Four species of fish (Danio rerio, Xenotoca eiseni, Carassius auratus and Pterophyllum scalare) were tested in a detour task requiring them to temporarily abandon the view of the goal-object (a group of conspecifics) to circumvent an obstacle. Fishes were placed in the middle of a corridor, at the end of which there was an opaque wall with a small window through which the goal was visible. Midline along the corridor two symmetrical apertures allowed animals to access two compartments for each (...) aperture. After passing the aperture, fishes showed searching behavior in the two correct compartments close to the goal, appearing able to localize it, although they had to temporarily move away from the object's view. Here we provide the first evidence that fishes can solve such a detour task and therefore seem able to represent the “permanence in existence” of objects, which continue to exist even if they are not momentarily visible. (shrink)

Baker claims to provide an example of mathematical explanation of an empirical phenomenon which leads to ontological commitment to mathematical objects. This is meant to show that the positing of mathematical entities is necessary for satisfactory scientific explanations and thus that the application of mathematics to science can be used, at least in some cases, to support mathematical realism. In this paper I show that the example of explanation Baker considers can actually be given without postulating mathematical objects and thus (...) cannot be used by the mathematical realist. I also show that, despite this, mathematics keeps playing an important methodological role in the explanation and does not reduce to a merely computational or descriptive framework. (shrink)

Trinity, freedom and dialogue not only represent three themes of Nicholas Cusanus' thought, but provide a possible hermeneutic key to reading his work and understanding his philosophy. Through a historico-philological and theoretico-speculative investigation, an attempt is made to investigate Cusanus' complex reflection on the One and his reflections on the concept of man and religion. If Cusanus has collated Platonic and Neoplatonic reflection, in particular from Plato, Proclus and Dionysius, he managed at the same time to direct their teachings towards (...) the Trinity. In his last works he reformulates his theory of the First Principle by endeavouring to thematize and give greater emphasise to the freedom of the One. But if freedom denote divine acting, it cannot but imprint also the being of his image, that is to say of man, whose mind is defined as viva imago Dei. Only by starting out from these presuppositions can the dialogical perspective be understood that he elaborated as response to the burning issue then current in his day of encounter, namely the meeting and clashing among the different cultures and religions. At the bloody conquest of Constantinople at the hands of the Turkish army (1453), just at the moment when all Europe was crying out for a recourse to arms and a crusade, the German philosopher and cardinal laid aside the merely denigratory and condemnatory designs against Islam in an attempt to make Christians realise that by putting faith in the one God there existed scope for possible mutual understanding and communion, that was essential for embarking on the way towards peace. (shrink)

Davide Serpico describes his research at the Special Collection dedicated to the distinguished population geneticist John R. G. Turner at the University of Leeds’ Library.

Prologue : narratocracy and the contours of political life -- From nomos to nomad : Kant, Deleuze, and Rancière on sensation -- The piazza, the edicola, and the noise of the utterance -- Machiavelli's theory of sensation and Florence's vita festiva -- The viewing subject : Caravaggio, Bacon, and the ring -- "You're eating too fast!" slow food's ethos of convivium -- Epilogue : "the photographs tell it all" : on an ethics of appearance.

This study uses a quasi-experimental design to investigate what happens to individual socially responsible attitudes when they are exposed to group dynamics. Findings show that group engagement increases individual attitudes toward social responsibility. We also found that individuals with low attitudes toward social responsibility are more likely to change their opinions when group members show more positive attitudes toward social responsibility. Conversely, individuals with high attitudes do not change much, independent of group characteristics. To better analyze the effect of group (...) dynamics, the study proposes to split social responsibility into relative and absolute components. Findings show that relative social responsibility is correlated with but different from absolute social responsibility although the latter is more susceptible than the former to group dynamics. (shrink)

In the recent literature, it has been shown that the wave function in the de Broglie–Bohm theory can be regarded as a new kind of field, i.e., a "multi-field", in three-dimensional space. In this paper, I argue that the natural framework for the multi-field is the original second-order Bohm’s theory. In this context, it is possible: i) to construe the multi-field as a real-valued scalar field; ii) to explain the physical interaction between the multi-field and the Bohmian particles; and iii) (...) to clarify the status of the energy-momentum conservation and the dynamics of the theory. (shrink)

What is knowledge? What should knowledge be like? Call an epistemological project that sets out to answer the first question ‘descriptive’ and a project that sets out to answer the second question ‘normative’. If the answers to these two questions don’t coincide—if what knowledge should be like differs from what knowledge is like—there is room for a third project we call ‘revisionary’. A revisionary project starts by arguing that what knowledge should be differs from what knowledge is. It then proposes (...) that we revise our account of knowledge accordingly. Our aim in this paper was to develop a methodology for revisionary projects in epistemology. Put roughly, the thought is that we start by looking at the various things that we expect knowledge to do for us. Once we have a list of the various things we expect knowledge to do for us we have a ‘job description’; a list of tasks we need done, and that we expect knowledge to perform. With the job description in hand, we can ask what knowledge would hav.. (shrink)

Since 2010, the European Journal of Anaesthesiology has required the reporting of five items concerning ethical approval in articles describing human research: ethics committee’s name and address, chairperson’s name, study’s protocol number and approval date. We aimed to assess whether this requirement has helped to identify and to contact the referenced ethics committees. In this cross-sectional study, we analysed articles requiring ethical approval, according to the Swiss federal law for human research and published in the European Journal of Anaesthesiology in (...) 2011. Ethics committees were searched through our institutional Internet access based on information provided in the articles. The last search was performed in November 2015. Numbers of items reported, of ethics committees identified, and of those that confirmed having provided ethical approval are reported. Of 76 articles requiring ethical approval, 74 declared it. Ethics committees’ names and addresses were mentioned in 63/74, protocol numbers in 51/74, approval dates in 48/74, and chairpersons’ names in 45/74. We could identify 44/74 committees; 36/74 answered our inquiry and 24/74 confirmed their role. Thirty-four of 74 articles reported all five items; in 25/34, we were able to identify an ethics committee, 18/34 answered our inquiry, and 15/34 confirmed their role. Forty of 74 articles reported ≤4 items; in 19/40, we were able to identify an ethics committee, 18/40 answered our inquiry, and 9/40 confirmed their role. Reporting five items significantly increased identification of ethics committees and their confirmation of ethical approval. Twelve of 74 ethics committees were unable to confirm their role in approving the study. Even when details concerning ethical approval were reported in these studies of human research, we were unable to identify almost half of the ethics committees concerned. The reporting of five items, compared with reporting ≤4, was associated with facilitated identification of ethics committees, and increased the likelihood that they would be able to confirm the study’s approval. Future research should identify which information facilitates identification of, and contact with, ethics committees. (shrink)

Recent trends in psychiatry involve a transition from categorical to dimensional frameworks, in which the boundary between health and pathology is understood as a difference in degree rather than as a difference in kind. A major tenet of dimensional approaches is that no qualitative distinction can be made between health and pathology. As a consequence, these approaches tend to characterize such a threshold as pragmatic or conventional in nature. However, dimensional approaches to psychopathology raise several epistemological and ontological issues. First, (...) we review major sources of evidence usually recruited in support of the dimensional trend (focusing on clinical observation and biological data), and we show that these are connected to different conceptualizations of how dimensional traits extend across health and pathology. Second, we criticize two unquestioned assumptions that stand at the core of the dimensional trend: a) that there is continuity from health to pathology at the symptomatic level; b) that such continuity reflects an underlying continuity in the genetic liability for pathological conditions. Third, we argue against the idea of a conventional threshold by showing that such a view implies a linear relationship between the genotype and the phenotype. Fourth, drawing on epigenetics and developmental biology, we offer a characterization of mental disorders as stable and dynamic constellations of multi-level variables that differ qualitatively from ‘healthy states’. We conclude by showing that our account has several theoretical advantages over both categorical and dimensional approaches. Notably, it provides crucial insights into psychological development over time and individual differences, with major implications in terms of intervention and clinical decision-making. (shrink)

Philosophers have become increasingly aware of the difficulties that plague accounts of kinds with objectively determined boundaries, and generally recognise that scientific taxonomies are shaped by human pragmatic interests and non-epistemic values. Against this trend, we propose an account of kinds conceived as dynamic entities, characterised by qualitatively distinct and robust trajectories originating from bifurcation events in the development of complex systems. We argue that the Homeorhetic Dynamic Kinds account (HDK) can be applied to systems investigated in a variety of (...) disciplinary contexts, ranging from biology, medicine, and the social sciences. Shifting the focus from a synchronic (homeostatic) to a dynamic and processual (homeorhetic) perspective, we show that HDK allows a better characterisation of discontinuities among kinds. We then outline its implications for pluralism, particularly how HDK can help us understand how scientific categories are shaped both by ontological aspects of developmental trajectories and by pragmatic, value-laden considerations. (shrink)

Biologists and philosophers often use the language of determination in order to describe the nature of developmental phenomena. Accounts in terms of determination have often been reductionist. One common idea is that DNA is supposed to play a special explanatory role in developmental explanations, namely, that DNA is a developmental determinant. In this article we try to make sense of determination claims in developmental biology. Adopting a manipulationist approach, we shall first argue that the notion of developmental determinant is causal. (...) We suggest that two different theses concerning developmental determination can be articulated: determination of occurrence and structural determination. We shall argue that, while the first thesis is problematic, the second, opportunely qualified, is feasible. Finally, we shall argue that an analysis of biological causation in terms of determination cannot account for entangled dynamics. Characterising causal entanglement as a particular kind of interactive causation whereby difference-making causes ascribable to different levels of biological organisation influence a particular ontogenetic outcome, we shall, via two illustrative examples, diagnose some potential limits of a reductionist, molecular and intra-level understanding of biological causation. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 1 Seiten: 226-237.

A level of adequacy of a given model with physical world represents an important element of physics. In an “ideal” model each element in the model would correspond exactly to one element in the physical world. In such a model each element would have a direct epistemological correlation with exactly one element of the physical world. Such a model would become a perfect picture of the physical world. The possibility of misinterpretation, in a sense that one searches for physical existence (...) of purely theoretically predicted elements of the model, would be excluded. In order to develop such a model we apply bijective function of set theory. Bijective function applied on time research shows model of space–time has no direct epistemological correlation in physical reality. Time is duration of changes which run in space. Duration does not run in time, duration is time. (shrink)

Theologia est scientia universalissima, et amplius quam metaphysica… theologia est quodammodo latior omni scientia1*Ci proponiamo di accostare la questione relativa all’indagine strutturale della teologia, della sua natura e del suo statuto2, con l’intento di precisarla da una prospettiva gnoseologica. La scelta di questo punto di vista è stata operata sotto la spinta di una antica suggestione attinta da Paul Vignaux, il quale riconosceva in Duns Scoto, prima ancora che in Ockham, un tornante decisivo nell’ambito dei rapporti tra gnoseologia e teologia:Duns (...) Scot […] avait transposé une question classique depuis l’invasion aristotélicienne: «la théologie est-elle une science?» en cette autre, plus... (shrink)

Using a basic theorem from mathematical logic, I show that there are field-extensions ofRon which a class of orderings that do not admit any real-valued utility functions can be represented by uncountably large families of utility functions. These are the lexicographically decomposable orderings studied in Beardon et al. (2002a). A corollary to this result yields an uncountably large family of very simple utility functions for the lexicographic ordering of the real Cartesian plane. I generalise these results to the lexicographic ordering (...) of \mathbb{R}^n, for every n > 2, and to lexicographic products of lexicographically decomposable chains. I conclude by showing how almost all of these results may be obtained without any appeal to the Axiom of Choice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.2 (2000) 113-126 [Access article in PDF] Dissenting Words:A Conversation with Jacques Rancière 1 Davide Panagia:In your writings you highlight the political efficacy of words. In The Names of History, for instance, this emphasis is discussed most vividly in terms of what you refer to as an "excess of words" that marks the rise of democratic movements in the seventeenth century. Similarly, in On The Shores of (...) Politics, you begin your discussion with an excursus on the end of politics as the end of the promise. Finally, in Dis-agreement you speak of "the part of those who have no-part" as voicing a "wrong" for the sake of equality.In each of these instances, however, your treatment of words (and language more generally) is very different from those thinkers of the "linguistic turn" in political philosophy who expound on an ethics of deliberation as the first virtue of modern democracies. For that matter, your approach is quite different from those thinkers who focus on the aporias of language as such.Could you discuss this thematic of the proliferation of words in your thinking about democratic politics?Would it be fair to characterize your research on and exposition of democratic thinking as a "poetics of politics"?Rancière's Reply:In order to address your question adequately, it would be wise to enlarge the sense of "linguistic turn" you invoke. In its most generally accepted sense, the linguistic turn in philosophy consists in ascribing to linguistic processes certain phenomena and specifiable modes of relating objects attributed, in a previous instance, either to factual processes or lines of thought. This approach is not limited to the two figures you invoke in your question. The linguistic turn also has two stages of development that, from my experience, have been more noticeable in France than in the United States. The first phase, then, emerged with Lévi-Strauss and his structural approach to social relations founded on a linguistic model of relationality, subsequently reprised in Lacan's psychoanalytic notion that "the unconscious is structured like a language" that, in its turn, conjoins the energetic mental processes Freud discusses to linguistic practices. The primacy of "the linguistic" thus granted language all the properties of the Freudian unconscious [End Page 113] along with those of a Marxist notion of infrastructure. The Saussurian opposition between langue and parole provided a privileged status to a linguistic model whose role was that of a general law that unconsciously structures the behavior of individuals and societies. It is on the basis of these parameters that the structuralist moment of the linguistic turn was constituted. At one and the same time, the analysis of speech acts became first and foremost a "symptomatic" analysis of those procedures of misrecognition that linguistically structured both the behavior of individuals and social relations. When we "read" Le Capital with Althusser, the interpretive and methodological schema for linguistic phenomena operated like a kind of "policing of the enunciated": that is, a search for those unsuccessful (i.e., inadequate) modes of expression that exemplify such symptomatic procedures of misrecognition.The second phase of the linguistic turn constituted itself more ambiguously. For those who shared intellectual experiences similar to my own, this version involved a critique of the langue/infrastructure model; that is, a further and more favorable consideration of the value of the political and the linguistic games therein that, according to the Althusserian/Marxist model (and, indeed, with structuralism more generally), were to be treated as ideological artifacts. In a very real sense, it all began with the May '68 assertion that "we are all German Jews"--an entirely ideological statement, the validity of which, if analyzed at the level of its content, one finds to rest entirely on the capacity to overturn the political relationship between the order of designations and that of events by emphasizing the gap that separates subject and predicate. From there, an entire field of understanding speech acts as political gestures opened up: a field that reconfigured the division between words and things while rearranging the distinction between legitimate... (shrink)

Peano's axiomatizations of geometry are abstract and non-intuitive in character, whereas Peano stresses his appeal to concrete spatial intuition in the choice of the axioms. This poses the problem of understanding the interrelationship between abstraction and intuition in his geometrical works. In this article I argue that axiomatization is, for Peano, a methodology to restructure geometry and isolate its organizing principles. The restructuring produces a more abstract presentation of geometry, which does not contradict its intuitive content but only puts it (...) into a particular form. (shrink)

An increasingly popular view in contemporary epistemology holds that the most fundamental norm governing belief is knowledge. According to this norm one shouldn’t believe what one doesn’t know. A prominent argument for the knowledge norm appeals to the claim that knowledge is the most general condition of epistemic assessment of belief, one entailing all other conditions under which we epistemically assess beliefs. This norm would provide an easy and straightforward explanation of why we assess beliefs along all these various epistemic (...) dimensions. This article argues that this line of argument is ultimately unsuccessful. I show that the main premise of the argument actually supports the opposite conclusion: the norm of belief requires a condition weaker than knowledge. Furthermore, I argue that if we hold on to the assumption that knowledge is the most general condition of belief’s epistemic assessment, the fundamental norm of belief is factive: one is not permitted to believe a proposition p if it is not true that p. (shrink)

The notion of maximal greatness is arguably part of the very concept of God: something greater than God is not even possible. But how should we understand this notion? The aim of this paper is to provide a Śaivist answer to this question by analyzing the form of theism advocated in the Pratyabhijñā tradition. First, I extract a model of divine greatness, the Hierarchical Model, from Nagasawa’s work "Maximal God". According to the Hierarchical Model, God is that than which nothing (...) could be greater by virtue of being better suited than all other beings in relation to certain great-making properties (§1). I then offer an analysis of the form of theism advocated in the Pratyabhijñā tradition by discussing passages from the works of Somānanda, the founder of the Pratyabhijñā school, and of Utpaladeva, the most prominent of Somānanda’s disciples. I argue that the Pratyabhijñā theist cannot account for divine greatness in terms of the Hierarchical Model. My argument is that the Hierarchical Model requires a comparison between God and other beings that cannot be made with the Pratyabhijñā God (§2). Finally, I develop an original alternative model, the Unlimited Nature Model, that accounts for God’s maximal greatness in a way that suits Pratyabhijñā’s theism. According to the Unlimited Nature Model, the nature of all ordinary beings is metaphysically limited as a result of realizing only a small portion of the potential of what could be, and God is maximally great because only he has a completely unlimited nature (§3). (shrink)

In _Rancière’s Sentiments _Davide Panagia explores Jacques Rancière’s aesthetics of politics as it informs his radical democratic theory of participation. Attending to diverse practices of everyday living and doing—of form, style, and scenography—in Rancière’s writings, Panagia characterizes Rancière as a sentimental thinker for whom the aesthetic is indistinguishable from the political. Rather than providing prescriptions for political judgment and action, Rancière focuses on how sensibilities and perceptions constitute dynamic relations between persons and the worlds they create. Panagia traces this approach (...) by examining Rancière’s modernist sensibilities, his theory of radical mediation, the influence of Gustave Flaubert on Rancière’s literary voice, and how Rancière juxtaposes seemingly incompatible objects and phenomena to create moments of sensorial disorientation. The power of Rancière’s work, Panagia demonstrates, lies in its ability to leave readers with a disjunctive sensibility of the world and what political thinking is and can be. (shrink)

During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, practitioners had to make tragic decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources in the ICU. The Italian debate has paid a lot of attention to identifying the specific regulatory criteria for the allocation of resources in the ICU; in this paper, however, we argue that deciding such criteria is not enough for the implementation of fair and transparent allocative decisions. In this respect, we discuss three ethical issues: (a) in the (...) Italian context, the treating physician, rather than a separate committee, was generally the one responsible for the allocation decision; (b) although many allocative guidelines have supported moral equivalence between withholding and withdrawing treatments, some health professionals have continued to consider it a morally problematic aspect; and (c) the health workers who have had to make the aforementioned decisions or even only worked in ICU during the pandemic often experienced moral distress. We conclude by arguing that, even if these problems are not directly related to the above-mentioned issues of distributive justice, they can nevertheless directly affect the quality and ethics of the implementation of allocative criteria, regardless of those chosen. (shrink)

In Normative Reasons: Between Reasoning and Explanation (2022), Arturs Logins provides a novel reductivist account of normative reasons, what he calls the Erotetic View of Reasons. In this paper, I provide three challenges to this view. The first two concern the extensional adequacy of the Erotetic View. The view may fail to count as normative reasons all and only considerations that are such. In particular, the view seems to both overgenerate and undergenerate reasons. My third concern is that the view (...) may fail to capture the essential, practice-independent nature of reasons, as well as reasons’ constitutive and grounding role with respect to other normative properties. (shrink)

The paper develops an interface between syntax-based logical models of awareness and dynamic epistemic logic. The framework is shown to be able to accommodate a variety of notions of awareness and knowledge, as well as their dynamics. This, it is argued, offers a natural formal environment for the analysis of epistemic phenomena typical of multi-agent information exchange, such as how agents become aware of relevant details, how they perform inferences and how they share their information within a group. Technically, the (...) logics presented are all simple refinements of the logic of public announcements. (shrink)