Questo utile ed interessante volume – frutto di una tesi in Filologia bizantina elaborata presso l'Università Cattolica di Milano sotto la guida di C. M. Mazzucchi – offre l'editio princeps della Parafrasi Ambrosiana allo Strategicon di Maurizio, un manuale di tattica militare fra i più significativi della letteratura greca, composto verisimilmente nell'ultima decade del VI secolo ovvero agli inizi del VI; la parafrasi, a sua volta, è testimoniata dal codice Ambrosianus B 119 sup. = gr. 139 (A), una importantissima raccolta (...) di tattici greci le cui caratteristiche paleografiche rinviano agli anni immediatamente successivi alla metà del X secolo; di più, l'esame interno del manoscritto permette di corroborare e precisare questa deduzione, riportandoci con tutta probabilità all'ambiente di corte ed ad una delle personalità più significative e potenti di quegli anni, Basilio παϱαϰοιμώμενος, figlio naturale di Romano Lecapeno e fratellastro dell'imperatrice Elena, la consorte di Costantino VII Porfirogenito: ne sono prova, fra l'altro, le eccezionali caratteristiche librarie e la presenza di un dizionario nautico – i cosiddetti Naumachica di Basilio – preceduto da esametri e da un proemio espressamente dedicati al Παϱαϰοιμώμενος, dati che sembrano riportarci ai preparativi per una spedizione navale per Creta che già negli anni 958–959 si andava allestendo. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Arms and the Man:Wordplay and the Catasterism of Chiron in Ovid Fasti 5Barbara Weiden BoydIn a recent essay, Ian Brookes has drawn attention to the way in which Ovid's description of the catasterism of Chiron in Fasti 5 "suppresses Chiron's hybrid nature" as centaur "in order to allow us to sympathize with him as a fellow human."1 Brookes also directs us to the ironic ambiguity used by Ovid to (...) portray the episode's three main characters, Chiron, Achilles, and Hercules, each of whose histories, as alluded to by Ovid, shares with or borrows from the mythical histories of the other two characters.2 Thus, the wordplay associating Chiron's name with the Latin manus (as if derived from ), an etymological link already discussed by Santini (1976, 49-56), is demonstrated by Brookes to point instead here to the character of Achilles, whose "man-slaying hands" () are known from Iliad 18.317 and 24.478-79; the arrow wound in the left foot here fatal to Chiron is suggestive of Achilles' vulnerable heel; and the poison here responsible for Chiron's death is the same poison that Deianira will one day use to kill Hercules.3I want in the following discussion to extend the line of argument begun by Brookes through a fuller consideration of Ovid's exploitation of shared motifs in the mythical histories of each of these characters, and to focus in particular on the important role of wordplay, of a sort not previously observed, in the episode. My reading, while demonstrating that Brookes has made a valuable start on the literary analysis of the passage as a whole, will reach a somewhat different conclusion and suggest that Ovid's narrative intentionally subverts the superficial solemnity of the story told.It will be useful to begin with a full quotation of the episode (Fast. 5.379-414): [End Page 67] Nocte minus quarta promet sua sidera Chiron380 semivir et flavi corpore mixtus equi. Pelion Haemoniae mons est obversus in Austros: summa virent pinu, cetera quercus habet. Phillyrides tenuit: saxo stant antra vetusto, quae iustum memorant incoluisse senem.385 ille manus olim missuras Hectora leto creditur in lyricis detinuisse modis. venerat Alcides exhausta parte laborum, iussaque restabant ultima paene viro. stare simul casu Troiae duo fata videres:390 hinc puer Aeacides, hinc Iove natus erat. excipit hospitio iuvenem Philyreius heros, et causam adventus hic rogat, ille docet. respicit interea clavam spoliumque leonis, 'vir' que ait 'his armis, armaque digna viro!'395 nec se, quin horrens auderent tangere saetis vellus, Achilleae continuere manus. dumque senex tractat squalentia tela venenis, excidit et laevo fixa sagitta pede est. ingemuit Chiron, traxitque e corpore ferrum:400 adgemit Alcides Haemoniusque puer. ipse tamen lectas Pagasaeis collibus herbas temperat et varia volnera mulcet ope; virus edax superabat opem, penitusque recepta ossibus et toto corpore pestis erat:405 sanguine Centauri Lernaeae sanguis echidnae mixtus ad auxilium tempora nulla dabat. stabat, ut ante patrem, lacrimis perfusus Achilles: sic flendus Peleus, si moreretur, erat. saepe manus aegras manibus fingebat amicis:410 morum, quos fecit, praemia doctor habet. oscula saepe dedit, dixit quoque saepe iacenti 'vive, precor, nec me, care, relinque, pater.' nona dies aderat, cum tu, iustissime Chiron, bis septem stellis corpora cinctus eras.I have discussed elsewhere4 Ovid's effective use of second-person address to the reader at Fasti 5.389 to draw attention to the novelty of his narrative: this is the only extended narrative in the extant literary tradition [End Page 68] in which Achilles and Hercules actually meet as a result of their mutual acquaintance with Chiron. This meeting is, as Brookes (1994, 496) has observed, "something of a coup": only the most elastic of relative mythological chronologies could permit this meeting to occur. I propose that in fact we take Ovid's videres, appearing immediately after Ovid has set the scene by describing the landscape (379-82) and by introducing each of his three protagonists in three successive couplets (383-88), as an invitation to scrutinize carefully the play with characterization thus made possible, a play signaled first and foremost in this episode through Ovid's use of the epithet semivir (380) to describe... (shrink)

The exchange between the Borg and Captain Jean‐Luc Picard illustrates what's truly horrifying about the Borg. In philosophical terms, the Borg strips the assimilated of their autonomy. Choice is essential to autonomy, but autonomy means more than the freedom to act on whims. Autonomous can be applied to two different sorts of things: there are autonomous beings and autonomous actions. Beings that can rationally deliberate in the face of amoral choice are called autonomous, and many of their actions display (...) autonomy. Autonomous actions are done intentionally, with understanding, and without controlling influences that determine. As crucial as the idea of autonomy seems to be to the moral life, it is also been criticized for relying on a highly individualistic and overly rationalistic notion of humanity. Autonomy is a good thing that we can encourage in others by helping them develop deliberative skills and by interacting with them during decision making. (shrink)

This book presents the most important problems of reference and considers their solution. It presupposes no technical knowledge, presents analyses from first principles, illustrates every stage with examples, and is written with verve and clarity. This is the ideal introduction to reference for students of linguistics and philosophy of language.

The standard Kratzerian analysis of modal auxiliaries, such as ‘may’ and ‘can’, takes them to be univocal and context-sensitive. Our first aim is to argue for an alternative view, on which such expressions are polysemous. Our second aim is to thereby shed light on the distinction between semantic context-sensitivity and polysemy. To achieve these aims, we examine the mechanisms of polysemy and context-sensitivity and provide criteria with which they can be held apart. We apply the criteria to modal auxiliaries and (...) show that the default hypothesis should be that they are polysemous, and not merely context-sensitive. We then respond to arguments against modal ambiguity. Finally, we show why modal polysemy has significant philosophical implications. (shrink)

Ethical concerns regarding agricultural practices can be found to co-evolve with technological developments. This paper aims to create an understanding of ethics that is helpful in debating technological innovation by studying such a co-evolution process in detail: the development and adoption of the milking robot. Over the last decade an increasing number of milking robots, or automatic milking systems (AMS), has been adopted, especially in the Netherlands and a few other Western European countries. The appraisal of this new technology in (...) ethical terms has appeared to be a complicated matter. Compared to using a conventional milking parlor, the use of an AMS entails in several respects a different practice of dairy farming, the ethical implications and evaluation of which are not self-evident but are themselves part of a dynamic process. It has become clear that with its use, the entire practice of dairy farming has been reorganized around this new device. With a robot, cows must voluntarily present themselves to be milked, whereby an ethical norm of (individual) freedom for cows can be seen to emerge together with this new technology. But adopting a robot also implies changes in what is considered to be a good farmer and an appropriate relation between farmer and cow. Through interviews, attending “farmers’ network” meetings in the Netherlands, and studying professional literature and dedicated dairy farming web forums, this paper traces the way that ethical concerns are a dynamic part of this process of rearranging a variety of elements of the practice of dairy farming. (shrink)

Partee (1973) discussed quotation from the perspective of the then relatively new theory of transformational grammar.2 As she pointed out, the phenomenon presents many curious puzzles. In some ways quotes seem quite separate from their surrounding text; they may be in a different dialect, as in her example in (1), (1) ‘I talk better English than the both of youse!’ shouted Charles, thereby convincing me that he didn’t. [Partee (1973):ex. 20] or even in a different language, as in (2): (2) (...) Louise said ‘Je voudrais un auto-da-f´e’, but I didn’t know what she meant. (shrink)

The article argues that the relationship to time is at the root of what makes us human and that culture arises with and from efforts to transcend death, change and the rhythmicity of the physical environment. Time can be tracked through systems of time measurement and later transformed from a process of nature into clock time, a time to human design that is abstracted from context and content. In this form time can be traded with all other times. With contemporary (...) science and new information and communications technologies, which operate in a new all-encompassing temporal spectrum that extends from nanoseconds to millennia, clock time is no longer appropriate to the associated present-oriented transactions and futures are traversed in the dual sense of the word. By historically locating temporal relations, the article provides both a new understanding of socio-cultural relations and a perspective on social change. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to suggest a definition of genetic information by taking into account the debate surrounding it. Particularly, the objections raised by Developmental Systems Theory to Teleosemantic endorsements of the notion of genetic information as well as deflationist approaches which suggest to ascribe the notion of genetic information a heuristic value at most, and to reduce it to that of causality. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents the notion of genetic information through its historical evolution and analyses (...) it with the conceptual tools offered by philosophical theories of causation on one side and linguistics on the other. Findings The concept of genetic information is defined as a special kind of cause which causes something to be one way rather than another, by combining elementary units one way rather than another. Tested against the notion of “genetic error” this definition demonstrates to provide an exhaustive account of the common denominators associated with the notion of genetic information: causal specificity; combinatorial mechanism; arbitrariness. Originality/value The definition clarifies how the notion of information is understood when applied to genetic phenomena and also contributes to the debate on the notion of information, broadly meant, which is still affected by lack of consensus. (shrink)

This work is an historiographical analysis of Bayle's view of the Reformation and the Europeans it affected."--BOOK JACKET.

The study investigates how the territorial community can influence the individual and social well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual youth and especially the recognition of their feelings and the construction of their own identity as well as their needs to be socially recognized. This research focuses on the experiences of 30 LGB individuals, with a mean age of 25.07 years, living in urban and rural areas of Southern Italy. Focalized open interviews were conducted, and the Grounded Theory Methodology, supported by the (...) Atlas.ti 8.0 software, was used for data analysis. The textual material was first coded, and then codes were grouped into five macro-categories: Freedom of identity expression in the urban and rural context, identity construction and acceptance process, need of aggregation and identification with the LGB community, role of the interpersonal relationship in the process of identity acceptance, socio-cultural context, and LGB psychological well-being. The results showed a condition common to the two contexts that we can define as “ghettoization.” The young LGB is alone in the rural area due to a lack of places and people to identify with and greater social isolation. On the contrary, although there are more opportunities in the urban area, young people feel stigmatized and ghettoized because “their places” are frequented exclusively by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transexual, queer community. The work will extensively discuss the limitations of the research, future proposals, and the practical implications of the results. (shrink)

The expression “human enhancement” could be placed in the ontological, cognitive, and symbolic dimension in which we conceive and experience the faculty, that is constitutive of human beings, of giving name and thus consistence to things, relations and phenomena in general. It is necessary to point out that this symbolic dimension of emerging technologies has been obstinately and jealously anthropocentric, at least in the modern Western world. In this contribution, I aim to develop a philosophical account of post-human enhancement that (...) allows us to conceive a future society of humanoids – humans, hybrids, artificial beings – who are free and equal. This expression – “post-human enhancement” – is to be understood as referring to symbols and phenomena different from those associated with “trans-human”. Post-human is to be interpreted here as material, not anthropocentric but rather interspeciesist, osmotic and relational, horizon of effective sharing of experiences, dangers and challenges. In contrast, trans-human is meant to refer to the transcending of humans into the pure ether of an ‘ideal’, immaterial network made up only of software, and lacking of relations with any material beings in the ecosystem or cosmos. On my account, reframing the debate about human enhancement means to guarantee widest possible conditions of non-hegemonic or expansive conscious contextuality of legislative and decisional systems. I focus rather on the social circumstance whereby we see ourselves as subjects that already co-inhabit multiform social identities, in changeable and hybrid bodies and identitary images, in potential or latent conditions of moral and political asymmetry. These conditions, I hold, are therefore to be preventively identified and neutralized. (shrink)

Comme s’en explique Melville lui-même, le classicisme domine dans l’écriture de ce film noir « à la française » qu’est Le Cercle rouge. Un casse sans spectacle, des héros sans passé incarnés par des acteurs mythiques, une rencontre improbable qui se clôt dans une vision déceptive du monde : le silence qui s’installe entre les personnages renforce le sentiment d’incommunicabilité, de solitude, de froideur. Autant qu’un film noir, Melville semble finalement explorer les pistes du « film froid ».

Machery (2009) has proposed that the notion of ‘concept’ ought to be eliminated from the theoretical vocabulary of psychology. I raise three questions about his argument: (1) Is there a meaningful distinction between concepts and background knowledge? (2) Do we need to discard the hybrid view? (3) Are there really categories of things in the world that are the basis for concepts? Although I argue that the answer to all three is ‘no’, I agree with Machery's conclusion that seeking a (...) single characterization of concepts will not be fruitful for understanding cognitive representations and processes. (shrink)