First published in 1997, this volume addressed the growing preoccupation of scientists at the time had in environmental phenomena, such as global warming, ozone layer depletion, acid rains, fresh water and ocean pollution, desertification, deforestation and the loss of bio-diversity. The crucial and pressing nature of these issues spawned says the author a new wave of research in environmental economics. The volume provides broad surveys of the developments in the economics of the environment and reports on the developing set of (...) environmental problems, analytical tools and economic policies. The importance of the developing approach was that environmental problems are no longer isolated from all other economic dimensions. Throughout the volume they are analysed in an open, generally non-competitive economy with transnational or global externalities. The first part deals with the relationship between the environment, economic growth and technological innovation. The second part analyses the optimal design of environmental taxation, while the third part considers the international dimension of environmental policy. (shrink)

We characterize the collapse of Buss' bounded arithmetic in terms of the provable collapse of the polynomial time hierarchy. We include also some general model-theoretical investigations on fragments of bounded arithmetic.

Perhaps no philosopher is more of a conundrum than Nietzsche, the solitary rebel, poet, wayfarer, anti-revolutionary Aufklärer and theorist of aristocratic radicalism. His accusers identify in his 'superman' the origins of Nazism, and thus issue an irrevocable condemnation; his defenders pursue a hermeneutics of innocence founded ultimately in allegory. In a work that constitutes the most important contribution to Nietzschean studies in recent decades, Domenico Losurdo instead pursues a less reductive strategy. Taking literally the ruthless implications of Nietzsche's anti-democratic (...) thinking - his celebration of slavery, of war and colonial expansion, and eugenics - he nevertheless refuses to treat these from the perspective of the mid-twentieth century. In doing so, he restores Nietzsche's works to their complex nineteenth-century context, and presents a more compelling account of the importance of Nietzsche as philosopher than can be expected from his many contemporary apologists. (shrink)

The contribution examines the notion of occasionalismo sensista, or also known by the expression of formalismo sensista, that the Italian philosopher Adelchi Baratono was proposing in the ’30s and ’40s of the twentieth century. Best known for his dense volume, Il mondo sensibile. Introduzione all’estetica, Baratono is among the first thinkers of his time in Italy to start a confrontation with Kantian criticism in aesthetic context, looking groundwork for an alternative route to the one proposed by the Italian Neo-idealism. In (...) fact, against the absolutization of the subject, which Baratono ascribes, in particular, to the thought of Giovanni Gentile, he affirms the profound otherness of subject and object in front of which philosophy is bound to be wrecked. In this perspective, the “sensible world” for Baratono is in itself, regardless of the knowing subject, because everything is resolved in the “world within and around us”. In this perspective, Baratono affirms that the feeling is all this, that is something without which are neither perception nor the concept and even the idea. The feeling, therefore, far from being considered the first stage of knowledge, is the real existence. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between business experience in cross-sector partnerships and the co-creation of what we refer to as ‘dynamic capabilities for stakeholder orientation,’ consisting of the four dimensions of sensing, interacting with, learning from and changing based on stakeholders. We argue that the co-creation of dynamic capabilities for stakeholder orientation is crucial for CSPs to create societal impact, as stakeholder-oriented organizations are more suited to deal with “wicked problems,” i.e., problems that are large, messy, and complex. By means (...) of a grounded theory approach of inductive research, we collected and interpreted data on four global agri-food companies which have heterogeneous experience in participating in CSPs. The results of this paper highlight that only companies’ capability of interacting with stakeholders continually increases, while their capabilities of sensing, learning from, and changing based on stakeholders first increase and then decrease as companies gain more experience in CSP participation. To a large extent, this can be attributed to the development of corporate strategies on sustainability after a few years of CSP participation, which entails a shift from a reactive to a proactive attitude towards sustainability issues and which may decrease the need or motivation for stakeholder orientation. These findings open up important issues for discussion and for future research on the impact of CSPs in a context of wicked problems. (shrink)

Cassirer’s concept of symbolic forms represents a cultural-philosophical approach in which specific modes of objectification, the symbolic forms themselves, establish an independent truth. This truth does not consist in a purely analytical truth, but in the fact that we live along these symbolic forms in a specific stubbornness. When we use language, we live and experience language in its specific autonomy. The same applies to the other symbolic forms developed by Cassirer. Both before the cultural-philosophical phase of creation and within (...) the philosophy of symbolic forms, Cassirer refers to mathematics several times. An interesting tension arises as to whether Cassirer could have understood mathematics as a symbolic form in its own right. On the one hand, cultural-historical considerations in Cassirer’s work speak in favour of this; on the other hand, Cassirer embeds mathematics as a mere formal science in physics and thus in the philosophical form of science as a whole. The article explores this tension—mathematics as a symbolic form—and shows that only indications within the framework of the historical-hermeneutical treatment would speak in favour of such an interpretation. Furthermore, the article argues that a specific, cultural-historical semiotics can be considered for mathematics in Cassirer’s work. (shrink)

The relations between the Iranian, in particular Zoroastrian, and Jewish apocalyptic literature as well as their mutual influences have, since the beginning of the twentieth century, constituted a rich and exciting battlefield for the scholars of these respective traditions. This article aims to present some topics concerning the definition of Iranian apocalyptics and its relation with its Jewish counterpart, as well as to establish an updated starting point for a new scholarly debate.

The notions of ``motion'' and ``conserved quantities'', if applied to extended objects, are already quite non-trivial in Special Relativity. This contribution is meant to remind us on all the relevant mathematical structures and constructions that underlie these concepts, which we will review in some detail. Next to the prerequisites from Special Relativity, like Minkowski space and its automorphism group, this will include the notion of a body in Minkowski space, the momentum map, a characterisation of the habitat of globally conserved (...) quantities associated with Poincare symmetry -- so called Poincare charges --, the frame-dependent decomposition of global angular momentum into Spin and an orbital part, and, last not least, the likewise frame-dependent notion of centre of mass together with a geometric description of the Moeller Radius, of which we also list some typical values. (shrink)

The aim of my research is to define the religious hermeneutics that can be identified as the specific core of Antaios (1959–71), the German journal directed by the historian of religions Mircea Eliade and by the writer and philosopher Ernst Jünger. Drawing on their insights, we will focus on the philosophical-religious interpretation of Antaios contents: the so-called “mythical-symbolic hermeneutics” is probably the most interesting theoretical theme connected to the Weltanschauung of Antaios. This cultural journal could embody a counter-philosophical perspec­tive that (...) is at the same time intrinsic to Western speculation. This position has repeatedly emerged in many phases of our cultural history. I refer here to mythical-symbolic thought, characterized by an analogical interpretation of the world, whose structure is considered a stratification of truth levels that are complementary ontological levels of reality. This tradition sees reality as a specific kind of totality that allows human perception to take place through the structures of myth and symbols. The theoretical unity of the project is rooted in the mythical-symbolic tradition that, starting from the religious and esoteric pre-philosophical medita­tions, spans Platonic thought, the various neoplatonisms, passes through medieval mysticism and alchemy, reappears in Romanticism and is revealed in the twentieth century by the reflections of the “thinkers of Tradition.” With this paper I would like to highlight the main topics that can be identified from this hermeneutics: speculations about symbol, myth, coincidentia oppositorum (coincidence of opposites), archetypes, and ontological pluralism. These are at the core of this paradigm. (shrink)

The present contribution develops some key issues of the work of Luigi Stefanini, starting from his work on cinema dating back to 1954. The relationships between philosophical esthetics and film criticism have not been particularly fruitful in Italy (or elsewhere). However it can be surmised, following Formaggio 1961, that “cinema is a testbed for contemporary esthetics, insofar as the latter tries to provide a universal theorization of art”.

Il presente numero di “Rivista di estetica” raccoglie diversi contributi che intendono riflettere oggi sui limiti e sulle possibilità di un approccio estetico-filosofico alle nuove istanze (sia tecniche che narrative) che ci giungono da questo oggetto sempre da identificare chiamato film. Come si sa, il cinema, fin dalle sue origini, ha generato un complesso insieme di discorsi intorno a sé. Il cinema è stato cioè continuamente trattato, discusso, analizzato, fatto oggetto di studio, dalla st...

Despite the burgeoning literature on the governance and impact of cross-sector partnerships in the past two decades, the debate on how and when these collaborative arrangements address globally relevant problems and contribute to systemic change remains open. Building upon the notion of wicked problems and the literature on governing such wicked problems, this paper defines harnessing problems in multi-stakeholder partnerships as the approach of taking into account the nature of the problem and of organizing governance processes accordingly. The paper develops (...) an innovative analytical framework that conceptualizes MSPs in terms of three governance processes harnessing three key dimensions of wicked problems. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil provides an illustrative case study on how this analytical framework describes and explains organizational change in partnerships from a problem-based perspective. The framework can be used to better understand and predict the complex relationships between MSP governance processes, systemic change and societal problems, but also as a guiding tool in organizing governance processes to continuously re-assess the problems over time and address them accordingly. (shrink)

We consider the problem of uniqueness of certain simultaneity structures in flat spacetime. Absolute simultaneity is specifiled to be a non-trivial equivalence relation which is invariant under the automorphism group Aut of spacetime. Aut is taken to be the identity-component of either the inhomogeneous Galilei group or the inhomogeneous Lorentz group. Uniqueness of standard simultaneity in the first, and absence of any absolute simultaneity in the second case are demonstrated and related to certain group theoretic properties. Relative simultaneity with respect (...) to an additional structure X on spacetime is specified to be a non-trivial equivalence relation which is invariant under the subgroup in Aut that stabilises X. Uniqueness of standard Einstein simultaneity is proven in the Lorentzian case when X is an inertial frame. We end by discussing the relation to previous work of others. (shrink)

This study was designed to find out what scientists and science students actually do when they are reading familiar and unfamiliar graphs. This study provides rich details of the subtle changes in the ontologies of scientists and science students as they engage in the reading tasks assigned to them. In the course of the readers’ interpretation work, initially unspecified marks on paper are turned into objects with particular topologies that are said to correspond to specific features in the world. We (...) theorize this interpretive work as a transition of graphs from things to signs that come to stand for natural objects. Especially among physicists and theoretical ecologists, graphs enter new relations and become natural objects in their own right. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é refletir sobre o mecanismo da negação como uma estratégia psicopolítica que articula o movimento bolsonarista. Como método de trabalho, realizamos uma discussão teórica sobre alguns aspectos do movimento bolsonarista que são estruturados pelo negacionismo. Empregamos os conceitos da psicologia política, da esquizoanálise e da psicanálise de grupo para analisar este fenômeno. Para discutir os mecanismos de negação, constatamos quatro características principais: (i) a negação como estratégia discursiva, (ii) a lógica cognitiva da negatividade, (iii) a produção (...) do antagonismo coletivo e (iv) a micropolítica do ódio, que é anterior à necessidade de um líder. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Psicologia Política. Extremismo político. Esquizoanálise. Grupo. (shrink)

In this paper the affiliation of Lévi-Strauss with the functional structuralism of Trubetzkoy and Jakobson is defined as “explicit linguistics” and the consonance with the works of Franz Boas is also thrown into relief. As “implicit linguistics” is defined his accurate attention to lexical facts, in the case of questions of nomenclature and in particular of the terminology of kinship. As this regards, Lévi-Strauss perfectly captures not only the differences between linguistic systems and anthropological systems, but also their respective integration. (...) In this way he comes to surmount the model itself of the functional structuralism of a certain linguistics which is too predictive. Finally, in homage to the great scholar, two examples are proposed of the integration of linguistics “without adjectives” and anthropology “without adjectives” in relation to the etymology of gr. anthropos, seen from the point of view of a specific sociolinguistic hierarchy and within the frame of the Indo-Mediterranea area, and of the Indo-European name of the woman of marriageable age (gr. gyné) seen in the perspective of the innovative conditions of exogamous marriage. (shrink)

As a reply to the commentary (Lenhard in Found Sci, 2012), we stress here that structural understanding of data analysis techniques is the natural counterpart to the lack of understanding of phenomena in agnostic science. We suggest moreover that the dynamics of computational processes, and their parallels with the dynamics of natural processes, will increasingly be, possibly, the driving force of the development of data analysis.

This paper discusses the merits and faults of a Note by Vittorino Grossi, published in this journal , concerning a new Italian translation of Augustine’s bestseller, City of God, with an introduction by Domenico Marafioti . The Author discusses the divergence of interpretations of Augustine’s works.

In this contribution I wish to address the question whether, and how, the global cosmological expansion influences local physics, like particle orbits and black hole geometries. Regarding the former I argue that a pseudo Newtonian picture can be quite accurate if “expansion” is taken to be an attribute of the inertial structure rather than of “space” in some substantivalist sense. This contradicts the often-heard suggestion to imagine cosmological expansion as that of “space itself”. Regarding isolated objects in full General Relativity, (...) like black holes, I emphasise the need for proper geometric characterisations in order to meaningfully compare them in different spacetimes, like static and expanding ones. Examples are discussed in some detail to clearly map out the problems. A slightly extended version of this contribution may be found at philsci-archive.pitt.edu/10033. (shrink)

DIVTranslated into English for the first time, this work portrays a different side of Hegel -- not just as a philosopher preoccupied with abstract ideas but a man deeply enmeshed and active in the pressing, concrete political issues of his time./div.