implies a criticism of the Dual System theory and a claim on the strong interaction and integration of Sist1 (automatic) and Sist2 (deliberative), based on reasons, preferences, and decisions. We present a theory of different kinds of teleology. Mere “functions” of the behavior: finalism not represented in the mind of the agent, not “regulati…Read more
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24All We Need Is Trust: How the COVID-19 Outbreak Reconfigured Trust in Italian Public InstitutionsFrontiers in Psychology 11 561747. 2020.The central focus of this research is the fast and crucial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and its exceptionally serious consequences in terms of healthcare, state intervention and impositions, radical changes in people’s life, on a crucial psychological, relational, and political construct: trust. In this survey, addressed to 4260 Italian citizens, we tried to analyze and measure such impact, focusing on various aspects of trust. This attention to multiple dimensions of trust constitutes the k…Read more
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11The Goals of NormsIn Colin Aitken, Amalia Amaya, Kevin D. Ashley, Carla Bagnoli, Giorgio Bongiovanni, Bartosz Brożek, Cristiano Castelfranchi, Samuele Chilovi, Marcello Di Bello, Jaap Hage, Kenneth Einar Himma, Lewis A. Kornhauser, Emiliano Lorini, Fabrizio Macagno, Andrei Marmor, J. J. Moreso, Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco, Antonino Rotolo, Giovanni Sartor, Burkhard Schafer, Chiara Valentini, Bart Verheij, Douglas Walton & Wojciech Załuski (eds.), Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation, Springer Verlag. pp. 173-190. 2011.Norms are tools for manipulating human conduct through the manipulation of our goals and choices. It is impossible to understand the efficacy and working of norms without a modeling of how Ns work in our mind and how do they cut or give us goals. They are built for that. Thus, a sophisticated ontology of goals is necessary. Ns also have goals and have “functions”: a different kind of goal. We do not understand and intend all the functions of Ns. The subject is not supposed or requested to unders…Read more
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79Contempt and disgust: the emotions of disrespectJournal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 48 (2): 205-229. 2018.Contempt and disgust share a number of features which distinguish them from other hostile emotions: they both present two distinct facets—a nonmoral facet and a moral one; they both imply a negative evaluation of the dispositional kind as well as disrespect towards the target of the feeling; and they trigger avoidance and exclusion action tendencies. However, while sharing a common core, contempt and disgust are in our view distinct emotions, qualified by different cognitive-motivational feature…Read more
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91Anger and Its CousinsEmotion Review 11 (1): 13-26. 2019.The widespread assumption that anger is a response to wrongdoing and motivates people to sanction it, as well as the lack of distinction between resentment and indignation, obscure notable differences among these three emotions in terms of their specific beliefs, goals, and action tendencies, their nonmoral or moral character, and the kinds of moral claim implied. We provide a cognitive-motivational analysis of anger, resentment, and indignation, showing that, while sharing a common core, they a…Read more
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41Augmented societies with mirror worldsAI and Society 34 (4): 745-752. 2019.Computing systems can function as augmentation of individual humans as well as of human societies. In this contribution, we take mirror worlds as a conceptual blueprint to envision future smart environments in which the physical and the virtual layers are blended into each other. We suggest that pervasive computing technologies can be used to create a coupling between these layers, so that actions or, more generally, events in the physical layer would have an effect in the virtual layer and vice…Read more
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83Acceptance as a positive attitudePhilosophical Explorations 4 (2). 2001.We argue in favor of the adaptive value of acceptance and that it deserves a definite status within the 'positive paradigm'. Acceptance currently suffers from ambiguous connotations because of its lack of optimistic biases and its similarity to resignation. We endeavor to show that acceptance and resignation are distinct attitudes by exploring their relationships with various phenomena-frustration, disappointment, expectation, positive thinking, replanning, and accuracy. The resulting distinguis…Read more
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47From conventions to prescriptions. Towards an integrated view of normsArtificial Intelligence and Law 7 (4): 323-340. 1999.In this paper, a model of norms as cognitive objects is applied to establish connections between social conventions and prescriptions. Relevant literature on this issue, especially found in AI and the social sciences, will be shown to suffer from a dychotomic view: a conventionalistic view proposed by rationality and AI scientists; and a prescriptive view proposed by some philosophers of law (Kelsen 1934/1979, Hart 1961, Ross, 1958).In the present work, the attempt is made to fill the gap betwee…Read more
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Principles of limited autonomyIn J. Hintikka & R. Tuomela (eds.), Contemporary Action Theory, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1997.
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15Thinking as the Control of Imagination: a Conceptual Framework for Goal-Directed SystemsPsychological Research 73 (4): 559-577. 2009.This paper offers a conceptual framework which (re)integrates goal-directed control, motivational processes, and executive functions, and suggests a developmentalpathway from situated action to higher level cognition. We first illustrate a basic computational (control-theoretic) model of goal-directed action that makes use of internalmodeling. We then show that by adding the problem of selection among multiple actionalternatives motivation enters the scene, and that the basic mechanisms of execu…Read more
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111Hope: The power of wish and possibilityTheory and Psychology 20 (2): 251-276. 2010.This work proposes an analysis of the cognitive and motivational components of hope, its basic properties, and the affective dispositions and behaviors it is likely to induce. In our view current treatments of hope do not fully account for its specificity, by making hope overlap with positive expectation or some specification of positive expectation. In contrast, we attempt to highlight the distinctive features of hope, pointing to its differences from positive expectation, as well as from a sen…Read more
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52Through the agents' minds: Cognitive mediators of social actionMind and Society 1 (1): 109-140. 2000.Thesis: Macro-level social phenomena are implemented through the (social) actions and minds of the individuals. Without an explicit theory of the agents' minds that founds, agents' behavior we cannot understand macro-level social phenomena, and in particular how they work. AntiThesis: Mind is not enough: the theory of individual (social) mind and action is not enough to explain several macro-level social phenomena. First, there are pre-cognitive, objective social structures that constrain the ac…Read more
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139The role of beliefs in goal dynamics: prolegomena to a constructive theory of intentionsSynthese 155 (2): 237-263. 2007.In this article we strive to provide a detailed and principled analysis of the role of beliefs in goal processing—that is, the cognitive transition that leads from a mere desire to a proper intention. The resulting model of belief-based goal processing has also relevant consequences for the analysis of intentions, and constitutes the necessary core of a constructive theory of intentions, i.e. a framework that not only analyzes what an intention is, but also explains how it becomes what it is. We…Read more
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82Minds as social institutionsPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 13 (1): 121-143. 2014.I will first discuss how social interactions organize, coordinate, and specialize as “artifacts,” tools; how these tools are not only for coordination but for achieving something, for some outcome (goal/function), for a collective work. In particular, I will argue that these artifacts specify (predict and prescribe) the mental contents of the participants, both in terms of beliefs and acceptances and in terms of motives and plans. We have to revise the behavioristic view of “scripts” and “roles”…Read more
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19No abstract available
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18Argumentation is a dialogical attempt to bring about a desired change in the beliefs of another agent – that is, to trigger a specific belief revision process in the mind of such agent. However, so far formal models of belief revision widely neglected any systematic comparison with argumentation theories, to the point that even the simplest argumentation structures cannot be captured within such models. In this essay, we endeavour to bring together argumentation and belief revision in the same f…Read more
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Self-awareness: notes for a computational theory of intrapsychic social interactionIn Giuseppe Trautteur (ed.), Consciousness: Distinction and Reflection, Bibliopolis. pp. 55--80. 1995.
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Healing Social Sciences’ Psycho-phobia: Founding Social Action and Structure on Mental RepresentationsIn Emiliano Lorini & Andreas Herzig (eds.), The Cognitive Foundations of Group Attitudes and Social Interaction, Springer. 2015.
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6Two Basic Agreements and Two Doubts. Commentary on the target artcle by Martin V. ButzConstructivist Foundations 4 (1). 2008.
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62How to silence one's conscience: Cognitive defenses against the feeling of guiltJournal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 28 (3). 1998.This work presents an analysis of the feeling of guilt and in particular of the cognitive defenses against it. It shows how the need to avoid or mitigate the feeling, with the suffering implied, affects the perception and judgment of oneself and others. It is in fact claimed that to copy with their guilt people try to alter the appraisal processes implied by the emotion. Once described the main cognitive components of the feeling of guilt, an analysis is offered of the interventions of the cogni…Read more
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137The cognitive structure of surprise: Looking for basic principlesTopoi 26 (1): 133-149. 2007.We develop a conceptual and formal clarification of notion of surprise as a belief-based phenomenon by exploring a rich typology. Each kind of surprise is associated with a particular phase of cognitive processing and involves particular kinds of epistemic representations (representations and expectations under scrutiny, implicit beliefs, presuppositions). We define two main kinds of surprise: mismatch-based surprise and astonishment. In the central part of the paper we suggest how a formal mode…Read more