A review of the achievements of Fr. Busa over the course of his 60 years of work in the area of computational linguistics: internal hypertexts, the systematization of allographs, lemmatization, homographs and typologies; the lexical system; the laws of economy for graphemes, for semantic typology, for heterogeneity among terms, and of the two lexical hemispheres. Finally, the project of disciplined languages is mentioned, a response to the linguistic challenge resulting from informational globalization.

The precarious rights of senior citizens, especially those who are highly educated and who are expected to counsel and guide the younger generations, has stimulated the creation internationally of advocacy associations and opinion leader groups. The strength of these groups, however, varies from country to country. In some countries, they are supported and are the focus of intense interest; in others, they are practically ignored. For this is reason we believe that the creation of a network of all these associations (...) is essential. The proposed network would act as a support for the already-existing policies of the United Nations’ High Commission for Human Rights, of independent experts, and of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People. All three have long ago recommended the creation of a recognized instrument for uniting presently scattered efforts. The proposed network, therefore, will seek to promote the international exchange of relevant expertise, and it will reinforce the commitments and actions that single countries are currently taking to meet these objectives. For example, informative public events can be organised to promote particular support initiatives and to provide an opportunity for new members of the network to be presented. The network will promote health for senior citizens, disease prevention, senior mobility, safe free time for seniors, alimentary education, protection against new risks and dangers, as well as equity in the services necessary for seniors to adopt new information and communication technologies. In the case of retired academic members, the network will promote equality with respect to continuing use of digital technologies (particularly email), continuing access to research libraries, and the guaranteed ability for seniors to fund their own research programs and to deliver free seminars. (shrink)

During the inter war period, European Catholic authors exhibited two different approaches to the question of just war. One approach was articulated at the “Fribourg Conventus,” a 1931 meeting of French, Swiss, and German theologians, whose subsequent declaration (Conventus de bello, published in 1932) called for a reformulation of Catholic teaching based on the premise that the traditional just‐war doctrine had been superseded by developments in international law. A competing approach was articulated by the Dutch Jesuit Robert Regout, who maintained (...) that the just‐war doctrine could contribute to the formation of international law by providing a much‐needed normative foundation for the use of armed force by individual states in redress of their violated rights. After presenting these two approaches and explaining how they differ, this essay shows how the outlook of the Conventus de bello is reflected in subsequent papal statements on armed force—to the detriment of the traditional terminology of just war. (shrink)

Psychophysical experiments have demonstrated large and highly systematic perceptual distortions of tactile space. Such a space can be referred to our experience of the spatial organisation of objects, at representational level, through touch, in analogy with the familiar concept of visual space. We investigated the neural basis of tactile space by analysing activity patterns induced by tactile stimulation of nine points on a 3 × 3 square grid on the hand dorsum using functional magnetic resonance imaging. We used a searchlight (...) approach within pre-defined regions of interests to compute the pairwise Euclidean distances between the activity patterns elicited by tactile stimulation. Then, we used multidimensional scaling to reconstruct tactile space at the neural level and compare it with skin space at the perceptual level. Our reconstructions of the shape of skin space in contralateral primary somatosensory and motor cortices reveal that it is distorted in a way that matches the perceptual shape of skin space. This suggests that early sensorimotor areas critically contribute to the distorted internal representation of tactile space on the hand dorsum. (shrink)

We examined the neural basis of tactile distance perception by analyzing activity patterns induced by tactile stimulation of nine points on a 3 x 3 square grid on the hand dorsum using functional magnetic resonance (fMRI). We used a searchlight approach within pre-defined regions of interests (ROIs) to compute the pairwise Euclidean distances between the activity patterns elicited by tactile stimulation. Then, we used multidimensional scaling (MDS) to reconstruct skin space at the neural level and compare it with skin space (...) at the perceptual level. Our reconstructions of the shape of skin space in contralateral primary somatosensory (SI) and motor (M1) cortices reveal that it is distorted in a way that matches the perceptual shape of skin space. This suggests that early sensorimotor areas are critical to processing tactile distance perception. (shrink)

This book is the first of its kind to provide a comprehensive overview of happiness in Economics. Although it is comparatively unusual to put happiness and economics together, the association appears increasingly exciting and fruitful. A number of studies have been produced following Richard Easterlins and Tibor Scitovskys pioneering works throughout the 1970s. The essays collected in this book provide an authoritative and comprehensive assessment both theoretical, applied and partly experimental of the whole field moving from the so-called paradoxes of (...) happiness in Economics. The book breaks new ground, particularly on the more recent directions of research on happiness, well-being, interpersonal relations and reciprocity. The meaning of happiness is thoroughly explored and the tension between a hedonic-subjective idea of happiness and a eudaimonic-objective one is discussed. This volume opens with Richard Easterlins own assessment of the main issues. Other authors include Robert H. Frank, Robert Sugden, Bruno S. Frey, Alois Stutzer, Richard Layard, Martha C. Nussbaum, Matt Matravers, Bernard M.S, van Praag, Oded Stark, You Q. Wang, Ruut Veenhoven, Charlotte Phelps, Stefano Zamagni, and Luigi Pasinetti. (shrink)

1. Esistenza e libertà -- 2. Interiorità e persona -- 3. Verità e linguaggio -- 4. Storia e politica.

European absolute monarchy was the model for all subsequent versions of statism. The rise of the centralized state apparatus that claimed a monopoly of the (legitimate) use of force within a given territory went hand in hand with the intellectual pursuit of describing it. America, both during colonial times and even more so at the founding of the republic, was relatively free from absolutism. The US, born without a sovereign, could not know the peculiar development of a fundamental state category (...) such as sovereignty, first defined by Jean Bodin in the 16th century. Sovereignty, in American political discourse, was…. (shrink)

Un classico della teoria del diritto naturale e dell'etica, questo libro di Luigi Taparelli d'Azeglio è un'opera importante per gli studenti di filosofia e di diritto. Il libro offre una visione critica del diritto naturale e una difesa dell'etica della volontà, che Taparelli considerava una base per il progresso umano. Il libro non è solo un importante lavoro di filosofia, ma anche un saggio politico e sociale che offre una visione innovativa della legge e dell'etica. This work has been (...) selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In this paper we compare the strategies applied by two successful biological components of the ecosystem, the viruses and the human beings, to interact with the environment. Viruses have had and still exert deep and vast actions on the ecosystem especially at the genome level of most of its biotic components. We discuss on the importance of the human being as contraptions maker in particular of robots, hence of machines capable of automatically carrying out complex series of actions. Beside the (...) relevance of designing and assembling these contraptions, it is of basic importance the goal for which they are assembled and future scenarios of their possible impact on the ecosystem. We can’t procrastinate the development and implementation of a highly inspired and stringent “ethical code” for human beings and humanoid robots because it will be a crucial aspect for the wellbeing of the mankind and of the entire ecosystem. (shrink)

Simple assumptions represent a decisive reason to prefer one theory to another in everyday scientific praxis. But this praxis has little philosophical justification, since there exist many notions of simplicity, and those that can be defined precisely strongly depend on the language in which the theory is formulated. The language dependence is a natural feature—to some extent—but it is also believed to be a fatal problem, because, according to a common general argument, the simplicity of a theory is always trivial (...) in a suitably chosen language. But, this trivialization argument is typically either applied to toy-models of scientific theories or applied with little regard for the empirical content of the theory. This paper shows that the trivialization argument fails, when one considers realistic theories and requires their empirical content to be preserved . In fact, the concepts that enable a very simple formulation, are not necessarily measurable, in general. Moreover, the inspection of a theory describing a chaotic billiard shows that precisely those concepts that naturally make the theory extremely simple are provably not measurable. This suggests that—whenever a theory possesses sufficiently complex consequences—the constraint of measurability prevents too simple formulations in any language. This explains why the scientists often regard their assessments of simplicity as largely unambiguous. In order to reveal a cultural bias in the scientists’ assessment, one should explicitly identify different characterizations of simplicity of the assumptions that lead to different theory selections. General arguments are not sufficient. (shrink)

La riflessione del maestro inglese può senz’altro essere considerata per molti versi forte: basti pensare alla piena fiducia riposta nella convergenza di ragione e fede e nella sinergia di metafisica realista e logica della scrittura. Tuttavia, non mancano tracce di debolezza: il discorso teologico del primo Wyclif non solo è più complesso e articolato di quanto non si sia soliti pensare, ma oltretutto sembra condurre a conclusioni ben lontane dall’affermazione estrema e urtante di un unico partito possibile per Dio e (...) per l’uomo. Quanto alle formulazioni più mature, oltre alla possibilità di rintracciare indizi di debolezza nello spirito delle tesi giovanili, sembra anche attestabile la presenza di tracce di indebolimento: questo è il bilancio da trarre circa gli interventi correttivi cui Wyclif sottopose le proprie dottrine teologiche, private con il procedere degli anni del sostegno garantito dai ben congegnati argomenti filosofici.La stessa ricezione del suo pensiero da parte della tradizione può dirsi debole, viziata da fraintendimenti e da letture unilaterali, nonché spesso priva del conforto di riscontri testuali.Il ritratto ben noto del riformatore inglese – alla luce di quanto detto sin qui – reclama forse un ricorso più convinto al chiaro-scuro. Basti pensare al dubbio circa l’efficacia del tentativo proposto proprio nel giovanile De universalibus, così come nel De dominio divino, di una conciliazione tra la necessità degli eventi futuri quoad prescienciam Dei e la libertà umana di determinare le proprie azioni, che pure sembrerebbe suffragata da molte evidenze testuali.Un modo, questo, per dire che la ballata leggendaria di un Wyclif determinista continuerà ancora a essere cantata. (shrink)

The author argues that the unity, coherence, and completeness of both the theory of law and the theory of politics and democracy throughout Bobbio’s work was produced by the fruitful connection that he established between the approaches of several different disciplines. Bobbio was able to connect legal theory and political philosophy, and to entwine theory itself, whether legal or philosophical, with meta-theoretical and methodological reflection. In Bobbio’s work even the theoretical-analytical approach was connected with an analytical history of ideas. Bobbio’s (...) capacity for synthesis and the systematic theoretical character of his investigations found specific expression, according to the author, in four fundamental connections: that between democracy and law; that between law and reason; that between reason and peace; and that between peace and human rights. This doctrinal framework, according to Ferrajoli, already suffices to establish Bobbio as a great teacher and thinker. Nonetheless, Ferrajoli also draws attention to certain aporias in Bobbio’s thought. Thus the author argues that Bobbio fails to recognize the influence of strictly defined constitutions on the legal order and continues to defend a merely formal conception of the validity of legal norms and of democracy. Bobbio retains a non-evaluative conception of legal science without considering the internal criticisms regarding the lacunae and antinomies that constitutional norms forcibly reveal with respect to both legal science and the practice of jurisdiction. (shrink)