Pretende-se apresentar neste artigo os temas do determinismo e do indeterminismo na física moderna e contemporânea, seguindo o desenvolvimento histórico. Nesse sentido, apoiando-se apenas em textos científicos, mostram-se os elementos do determinismo anterior a Poincaré. A respeito do indeterminismo, foca-se a atenção na introdução do caos determinístico, através do trabalho de Poincaré sobre o problema dos três corpos e da indeterminação quântica. Para cada uma das duas formas de indeterminação será fornecida também uma interpretação do estatuto gnosiológico.

Mitate is the name used to describe a typically Japanese visual trope, in which one object is meant to be seen as something else. While mitate is a defining element of Edo period haikai and ukiyo-e, a this kind of overlapping meanings can be found in much earlier sources. Its aesthetic effects are often smile, laughter, and parody, but mitate can also bestow a hidden depth to the commonplace and the contemporary through explicit and implicit connections to more noble and (...) remote cultural antecedents. In this paper I examine mitate and mitate-like configurations throughout the history of Japanese aesthetics, and conclude by asking whether mitate is indeed a uniquely Japanese phenomenon and by analysing whether and how it can be relevant to some philosophical discussions (Husserl's and Wittgenstein’s) concerned with the phenomenological and ontological status of images. (shrink)

This book proposes the foundation of the relational approach to biology, rejecting the deterministic and reductionist approach of molecular biology. Although biology has made enormous progress in the last seventy years, onto genesis is still conceived as a “revelation” of information (DNA). Recovering the geometric tradition, relational biology conceives scientific and epistemological tools (cause, probability, space etc.) of science in a new way. If probabilistic biology and organicism still proposes a biology based on physics, with a fundamental invariant, relational biology (...) is based on variation: its fundamental invariant is variation, one of the most important elements of life. This is an indispensable book for academics who consider biology from a new theoretical approach, in particular for those working in the domains of cancer, ontogenesis and evolution. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper explores philosophically the experiences of laughter and irony, focusing on Japanese sources but with a cross-cultural outlook. I ask whether globally unfavorable attitudes towards the comic in the European canon might have left unexplored or misunderstood several insights offered by the bodily and spiritual dimension revealed by laughter, and examine them through Japanese sources. Following a short but poignant triad of examples in Kuki Shūzō’s work, the paper analyses three instances of Japanese laughter and irony: the orgiastic (...) laughter of the gods luring Amaterasu out of the Heavenly Cave in Kojiki; the anthropomorphic animal scrolls of Chōjūgiga, and the “Tiger Cubs Crossing” stone garden in Ryōanji, Kyoto, concluding how each one of them offers an important insight on the bodily and conceptual phenomenological cluster of laughter and irony. I conclude with a further exploration of laughter in Zen, a religious tradition with a unique stress on the spiritual potential of humor, following Nishitani’s reading of Mumonkan and his connection to the experience of “emptiness”. (shrink)

Biases in cognition are ubiquitous. Social psychologists suggested biases and stereotypes serve a multifarious set of cognitive goals, while at the same time stressing their potential harmfulness. Recently, biases and stereotypes became the purview of heated debates in the machine learning community too. Researchers and developers are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that some biases, like gender and race biases, are entrenched in the algorithms some AI applications rely upon. Here, taking into account several existing approaches that address the (...) problem of implicit biases and stereotypes, we propose that a strategy to cope with this phenomenon is to unmask those found in AI systems by understanding their cognitive dimension, rather than simply trying to correct algorithms. To this extent, we present a discussion bridging together findings from cognitive science and insights from machine learning that can be integrated in a state-of-the-art semantic network. Remarkably, this resource can be of assistance to scholars (e.g., cognitive and computer scientists) while at the same time contributing to refine AI regulations affecting social life. We show how only through a thorough understanding of the cognitive processes leading to biases, and through an interdisciplinary effort, we can make the best of AI technology. (shrink)

Feminism is Queer is an introduction to the intimately related disciplines of gender and queer theory. While guiding the reader through complex theory, the author develops the original position of "queer feminism," which presents queer theory as continuous with feminist theory. While there have been significant conceptual tensions between second wave feminism and traditional lesbian and gay studies, queer theory offers a paradigm for understanding gender, sex, and sexuality that avoids the conflict in order to develop solidarity among those interested (...) in feminist theory and those interested in lesbian and gay rights. This accessible and comprehensive textbook carefully explains nuanced theoretical terminology and includes extensive suggested further reading to provide the reader with a full and thorough understanding of both disciplines.--Publisher information. (shrink)

A great deal of feminist research challenges the ideal of scientific objectivity and advocates scientific pluralism. Pluralism is often equated with an ?anything goes? attitude that undermines normative epistemology. The perceived tension between pluralism and normativity is a consequence of the rationalist conceptual vocabulary, which defines knowledge in propositional terms. Building on an analogy between scientific knowledge and the familiarity developed through interpersonal relationships, I develop a conception of knowledge that is simultaneously pluralistic and normative.

Most countries have been struggling with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic imposing social isolation on their citizens. However, this measure carried risks for people's mental health. This study evaluated the psychological repercussions of objective isolation in 1,006 Italians during the first, especially strict, lockdown in spring 2020. Although varying for the regional spread-rate of the contagion, results showed that the longer the isolation and the less adequate the physical space where people were isolated, the worse the mental health. Offline (...) social contacts buffered the association between social isolation and mental health. However, when offline contacts were limited, online contacts seemed crucial in protecting mental health. The findings inform about the potential downsides of the massive social isolation imposed by COVID-19 spread, highlighting possible risk factors and resources to account for implementing such isolation measures. Specifically, besides some known factors such as physical space availability, the local contagion rate is critical in moderating the link between social isolation and mental health issues, supporting national policies implementing regional tiers of restriction severity. (shrink)

Seguendo la storia del problema dei tre corpi, l'autore si chiede perché prima di Poincaré non si parli di caos deterministico, sebbene giŕ nel '700 esistessero la matematica e i problemi fisici del caos. L'autore trova una risposta nel rapporto tra linearitŕ e non linearitŕ nella risoluzione di equazioni differenziali non lineari e non integrabili. Marinucci sottolinea come il problema dei tre corpi venisse trattato come il problema dei due corpi piů una perturbazione, poiché trattato riduzionisticamente. Egli si sofferma (...) poi sul forte intreccio di fisica e matematica: la correttezza dei suoi procedimenti e la certezza fisica dei risultati matematici erano sinonimo di veritŕ. La linearitŕ diventa fondamentale nella risoluzione di equazioni differenziali non lineari e non integrabili. Č cosě possibile affiancare il concetto di linearitŕ a quelli di ordine e semplicitŕ della natura. L'autore sottolinea infine come l'equazione differenziale fornisca il criterio di riconoscibilitŕ della scientificitŕ. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Pleasure as Power Feminist Porn Discussion Notes.

Christiaan Huygens’s late writings, ranging from 1686 to 1695, bear witness to his philosophical and theological reflections. In his Cosmotheoros, which was intended for publication, and other late writings that can be regarded as its preparatory drafts, Huygens deals with issues central to seventeenth-century philosophical debates: God’s power, divine and human intelligence, probabilistic epistemology, natural theology, and the plurality of worlds. This paper explains how Huygens’s reflections on animals and their souls, rational or not, play a key role in his (...) epistemological reflections on natural theology. The issue of animal generation, as well as of animal souls, is crucial to identifying elements of continuity between the scientific topics of Huygens’s works, and may be considered as the point of intersection between his understanding of mechanism and of the teleology of nature. This neglected perspective on Huygens’s philosophical-natural animism reveals key elements of his model of rationality and of his attitude towards religion, demonstrating his involvement in the debate over animism, in which he seems to have been strongly influenced by English Protestant empiricism. (shrink)

This paper describes the semantic mapping methodology we applied to define an integration model for describing the stages of an outdoor and indoor route within the historic center of Naples, dating back to between the 17th and 18th Centuries. We detailed the side concerning the selection and connection of cultural contents, as well as that concerning the transformation of data into an interoperable format. From both perspectives, the working methodologies are illustrated, and issues and opportunities are highlighted. The semantic model (...) can be applied to any project that needs to integrate heterogeneous data for the fruition of cultural heritage in a well-defined sequence of stages. (shrink)

In Ostia, Rome's harbour-town, several parts of an inscription which reveals that the Emperor Vespasian promoted the town's water supply were found in 1983. Eventually references to the text began to circulate, then one more fragment turned up and in 2006 the formal and official publication of the text took place, for which the scholarly world is grateful to Alfredo Marinucci.