The article treats the presence of stars in terrestrial landscapes, in opposition to the Underworld and in connection to the topos of katabasis, above all in order to pursue in more depth a textual problem in the fabula Orphei of Vergil’s Georgics. The philological question is approached both on the basis of context and in relation to the descent into Hades of Aeneas, as well as in diachronic comparison with the earlier Homeric katabasis of Odysseus and the later otherworldly voyage (...) of Dante in the Commedia. This internal and intertextual investigation reveals multiple functions of the celestial bodies in similar stories, as well as analogies between Homer, Vergil and Dante, linked by interests in nature and astronomy and by reciprocal influences. In fact, the Greek model and the Italian emulator seem to help clarify the contested passage in the Vergilian katabasis of Orpheus, while the Latin poet and Dante rework a celestial detail already present in the νέκυια of Homer. Finally, both these classical authors, as well as Ovid, are subtly present at the ends of the three parts of the Commedia, each of which closes with the suggestive and symbolic image of “stars”, which evokes and renews an ancient tradition. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to investigate around the life in the contemporary society, characterized by risks and catastrophes. What does mean to live fearing that in any moment a catastrophe could happen (a tsunami, an earthquake, a nuclear explosion)? Despite of the failure of science and public institutions in the prevention of the catastrophes, the question is the following: Can we use the catastrophe as a paradigm of the contemporary uncertain life, trying to mean it as a theme (...) of mediation? Can we use the catastrophe for developing a philosophy of the recognition of the other who has been involved in the same tragedy? (shrink)

The range of opportunities people enjoy in life largely depends on social, biological, and genetic factors for which individuals are not responsible. Philosophical debates about equality of opportunities have focussed mainly on addressing social determinants of inequalities. However, the introduction of human bioenhancement should make us reconsider what our commitment to equality entails. We propose a way of improving morally relevant equality that is centred on what we consider a fair distribution of bioenhancements. In the first part, we identify three (...) main positions in the debate on bioenhancement and equality, and we show how each of them fails to meet the demands of a serious commitment to equality. In the second part, we formulate a new proposal that we think better promotes equality of opportunities: people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds should be given access to bioenhancements while people from privileged socio-economic background should be prohibited from using them. We argue that those who are concerned about the inequality implications of bioenhancement should embrace this solution, rather than reject bioenhancement. (shrink)

The notion of grounding is usually conceived as an objective and explanatory relation. It connects two relata if one—the ground—determines or explains the other—the consequence. In the contemporary literature on grounding, much effort has been devoted to logically characterize the formal aspects of grounding, but a major hard problem remains: defining suitable grounding principles for universal and existential formulae. Indeed, several grounding principles for quantified formulae have been proposed, but all of them are exposed to paradoxes in some very natural (...) contexts of application. We introduce in this paper a first-order formal system that captures the notion of grounding and avoids the paradoxes in a novel and non-trivial way. The system we present formally develops Bolzano’s ideas on grounding by employing Hilbert’s ε-terms and an adapted version of Fine’s theory of arbitrary objects. (shrink)

Troppo spesso lo specialismo, pur indispensabile, impedisce una proficua collaborazione tra studiosi. È pensando a un territorio al cui centro si colloca il testo o, meglio, i testi, nella fattispecie di filosofi e scienziati, che è stata disegnata la geografia del convegno; per far incontrare editori di testi, storici della filosofia e della scienza, storici del libro, bibliografi e biblioteconomisti, informatici ed esperti di manoscritti.

[Esotericism. One-day Workshop about the Annale n. 25 of the Storia d'Italia Einaudi]. This section contains the proceedings of the one-day workshop on the book Esoterismo, published as the Annale n. 25 in the collection "History of Italy" by Einaudi. The workshop was organized by ISPF on the October 26, 2011 to promote the discussion on the significance of Western esotericist traditions in Italian history. S. Caianiello’s introduction highlights some major concepts and goals of the recent field of studies about (...) Western Esotericism, and some open problems about its definition. M. Cambi comments on the substantial transformation of esotericist themes in Giordano Bruno’s natural philosophy, whereby the sources of the magician’s power are completely enclosed in the realm of nature, thus rejecting any transcendent foundation. M. Conforti focuses on "the function and opportunities" offered by the Western Esotericism approach "to the genesis and development of early modern science" and comments from this perspective on different contributions in the volume, emphasizing however the importance of largely pre-existing traditions in the history of science and medicine which have long challenged the wiggish separation between science and magic, rational and irrational thought. L. Simonutti provides new material to the general theme, with a historical-philosophical analysis of the esotericist elements in Picart’s iconography of the 18th Century edition of "Cymbalum mundi". F. Sofia discusses the effective role of esotericist traditions in the attempts to establish a "civil religion" in Italy from Risorgimento to Fascism, a history in which, she argues, it is difficult to establish "how much esotericism was an intentional choice or the product of an unavoidable nicodemism". C. Castellano reviews the contributions dedicated to the "political teology" of Italian Risorgimento, dealing in depth with the complex relationship between Freemasonry and Carbonari in Italy – in her view, more of a cultural than of a strictly political connection – and highlights the relevance of the anticurial component in their esotericist inspiration. G.M. Cazzaniga, author and editor of the Annale, beyond reacting to the different stimuli offered by the discussion, provides a brief history of Western Esotericism studies in Europe and of the reasons of their difficult reception in Italy. (shrink)

Riassunto: Nell’età dello sviluppo, i bambini iniziano a comprendere e a produrre le prime espressioni ironiche, in particolare nel contesto familiare. Sebbene sia comprensione sia produzione di ironia richiedano abilità linguistiche, pragmatiche, di Teoria della Mente e di tipo socio-comunicativo, non è ancora chiaro come tali abilità entrino in gioco nel caso della produzione del sarcasmo. Questo contributo ripercorre gli studi principali sulla comprensione vs. produzione dell’ironia in età evolutiva, mettendo in evidenza il ruolo delle capacità affettive e argomentative necessarie (...) alla produzione dell’ironia e del sarcasmo. In riferimento a studi recenti, si ipotizza che le capacità di Mind-mindedness genitoriale possano influenzare lo sviluppo delle capacità di lettura della mente e, più in particolare, gli aspetti affettivi e relazionali nel processo di comprensione dell’ironia. Si ipotizza altresì che la produzione dell’ironia, e in particolare del sarcasmo, sia modulata non solo dalle capacità affettive ma anche da quelle argomentative in via di sviluppo. Parole chiave: Produzione del sarcasmo; Capacità affettive; Capacità argomentative; Comprensione; Teoria della mente Comprehension vs. Production of Sarcasm: The role of the affective and argumentative capacities in childhood: Children start comprehending and producing their first ironic expressions quite early especially in the family environment. The comprehension and the production of irony require linguistic, pragmatic, social and communicative capacities as well as abilities related to the Theory of Mind. However, it is not yet clear how these abilities are involved in the production of sarcasm. In this manuscript we review the main studies on the production of irony in childhood in order to identify the affective and argumentative capacities that are needed for the production of irony and sarcasm and the specific role they play in that. On the basis of these studies, we hypothesize that parental mind-mindedness promote children’s development of mindreading capacities and, more specifically, of those affective and relational aspects needed for the comprehension of irony. Moreover, we also argue that the production of irony and even more of sarcasm depends not only on the affective capacities but also on the developing argumentative capacities of the children. Keywords: Production of Sarcasm; Affective Capacities; Argumentative Capacities; Comprehension, Theory of Mind. (shrink)

Physical appearance influences our perceptions, judgments, and decision making about others. While the current literature with regard to the perceptions and judgments of nondisabled people’s attractiveness is robust, the research investigating the perceived physical attractiveness and judgments of physically disabled individuals is scarce. Therefore, in the current study, we investigated whether people with physical disabilities are perceived by the opposite sex as more or less attractive relative to nondisabled individuals. Our results, based on over 675 participants, showed a positive effect (...) for women’s attractiveness ratings of men with physical disabilities, but not men’s attractiveness ratings of physically disabled women. Moreover, social desirability bias was positively associated with attractiveness ratings of physically disabled individuals, meaning those with higher tendency to be viewed favorably by others rated physically disabled individuals more attractive. Finally, our results revealed that attractiveness ratings of individuals with physical disabilities are positively associated with extroversion and empathy in both men and women, and positively with agreeableness and negatively with neuroticism in women. In conclusion, our study showed women rate men with physical disabilities as higher on attractiveness than nondisabled men, which is also influenced by their social desirability bias. (shrink)

In referential communication, Grice's Maxim of Quantity is thought to imply that utterances conveying unnecessary information should incur comprehension difficulties. There is, however, considerable evidence that speakers frequently encode redundant information in their referring expressions, raising the question as to whether such overspecifications hinder listeners’ processing. Evidence from previous work is inconclusive, and mostly comes from offline studies. In this article, we present two event‐related potential (ERP) experiments, investigating the real‐time comprehension of referring expressions that contain redundant adjectives in complex (...) visual contexts. Our findings provide support for both Gricean and bounded‐rational accounts. We argue that these seemingly incompatible results can be reconciled if common ground is taken into account. We propose a bounded‐rational account of overspecification, according to which even redundant words can be beneficial to comprehension to the extent that they facilitate the reduction of listeners’ uncertainty regarding the target referent. (shrink)

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic has broadly impacted university students’ customary life, resulting in remarkable levels of stress and psychological suffering. Although the acute phase of the crisis has been overcome, it does not imply that perceived stress related to the risk of contagion and to the changes in the relational life experienced over more than 1 year of the pandemic will promptly and abruptly decrease. This study aims at comparing university students’ psychological health conditions before and during the COVID-19 (...) pandemic, but also at providing information on how psychological health conditions evolved over the 1 year of the pandemic. We analyzed data from a repeated cross-sectional survey on different samples of university students before the pandemic in 2017 and during the pandemic. During the pandemic, data were collected at three stages. The COVID-19 Student Stress Questionnaire and the Symptom-Checklist-90-Revised were used to assess, respectively, COVID-19-related stressors and the presence of psychological symptoms. Psychological health conditions were compared at baseline and during the pandemic, whereas both psychological health conditions and perceived levels of COVID-19-related stressors were compared over the three pandemic stages. In addition, Logistic Regression was used to explore the associations between COVID-19-related stressors and psychological symptoms. Findings revealed a significant increase in symptoms of Depression, Phobic-Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive, and Psychoticism from pre to during the pandemic. Perceived levels of COVID-19-related stress and specific psychological symptoms significantly increased as the pandemic was progressing. COVID-19-related stressors emerged as significantly associated with several psychopathological symptoms. Findings are discussed with the aim of providing tailored interventions to prevent mental disease and promote psychological adjustment in this specific stage of transition within this exceptional global emergency. (shrink)

BackgroundThe psychological burden possibly deriving from not immediately undergoing radical treatment for prostate cancer could be a potential disadvantage of active surveillance, especially in the eve of some relevant clinical exams [i.e., re-biopsy, prostate-specific antigen test, and medical examination]. Even if it is known from the literature that the majority of PCa men in AS do not report heightened anxiety, there is a minority of patients who show clinically significant levels of anxiety after diagnosis. The present study aimed to investigate (...) if demographic, clinical, and psychological variables at the entrance in AS were associated with the risk of developing clinically significant PCa-related anxiety 2 months before the first re-biopsy and to offer psychological support to improve quality of life.Materials and MethodsA total of 236 patients participated in the PCa Research International: AS protocol and in PRIAS-QoL study. Demographic/clinical features, health-related QoL domains, coping with cancer, PCa-related anxiety [Memorial Anxiety Scale for PCa ], personality traits, and decision-making-related factors were assessed at T0. MAX-PC was also administered at T1. PCa-related anxiety at T1 was considered to be of clinical significance if the MAX-PC score was ≥1.5. Multivariable logistic regression coupled to bootstrap was used to detect factors associated with high levels of anxiety.ResultsThe median age was 64.4 years. Fifty-six patients reported MAX-PC total score above the cutoff. Three factors were associated with a high level of PCa anxiety at T1: anxious preoccupation [odds ratio = 4.36], extraversion, and prostate-related symptoms. Physical well-being was associated with a low PCa anxiety subscale ; neuroticism and functional well-being were associated with PSA anxiety. Neuroticism and helplessness/hopelessness were associated with fear of progression.ConclusionOnly a partial portion of the sample experienced significant levels of anxiety after 10 months. Psychological assessment should be routinely conducted to detect risk factors for increased anxiety, offering tailored psychological interventions aimed at promoting interpersonal awareness and emotional well-being. (shrink)

The paper aims to show how and to what extent social and cultural cues influence figurative language understanding. In the first part of the paper, we argue that social-contextual knowledge is organized in “schemas” or stereotypes, which act as strong bias in speaker’s meaning comprehension. Research in Experimental Pragmatics has shown that age, gender, race and occupation stereotypes are important contextual sources of information to interpret others’ speech and provide an explanation of their behavior. In the second part of the (...) paper, we focus on gender stereotypes and their influence on the comprehension of figurative language, to show how the social functions of figurative language are modulated by gender stereotypes. We provide then an explanation of gender stereotypical bias on figurative language in terms of possible outcomes in the social context. (shrink)

In Memory, History, Forgetting, Ricœur does not provide us with a clear definition of collective memory. In this article, we will try to show how it could nevertheless be described, based on the same text, as the capacity for recognition, by way of reciprocal attribution, memories that are engraved in temporal spaces and are shared with our neighbors and, through them, with strangers. To verify this hypothesis, we will analyse Ricœur’s reflection on architecture as public memory’s engraving into space, presented (...) for the first time in the text “Architecture et narrativité.” Lastly, we will consider imagination and bodily memory, i.e. habit emanating from the act of inhabiting, as the conditions of possibility for the crystallization of memories in shared places. (shrink)

The political role of architecture in urban space design is still a significant philosophical issue. Starting from the assumption that cities can actually be understood as material texts, Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics has described the architecture as a creative mimesis of space. Textual hermeneutics applied to architecture, if crossed with Ricoeur’s reading of ideology and utopia, allows today to qualify the figure of the architect as a critical and transformative narrator of the urban dimension, and, thus, to identify his political task (...) in the imaginative effort of thinking a utopian elsewhere which is, at the same time, rooted in cultural and historical identities of designed places. (shrink)

_Islamicate Occult Sciences in Theory and Practice_ presents the latest research on Islamic occult sciences from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, namely intellectual history, manuscript studies and material culture.

A cavallo tra i due concili di Costanza e Basilea, che hanno fortemente influito sul giudizio della Chiesa in relazione alle donne visionarie, si staglia la figura di Francesca Bussa dei Ponziani. Le visioni politiche di Francesca rappresentano un fulgido esempio di come i modelli brigidini e cateriniani siano stati ripresi e rimodellati su un nuovo, mutato contesto storico. La sua consolidata autorità le consentì di ammonire a più riprese papa Eugenio IV riguardo alla sua partecipazione al concilio (...) di Basilea, intervenendo attivamente nello scenario religioso e politico romano. (shrink)

In this paper we present a sequent calculus for the modal propositional logic GL (the logic of provability) obtained by means of the tree-hypersequent method, a method in which the metalinguistic strength of hypersequents is improved, so that we can simulate trees shapes. We prove that this sequent calculus is sound and complete with respect to the Hilbert-style system GL, that it is contraction free and cut free and that its logical and modal rules are invertible. No explicit semantic element (...) is used in the sequent calculus and all the results are proved in a purely syntactic way. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to introduce a philosophical analysis of a widely neglected condition which affects between 3% and 18% of the population. People affected by this condition experience a lower level of wellbeing than the average population and are discriminated against in both their professional and their personal life. I will argue that this form of discrimination should be taken more seriously in philosophical debate and that social, legal and medical measures ought to be taken in order (...) to improve the quality of life of people affected by this condition. (shrink)

At Columbia University in 1906, William James gave a highly confrontational speech to the American Philosophical Association (APA). He ignored the technical philosophical questions the audience had gathered to discuss and instead addressed the topic of human energy. Tramping on the rules of academic decorum, James invoked the work of amateurs, read testimonials on the benefits of yoga and alcohol, and concluded by urging his listeners to take up this psychological and physiological problem. What was the goal of this unusual (...) speech? Rather than an oddity, Francesca Bordogna asserts that the APA address was emblematic—it was just one of many gestures that James employed as he plowed through the barriers between academic, popular, and pseudoscience, as well as the newly emergent borders between the study of philosophy, psychology, and the “science of man.” Bordogna reveals that James’s trespassing of boundaries was an essential element of a broader intellectual and social project. By crisscrossing divides, she argues, James imagined a new social configuration of knowledge, a better society, and a new vision of the human self. As the academy moves toward an increasingly interdisciplinary future, William James at the Boundaries reintroduces readers to a seminal influence on the way knowledge is pursued. (shrink)

Typical theory of mind tasks assess children’s ability to attribute a false belief in order to predict or explain an action. According to these standard tasks, young children do not represent the independent (mistaken) beliefs of others until the fourth year—yet long before this, children are able to track speakers’ intentions in order to learn new words. Might communication be a privileged domain for theory of mind? In the present study we explored pre‐schoolers’ ability to track a false belief in (...) order to acquire a novel word. A puppet labeled a novel object in a false belief condition (contents of a box had been switched without her knowledge), and a true belief condition (contents switched in her presence). Children were significantly better at tracking the puppet’s false belief in the word‐learning task than in a standard false belief test. Possible reasons for this advantage are discussed, and the suggestion made that representation of mental states may emerge precociously in the service of communication. (shrink)

Frege's definition of the real numbers, as envisaged in the second volume of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, is fatally flawed by the inconsistency of Frege's ill-fated Basic Law V. We restate Frege's definition in a consistent logical framework and investigate whether it can provide a logical foundation of real analysis. Our conclusion will deem it doubtful that such a foundation along the lines of Frege's own indications is possible at all.

This paper is a critical response to Andreas Bartels’ sophisticated defense of a structural account of scientific representation. We show that, contrary to Bartels’ claim, homomorphism fails to account for the phenomenon of misrepresentation. Bartels claims that homomorphism is adequate in two respects. First, it is conceptually adequate, in the sense that it shows how representation differs from misrepresentation and non-representation. Second, if properly weakened, homomorphism is formally adequate to accommodate misrepresentation. We question both claims. First, we show that homomorphism (...) is not the right condition to distinguish representation from misrepresentation and non-representation: a “representational mechanism” actually does all the work, and it is independent of homomorphism – as of any structural condition. Second, we test the claim of formal adequacy against three typical kinds of inaccurate representation in science which, by reference to a discussion of the notorious billiard ball model, we define as abstraction, pretence, and simulation. We first point out that Bartels equivocates between homomorphism and the stronger condition of epimorphism, and that the weakened form of homomorphism that Bartels puts forward is not a morphism at all. After providing a formal setting for abstraction, pretence and simulation, we show that for each morphism there is at least one form of inaccurate representation which is not accommodated. We conclude that Bartels’ theory – while logically laying down the weakest structural requirements – is nonetheless formally inadequate in its own terms. This should shed serious doubts on the plausibility of any structural account of representation more generally. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a simple sequent calculus for the modal propositional logic S5. We prove that this sequent calculus is theoremwise equivalent to the Hilbert-style system S5, that it is contraction-free and cut-free, and finally that it is decidable. All results are proved in a purely syntactic way.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a driving force in modern research, industry and public administration and the European Union (EU) is embracing this technology with a view to creating societal, as well as economic, value. This effort has been shared by EU Member States which were all encouraged to develop their own national AI strategies outlining policies and investment levels. This study focuses on how EU Member States are approaching the promise to develop and use AI for the good of (...) society through the lens of their national AI strategies. In particular, we aim to investigate how European countries are investing in AI and to what extent the stated plans contribute to the good of people and society as a whole. Our contribution consists of three parts: (i) a conceptualization of AI for social good highlighting the role of AI policy, in particular, the one put forward by the European Commission (EC); (ii) a qualitative analysis of 15 European national strategies mapping investment plans and suggesting their relation to the social good (iii) a reflection on the current status of investments in socially good AI and possible steps to move forward. Our study suggests that while European national strategies incorporate money allocations in the sphere of AI for social good (e.g. education), there is a broader variety of underestimated actions (e.g. multidisciplinary approach in STEM curricula and dialogue among stakeholders) that can boost the European commitment to sustainable and responsible AI innovation. (shrink)

Hermann von Helmholtz has been widely acknowledged as one of the forerunners of contemporary theories of measurement. However, his conception of measurement differs from later, representational conceptions in two main respects. Firstly, Helmholtz advocated an empiricist philosophy of arithmetic as grounded in some psychological facts concerning quantification. Secondly, his theory implies that mathematical structures are common to both subjective experiences and objective ones. My suggestion is that both of these differences depend on a classical approach to measurement, according to which (...) the arithmetic laws of addition define what is measurable as a particular domain for their application, and, at the same time, the extensibility of these laws to all known physical processes works as a heuristic principle for empirical research. Such an approach is worth reconsidering, not only because it lends plausibility to some of the controversial aspects of Helmholtz’s theory, but also because it offers a philosophical perspective on quantification problems that originated in the nineteenth-century.This paper draws insights on Helmholtz’s philosophical views from his engagement with the measurability of sensations via Fechner’s psychophysical law. This seems to be in contrast with the fact that the reception of Helmholtz’s theory culminated with the formulation of the theory of extensive measurement. I will contend that Helmholtz reached a no less important standpoint in the nineteenth-century debate on whether sensations are different (i.e., intensive) kinds of magnitudes and on how, if at all, they can be measured. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the intersections between Hegel’s aesthetics lec- tures and translation theory and praxis, with reference to the French-Italian translation project Hegel Art Net. Against the background of the historical recon- struction that sees Hegel repeatedly confronted with the fruition and production of translations, we intend to examine the hermeneutic, philological and political challenges that a translator of the aesthetics Nachschriften encounters today, following the “philological turn” of the 1990s and the publication of new sources documenting Hegel’s (...) Berlin lectures on the philosophy of art. (shrink)