This article reconsiders the methodological issues posed by the reception of archaic and classical poetry in imperial rhetorical texts. It argues that references to ancient poems and poets in the works of imperial sophists are always already the product of appropriation and rewriting, and that the study of sophists’ engagement with poetry should go beyondQuellenforschungto explore how and why poetic models were transformed in light of their new rhetorical and imperial contexts. To illustrate this approach and its contribution to our (...) understanding of both ancient-reception phenomena and imperial rhetorical culture, the article focusses on Himerius of Athens, a fourth-centuryc.e.sophist and teacher of rhetoric whose fondness for lyric poetry has caused hisOrationsto be used as a quarry for lyric fragments and testimonia. Himerius’ treatment of carefully chosen lyric models is here discussed with attention to his self-presentation and rhetorical agenda to show how the sophist appropriated the voices of diverse lyric icons to promote his school and negotiate his position in relation to the imperial administration. This analysis restores Himerius’ intellectual significance within late imperial culture and society, but it also demonstrates how a more in-depth study of the reception of ancient poetry in imperial sophistic literature has the potential to illuminate the strategies of cultural politics used by imperial authors to (re)construct Greek tradition. (shrink)

Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion (...) is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled. (shrink)

Recent work has demonstrated how data-driven AI methods can leverage consumer protection by supporting the automated analysis of legal documents. However, a shortcoming of data-driven approaches is poor explainability. We posit that in this domain useful explanations of classifier outcomes can be provided by resorting to legal rationales. We thus consider several configurations of memory-augmented neural networks where rationales are given a special role in the modeling of context knowledge. Our results show that rationales not only contribute to improve the (...) classification accuracy, but are also able to offer meaningful, natural language explanations of otherwise opaque classifier outcomes. (shrink)

Expectation-based theories of language comprehension, in particular Surprisal Theory, go a long way in accounting for the behavioral correlates of word-by-word processing difficulty, such as reading times. An open question, however, is in which component of the Event-Related brain Potential signal Surprisal is reflected, and how these electrophysiological correlates relate to behavioral processing indices. Here, we address this question by instantiating an explicit neurocomputational model of incremental, word-by-word language comprehension that produces estimates of the N400 and the P600—the two most (...) salient ERP components for language processing—as well as estimates of “comprehension-centric” Surprisal for each word in a sentence. We derive model predictions for a recent experimental design that directly investigates “world-knowledge”-induced Surprisal. By relating these predictions to both empirical electrophysiological and behavioral results, we establish a close link between Surprisal, as indexed by reading times, and the P600 component of the ERP signal. The resultant model thus offers an integrated neurobehavioral account of processing difficulty in language comprehension. (shrink)

Individual and collective ethical stances regarding ethical consumption and related outcomes are usually seen as both a form of concern about extant market offerings and as opportunities to develop new offerings. In this sense, demand and supply are traditionally portrayed as interacting dialectically on the basis of extant business models. In general, this perspective implicitly assumes the juxtaposition of demand side ethical stances and supply side corporate initiatives. The Eataly story describes, however, a different approach to market transformation; in this (...) case a company and a social movement (Slow Food) have negotiated and collaborated prior to initiating a new business model. This collaboration process and its outcomes are described, focusing specifically on ordinary Eataly customers’ and Slow Food members’ reactions. Given that Eataly can be regarded as a case of mainstreaming, ordinary customers seem satisfied with the new offering and the Slow Food support for the initiative; the more purist members of the Slow Food movement had critical concerns, however, as happened in similar conditions, according to literature, with regard to Fair Trade. The Slow Food endorsement of the new venture has also been observed from the attitude–behaviour gap perspective, as it contributed to addressing the factors affecting the gap between attitudes and actual behaviours. Extensive qualitative data were collected and analysed over a 3-year period. The main study implications refer to the ways in which companies and social movements could interact to co-design new business models, as well as outlining consumers’ attitudes and behaviours towards such new offerings. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate ways to comply with justice in a liberal democracy. In order to do that, we sketch Rawls’s account of moral-consensus stability and discuss the alternative idea of stability reached through a modus vivendi. We defend modus vivendi as a way to achieve stability backed by a variety of reasons and even by ‘non-reasons’. By ‘non-reasons’ we mean alternative sources of motivation for compliance as a precondition of a stable coexistence. We focus on such sources, which (...) differ from reasons and beliefs, that are practices, shared values, and value experiences, in light of both a theoretical-political and a qualitative social-ontological perspective. We argue that individuals who experience the same values become collectives and even stable ones: the sharing of values creates social unity and makes collectives solid and resistant to individualistically centrifugal tendencies. (shrink)

This paper aims to develop a better understanding of the influence of the social environment in which entrepreneurs reside on the success of the crowdfunding projects they propose. Specifically, this study investigates on the importance of local religiosity on the propensity to support cross-regional crowdfunding projects. We theoretically discuss and empirically document, using a dataset of 5841 contributions on three Swiss reward-based and donation-based platforms, that local religiosity affects cross-regional resource flows by creating social interactions and enhancing trust. Furthermore, we (...) find that cross-regional resource flows are more likely between regions sharing the same primary religion—whether Protestant or Catholic. (shrink)

In this paper we clarify some issues related to our previous article ‘After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?’.

Problem solving can be readily described as one of the key activities regularly performed by professionals in any workplace setting. Despite its importance, however, there is relatively little linguistic research which looks at the complex ways in which problems are constructed in discourse. This article sees the enactment of a ‘problem’ as a discursive phenomenon with fluid boundaries. It draws on business meeting data recorded in multinational companies in Europe and focuses on excerpts identified by the participants as having a (...) PbS function. The data show that problem solving processes and practice are anchored to the structure of the organizations, the local history and employees’ shared perceptions of professional practices and hierarchies in their workplace. The analysis also shows two focal points in the PbS talk of the participants in this study, namely identification of a problem and its ownership. These, however, are not predetermined starting points but rather locally constructed in relation to the status, expertise and shared/past history of the interactants. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of phenomenology in the understanding of the cognitive processes of coupling/decoupling, defending the Wittgensteinian idea that phenomenology can play a crucial role as a description of immediate (social) experience. We argue that epistemic feelings can provide a phenomenological description of the development of a subject's everyday experience, tracking the transition from the processes of coupling/decoupling and recoupling with the world. In particular, the feeling of familiarity, whose key features can be considered the core of epistemic (...) feelings, signals a novelty in the flow of experience that makes sense and is worthy of remarking on or even articulating. By describing the primary features and sources of the feeling of familiarity, we highlight a conceptual tension related to its sources, which could be based on processing both fluency and discrepancy. We proposed a solution to the conceptual tension by introducing two levels of the feeling of familiarity: epistemic and experiential. (shrink)

In the last 2 decades, the literature has documented the upsurge of community-driven processes of consumer-producer cooperation, which are alternative to the dominant food system. These organizational arrangements have been conceptualized differently, witnessing the growing importance of local communities in generating place-based solutions to the demand for organic, local, and sustainable food. Relying on a practice theory approach, this article delves into two key inquiries: first, what motivates individuals to become part of Civic Food Networks (CFNs) and how does this (...) influence the variety of food entering their households? And second, how does participation in a CFN impact people’s daily food practices, with a particular focus on diet diversification? We employ the term “civic food networks (CFN)” to underscore the significance of grassroots initiatives in the broader context of local food policies. This term also highlights the connections to other movements known for their potential for transformation, such as the solidarity economy, transition towns, and de-growth movements. Our analysis draws on a comprehensive qualitative approach, which includes participant observation, in-depth interviews, and a focus group involving members of the CSA _Naturalmente in Trentino_, situated in the North-Eastern part of Italy. The findings reveal that altering dietary habits poses various challenges both at the individual and institutional levels. This process involves the stabilization of ingrained habits, adjustments to daily routines, and the reinforcement of shared norms. Furthermore, it underscores the critical role of food policies in promoting sustainable eating practices. (shrink)

Bayesian agents, argues Belot (2013), are orgulous: they believe in inductive success even when guaranteed to fail on a topologically typical collection of data streams. Here we shed light on how pervasive this phenomenon is. We identify several classes of inductive problems for which Bayesian convergence to the truth is topologically typical. However, we also show that, for all sufficiently complex classes, there are inductive problems for which convergence is topologically atypical. Lastly, we identify specific topologically typical collections of data (...) streams, observing which guarantees convergence to the truth across all problems from certain natural classes of effective inductive problems. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutics of spaces and the aesthetics vision of the landscape as a performance, based on the contemporary theories of Erika Fischer-Lichte, can integrate each other through the mediation of Mikel Dufrenne’s phenomenology of the a priori. In particular, we will show how the representations and the hermeneutics of a landscape as a peculiar “text” are essentially connected with its the pre-reflective experience, which, being made possible by the activation of precise material – (...) and therefore historical and cultural – a priori, can be thus translated into images and words. By intertwining hermeneutics, phenomenology, and performative esthetics we will provide with a non-reductive philosophical description of a landscape, i.e., a definition that does not neglect the aspects of it suggested by its linguistic pre-comprehension and artistic representations. (shrink)

Early diagnosis of leaf diseases is a fundamental tool in precision agriculture, thanks to its high correlation with food safety and environmental sustainability. It is proven that plant diseases are responsible for serious economic losses every year. The aim of this work is to study an efficient network capable of assisting farmers in recognizing pear leaf symptoms and providing targeted information for rational use of pesticides. The proposed model consists of a multioutput system based on convolutional neural networks. The deep (...) learning approach considers five pretrained CNN architectures, namely, VGG-16, VGG-19, ResNet50, InceptionV3, MobileNetV2, and EfficientNetB0, as feature extractors to classify three diseases and six severity levels. Computational experiments are conducted to evaluate the model on the DiaMOS Plant dataset, a self-collected dataset in the field. The results obtained confirm the robustness of the proposed model in automatically extracting the discriminating features of diseased leaves by adopting the multitasking learning paradigm. (shrink)

In this special issue, our aim is to analyse the role of emotions with particular attention to shaping political actions in the face of present challenges to justice. The relationship between the widespread rise of collective emotions and the experience of injustice in our societies is a pressing issue, both in our everyday practice of ethical and political discourse and in philosophical reflection and discussion. Some negative emotions—such as fear, resentment, greed, distrust towards institutions, and disrespect for basic human rights—are (...) often manipulated and amplified. Other, more positive, emotions, such as respect, hope, solidarity, and affinity, often seem to be not enough to give rise to alternative policies. This worldwide problem reflects a deep economic, social, and existential crisis. In this framework, philosophical reflection on emotions can be put fruitfully in dialogue with the contemporary philosophical analysis of collective intentionality and collective agency, which aims at investigating the nature of different types of groups and their main features as well as phenomena such as sense of group membership and group agency. Indeed, it is often argued that collective emotions boost the sense of group belonging in individual members and act to reduce uncertainty in joint actions. In normative terms, feelings such as the rejection of cruelty have been proposed as the foundation of moral equality, and even rationalistic approaches tend to focus on respect first of all as a feeling, as Kant maintained. (shrink)

The paper describes a highly specific Italian action research experience, connected with the trade unions, going through different phases from the 1970s to the present day. The journey is not only a journey through time but also through different approaches. It ranges from the initial experience focusing on health and safety problems at the workplace involving the workers as co-designers of new working environments to today’s search conference experience. For each phase there is a full description and comment on the (...) methods utilised by the research group. The main methodological shift described in the paper is the one from discussion groups, based on Bion’s thinking, to the search conferences, based on Emery’s line of thinking. Both are oriented to the subjectivity of the people involved, although in the discussion group experience the research groups considered the subjectivity of the people involved as the subject of the observation. The researchers’ aim of was to acquire a reliable knowledge of what was at stake and to pass it on to the union that organised the research in order to promote actions. Hence, the action-research circuit is based upon different actors and the process is integrated only from the point of view of the union. In the search conference experience the researchers are involved in a co-design process and so the action-research circuit is really integrated from the researchers’ perspective; there are, of course, multiple perspectives in this case and this opens up epistemological problems that are not discussed in the paper. (shrink)

We survey the literature that has explored the implications of decision-making under ambiguity for financial market outcomes, such as portfolio choice and equilibrium asset prices. This ambiguity literature has led to a number of significant advances in our ability to rationalize empirical features of asset returns and portfolio decisions, such as the failure of the two-fund separation theorem in portfolio decisions, the modest exposure to risky securities observed for a majority of investors, the home equity preference in international portfolio diversification, (...) the excess volatility of asset returns, the equity premium and the risk-free rate puzzles, and the occurrence of trading break-downs. (shrink)

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)

The identity and the existence of genes has been challenged by postgenomic discoveries. Specifically, the consideration of molecular and cellular phenomena in which genes are embedded has proved relevant for their understanding. In response to these challenges, I will argue that the complexity of genetic phenomena supports the weak emergence of genes from the DNA. In Section 2, I will expose what genes are taken to be in the postgenomic world. In Section 3, I will present the relevant account of (...) emergence. I consider weak emergence as in Franklin and Knox, for which a phenomenon is emergent when it displays novelty and robustness. In Section 4, I will argue that genes are weakly emergent since they are novel, improving explanations, and robust in respect to some perturbations. Then, I will conclude in Section 5 that genes’ emergence is a way to allow genes’ flexibility and context dependency, without compromising their existence. (shrink)

The topic tackled in this book is Philo's account of the complex, double-sided nature of God's acting - the two-sided coin of God as transcendent yet immanent, ...

A historical and systematic introduction to what the medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas wrote about the Trinity. By focusing on the thought of one of the greatest defenders of the doctrine of the Trinity, Gilles Emery OP elucidates the classical Christian understanding of God.

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)

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)

Sociopolitical attitudes are often the root cause of conflicts between individuals, groups, and even nations, but little is known about the origin of individual differences in sociopolitical orientation. We test a combination of economic and evolutionary ideas about the degree to which the mating market, sex, age, and income affect sociopolitical orientation. We collected data online through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk from 1108 US participants who were between 18 and 60, fluent in English, and single. While ostensibly testing a new online (...) dating website, participants created an online dating profile and described people they would like to date. We manipulated the participants’ popularity in the mating market and the size of the market and then measured participants’ sociopolitical attitudes. The sociopolitical attitudes were reduced to five dimensions via Principal Components Analysis. Both manipulations affected attitudes toward wealth redistribution but were largely not significant predictors of the other dimensions. Men reported more unrestricted sociosexual attitudes, and more support for benevolent sexism and traditional family values, than women did, and women supported wealth redistribution more than men did. There was no sex difference in accepting nonconforming behaviors. Younger people and people with lower incomes were more liberal than older people and people with higher incomes, respectively, regardless of sex. Overall, effects were largely not interactive, suggesting that individual differences in sociopolitical orientation may reflect strategic self-interest and be more straightforward than previously predicted. (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)

_Aristotle on Prescription_ explores Aristotle’s deep reflections on rule-making as a process that is both distinct from that of particular deliberation and decision-making and fundamental to it, operating at the level both of the individual and of society as a whole.