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9Expropriated Minds: On Some Practical Problems of Generative AI, Beyond Our Cognitive IllusionsPhilosophy and Technology 37 (2): 1-30. 2024.This paper discusses some societal implications of the most recent and publicly discussed application of advanced machine learning techniques: generative AI models, such as ChatGPT (text generation) and DALL-E (text-to-image generation). The aim is to shift attention away from conceptual disputes, e.g. regarding their level of intelligence and similarities/differences with human performance, to focus instead on practical problems, pertaining the impact that these technologies might have (and alr…Read more
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20Real is the new sexy: the influence of perceived realness on self-reported arousal to sexual visual stimuliCognition and Emotion. forthcoming.As state-of-art technology can create artificial images that are indistinguishable from real ones, it is urgent to understand whether believing that a picture is real or not has some import over affective phenomena such as sexual arousal. Thus, in two pre-registered online studies, we tested whether 60 images depicting models in underwear elicited higher self-reported sexual arousal when believed to be (N = 57) or presented as (N = 108) real photographs as opposed to artificially generated. In b…Read more
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86Enthymematic parsimonySynthese 178 (3). 2011.Enthymemes are traditionally defined as arguments in which some elements are left unstated. It is an empirical fact that enthymemes are both enormously frequent and appropriately understood in everyday argumentation. Why is it so? We outline an answer that dispenses with the so called "principle of charity", which is the standard notion underlying most works on enthymemes. In contrast, we suggest that a different force drives enthymematic argumentation—namely, parsimony, i.e. the tendency to opt…Read more
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64Enthymemes: From Reconstruction to Understanding (review)Argumentation 25 (2): 127-139. 2011.Traditionally, an enthymeme is an incomplete argument, made so by the absence of one or more of its constituent statements. An enthymeme resolution strategy is a set of procedures for finding those missing elements, thus reconstructing the enthymemes and restoring its meaning. It is widely held that a condition on the adequacy of such procedures is that statements restored to an enthymeme produce an argument that is good in some given respect in relation to which the enthymeme itself is bad. In …Read more
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9Accepted by whom? On the Empirical Roots of Aristotle's DialecticRevue Internationale de Philosophie 270 (4): 393-402. 2014.
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58Bogency and Goodacies: On Argument Quality in Virtue Argumentation TheoryInformal Logic 35 (4): 65-87. 2015.Virtue argumentation theory has been charged of being incomplete, given its alleged inability to account for argument cogency in virtue-theoretical terms. Instead of defending VAT against that challenge, I suggest it is misplaced, since it is based on a premise VAT does not endorse, and raises an issue that most versions of VAT need not consider problematic. This in turn allows distinguishing several varieties of VAT, and clarifying what really matters for them.
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5305The Fake, the Flimsy, and the Fallacious: Demarcating Arguments in Real LifeArgumentation 29 (4). 2015.Philosophers of science have given up on the quest for a silver bullet to put an end to all pseudoscience, as such a neat formal criterion to separate good science from its contenders has proven elusive. In the literature on critical thinking and in some philosophical quarters, however, this search for silver bullets lives on in the taxonomies of fallacies. The attractive idea is to have a handy list of abstract definitions or argumentation schemes, on the basis of which one can identify bad or …Read more
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17La disinformazione felice: cosa ci insegnano le bufaleIl mulino. 2020.Elefanti nani, inesistenti regni medievali, parodie politiche scambiate per vere, panzane virali e dibattiti privi di senso sui social media. Le bufale un tempo erano oggetto di curiosità, bizzarri orpelli della credulità umana di cui discutere fra il serio e il faceto. Oggi causano allarme sociale, come ci dimostra la cronaca recente: la baraonda digitale prodotta dal diffondersi di un'epidemia può minare alla radice i tentativi di combatterla, o al contrario facilitare una risposta colletti…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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8Response to my commentatorProceedings of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation Conference 10. 2013.N/A.
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22Introduction: Theoretical and Technological Perspectives on Online ArgumentsPhilosophy and Technology 30 (2): 131-135. 2017.
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2The psychology of argument: Cognitive approaches to argumentation and persuasion (edited book)College Publications. 2016.
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Consciousness in interaction: the role of the natural and social context in shaping consciousness (edited book)John Benjamins. 2012.
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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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47More than control freaks: Evaluative and motivational functions of goalsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (1): 35-36. 2008.True to its sensorimotor inspiration, Hurley's shared circuits model (SCM) describes goal-states only within a homeostatic mechanism for action control, neglecting to consider other functions of goals control freaks.”
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30Acceptance as Conditional DispositionIn Alexander Hieke & Hannes Leitgeb (eds.), Reduction: Between the Mind and the Brain, Ontos Verlag. pp. 29-50. 2009.
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49Trust, relevance, and argumentsArgument and Computation 5 (2-3): 216-236. 2014.This paper outlines an integrated approach to trust and relevance with respect to arguments: in particular, it is suggested that trust in relevance has a central role in argumentation. We first distinguish two types of argumentative relevance: internal relevance, i.e. the extent to which a premise has a bearing on its purported conclusion, and external relevance, i.e. a measure of how much a whole argument is pertinent to the matter under discussion, in the broader dialogical context where it is…Read more
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65The ecological rationality of delay tolerance: Insights from capuchin monkeysCognition 119 (1): 142-147. 2011.
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93Playing by and with the rules: Norms and morality in play developmentTopoi 24 (2): 149-167. 2005.This article, Piaget’s theory of moral development in play behaviour is critically reviewed and framed within the philosophical debate on morality. On this basis, an alternative socio-cognitive model for describing normative evolution in play development is proposed. Special attention is paid to the transition from children’s play to adult games, for the purpose of demonstrating that some relevant features of morality stagnate, rather than progress, during such transition. Finally, some speculat…Read more
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39The history of fallacy theory is long, distinguished and, admittedly, checkered. I offer a bird eye view on it, with the aim of contrasting the standard conception of fallacies as attractive and universal errors that are hard to eradicate with the contemporary preoccupation with “non-fallacious fallacies”, that is, arguments that fit the bill of one of the traditional fallacies but are actually respectable enough to be used in appropriate contexts. Godden and Zenker have recently argued that rei…Read more
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48Conductive Argument, An Overlooked Type of Defeasible ReasoningInformal Logic 33 (3): 438-461. 2013.Edited by J. Anthony Blair and Ralph H. Johnson King’s College London, UK: College Publications, 2011. Pp. vii, 1-299. Softcover. ISBN: 978-1-84890-030-1. US$ ~20
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82Why argue? Towards a cost–benefit analysis of argumentationArgument and Computation 1 (1): 71-91. 2010.This article proposes a cost-benefit analysis of argumentation, with the aim of highlighting the strategic considerations that govern the agent's decision to argue or not. In spite of its paramount importance, the topic of argumentative decision-making has not received substantial attention in argumentation theories so far. We offer an explanation for this lack of consideration and propose a tripartite taxonomy and detailed description of the strategic reasons considered by arguers in their deci…Read more
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41No more charity, please! Enthymematic parsimony and the pitfall of benevolenceIn Ralph H. Johnson and David M. Godden J. Anthony Blair Christopher W. Tindale Hans V. Hansen (ed.), Dissensus and the Search for Common Ground, Ossa. pp. 1--26. 2007.Why are enthymemes so frequent? Are we dumb arguers, smart rhetoricians, or parsimonious reasoners? This paper investigates systematic use of enthymemes, criticizing the application of the principle of charity to their interpretation. In contrast, I propose to analyze enthymematic argumentation in terms of parsimony, i.e. as a manifestation of the rational tendency to economize over scant resources. Consequences of this view on the current debate on enthymemes and on their rational reconstructio…Read more