Humans naturally perceive visual patterns in a global manner and are remarkably capable of extracting object shapes based on properties such as proximity, closure, symmetry, and good continuation. Notwithstanding the role of these properties in perceptual grouping, studies highlighted differences in disembedding performance across individuals, which are summarized by the field dependence dimension. Evidence suggests that age and educational attainment explain part of this variability, whereas the role of sex is still highly debated. Also, which stimulus features primarily influence inter-individual (...) variations in perceptual grouping has still to be fully determined. Building upon these premises, we assessed the role of age, education level, and sex on performance at the Leuven Embedded Figure Test—a proxy of disembedding abilities—in 391 cisgender individuals. We also investigated to what extent shape symmetry, closure, complexity, and continuation relate to task accuracy. Overall, target asymmetry, closure, and good continuation with the embedding context increase task difficulty. Simpler shapes are more difficult to detect than those with more lines, yet context complexity impairs the recognition of complex targets to a greater extent. Concerning demographic data, we confirm that age and educational attainment are significantly associated with disembedding abilities and reveal a perceptual advantage in males. In summary, our study further highlights the role of shape properties in disembedding performance and unveils sex differences not reported so far. (shrink)

The COVID-19 evolution has forced the massive introduction of homeworking for most employees in the initial stages of the pandemic and then return to work, mainly due to the vaccination campaign. These multiple abrupt adjustment demands in work may be a source of intense stress for office workers with consequences on wellbeing and the quality of life. This long-term prospective study aimed at investigating the effect of adaptation demands on a broad population of employees of a large Italian banking group (...) in the job-related stress framework. We administered a web-based survey to 1,264 participants in Reopening after the first lockdown, from June to October 2020, at 841 subjects in Second Wave, corresponding to the rise of contagions from November 2020 to January 2021, and to 491 individuals in Vaccination Round, which ranged from February to June 2021. We assessed workaholism by using the Dutch Work Addiction Scale, work-family conflicting overlap by using the Work and Family Conflict Scale, and concern for back to work and for HW by specific questions. Higher WAFCS scores characterized Reopening and Vaccination Round while Second Wave had the highest level of concern for HW. Women and younger individuals showed the highest concern for BW, WAFCS, and DUWAS-10 scores regardless of the pandemic stage. HW days per week were related to more heightened concern for BW and lower concern for HW, DUWAS, and WAFCS scores. The number of children was related to lower Concern for BW and higher WAFCS scores in Reopening and Second Wave. Our data showed that massive adjustment demands in work and family routine represented a significant source of stress for employees, regardless of the different pandemic stages. The highest level of fatigue emerged in women and younger subjects. These results shed light on the need for a road map to promote a gradual and structured adjustment for workers and encourage organizations to consider homeworking as a valid stable alternative. (shrink)

In recent years, the publication of the studies on the transmissibility in mammals of the H5N1 influenza virus and synthetic genomes has triggered heated and concerned debate within the community of scientists on biological dual-use research; these papers have raised the awareness that, in some cases, fundamental research could be directed to harmful experiments, with the purpose of developing a weapon that could be used by a bioterrorist. Here is presented an overview regarding the dual-use concept and its related international (...) agreements which underlines the work of the Australia Group Export Control Regime. It is hoped that the principles and activities of the AG, that focuses on export control of chemical and biological dual-use materials, will spread and become well known to academic researchers in different countries, as they exchange biological materials and scientific papers. To this extent, and with the aim of drawing the attention of the scientific community that works with yeast to the so called Dual-Use Research of Concern, this article reports case studies on biological dual-use research and discusses a synthetic biology applied to the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, namely the construction of the first eukaryotic synthetic chromosome of yeast and the use of yeast cells as a factory to produce opiates. Since this organism is considered harmless and is not included in any list of biological agents, yeast researchers should take simple actions in the future to avoid the sharing of strains and advanced technology with suspicious individuals. (shrink)

Since the introduction of Prozac (fluoxetine), a number of so‐called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have been developed and introduced. These mood enhancers are being presently prescribed for people whose problems are not recognized mental illnesses. It is probable that in the near future the combination of data from advanced biochips and brain imaging will accelerate the development of neurotechnology. So‐called neuroceuticals, used for therapy and enhancement, and to improve different aspects of mental health, will be efficient neuromodulators. The scientific, (...) ethical, and social issues raised by mood enhancement and alteration of personal resilience require further exploration. The chapter talks about the notion of personal autonomy, cosmetic psychopharmacology, power for autonomous, and moral accountability in this context. It suggests that empirical research should also cover psychological and sociological research into perceptions and experiences of individuals who have used these drugs. (shrink)

How do affect and cognition interact in managerial decision making? Over the last decades, scholars have investigated how managers make decisions. However, what remains largely unknown is the interplay of affective states and cognition during the decision-making process. We offer a systematization of the contributions produced on the role of affect and cognition in managerial decision making by considering the recent cross-fertilization of management studies with the neuroscience domain. We implement a Systematic Literature Review of 23 selected contributions dealing with (...) the role of affect and cognition in managerial decisions that adopted neuroscience techniques/points of view. Collected papers have been analyzed by considering the so-called reflexive (X-) and reflective (C-) systems in social cognitive neuroscience and the type of decisions investigated in the literature. Results obtained help to support an emerging “unified” mind processing theory for which the two systems of our mind are not in conflict and for which affective states have a driving role toward cognition. A research agenda for future studies is provided to scholars who are interested in advancing the investigation of affect and cognition in managerial decision making, also through neuroscience techniques – with the consideration that these works should be at the service of the behavioral strategy field. (shrink)

Citizen science models of public participation in scientific research represent a growing area of opportunity for health and biomedical research, as well as new impetus for more collaborative forms of engagement in large-scale research. However, this also surfaces a variety of ethical issues that both fall outside of and build upon the standard human subjects concerns in bioethics. This article provides background on citizen science, examples of current projects in the field, and discussion of established and emerging ethical issues for (...) citizen science in health and biomedical research. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

In recent decades deflationary theories of truth have been challenged with a technical argument based on the notion of conservativeness. In this paper, I shall stress that conservative extensions of theories and expandability of their models are not equivalent notions. Then, I shall argue that the deflationary thesis of the unsubstantiality of truth is better understood as leveraging on the stronger notion of expandability of models. Once expandability is involved in the argument, some notable consequences follow: the strategy proposed by (...) Hartry Field in response to the conservativeness objection is strongly undermined and even simpler proposals (such as theories based on standard t-sentences) are shown to be quite problematical. (shrink)

She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg, if there was a draught, she sat in it—in short, she was so constituted that she never had a mind or wish of her own, but preferred to sympathise always with the minds and wishes of others. — Virginia Woolf (1979, 59).

ArgumentThis paper argues that Samuel Clarke's account of agent causation (i) provides a philosophical basis for moderate voluntarism, and (ii) both leads to and benefits from the acceptance of partial occasionalism as a model of causation for material beings. Clarke's account of agent causation entails that for an agent to be properly called an agent (i.e. causally efficacious), it is essential that the agent is free to choose whether to act or not. This freedom is compatible with the existence of (...) conceptually necessary connections. Hence, Clarke can harmonize God's freedom of choosing with the existence of eternal and necessary relations among things. Moreover, in Clarke's account, only intelligent entities can be properly understood as efficacious causes. Beings deprived of intelligence are not agents or efficacious causes at all and their effects are thus the result of the immediate action of some intelligent being operating upon them. (shrink)

Journal Name: SATS Issue: Ahead of print.

The demand for social justice, especially in the context of the welfare state, is often framed as a demand of solidarity. But it is not clear why: in what sense, if any, is social justice best understood as a demand of solidarity? This article explores that question. There are two reasons to do so. First, very little has been written on the concept of solidarity, and almost nothing on why and how solidarity can both give rise to and be the (...) target of a moral obligation. The first aim of the article is to fill this gap. The second aim of the article is to explore the normative implications of this account of solidarity for the commitment to social justice at the heart of the welfare state, and in so doing, to put into question the idea that shared experience or shared identity are either necessary or sufficient bases for social justice qua solidarity. (shrink)

Human brain organoids (HBOs) are three-dimensional biological entities grown in the laboratory in order to recapitulate the structure and functions of the adult human brain. They can be taken to be novel living entities for their specific features and uses. As a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the use of HBOs, the authors identify three sets of reasons for moral concern. The first set of reasons regards the potential emergence of sentience/consciousness in HBOs that would endow them with a (...) moral status whose perimeter should be established. The second set of moral concerns has to do with an analogy with artificial womb technology. The technical realization of processes that are typically connected to the physiology of the human body can create a manipulatory and instrumental attitude that can undermine the protection of what is human. The third set concerns the new frontiers of biocomputing and the creation of chimeras. As far as the new frontier of organoid intelligence is concerned, it is the close relationship of humans with new interfaces having biological components capable of mimicking memory and cognition that raises ethical issues. As far as chimeras are concerned, it is the humanization of nonhuman animals that is worthy of close moral scrutiny. A detailed description of these ethical issues is provided to contribute to the construction of a regulative framework that can guide decisions when considering research in the field of HBOs. (shrink)

A study of a group of elementary school students learning to control a computer‐implemented Newtonian object reveals a surprisingly uniform and detailed collection of strategies, at the core of which is a robust “Aristotelian” expectation that things should move in the direction they are last pushed. A protocol of an undergraduate dealing with the same situation shows a large overlap with the set of strategies used by the elementary school children and thus a marked lack of influence of classroom physics (...) training on this student's naive physics. The data from these two studies are pooled and elaborated into a “genetic task analysis” of how one might come to understand Newtonian dynamics as a more or less natural evolution from the naive state. (shrink)

Phenomenology has been defined by Husserl as “theory of the essences of pure phenomena,” yet the ontological status of essences in Husserlian phenomenology is far from a settled issue. The late Husserlian emphasis on genetic constitution and the historicity of the lifeworld is not immediately reconcilablewith the ‘unchangeable’ nature that is prima facie attributed to essences. However, the problem of the nature of ideality cannot be dropped from phenomenological accounts without jeopardizing the phenomenological enterprise as such. Through an immanent analysis (...) of Husserl’s meditation on essences a positive account of their ontological status is provided. Essences are interpreted as ontological thresholds, primordially rooted in our motivated confrontation with sensuous transcendence. Essences appear as emergent ontological features, which are not reducible to their particular realizations and which exhibit a fundamental continuity between consciousness and being. They manifest themselves as prospectively a priori (a precondition for further experiences), but retrospectively a posteriori (they are founded in experience). Finally, essences manifest the ‘co-essential’ nature of consciousness and sensuous transcendence: they are the way in which we are motivated and constitutively bound to articulate being, which in turn is apt to be thus articulated. (shrink)

is accounted for, among other things, in terms of particular relations between events (or states1) and places or times. Roughly speaking, an event α is said to occur in a place p (or interval t) if the spatial (temporal) extension of α is located in p (or t). Let the predicate ‘Occ’ denote such a relation. From this point of view, part of the content of the above sentences can be associated, respectively, with formulas such as.

Most contemporary chemists consider quantum mechanics to be the foundational theory of their discipline, although few of the calculations that a strict reduction would seem to require have ever been produced. In this essay I discuss contemporary algebraic and diagrammatic representations of molecular systems derived from quantum mechanical models, specifically configuration interaction wavefunctions for ab initio calculations and molecular orbital energy diagrams. My aim is to suggest that recent dissatisfaction with reductive accounts of chemical theory may stem from both the (...) inability of standard accounts of reduction to incorporate the diverse forms of representation found in chemical practice and our philosophical predilection to analyze all connections between theories in terms of logical reduction. (shrink)

Philosophical cognitivists have argued for more than four decades that emotions are special types of judgments. Anti-cognitivists have provided a series of counterexamples aiming to show that identifying emotions with judgments overintellectualizes the emotions. I provide a novel counterexample that makes the overintellectualization charge especially vivid. I discuss neurophysiological evidence to the effect that the fear system can be activated by stimuli the subject is unaware of seeing. To emphasize the analogy with blind sight , I call this phenomenon blind (...) fright . Cognitivists may reply that blindfright is nothing but an unconscious judgment subcortically elicited. This reply is in line with the strategy commonly employed by cognitivists against their critics. I call it the Elastic Strategy, because it consists of ‘stretching’ the notion of judgment in order to accommodate counterexamples. This strategy, I argue, turns cognitivism into a theory that is at worst unfalsifiable and at best trivially true. The final portion of my article aims to rescue cognitivism from the damage done by the Elastic Strategy. I distinguish three varieties of cognitivism, one concerned with what emotions essentially are (Constitutive Cognitivism), one concerned with what causes emotions (Etiological Cognitivism) and one concerned with what emotions represent (Representational Cognitivism). I conclude that what cognitivism has to offer to emotion theory are primarily insights concerning the causes and representational content of emotions. The constitutive identification of emotions with judgments, on the other hand, does more harm than good. (shrink)

In the third intermède of Le Malade Imaginaire, Molière imagines a sort of medical convention in which "the wisest experts and professors of Medicine" examine whether a bachelor candidate can be deemed to enter the medical profession. As the first question in this examination, the "Chief physician" asks, "What is the cause and reason [causam et rationem] why opium induces sleep?" The candidate answers without the least hesitation: "Because it contains a sleeping virtue [virtus dormitiva], whose nature is to put (...) the senses to sleep." The answer is followed by a jubilant reaction by the choir: "Good, good, good, he answers well, he is worthy of entering in our wise gild."1The scene is intended to be a... (shrink)

Hursthouse :57–68, 1991) argues that arational actions—e.g. kicking a door out of anger—cannot be explained by belief–desire pairs. The Humean Response to Hursthouse :25–38, 2000b) defends the Humean model from Hursthouse’s challenge. We argue that the Humean Response fails because belief–desire pairs are neither necessary nor sufficient for causing emotional actions. The Emotionist Response is to embrace Hursthouse’s conclusion that emotions provide an independent source of explanation for intentional actions. We consider Döring’s :214–230, 2003) feeling-based Emotionist account and argue that (...) it fails to explain arational actions. Finally, we develop our own Emotionist account, grounded in the Motivational Theory of Emotions one of us has developed. On our account, arational actions form a non-homogeneous class, some members of which must be understood as instrumental actions and some members of which must be understood as displacement behaviors of the kind animals display when their motivations are thwarted or in conflict. (shrink)

This article discusses Luigi Caranti’s Kant’s Political Legacy, which argues, among other things, that a Kantian reconstruction of dignity can provide a foundation for human rights. Caranti’s book is one of the most powerful recent reconstructions of Kant’s political philosophy. Four main points are argued in response. First, to what extent can dignity understood as a value ground the essentially relational character of human rights claims? Second, does Caranti explain why our mere rational capacity to set moral ends has dignity (...) rather than the realization of that capacity in a morally righteous will? Third, how can the argument provided avoid the conclusion that, because people’s capacities vary, their dignity varies too? Fourth, is Kant’s political philosophy incompatible with our modern understanding of human rights and, in particular, their function in international law and practice? (shrink)

What distinguishes theology from the other uses of language? Is theology a specific language, or is it a specific situation of language, a specific way to consider language? I start with the issue of language’s inadequacy before divine revelation. By analyzing the variety of answers to this inopia verborum, I show that the theological inadequacy of language is not conceptual, but formal: it concerns the metalinguistic definition of inadequacy. Then, I formalize the relationship between metalanguage and object language, and I (...) argue that theology applies precisely to this formal relationship. From this, I deduce that the function of theology is to question the need for metalinguistic foundation and validation—given that this need characterizes human language, that is, what is not divine revelation. I end with two applications: on one hand, to the axiomatization of theology; on the other hand, to the methodology for inter-religious dialogue. (shrink)

I argue that a form of animalism that does not include the belief that ‘human animal’ is a substance-sortal has a dialectical advantage over other versions of animalism. The main reason for this advantage is that Phase Animalism, the version of animalism described here, has the theoretical resources to provide convincing descriptions of the outcomes of scenarios problematic for other forms of animalism. Although Phase Animalism rejects the claim that ‘human animal’ is a substance-sortal, it is still appealing to those (...) who believe that our nature is continuous or of a similar kind to that of other physical entities. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Carl Schmitt is generally considered as the father of exceptionalism – the theory that the heart of politics lies in the sovereign power to issue emergency measures that suspend everyday normality. This is why his name comes up anytime state governments, whether liberal or not, impose limits on constitutional rights and freedoms to cope with emergencies. This article problematises such a received understanding. It argues that Schmitt held an exceptionalist view for a limited period of time and that even (...) in that period his thinking cannot be regarded as unshakably exceptionalist. This interpretation offers a new entry point to Schmitt’s overall theory. While it can hardly be defended from allegations of reactionary conservatism, it remains a juristic theory of the legal order that tries to answer the question of what ensures the stability of social life. The backdrop of this view is an institutional theory of law and politics that is hardly reconcilable with any form of exceptionalism. In this light, the core of Schmitt’s thinking turns out to be the exaltation of legal science as a jurisgenerative practice that shelters a community’s institutional practices and the traditional identity. (shrink)

Some works of architecture have remarkable aesthetic value. According to certain philosophers, part of this value derives from the appearance of such constructions to fulfil the function for which they were built. I argue that one way of understanding the connection between function and aesthetic value resides in the concept of functional beauty. I analyse a number of recent accounts of this notion, then offer a better way of understanding it. I then focus my attention on the relation between aesthetic (...) and moral values and claim that, if the notion of functional beauty makes any sense at all, then we have a pro tanto case for holding that moral defects in works of architecture can have aesthetic merits. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate Louis de La Forge's argument against body–body causation. His general strategy exploits the impossibility of bodies communicating their movement by transfer of motion. I call this the ‘non-transfer’ argument . NT allows La Forge both to reinterpret continuous creation in an occasionalistic fashion and to support his non-occasionalistic view concerning mind–body union. First, I present how NT emerges in Descartes’ own texts. Second, I show how La Forge recasts it to draw an occasionalistic account of (...) body–body interactions, and I discuss how La Forge supports NT with continuous creation. Third, I conclude by suggesting that this further step of his argument does not undermine his non-occasionalistic account of mind–body union. (shrink)

We investigate a contractionless naive set theory, due to Grisin [11]. We prove that the theory is undecidable.

This introduction to the thematic section of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science on “Artificial Intelligence and Religion: Recent Advances and Future Directions” outlines the five articles by dividing them into two groups: the three that analyze the impact of recent advances in subsymbolic artificial intelligence (AI) on religion and theology, and the two that explore theological concepts in symbolic AI environments. These five articles are five steps toward a strong, deep, and interdisciplinary dialogue between the research in religion and (...) the research in AI. (shrink)

Critical algorithm scholarship has demonstrated the difficulties of attributing accountability for the actions and effects of algorithmic systems. In this commentary, we argue that we cannot stop at denouncing the lack of accountability for algorithms and their effects but must engage the broader systems and distributed agencies that algorithmic systems exist within; including standards, regulations, technologies, and social relations. To this end, we explore accountability in “the Generated Detective,” an algorithmically generated comic. Taking up the mantle of detectives ourselves, we (...) investigate accountability in relation to this piece of experimental fiction. We problematize efforts to effect accountability through transparency by undertaking a simple operation: asking for permission to re-publish a set of the algorithmically selected and modified words and images which make the frames of the comic. Recounting this process, we demonstrate slippage between the “complication” of the algorithm and the obscurity of the legal and institutional structures in which it exists. (shrink)

This re-examination of the cogito is prompted by a substantive question which has not previously been identified: the distinguishability of the I or self. Consequently, its force has not been addre...

Kant’s conception of the relation between knowledge and doubt stands opposed to much of contemporary epistemology. For Kant denies that it is possible for one to have knowledge of how things are without having a ground for one’s judgment that guarantees its truth. Knowledge, according to him, is judgment that is based on a ground that the judger recognizes to guarantee the truth of her judgment. A judgment that is based on such a ground, trivially, excludes any doubt the judger (...) might have had with respect to it. Therefore knowledge implies certainty. Much of contemporary epistemology has no room for the idea of a truth-guaranteeing ground. By contrast, Kant thinks that the rejection of the idea of a truth-guaranteeing ground has a devastating effect. It does not only render unintelligible the idea of knowledge, but, because of that, the very idea of a subject that is able to be ignorant about things, to have doubts about them or even to err about them. The paper defends the Kantian account of knowledge with the aim to show that ignorance, doubt and error can only characterize, and hence trouble, a subject that knows herself to have a capacity that enables her to overcome any possible doubt and error. (shrink)

This study assessed the attitudes and needs of physicians and health professional staff at a tertiary care hospital in Canada regarding the introduction of physician assisted dying (PAD) during 2015–16. This research aimed to develop an understanding of the wishes, concerns and hopes of stakeholders related to handling requests for PAD; to determine what supports/structures/resources health care professionals (HCP) require in order to ensure high quality and compassionate care for patients requesting PAD, and a supportive environment for all healthcare providers (...) across the moral spectrum. This study constituted a mixed methods design with a qualitative descriptive approach for the study’s qualitative component. A total of 303 HCPs working in a tertiary care hospital completed an online survey and 64 HCPs working in hospital units with high mortality rates participated in 8 focus group discussions. Both focus group and survey data coalesced around several themes to support the implementation of PAD following the decriminalization of this practice: the importance of high quality care; honoring moral diversity; supporting values (such as autonomy, privacy, beneficence); and developing resources, including collaboration with palliative care, education, policies and a specialized team. This study provided the foundational evidence to support the development of the PAD program described in other papers in this collection, and can be a model for gathering evidence from stakeholders to inform the implementation of PAD in any healthcare organization. (shrink)

Philosophers have been quarrelling for ages over the correct understanding of the identity relation and its applications, but seldom have they discussed the identity of foods, including beverages under this herd. Taking wine as a working example, the present study shows that foods call attention over unnoticed metaphysical difficulties, most importantly the role of authenticity in ascertaining the identity of an individual and the possibility of identity being determined by a collectivity of people. More in details, the paper examines the (...) relationship between a rank of wines and its specific instances, that is, on what grounds some wine is of a certain rank. A “rank of wines” here stands for wines that are identical under some respect, be it the area of production, the style, the color, the variety, and so forth. Extant wine labels are taken as the best candidates to carve out a class of wine ranks that is metaphysically prior to any other; the analysis focuses on geographic indications because of the extensive discussion they have generated, but the morals here drawn extend also to other classes of wine ranks, such as those utilized by wine experts. After some introductory remarks (§1), the case is made that the identity of wines is established through judgments of authenticity (§2). Issues of authenticity are then discussed through the special case of geographic indications (§3). Two different views on how to justify the attribution of a geographic indication are presented and criticized; those rest respectively on terroir (§3.1) and chemical composition (§3.2). The last section (§4) argues for a conventionalist view on wine identity. Distancing itself from conventionalist proposals advanced to favor industrial wine production, the view defended here ties the identity of a wine to collective expert judgments of authenticity that are based on the extensive pleasure of the product. (shrink)

Several scholars have recognized the limitations of theories of moral reasoning in explaining moral behavior. They have argued that moral behavior may also be influenced by moral identity, or how central morality is to one’s sense of self. This idea has been supported by findings that people who exemplify moral behavior tend to place more importance on moral traits when defining their self-concepts (Colby & Damon, 1995). This paper takes the next step of examining individual variation in a construct highly (...) associated with immoral behavior — psychopathy. In Study 1, we test the hypothesis that individuals with a greater degree of psychopathic traits have a weaker moral identity. Within a large online sample, we found that individuals who scored higher on a measure of psychopathic traits were less likely to base their self-concepts on moral traits. In Study 2, we test whether this reduced sense of moral identity can be attributed to differences in moral judgment, which is another factor that could influence immoral behavior. Our results indicated that the reduced sense of moral identity among more psychopathic individuals was independent of variation in moral judgment. These results suggest that individuals with psychopathic traits may display immoral behavior partially because they do not construe their personal identities in moral terms. (shrink)

Resilient socioeconomic unsustainability poses a threat to democracy whose importance has yet to be fully acknowledged. As the prospect of sustainability transition wanes, so does perceived legitimacy of institutions. This further limits representative institutions’ ability to take action, making democratic deepening all the more urgent. I investigate this argument through an illustrative case study, the 2017 People's Climate March. In a context of resilient unsustainability, protesters have little expectation that institutions might address the ecological crisis and this view is likely (...) to spread. New ways of thinking about this problem and a new research agenda are needed. (shrink)

Quasi al termine della seconda guerra mondiale, alcuni ufficiali tedeschi diedero l’ordine di abbattere le storiche torri di San Gimignano; tutto pareva ormai deciso, quando un gruppo di civili riuscì con successo a ritardare l’esecuzione fino all’arrivo delle truppe alleate. Grazie a quei civili, le torri di San Gimignano sono ancora ben visibili a tutti, meta ogni anno di numerosi turisti; ma che cosa dire della possibilità che oggi esistessero soltanto le loro macerie? Esse rientrano in quella classe di cose (...) che chiamerò oggetti possibili, ovvero sono oggetti che avrebbero potuto esistere, ma per un qualche motivo non sono esistiti. Proprio di essi parlerò nelle prossime pagine, cercando di capire quale sia il loro statuto ontologico e in quale modo possiamo parlarne usando le espressioni del nostro linguaggio.1 Come vedremo, ci sono varie teorie che spiegano cos’è un oggetto possibile, tra loro anche molto diverse. Compito di ciascuna è quello di motivare e, se necessario, rendere plausibile una scelta filosofica. Quindi, ogni teoria degli oggetti possibili, attribuirà loro un preciso statuto ontologico e provvederà una semantica delle espressioni del linguaggio naturale sulla possibilità. Nelle poche pagine che seguono però, non scenderò nei dettagli di tutte le teorie della possibilità; piuttosto, ne considererò una particolarmente controversa e singolare: quella sostenuta da David K. Lewis. (shrink)

This paper examines the transformation of medieval figures from state “heroes” during the interwar years into “villains” of the Communist state in Czechoslovakia and Hungary through their national day commemorations. I argue that the negative treatment of these medieval heroes was not clear-cut and, especially in Hungary, they enjoyed a comeback of sorts during the second half of the Communist era. This article thus demonstrates, through official commemorative events, that the Communist regimes of Czechoslovakia and Hungary to some extent were (...) ready to continue with national symbols and traditions that were firmly established in the previous era and had apparently been abolished by the Communist regimes themselves. (shrink)

ArgumentThe article examines the organizational patterns of nineteenth-century Swiss Alpine geology. It argues that early and middle nineteenth-century Swiss geognosy was shaped in genealogical terms and that the patterns of genealogical reasoning and practice worked as a vehicle of transmission toward the generalization of locally gained empirical knowledge. The case study is provided by the Zurich geologist Albert Heim, who, in the early 1870s, blended intellectual and patrilineal genealogies that connected two generations of fathers and sons: Hans Conrad and Arnold (...) Escher, Albert and Arnold Heim. Two things were transmitted from one generation to the next, a domain of geognostic research, the Glarus Alps, and a research interest in an explanation of the massive geognostic anomalies observed there. The legacy found its embodiment in the Escher family archive. The genealogical logic became visible and then experienced a crisis when, later in the century, the focus of Alpine geology shifted from geognosy to tectonics. Tectonic research loosened the traditional link between the intimate knowledge of a territory and the generalization from empirical data. (shrink)