Hands are commonly held up as an exemplar of well-known, familiar objects. However, conceptual knowledge of the hand has been found to show highly stereotyped distortions. Specifically, people judge their knuckles as farther forward in the hand than they actually are. The cause of this distal bias remains unclear. In Experiment 1, we tested whether both visual and tactile information contribute to the distortion. Participants judged the location of their knuckles by pointing to the location on their palm directly opposite (...) each knuckle with: 1) a metal baton (using vision and touch) 2) a metal baton while blindfolded (using touch), 3) a laser pointer (using vision). In Experiment 2, we investigated whether judgments are influenced by visual landmarks such as the creases at the base of each finger on the palm. Participants localized their knuckles on either a photograph or a silhouette of their hand. In both experiments, clear distortions were found across conditions, of generally similar magnitude. These results show that distal bias is resistant to changes in the stimulus information and does not rely on any specific stimulus cue or single sensory modality, suggesting that such mislocalisations reflect a conceptual misrepresentation of hand structure. (shrink)

The essay is dedicated to war considered through the reflections of Roger Caillois and in particular through certain motifs – feast, sacred, vertigo – that allow us to grasp its ‘metaphysical’ intention, i.e. capable of looking at war as the point of chiasmatic reversibility of life and death.

Parity games are combinatorial representations of closed Boolean μ-terms. By adding to them draw positions, they have been organized by Arnold and Santocanale [3] and [27] into a μ-calculus whose standard interpretation is over the class of all complete lattices. As done by Berwanger et al. [8] and [9] for the propositional modal μ-calculus, it is possible to classify parity games into levels of a hierarchy according to the number of fixed-point variables. We ask whether this hierarchy collapses w.r.t. the (...) standard interpretation. We answer this question negatively by providing, for each n≥1, a parity game Gn with these properties: it unravels to a μ-term built up with n fixed-point variables, it is not semantically equivalent to any game with strictly less than n−2 fixed-point variables. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to illustrate how the adoption of new enterprise resource planning systems affects sensemaking in the process of Organizational Identity integration after a Merger and Acquisition.Design/methodology/approachWithin a wider case study about an acquisition in chemical/pharmaceutical industry, the paper describes the effects of SAP adoption and implementation on the organizational identity. This methodology, based on semi‐structured interviews to project leaders and to team members, has allowed a deep comprehension of the context, even if results cannot provide (...) statistical evidence of relationships.FindingsUsing the Swanson and Ramiller's approach to innovation, the paper argues that ERP adoption and implementation support sensemaking process if innovation takes place with mindfulness and because, in that case, people interact on symbolic meanings sharing retrospective knowledge and cognitive causal maps. After an M&A there are conditions for a mindful innovation with IT and therefore innovating with IT can be an effective way to enforce sensemaking process and, as a consequence, to influence the Organizational Identity evolution. In a constructionist approach, the evolution of organizational identity requires a social negotiation among members where sensemaking has a primary role. So, the integration process following acquisitions can be facilitated by adopting, implementing and assimilating common IT solutions with mindfulness.Research limitations/implicationsThe first limitation of this study is referred to timing. The author entered into the company within a year after the acquisition and went out at the beginning of SAP assimilation phase. Therefore, some perceptions could still evolve in different ways. The second limitation depends on the fact that the author analyzed a single case. By focusing on one case of acquisition – an acquisition that gives value to acquired company – the author might be limiting the transferability of the findings.Practical implicationsThese results can be useful for both scholars and practitioners. Managers who face organizational change can consider the adoption and implementation of ERP as an opportunity to influence the evolution of Organizational Identity according to strategic priorities.Originality/valueThe value of this study is in its approach that links a strategic level with a social level. This link is realized not using the ERP as an artefact but using the process of its adoption and implementation. (shrink)

L’articolo affronta il problema delle interazioni fra cittadini romani e indigeni nel territorio di Bergomum, municipium della regio xi - Transpadana, attraverso l’esame delle formule onomastiche riscontrabili in alcune iscrizioni. In particolare, l’analisi della documentazione epigrafica agirà su un doppio binario, prendendo in considerazione sia formule di onomastica idionimica – tipicamente indigene e presenti anche dopo la concessione della cittadinanza romana alla Transpadana alla metà del I secolo a.C. – sia formule fedeli al modello romano dei tria nomina, che testimoniano (...) un’ascendenza celtica e una certa persistenza di abitudini locali. Le prove fornite dall’onomastica, dunque, saranno utili ad indagare come gli abitanti “indigeni” di Bergomum abbiano affrontato la romanizzazione del loro territorio e attraverso quali meccanismi vennero integrati nella struttura sociale romana; ciò anche attraverso il confronto con realtà circonvicine, prima fra tutte la Colonia Civica Augusta Brixia. (shrink)

1. Critica de capire e altri scritti. 2. Scritti kantiani. 3. L'analitica trascendentale. 4. Il problema della scienza e il giudizio storico.

Luigi Giussani, a high school religion teacher throughout the 1950s and 1960s, grounded his teachings in the vast body of experience to be found in Christianity's two-thousand-year history. He told his students, “I'm not here to make you adopt the ideas I will give you as your own, but to teach you a method for judging the things I will say.” Throughout his life, education was one of Giussani's primary intellectual interests. He believed that effective education required an adequate (...) background in the Christian tradition, presented within a lived experience that underscored the capacity of the faith to answer universal questions. What he proposed was a process that allowed one to sift through tradition, critically examining it and comparing it against the ultimate criteria for judgment: the desires of the heart. In Giussani's view, the primary concern was to “educate the human heart as God made it.” In The Risk of Education he states that fear leads students to associate this process of criticism with negativity or doubt. Yet, without an education in criticism, students cannot develop conviction. At a time when young people are abandoning the church and questioning the value of faith, Giussani's method of judging and verifying Christianity as an experience seems a necessary intervention. In The Risk of Education he argues that, ultimately, education and the Christian message reveal themselves through human freedom. (shrink)

Nel mio articolo propongo una lettura dei §§ 79-84 della Critica del Giudizio, parte della sezione Metodologia del Giudizio teleologico. Dapprima mi interrogo sul significato di una Methodenlehre del Giudizio teleologico, che rintraccio in un’attività metariflessiva del Giudizio; procedo poi ad una lettura analitica del testo nelle sue varie articolazioni, nella quale passo in rassegna le questioni attinenti alla specificità dello statuto epistemologico della teleologia, alla possibile convivenza tra finalismo e meccanicismo nella scienza della natura, all’origine della vita, allo scopo (...) ultimo della natura e allo scopo finale della creazione; approdo, infine, ad un’interpretazione per cui l’intera teleologia rationis humanae, che si estende dalla teleologia naturale alla teleologia morale passando per l’antropologia e per la filosofia della storia, viene in questa sezione riarticolata intorno ad un nuovo fulcro concettuale di livello trascendentale, che può garantire l’effettivo collegamento tra queste diverse parti della filosofia proprio perché esso non si esercita in forma di dominio legislativo, ma in forma di riflessione sul molteplice empirico e sulla causalità teleologica propria dell’uomo. (shrink)

A fronte di rapide trasformazioni geo-politiche globali, il tema dei diritti fondamentali - quale sia la loro struttura, quali debbano considerarsi tali, in qual modo li si possa garantire, quale il rapporto con la cittadinanza e la democrazia - acquista sempre maggiore rilevanza nella discussione pubblica. Luigi Ferraioli propone su questi problemi un'originale e innovativa riflessione, suscitando un dibattito in cui si coniugano rigore scientifico e passione civile.

This book examines recent forms of secularisation to demonstrate that we are now witnessing a "fourth secularisation": the autonomy of lifestyles. After introducing two initial secularising movements, from mythosto Logosand from Logosto Christianity, the book sets out how from Max Weber onwards a third movement emerged that practised the autonomy of science. More recently, daily life radicalises Weber's secularisation and its scope has spread out to include autonomy of individual practices, which has given rise to this fourth iteration. The book (...) outlines these first three forms of secularisation and then analyses the fourth secularisation in depth, identifying its three main dimensions: the de-institutionalisation of the religious lifestyle; the individualisation of faith; and the development of new social forms in the religious field. These areas of religious practice are shown to be multiplying partly as a result of the general aestheticization of society. Individuals, therefore, aspire to personal styles of life with regard to beliefs and the choice of their own religious practices. This book will be of great use to scholars of religious studies, secularisation and the sociology of religion. own to be multiplying partly as a result of the general aestheticization of society. Individuals, therefore, aspire to personal styles of life with regard to beliefs and the choice of their own religious practices. This book will be of great use to scholars of religious studies, secularisation and the sociology of religion. (shrink)

In the course of 1901, V. Crémieu published the results of some experiments carried out to test the magnetic effects of electric convection currents. According to Crémieu, his experiments had proved that convection currents had no magnetic effects and consequently they were not equivalent to conduction currents, that is they were not ‘real’ electric currents. These negative results conflicted with those of well-known experiments carried out by other researchers, in particular with Rowland's experiments, and with Maxwell's, Hertz's and Lorentz's theories, (...) which was more shocking. The publication of Crémieu's experiments raised a controversy which involved directly or indirectly some leading French and British physicists, and led Rowland together with his student Pender to re-perform his experiments. Pender's results confirmed those preiously obtained by Rowland, in striking conflict with those of Crémieu. The importance of Crémieu's experiments was stressed by Poincaré in some of his publications, where he analysed and criticized various aspects of the question. However, he was involved more deeply: his correspondence with Crémieu shows that many of the experiments performed by Crémieu were conceived by Poincaré and carried out with his guidance. To put an end to the controversy, Poincaré obtained Kelvin's support to organize Crémieu's and Pender's joint experiments. The results of these experiments showed that the conflicting results obtained previously were due to an ‘anomalous’ behaviour of the dielectrics used by Crémieu in his apparatus. (shrink)

The first part of this paper aims to highlight the analogies between Schutz’s vision of the natural attitude and Wittgenstein’s vision of a phenomenon that concerns the same problematic field, i.e. certainty, the belief of common sense that is free of all doubt, that the world “out there” is as it appears, absolutely real. These certainties form the basis, the foundation of language games and therefore of knowledge in general and in its entirety. This foundation is unfounded and yet indispensable. (...) The second part of the paper examines an important topic analysed by Wittgenstein, related to the aforementioned problem: the language transposition of pre-predicative, pre-reflective and non-propositional certainties, the cornerstones of which are “hinge propositions”, whose hybrid nature can be identified in the shift from empirical propositions to grammatical rules. (shrink)

_Abstract_: In this paper, I will examine the Goldstein-Cassirer approach to neuropathology to determine its current potential for yielding valuable insights. To this end, I will reconstruct the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of such a standpoint in the first four sections. What will emerge is that it entails a definition of pathology as the loss of balance in the adaption of human beings to the environment, leading to a lack of proclivity to categorical behaviour and symbolic performances. Furthermore, we will (...) see that there are behavioural alterations which are not related to the locus of lesions. In the fifth section, I will compare and contrast the holistic stances with current research in neuropsychology. The sixth section is dedicated to conclusive remarks. _Keywords_: Psychopathology; Neuropathology; Ernst Cassirer; Kurt Goldstein; Holism _ La mente ordinatrice. La concezione di Goldstein e Cassirer della neuropatologia e la sua rilevanza oggi _ _Riassunto_: In questo articolo intendo analizzare l’approccio Goldstein-Cassirer alla neuropatologia per comprendere se esso può rivelarsi ancora utile alla luce delle ricerche attuali. A tal fine, ne ricostruirò le basi filosofiche e teoriche nei primi tre paragrafi. Scopriremo che esso implica una definizione di patologia come perdita di equilibrio nell’adattamento degli esseri umani all’ambiente, a seguito della quale viene a mancare la naturale tendenza verso il “comportamento categoriale” e le prestazioni simboliche. Vedremo, inoltre, che vi sono alterazioni del comportamento non collegabili al sito delle lesioni. Nel quinto paragrafo, metterò a confronto le istanze olistiche con le ricerche contemporanee nel campo della neuropsicologia. Il sesto paragrafo contiene le considerazioni conclusive. _Parole chiave_: Psicopatologia; Neuropatologia; Ernst Cassirer; Kurt Goldstein; Olismo. (shrink)

In this paper, I will deal with the analogy between Cassirer’s interpretation of relativity and his philosophy of culture. As to the structure of the paper, it will be divided into six parts. I will start with a brief introduction, after which I will succinctly outline Cassirer’s reading of Einstein’s theory, and in particular of general covariance. I will then focus on the presentation of his project for a “systematic philosophy” in the last chapter of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and (...) subsequently delve into the lexical references to relativity made in Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. After this, I will tackle Cassirer’s rectorship speech, where relativity and the philosophy of culture are explicitly interwoven, but with the important clarification (already provided in Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Philosophy of Symbolic Forms) that not all kinds of knowledge align with de-anthropomorphized objectivity. The final section contains the concluding remarks. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Kant’s concept-less schematism (KU, 5: 287) in the thirdCritique1and make three claims: 1) concept-less schematism is entirely consistent with the schematism in the firstCritique; 2) concept-less schematism is schematism with noempiricalconcept as an outcome; and 3) in accordance with 1) and 2), the imagination is free to synthesize the given manifold and leads to judgements of taste without this meaning either that the categories play no role at all or that these judgements are full-fledged cognitive (...) determining judgements. While most commentators read the freedom of the imagination as its independence from the understanding, I argue that the freedom of the imagination is based on a non-determining employment of the pure concepts of the understanding. The freedom of the aesthetic imagination consists in the temporal schematization of the categories without any complementary determination of the empirical concept. (shrink)