In recent years, some theorists have argued that the clogics are not only defined by their inferences, but also by their metainferences. In this sense, logics that coincide in their inferences, but not in their metainferences were considered to be different. In this vein, some metainferential logics have been developed, as logics with metainferences of any level, built as hierarchies over known logics, such as \, and \. What is distinctive of these metainferential logics is that they are mixed, i.e. (...) the standard for the premises and the conclusion is not necessarily the same. However, so far, all of these systems have been presented following a semantical standpoint, in terms of valuations based on the Strong Kleene truth-tables. In this article, we provide sound and complete sequent-calculi for the valid inferences and the invalid inferences of the logics \ and \, and introduce an algorithm that allows obtaining sound and complete sequent-calculi for the global validities and the global invalidities of any metainferential logic of any level. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss the extent to which certain substructural logics are related through the phenomenon of duality. Roughly speaking, metainferences are inferences between collect...

This book is the first to present a comprehensive investigation of the technical features of the metainferential logics developed in the last years, with their most relevant results and applications. It provides some new paths to define and investigate metainferential logics and offers a thorough study of the semantics and the proof-theories of this new and exciting variety of families of logics. This volume examines the hierarchies of metainferential logics and gives a general and systematic theory of them, and of (...) the truth theories based on these logics. This book puts forward the prospects for truth-theories based on the metainferential logics of the TS/ST hierarchy and argues for its promise noting that each of these logics can be safely expanded with a transparent truth predicate. It also goes onto to explore new developments in three fields related to logics – namely metainferential logics built by means of the Weak Kleene schema and combining them with logics defined through the Strong Kleene schema, proof-theoretic presentations, and those with a with a global or an absolutely global validity standard, instead of a local one. This book is of interest to scholars in formal logic. (shrink)

Infectious logics are systems that have a truth-value that is assigned to a compound formula whenever it is assigned to one of its components. This paper studies four-valued infectious logics as the basis of transparent theories of truth. This take is motivated as a way to treat different pathological sentences differently, namely, by allowing some of them to be truth-value gluts and some others to be truth-value gaps and as a way to treat the semantic pathology suffered by at least (...) some of these sentences as infectious. This leads us to consider four distinct four-valued logics: one where truth-value gaps are infectious, but gluts are not; one where truth-value gluts are infectious, but gaps are not; and two logics where both gluts and gaps are infectious, in some sense. Additionally, we focus on the proof theory of these systems, by offering a discussion of two related topics. On the one hand, we prove some limitations regarding the possibility of providing standard Gentzen sequent calculi for these systems, by dualizing and extending some recent results for infectious logics. On the other hand, we provide sound and complete four-sided sequent calculi, arguing that the most important technical and philosophical features taken into account to usually prefer standard calculi are, indeed, enjoyed by the four-sided systems. (shrink)

We propose a new interpretation of the equation E=mc² in special relativity by generalizing ideas of ontological emergence to fundamental physics. This allows us to propose that mass, as a property, can be considered to emerge from energy, using a well-known definition of weak ontological emergence. Einstein’s famous equation gains in this way a clearer philosophical interpretation, one that avoids the problems of previous attempts, and is fully consistent with the kinematic properties of special relativity, while yielding fresh insights concerning (...) the nature of mass. (shrink)

En el marco de una investigación sobre la producción de organismos trasnacionales del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia en la ciudad de La Plata, en este trabajo sostenemos que el Viceconsulado creado allí en 2013 busca resituar a las agencias consulares de ese país en un lugar central en los procesos de diasporización desarrollados en esta localidad. Por medio del análisis de documentos y balances de la Cancillería boliviana, observaciones participantes en eventos, actividades y reuniones organizadas por las instancias consulares de (...) Bolivia y asociaciones de migrantes asentados/as en la ciudad de La Plata y entrevistas y numerosos diálogos informales con los/as principales dirigentes de estos espacios, damos cuenta de los mecanismos a partir de los cuales el Estado se involucra en los procesos de “etnización” conectando (o reforzando las conexiones entre) la trama institucional y la experiencia de la nación de las personas, como de los conflictos y resistencias que debe enfrentar en los intentos de consolidación de sus posicionamientos.El artículo repasa el desprestigio que sufrieron las entidades consulares en la región durante las últimas décadas del siglo XX y los primeros años del XXI y las estrategias que sostienen este intento de reposicionamiento. De esta manera, la tramitación de documentación y la figura de Evo Morales emergen en una trama en la que se conforma y disputa la representación y la autoridad sobre la “colectividad”. (shrink)

Degrowth is the literal translation of ‘décroissance’, a French word meaning reduction. Launched by activists in 2001 as a challenge to growth, it became a missile word that sparks a contentious debate on the diagnosis and prognosis of our society. ‘Degrowth’ became an interpretative frame for a new (and old) social movement where numerous streams of critical ideas and political actions converge. It is an attempt to re-politicise debates about desired socio-environmental futures and an example of an activist-led science now (...) consolidating into a concept in academic literature. This article discusses the definition, origins, evolution, practices and construction of degrowth. The main objective is to explain degrowth's multiple sources and strategies in order to improve its basic definition and avoid reductionist criticisms and misconceptions. To this end, the article presents degrowth's main intellectual sources as well as its diverse strategies (oppositional activism, building of alternatives and political proposals) and actors (practitioners, activists and scientists). Finally, the article argues that the movement's diversity does not detract from the existence of a common path. (shrink)

Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817-1881) fut l'une des figures majeures de la philosophie allemande au XIXe siècle. Philosophe, logicien, psychologue, médecin, il a connu à son époque une renommée extraordinaire. Professeur de philosophie à l'Université de Göttingen, où il succéda à Herbart, il mena un parcours de recherche aussi original qu'influent. Entre romantisme et positivisme, entre naturalisme et historicisme, sa doctrine ne s'est jamais confondue avec les courants les plus importants de son époque. Admirée et suivie, autant en Allemagne qu'à l'étranger, (...) sa pensée fut ensuite, après sa mort, condamnée à l'oubli en raison de son supposé éclectisme méthodologique et, finalement, classée sous la rubrique ambiguë d'idéal-réalisme. Le legs de Lotze s'inscrit dans un rapport complexe à la phénoménologie, à la philosophie analytique naissante, au pragmatisme américain et au néokantisme allemand jusqu'à Heidegger. L'analyse de ce legs n'a cependant jamais bénéficié d'une réflexion critique capable d'en mesurer la portée et les limites. Par un travail d'évaluation historico-critique, ce volume se propose de combler cette lacune. (shrink)

Dans la quête des constituants ultimes du langage, l'hypothèse de la double articulation se veut une réponse économique à la question de la compositionalité du signe : le morphème serait la plus petite unité signifiante de la chaîne parlée. Contre les pièges de l'ethnocentrisme linguistique, Lacan invoque le cas du mandarin, puis satirise : "Alors la double articulation, elle est marrante, là". Au-delà du ton ouvertement polémique des propos du psychanalyste, qui finira par déclarer "la double articulation, on en crève!", (...) la question mérite d'être posée : peut-on postuler un autre modèle sémiotique et, partant, une autre concevabilité du signe? Penser / repenser la segmentation de la chaîne signifiante, telle est la problématique que ce volume entend soumettre au questionnement scientifique en mettant la double articulation du langage à l'épreuve de la linguistique, mais aussi de la sémiotique, de la poétique, de la psychanalyse, de la textométrie, de la didactique, de la cognition, des disciplines informatiques et des sciences de la communication."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

During the last two decades, a sharp re-reading of St. Paul’s letters allowed several thinkers to embed a messianic element in their political philosophy. In these readings, the messianic refusal of the world and its laws is understood through the suspensive act of ‘subtraction’ – a movement of withdrawal which nonetheless proved too often ineffective when translated in political practice. -/- After having analysed Agamben’s declension of Subtraction in terms of ‘inoperativity’, this article focuses on the notion of Parousia as (...) a key element to understand his anti-utopian account of messianic time. In contrast with Agamben’s reading, Bloch’s interpretation of the Pauline Parousia envisages the messianic event as infra-historical, but at the same time opened to ultimate (meta-historical) purposes. Bloch’s messianic call – I argue – takes the form of mediation, a correction of subtraction towards the direction of a more committed political engagement. I conclude suggesting that the concrete implementations of this mediation perform their emancipatory function in so far as they assume the character of practical ethics, with the attention directed to the underprivileged and marginalised. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical assessment of the Successive Addition Argument (SAA) in support of past finitism, i.e., the thesis that the past of the universe is finite in duration. This old philosophical argument, re-popularized by William Lane Craig in modern times, contends that the universe’s past cannot be infinite because an infinite series cannot be formed by successive addition. I first address a recently popular objection to the argument, namely the Zeno Objection, showing that it can be easily dismissed (...) once each addition is taken to have the same duration. Nevertheless, I contend that the _onus_ of the proof lies on those who propose the SAA, and that their main argumentative strategies fail. Indeed, many of their arguments are based on the supposedly uncontroversial claim that one cannot traverse the infinite by starting somewhere. I argue that a complete traversal of the infinite, with a beginning infinitely far from its end, is logically and metaphysically possible. Other popular arguments against traversed infinities are based on thought experiments such as the backward counter or the Tristram Shandy thought experiments. I argue that, once infinitely far beginnings are granted, none of the arguments based on such thought experiments prove effective, so that the SAA must be rejected. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to deeply rethink the traditional notion of “ideological emendation”. By taking Taurus T27 as a test-case, I shall emphasise that Taurus’ intervention on Timaeus 27c5 is the result of a conjecture, and that such an emendation meets the requirements for a philological conjecture on Plato’s text. Indeed, Taurus’ fragment, which is usually taken as a typical example of “ideological emendation”, only reflects an effort to recover what Plato actually wrote, and is nothing but a (...) textual emendation. Accordingly, the ideological core of such an emendation is what must lie at the basis of any conjecture, that is an attempt to re-establish (what is assumed to be) Plato’s text in accordance with his consistent doctrine. (shrink)

Estas páginas abordan de nuevo algunas de las complejidades irreductibles del problema filosófico de la violencia (su delimitación teológico-política y su eventual uso), aprovechando la reciente edición crítica en inglés de Peter Fenves y Julia Ng del clásico ensayo de Walter Benjamin Zur Kritik der Gewalt (Hacia la crítica de la violencia) (1921), publicada en el centenario del texto original alemán. Partiendo de este contexto eminentemente filológico, nos gustaría mostrar cómo, en este ensayo, la verdadera y antagónica intimidad entre la (...) llamada «no violencia» (una política de puros medios) y la «doctrina de la no acción» (una inversión taoísta de la moral kantiana) se determina a través de una crítica lógica del pacifismo (como dogmático, contradictorio, metafísico, «un teorema más remoto»). La crítica de Benjamin también se cristaliza a través de una lectura excepcional y abisal del mandamiento divino de la Torá: «No matarás» (Ex 20, 13). (shrink)

Lo scopo del presente lavoro è indagare la peculiare legittimazione dell’impegno politico per i filosofi proposta da Platone e accolta dai suoi immediati discepoli nella cosiddetta Prima Accademia: particolare attenzione sarà rivolta, soprattutto, alla «terza ondata» della _Repubblica_. Attraverso opportuni riferimenti alla _Lettera VII_, si mostrerà come la terza ondata costituisca il cuore del progetto di riforma politica e sociale di Platone, il quale invita l’intellettuale a concepire la propria missione politica o come istituzione di un regno filosofico o come (...) consiglio e aiuto da prestare a un re o a un signore: in entrambi i casi, l’immagine del governo di un solo uomo serve a connotare lo scenario preferibile per garantire l’istituzionalizzazione politica della filosofia. È così che, allora, i discepoli di Platone tentarono di stabilire contatti con realtà monarchiche o tiranniche accettando di farsi legislatori o consiglieri di un singolo individuo al comando, il quale veniva concepito come il perfetto connubio tra sapere e potere nel solco delle teorie del maestro. (shrink)

In spite of the relevance of a scientific representation of the world for naturalism, it is surprising that philosophy of science is less involved in the debate on naturalism than expected. Had the viewpoint of philosophy of science been duly considered, naturalism could not have overlooked the established lesson, according to which there is no well-defined recipe for what science must or must not be. In the present paper I address some implications of this lesson for naturalism, arguing that a (...) radically naturalistic outlook fails to pay sufficient attention to some of the main lessons that philosophy of science has taught us concerning the nature of scientific theories. One of these lessons is that real scientific theories are far more normative than ordinary scientific naturalism is ready to accept, a circumstance that at a minimum is bound to force most naturalization strategies to re-define their significance. (shrink)

H.-I. Marrou's Traité de la musique selon l'esprit de Saint Augustin is a useful document about the relationship between 1930s French music and non-conformist culture. His stress on the moral aim of music recalls the claim for a spiritual revolution that informs the spirit of 1930 and Jeune France's manifesto: the reading of Marrou's Traité helps us defining the humanistic poetics of music of the '30s, and the historical context mutually explains and justify most of Marrou's thought .His thought is (...) in fact developed in the wake of Christian Platonism revised by Augustine, subject to a series of small changes in sight of a better and more relevant moral theology. The philosophical outcome isn't very convincing, both for many appeals to the authority principle, and for frequent contradictions clearly emerging in his arguments. The tension between the fidelity to the doctrine, the attempts to re-read the music from an apologetic viewpoint and the aim to suggest a practical philosophy produces a methodological setback so striking that it represents one of the greater limits of the Treaty.Marrou's remarks about the relationship between Christianity and ancient philosophy are certainly as interesting as questionable from the point of view of the history of philosophy. He goes so far to correct Augustine himself, especially as regards the Pythagorean influence on his thought, to stress instead a religious component of the music that doesn't seem so evident in the Augustinian analysis.Quest'ultimo viene infatti sviluppato sulla scia del platonismo cristiano mediato da Agostino, che viene sottoposto a una serie di piccoli mutamenti in funzione di una migliore e più attuale teologia morale. L'esito filosofico non è tuttavia dei più convincenti, vuoi per i numerosi appelli al principio d'autorità, vuoi per le frequenti contraddizioni argomentative che emergono dal testo in modo evidente. La tensione tra la fedeltà alla dottrina, il tentativo di rilettura della musica in chiave apologetica e la proposta di una filosofia pratica producono così un vistoso scacco metodologico che rappresenta uno dei limiti maggiori del Trattato.Le considerazioni di Marrou sul rapporto tra cristianesimo e filosofia antica sono certamente molto interessanti ma assai discutibili da un punto di vista storico-filosofico. L’autore si spinge fino a correggere Agostino stesso, soprattutto per quanto riguarda la componente pitagorica della sua riflessione, per sottolineare invece una componente religiosa della musica che non sembra così evidente nella riflessione agostiniana.. (shrink)

The article reflects on the relationship between pedagogy and body moving from the sense of tact. Firstly, the question of the body-mind relationship in contemporary pedagogy is presented. Starting from the cartesian division of mind and body, we expose the main issues related to a possible overcoming of such dualism. In addition, we maintain that cartesian dualism significantly contributed to a dominance of mind over body in education. Then, we reconstruct the history of “pedagogical tact”: this concept changed from an (...) original somatic significance to a more interpersonal sense, putting the question of the body aside. In conclusion, we maintain that re-considering tact in its somatic significance can help build innovative pedagogical theories and practices aimed at a broader reconsideration of bodies in education. (shrink)

The present Special Issue is the result of a collective effort to try to re-engage with the idea and concept of pedagogical tact. During two days in 2023, 17 people gathered in Malmö, Sweden for pr...

Ideology has re-emerged as a vital topic of investigation in social psychology. This chapter proposes that political ideologies possess both a discursive superstructure and a functional substructure and that ideologies serve social psychological functions that may not be entirely rational but help to explain why individuals are drawn to them. System justification, it argues, is the ‘glue’ that holds the two dimensions of left–right ideology together. To vindicate and uphold traditional institutions and arrangements, the right defends existing inequalities as just (...) and necessary. To bring about a more equal state of affairs, the left is motivated to challenge existing institutions and practices. (shrink)

All disciplines can count on a noble founder, and the representation of this founder as an authority is key in order to construe a discipline's identity. This book sheds light on how Plato and other authorities were represented in one of the most long-lasting traditions of all time. It leads the reader through exegesis and polemics, recovery of the past and construction of a philosophical identity. From Xenocrates to Proclus, from the sceptical shift to the re-establishment of dogmatism, from the (...) Mosaic of the Philosophers to the Neoplatonist Commentaries, the construction of authority emerges as a way of access to the core of the Platonist tradition. (shrink)

All disciplines can count on a noble founder, and the representation of this founder as an authority is key in order to construe a discipline's identity. This book sheds light on how Plato and other authorities were represented in one of the most long-lasting traditions of all time. It leads the reader through exegesis and polemics, recovery of the past and construction of a philosophical identity. From Xenocrates to Proclus, from the sceptical shift to the re-establishment of dogmatism, from the (...) Mosaic of the Philosophers to the Neoplatonist Commentaries, the construction of authority emerges as a way of access to the core of the Platonist tradition. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that, although neglected so far, there is a strong link between generics and testimonial injustice. Testimonial injustice is a form of epistemic injustice that “occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word”. Generics are sentences that express generalizations about a category or about its members without specifying what proportion of the category members possess the predicated property. We argue that generics are especially suited to cause testimonial (...) injustice for three reasons. First, generics elicit an “inferential asymmetry” :1452–1482, 2010). That is, generics are accepted even if only a few individuals possess the predicated property but are, nonetheless, taken to refer to almost all the members of the category. This peculiar combination makes generics particularly apt to cause testimonial injustice. High resistance to counter-evidence is a crucial feature of prejudice, the cause of testimonial injustice, and the more highly predictive a generalization the more it will be employed in concrete situations, leading to instances of testimonial injustice. Second, generics seem to play a key role in leading people to develop essentialist beliefs : 273–301, 2010; Rhodes et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci 109: 13526–13531, 2012). Subjects holding such beliefs treat categories as warranting strong generaliations over their members. Therefore, they will be more likely to rely on prejudice while dealing with the category members. Finally, generics are outstandingly common in everyday speech. Hence, their noxious effects are amplified by their diffusion and should not be underestimated. (shrink)

To make the case for non-conceptualism, Heck draws on an apparent dichotomy between linguistic and iconic representations. According to Heck, whereas linguistic representations have conceptual content, the content of iconic representations is non-conceptual. Based on the case of cartographic systems, the authors criticize Heck’s dichotomous distinction. They argue that maps are composed of semantically arbitrary elements that play different syntactic roles. Based on this, they claim that maps have a predicative structure and convey conceptual content. Finally, the authors argue that, (...) despite their differences, maps and sentences can logically interact with each other through heterogeneous inferences. These considerations not only challenge the view that conceptual content and inferential processes necessarily involve linguistic representations; furthermore, they provide a new perspective for thinking about maps, their semantics and syntax, and their interaction with linguistic systems. (shrink)

In their theoretical and experimental reflections on the capacities and behaviours of living systems, neuroscientists often formulate generalizations about the behaviour of neural circuits. These generalizations are highly idealized, as they omit reference to the myriads of conditions that could perturb the behaviour of the modelled system in real-world settings. This article analyses an experimental investigation of the behaviour of place cells in the rat hippocampus, in which highly idealized generalizations were tested by comparing predictions flowing from them with real-world (...) experimental results. The aim of the article is to identify under what conditions even single prediction failures regarding the behaviour of single cells sufficed to reject highly idealized generalizations, and under what conditions prima facie counter-examples were deemed to be irrelevant to the testing of highly idealized generalizations. The results of this analysis may contribute to understanding how idealized models are tested experimentally in neuroscience and used to make reliable predictions concerning living systems in real-world settings. (shrink)

Divided beauty (Dresden, 1764) -- Little gods of the street (Munich-Berlin, 1828) -- Plebeian heaven (Paris, 1830) -- The poet of the new world (Boston, 1841-New York, 1855) -- The gymnasts of the impossible (Paris, 1879) -- The dance of light (Paris, Folies Bergère, 1893) -- The immobile theatre (Paris 1894-95) -- Decorative art as social art: temple, house, factory (Paris-London-Berlin) -- Master of surfaces (Paris, 1902) -- The temple staircase (Moscow-Dresden, 1912) -- The machine and its shadow (Hollywood, 1916) (...) -- The majesty of the moment (New York, 1921) -- Seeing things through things (Moscow, 1926) -- The cruel radiance of what is (Hale County, 1936-New York, 1941). (shrink)

Homo Socer, de Giorgio Agamben, constitue un ensemble th©♭orique essentiel, o©£ celui-ci d©♭veloppe l'une des constructions les plus saisissantes de la pens©♭e europ©♭enne contemporaine. On en veut pour preuve les lectures, interpr©♭tations et usages multiples qui en sont faits dans des domaines aussi vari©♭s que la th©♭orie contemporaine de l'art, la critique litt©♭raire, les sciences humaines, la philosophie ou encore la pens©♭e politique. Homo Socer est rapidement devenu l'une des r©♭f©♭rences incontournables dans les d©♭bats qui animent actuellement chacun de ces (...) domaines. Anoush Ganjipour r©♭unit ici les contributions d'©tienne Balibar, Thomas B©♭natoul, Barbara Carnevali, Pierre Caye, Marie Goupy, Jean-Luc Nancy, Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, Federico Tarragoni et Giorgio Agamben lui-m©®me, pour proposer la premi©·re approche panoramique d'Homo Socer et, partant, de la pens©♭e de Giorgio Agamben dans sa syst©♭maticit©♭ et sa coh©♭rence interne."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Past research showed that the ability to focus on one’s internal states positively correlates with the self-regulation of behavior in situations that are accompanied by somatic and/or physiological changes, such as emotions, physical workload, and decision-making. The analysis of moral oriented decision-making can be the first step for better understanding the legal reasoning carried on by the main players in the field, as lawyers are. For this reason, this study investigated the influence of the decision context and interoceptive manipulation on (...) the moral decision-making process in the legal field gathering the responses of two groups of lawyers. A total of 20 lawyers were randomly divided into an experimental group, which was explicitly required to focus the attention on its interoceptive correlates, and a control group, which only received the general instruction to perform the task. Both groups underwent a modified version of the Ultimatum Game, where are presented three different moral conditions and three different offers. Results highlighted a significant increase of Acceptance Rate in those offers that should be considered more equal than fair or unfair ones, associated with a general increase of Reaction Times in the equal offers. Furthermore, the interoceptive manipulation oriented the Lawyers toward a more self-centered decision. This study shows how individual, situational, contextual, and interoceptive factors may influence the moral decision-making of lawyers. Future research in the so-called Neurolaw field is needed to replicate and expand current findings. (shrink)

While it has extensively been argued that aesthetic categories such as beauty have a direct relationship to emotion, there has only been limited psychological research on the relationship between aesthetic judgments and emotional responses to art. Music is recognized to be an art form that elicits strong emotional responses in listeners and it is therefore pertinent to study empirically how aesthetic judgments relate to emotional responses to music listening. The aim of the presented study is to test for the impact (...) of aesthetic judgment on various psychophysiological response measures of emotion that were assessed in parallel in two contemporary music concerts, each with a different audience and program. In order to induce different levels of aesthetic judgments in participants, we assigned them randomly to one of two groups in a between-subjects design in both concerts: One group attended a talk on the music presented, illustrating its aesthetic value, while the other group attended an unrelated talk on a non-musical topic. During the concerts, we assessed, from 41 participants in Concert 1 (10 males; mean age 23 years) and 53 in Concert 2 (14 males; mean age 24 years), different emotional response components: (a) retrospective rating of emotion; (b) activation of the peripheral nervous system (skin conductance and heart rate); (c) the activity of two facial muscles associated with emotional valence (only Concert 1). Participants listened to live performances of a selection of contemporary music pieces. After each piece, participants rated the music according to a list of commonly discussed aesthetic judgment criteria, all thought to contribute to the perceived aesthetic value of art. While preconcert talks did not significantly impact value judgment ratings, through factor analyses it was found that aesthetic judgments could be grouped into several underlying dimensions representing analytical, semantic, traditional aesthetic, and typicality values. All dimensions where then subsequently shown to be related to subjective and physiological responses to music. The findings reported in this study contribute to understanding the relationship between aesthetic judgment processes and emotional responses to music. The results give further evidence that cognitive-affective interactions have a significant role in processing music stimuli. (shrink)

On February 2,2004,U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno issued the final order and judgment authorizing a settlement between the HMO CIGNA Healthcare and the physicians who treated patients covered by CIGNA, ending the companys involvement in the larger class action In re Managed Care Litigation, which stil includes eight other HMOs. The settlement, estimated by plaintiffs experts to be worth 1.3 billion, mandates changes in the companys business and disclosure practices, establishes a non-profit foundation dedicated to the promotion of high (...) quality health care, and guarantees at least 70 million in payments to the physicians. Similar in scope to the settlement approved between the physician class and Aetna Healthcare in October 2003,the settlement could potentially set a new standard for transparency and physician involvement in billing practices; however, much depends on the outcome of the remainder of the class action, which is set to go to trial later this year. (shrink)

In multi-agent systems (MAS), abstract argumentation and argumentation schemes are increasingly important. To be useful for MAS, argumentation schemes require a computational approach so that agents can use the components of a scheme to construct and present arguments and counterarguments. This paper proposes a syntactic analysis that integrates argumentation schemes with abstract argumentation. Schemes can be analysed into the roles that propositions play in each scheme and the structure of the associated propositions, yielding a greater understanding of the schemes, a (...) uniform method of analysis, and a systematic means to relate one scheme to another. This analysis of the schemes helps to clarify what is needed to provide denotations of the terms and predicates in a semantic model. (shrink)

Firewalls are an important tool in the assurance of network security. Packet filtering firewalls are configured by providing a set of rules that identify how to handle individual data packets that arrive at the firewall. In large firewall configurations, conflicts may arise between these rules. Argumentation provides a way of handling conflicts such that their origin is illuminated, and hence can help a system administrator understand the effects of a given configuration. To show how argumentation might help in this domain (...) we examine the use of a system of metalevel argumentation for firewall configuration, showing how it makes conflicts and their origins clear, and showing how different instantiations of a metalevel argumentation system provide alternative ways to resolve conflicts. (shrink)

Models of deliberative dialogue are fundamental for developing autonomous systems that support human practical reasoning. The question discussed in this paper is whether existing models are able to capture the complexity and richness of natural deliberation. In real-world contexts, circumstances relevant to the decision can change rapidly. We reflect on today’s leading model of deliberation dialogue and we propose an extension to capture how newly exchanged information about changing circumstances may shape the dialogue. Moreover, in natural deliberation, a dialogue may (...) be successful even if a decision on what to do has not been made. A set of criteria is proposed to address the problem of when to close off the practical reasoning phase of dialogue. We discuss some measures for evaluating the success of a dialogue after closure and we present some initial efforts to introduce the new deliberation features within an existing model of agent dialogue. We believe that our extended model of dialogue may contribute to representing that richness of natural deliberative dialogue that is yet to be addressed in existing models of agent deliberation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:…duplici modo Daemon homini carnaliter copulatur:Ludovico Maria Sinistrari's Alternative to Apostasy and Sorcery in Human-Incubus IntercourseBert RoestLodovico Maria Sinistrari d'Ameno (1632-1701), who joined the Riformati branch in 1647 in the Pavian Provincia di S. Diego, is one of the many productive seventeenth-century Franciscan authors whose works are not habitually discussed within the world of Franciscan scholarship. According to the existing bibliographical guides, Sinistrari authored under his own name and (...) under various pseudonyms (such as Panfilo, Clodoveo Farvamondi, Nicolò Turris, Lazaro Socio, and Lazaro Agostino Cotta) about 34 works, more or less half of which reached the printing press during his lifetime. These works cover a wide range of genres and topics, including comedies, religious and secular dramas, astrological, astronomical and scientific works (including polemics against works of other scholars, medical and embryological papers), defenses of the religious orders, sermons and funerary orations, treatises of sacramental theology, some atypical hagiographical texts, and works of religious disciplinary law. This production was linked to his acknowledged expertise in a variety of disciplines, which apparently made him a celebrated lecturer in Pavia within the order and in public schools, teaching the liberal arts, geometry, military architecture and theology. Some of his works are connected with his activities as a preacher, advisor, and later censor for the Holy Office, practicing exorcist, consultant for the Franciscan Minister General, and personal theologian of Alessandro Montecatini (Archbishop of Avignon) and Federico Caccia (Cardinal and Archbishop of Milan).1Within the order itself, his most enduring legacy might have been his three volume Practica criminalis illustrata, a work that is both a commentary on penal law within the Franciscan order, and a more wide-ranging manual for dealing with penitential and religious-criminal issues, written [End Page 191] to supplant older handbooks of such kind. He was initially tasked to compile such materials at the Franciscan general chapter celebrated at Rome in 1688. The first two volumes of the Practica criminalis illustrata appeared in print in 1693. They were again published posthumously in 1702.2 In between he finished another volume of the Practica with a somewhat different focus, also known under the title De delictis et poenis tractatus absolutissimus, and which was proposed as a useful guidebook for judges, lawyers, and prelates in ecclesiastical courts, as well as for confessors, exorcists, and lay practitioners of law. This work was issued for the first time in 1700.3Although a wished-for early eighteenth-century re-issue of this multi-volume Practica criminalis illustrata was put on hold when it was placed on the index of forbidden books in March 1709 donec corrigatur for suspicion of laxist tendencies,4 all three volumes did appear again with some modifications in a 1753-1754 opera omnia edition. It could be found in a significant number of Franciscan and non-Franciscan order libraries, and apparently remained for a long time an important resource for penitential and disciplinary policies.5 [End Page 192]Whereas Sinistrari, like so many early modern friars, is not a commanding presence in the scholarly and literary canon of present-day Franciscan order history, he became a figure of some fascination and even notoriety in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century esoteric circles, and also is known by modern scholars of early modern demonology and early modern sexuality. This is mainly due to the publication, in the later nineteenth century, of two of Sinistrari's works on demoniality and sodomy that as such were not printed in full during our friar's lifetime, but parts of which are included in Titulus 4 of his Latin De delictis et poenis tractatus absolutissimus, namely the crimes against chastity (which in De delictis et poenis, alongside of daemonialitas [which comes last], comprises constortium suspectum, sollecitatio ad turpia, fornicatio, stuprum, incestus, raptus, clausurae violatio, sacrilegium cum moniali, mollities, sodomia, and bestialitas).Hence, in 1875, the French book collector and editor Isidore Liseux issued for the first time De la démonialité et des animaux incubes et succubes où l'on prouve qu'il existe sur terre des créatures raisonnables autres que l'homme, ayant comme lui un corps et une âme, naissant et mourant comme... (shrink)

During the Renaissance, several scholars worked to revive the contents and methods developed by the ancient Greek mathematicians. They began their research by studying the Latin editions of the Greek classics. The problem of Apollonius is a significant case study that sheds light on the recovery and re-appropriation of the solution methods employed by Greek mathematics. In this article, I will explore both the manuscript sources and the printed editions used by the Urbino School (Federico Commandino and Guidobaldo del (...) Monte) to solve the problem of Apollonius. (shrink)

This paper illustrates how external symbol grounding can be studied in simulations with large populations. We discuss how we can simulate language evolution in a relatively complex environment which has been developed in the context of the New Ties project. This project has the objective of evolving a cultural society and, in doing so, the agents have to evolve a communication system that is grounded in their interactions with their virtual environment and with other individuals. A preliminary experiment is presented (...) in which we investigate the effect of a number of learning mechanisms. The results show that the social symbol grounding problem is a particularly hard one; however, we provide an ideal platform to study this problem. (shrink)

Moments Politiques collects the short essays and interviews of Jacques Rancière from a span of thirty years, 1977 to 2007. Sparked by specific events in European and world news as they were happening, these pieces seek to call into question the inevitability we see in the world and undermine the legitimacy of what we think is possible. By examining the issues in which political moments arise, such as 9/11, immigration laws, and even the philosophy of Foucault, Rancière opens us up (...) to the possibility of a different world, to reimagining, and re-charting, the map of what is possible. (shrink)

Is music just matter of hearing and producing notes? And is it of interest just to musicians? By exploring different authors and philosophical trends of the Roman Empire, from Philo of Alexandria to Alexander of Aphrodisias, from the rebirth of Platonism with Plutarch to the last Neoplatonists, this book sheds light on different ways in which music and musical notions were made a crucial part of philosophical discourse. Far from being mere metaphors, notions such as harmony, concord and attunement became (...) key philosophical tools in order to better grasp and conceptualise fundamental notions in philosophical debates from cosmology to ethics and from epistemology to theology. The volume is written by a distinguished international team of contributors. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to amend some misunderstandings about Franz Brentano's thesis of intentionality, defending a different interpretation from the current one about the nature of intentional object and intentional correlate, and proposing an analysis of the origin of this conceptual confusion. The main problem lies in his student Anton Marty's interpretation of the immanent object, paving the way for an immanentist reading of Brentano's theory of intentionality.

In this book, Jacques Rancière explores how political relations develop fundamentally from sensual experience, as individual feelings become the concern of the whole community. Since politics emerges then from the 'division of the sensual', aesthetic experience becomes a radical means for social and political upheaval.

The importance of negotiation has increased in the last years as a relevant interaction to solve conflicts in multi-agent systems. Although there are many different scenarios, a typical negotiating situation involves two cooperative agents that cannot reach their goals by themselves because they do not have some resources needed to reach such goals. Therefore, a way to improve their mutual benefit is to start a negotiation dialogue, taking into account that they might have incomplete or incorrect beliefs about the other (...) agent’s goals and resources. The exchange of arguments during the negotiation gives them information that makes it possible to update their beliefs and consequently they can offer proposals which are closer for reaching a deal. In order to formalize their proposals in a negotiation setting, the agents must be able to generate, select and evaluate arguments associated with such offers, updating their mental state accordingly. We situate our work on this kind of scenarios with two argumentation-based negotiation agents equipped with belief revision operations in the generation and interpretation of arguments. It has been proved that those agents that take advantage of belief revision during the negotiation achieve an overall better performance. Because the belief revision process depends on the information the agents exchange in their utterances, in this paper we focus on different communication strategies the agents may implement and the impact that they have in the negotiation process. For this purpose, we present a negotiation protocol where the messages are extended to include a critique to the last proposal received and a counterproposal. Also, we define proposals that may be more or less informative containing different justifications. An intentional agent architecture is proposed and following this model different kind of negotiating agents are created using diverse communication strategies. To assess the impact these strategies have in the negotiation process some simulations are conducted, analyzing the results obtained. (shrink)

Atas do III Colóquio Internacional de Metafísica. [ISBN 978-85-7273-730-2]. Sumário: 1. Prazer, desejo e amor-paixão no texto de Lucrécio, por Antonio Júlio Garcia Freire; 2. Anaximandro: física, metafísica e direito, por Celso Martins Azar Filho; 3. Carta a Guimarães Rosa, por Cícero Cunha Bezerra; 4. Ante ens, non ens: La primacía de La negación em El neoplatonismo medievel, por Claudia D’Amico; 5. Metafísica e neoplatonismo, por David G. Santos; 6. Movimento e tempo no pensamento de Epicuro, por Everton da Silva (...) Rocha; 7. Críticas e elogios de Nietzche a Sócrates, por Fernanda Bulhões; 8. Sobre a Metafísica ou a respeito do jejum, por Gilvan Fogel; 9. A origem estética da ontologia hermenêutica de Luigi Pareyson, por Íris Fátima da Silva; 10. A Natureza da filosofia de Hume, por Jaimir Conte; 11. Logique ET métaphysique, por Jean-Baptiste Jainet; 12. Blaise Pascal: da recusa da metafísica da raison à metafísica do « estudo do homem », por João Emiliano Fotaleza de Aquino; 13. O niilismo no prólogo de Assim Falou Zaratustra. Por José Elielton de Sousa; 14. Presencia;Ausência: de Plotino a Procolo, por José Maria Zamora; 15. A natureza do Eros platônico, por Jovelina Maria Ramos de Souza; 16. Breve comentário acerca da origem da Gelassenheit de Heidegger a partir da mística de mestre Eckkart, por Luiz Fernando Fontes-Teixeira; 17. Humanismo e domesticação em Regras para o parque humano, por Luiz Roberto Alves dos Santos; 18. Contra a teoria de dois mundos na filosofia de Platão (República V 476e-478e), por Marcelo Pimenta Marques; 19. Sensações, impressões, projeções: as afecções do pensamento, por Markus Figueira da Silva; 20. Contribuições à história de uma metáfora: Heidegger e Nicolau de Cusa, por Oscar Federico Bauchwitz; 21. Uma impossibilidade ontológica em Schopenhauer, por Paulo César Oliveira Vasconcelos; 22. Ser e fenômeno: a Fenomenologia como teoria estética da ciência, por Pedro Paulo Coroa; 23. Para que serve a Metafísica de Aristóteles? O exemplo do movimento animal, por Pierre-marie Morel; 24. Contribuições para uma ontologia digital, por Rafael Capurro; 25. O que é o fim da metafísica, por Rodrigo Ribeiro Alves Neto; 26. A Physis na conformação do logos: linguagem e pensamento no corpus epicúreo, por Rodrigo Vidal do Nascimento; 27. O acontecimento de mundo na era da informação, por Soraya Guimarães da Silva; 28. Apofaticismo e abstração em Mark Rothko, por Vanessa Alves de Lacerda Santos. -/- . (shrink)

In this text, we ask if analogy can enable a dialogue between religion and the social sciences. To do so, we focus in the conflict between the biblical understanding of man as a created being and the notion of human nature as a social construct. Although there seems to be a fundamental dispute in social constructivism between nature and freedom (Ian Hacking), we consider analogical reasoning (Mauricio Beuchot) enables anthropological views, like Philip Hefner’s, that include central aspects of the doctrine (...) of creation and understand nature and freedom as complementary human features, thus allowing the desired dialogue. (shrink)

L'absence de travaux sur les missions intérieures jésuites en Espagne et au Portugal ne correspond pas à l'abondance des documents qui attestent une forte activité missionnaire depuis la deuxième moitié du XVIe siècle. Le caractère fondamentalement quadragésimal de l'activité initiale des jésuites déterminera le sens pénitentiel des missions ibériques et, par conséquent, les stratégies missionnaires elles-mêmes. Les formes de « présentation » des jésuites et le genre de prédication qu'ils adressent aux fidèles sont des exemples de ces stratégies, vouées à (...) l'objectif final, propres aux missions pénitentielles, de mener les fidèles à la « conversion ». Toutefois, cette idée de conversion prend un sens politique, qui trouve sa manifestation la plus évidente dans l'activité de pacification des communautés. L'action accomplie par les jésuites auprès des saisonniers dans les madragues de Conil et de Zahara en Andalousie montre le rôle joué par la mission intérieure comme moyen d'articulation du corps social, selon les modèles de comportement et d'organisation politique de l'époque. (shrink)

Since the advent of drug regulation in 1962, regulatory agencies have been in the practice of using strict standards to test the safety and efficacy of medical treatments and products. Regulatory agencies, such as the FDA, demand two full-fledged Randomized Clinical Trials demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of drugs to grant its marketing authorization. On the contrary, surgical treatments are left completely unregulated. There are several reasons explaining this difference, and all of them point to the difficulty of conducting well-designed (...) RCTs in surgery. However, we argue that none of these arguments is decisive and that, under certain conditions, surgical RCTs can be morally justified and methodologically sound. Although ethical constraints restrict the number of testable surgical procedures, and surgical trials might not be as dependable as pharmaceutical RCTs, our analysis suggests that, in certain cases, it is possible to obtain high-quality evidence about the safety and efficacy of surgical procedures. Untested surgical treatments may prove to be ineffective and harm patients. Therefore, regulation of surgical procedures seems not only morally acceptable and able to provide reliable scientific evidence, but also desirable and justified from an ethical-political standpoint. (shrink)