The recent historical commentary on Curtius’ Hi storiae book X by JOHN E. ATKINSON (2009) points out that the account of the expedition at the mouth of the Indus given by Nearchus and Onesicritus to Alexander coheres with the one presented by Diodorus in book 17 of his Historiae in many respects. So ATKINSON believes that Diodorus and Curtius may have used the same source, probably Clitarchus. However, LUISA PRANDI in her study on the reception of Clitarchus’ work (...) by later authors, has recognized nothing but generic similarities between Curtius’ and Diodorus’s accounts; she believes that both authors used a different source. In this paper, the issue is examined again, and Curtius’ account is compared with all the other sources for the same topic. (shrink)

This book explores Goethe's ethics of happiness and the role of resignation within them. Prandi has carefully separated autobiographical material from literary expository of these themes in order to clarify the misunderstanding that has resulted from relying on Goethe's fictional works to document his personal ethical convictions. The book aims in part at working out in detail the usefulness of Spinoza's Ethics in evaluating ethical views expressed in poetry and fiction; and in part at correcting erroneous and confused ideas (...) about Goethean resignation. Prandi studies the 'natural morality' Goethe developed and practiced, using Lucretius and Spinoza as models of influence. All three define the good as what makes people rationally happy; each has his own resignation model to offer. From a deep analysis of views on happiness and resignation, the author's discussion leads to some surprising new conclusions. (shrink)

L’article de Luisa Simonutti traite de la critique et de la reprise de certains concepts clés de la pensée de Socin (liberté, volonté, responsabilité) par des arminiens de Hollande. Cet héritage complexe est plus qu’un épisode de la réaction vaste et articulée qui se manifesta à la fin du XVIe siècle – et qui s’étendit sur tout le XVIIe siècle – contre les œuvres et les idées du Siennois. Cet événement doit aussi être interprété comme le moment d’une confrontation (...) plus large en défense de la libertas prophetandi et du libre arbitre de l’homme face aux lois et à la volonté divines. (shrink)

The problem of the construction of memory that faces the Afro-Brazilian population presents itself as more than a simple need for an identity connected to an original past, but in addition as essential, because for historical reasons their social reality has not yet reached the end of its struggle. The African composition of Brazilian culture is based on several sources of many origins peculiar to different African peoples. The memory people have of Africa is vague, generic, indefinite. Though the lost (...) ancestral past is multi-ethnic, multicultural Africa, the retrievable past is the one Brazil has succeeded in integrating into the construction of a new civilization: a past that can only be re-invented, a re-created memory. (shrink)

Argues that affirming the irreducible differences between men and women can lead to more transformative politics than the struggle for abstract equality between the sexes. In The Symbolic Order of the Mother Luisa Muraro identifies the bond between mother and child as ontologically fundamental to the development of culture and politics, and therefore as key to achieving truly emancipatory political change. Both corporeal development and language acquisition, which are the sources of all thinking, begin in this relationship. However, Western (...) civilization has been defined by men, and Muraro recalls the admiration and envy she felt for the great philosophers as she strove to become one herself, as well as the desire for independence that opposed her to her mother. This conflict between philosophy and culture on the one hand and the relationship with the mother on the other constitutes the root of patriarchy’s symbolic disorder, which blocks women’s (and men’s) access to genuine freedom. Muraro appeals to the feminist practice of gratitude to the mother and the recognition of her authority as a model of unconditional nurture and support that must be restored. This, she argues, is the symbolic order of the mother that must overcome the disorder of patriarchy. The mediating power of the mother tongue constitutes a symbolic order that comes before all others, for both women and men. Luisa Muraro is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Verona, Italy. Francesca Novello is an instructor at the University of Oklahoma. Timothy S. Murphy is Houston-Truax-Wentz Professor and Regents Professor of English at Oklahoma State University. (shrink)

The combinatory restriction known in linguistics as ‘selection restrictions’ are generally assumed to be a kind of linguistic structures, either syntactic or semantic, or at best cognitive structures. The idea discussed in this paper is that selection restrictions, although relevant for the description of complex meanings of linguistic expressions, do not belong to the structure of either language or cognition in any reasonable sense. Instead, they are criteria for conceptual consistency. They form a layer of shared presuppositions that lie at (...) the grounds of consistent human behaviour and therefore of consistent thought and expression and belong to a natural ontology shared far beyond the boundaries of a given linguistic community. (shrink)

La campagna innevata spaziava tra loro moventi e gli attestati tedeschi vasta, immobilmente ondosa, odiosamente imparzialeFenoglio 1 La domanda sulla significanza L’argomento di questo saggio — l’ontologia naturale condivisa che fornisce i criteri di coerenza (consistency) al nostro comportamento pratico, e di lì ai modelli cognitivi condivisi e ai significati linguistici — è legato indissolubilmente, nella mia ricerca, allo studio del significato delle espressioni complesse. Questo fa capire...

An important debate in the current literature is whether “all truth-conditional effects of extra-linguistic context can be traced to [a variable at; LM] logical form” (Stanley, ‘Context and Logical Form’, Linguistics and Philosophy, 23 (2000) 391). That is, according to Stanley, the only truth-conditional effects that extra-linguistic context has are localizable in (potentially silent) variable-denoting pronouns or pronoun-like items, which are represented in the syntax/at logical form (pure indexicals like I or today are put aside in this discussion). According to (...) Recanati (‘Unarticulated Constituents’, Linguistics and Philosophy, 25 (2002) 299), extra-linguistic context can have additional truth-conditional effects, in the form of optional pragmatic processes like ‘free enrichment’. This paper shows that Recanati’s position is not warranted, since there is an alternative line of analysis that obviates the need to assume free enrichment. In the alternative analysis, we need Stanley’s variables, but we need to give them the freedom to be or not to be generated in the syntax/present at logical form, a kind of optionality that has nothing to do with the pragmatics-related optionality of free enrichment. (shrink)

This paper investigates young children's knowledge of scalar implicatures and downward entailment. In previous experimental work, we have shown that young children access the full range of truth-conditions associated with logical words in classical logic, including the disjunction operator, as well as the indefinite article. The present study extends this research in three ways, taking disjunction as a case study. Experiment 1 draws upon the observation that scalar implicatures (SIs) are cancelled (or reversed) in downward entailing (DE) linguistic environments, e.g., (...) in the scope of negation (Chierchia, 2000). Experiment 2 was designed to determine if scalar implicatures are used by children, like adults, to influence the interpretation of disjunction in non-DE contexts, yielding an implicature of exclusivity for disjunction. Whereas adult controls always rejected assertions of the form A or B in positive (non-DE) contexts in which assertions of the form A and B were also true, many children accepted assertions with disjunction in such contexts. To provide an interpretation to the findings from Experiment 2, a new experimental technique was devised and used in Experiment 3. The new technique presents pairs of assertions to children, who are asked to judge which assertion is a ‘better’ description of the context. The findings from Experiment 3 demonstrated children's awareness that A and B is more informative than A or B in positive contexts, where both statements are true. Taken together, the findings of Experiments 2 and 3 are compatible with the view that some children lack the computational resources to apply scalar implicatures when a single assertion is presented alone (see Reinhart, 1999). (shrink)

An interaction between the ways morality and society develop in the face of the challenges they are exposed to seems consistent with empirical evidence. However, within this frame man's instinct of self preservation and his individualism seem to play an important part. The former by its influence on the evolution of what I refer to as 'our social morality'. The latter by finding its expression in conservative and radical ideologies whose political confrontation appears to give rise to an evolutionary develop (...) ment. The paper draws attention to the fact that in the face of contemporary challenges the evolutionary development of our morals may determine whether the corresponding evolutionary development of our societies will approach the patterns of those of insects, or whether our highly developed individual istic traits will result in new moral trends creating a society which is better suited to the present characteristics of humankind. It is also argued that the present growth of international organizations for cooperation and peaceful co-existence should make it possible to build a society worthy of the human race, but that it could be done only if we are able to develop a sufficient sense of responsibility to deliberately keep over-consumption and human population within a natural balance. (shrink)

El secreto en todas sus vertientes, en todas sus facetas, vericuetos, senderos. Pero sobre todo el Secreto en la literatura, pues como dice Luisa Valenzuela, en su estilo mordaz, agudo, siempre entre guinos y complicidades: "No hay literatura sin secreto."Detras de cada palabra se esconde el misterio, un laberinto en el que todo puede suceder: de la pasion a la ternura; del crimen a la sublimacion. Encontrar el hilo conductor, salvador, descifrador, o ahondar sus diversidades, es papel de quien (...) aspira a lo literario, bien como escritor, bien como lector.Precisas, directas, divertidas, las palabras de Luisa Valenzuela se deslizan sobre las paginas de un libro lleno de humor del mas fino, de ironia inteligente, como sucede en sus novelas, en sus cuentos, pero ahora provenientes del ciclo de conferencias y el dinamico taller de escritura breve que impartio en el marco de la Catedra Alfonso Reyes del Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of communicative intention on action. In Experiment 1 participants were requested to reach towards an object, grasp it, and either simply lift it or lift it with the intent to communicate a meaning to a partner . Movement kinematics were recorded using a three-dimensional motion analysis system. The results indicate that kinematics was sensitive to communicative intention. Although the to-be-grasped object remained the same, movements performed for the ‘communicative’ condition (...) were characterized by a kinematic pattern which differed from those obtained for the ‘individual’ condition. These findings were confirmed in a subsequent experiment in which the communicative condition was compared to a control condition, in which the communicative exchange was prevented. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive pragmatics and current knowledge on how social behavior shapes action kinematics. (shrink)

Living with the Robots. A Conversation about social Robotics This interview aims at focusing some aspects of an intriguing discipline known as social Robotics. In particular, we try to get familiar with concepts and philosophical frameworks which deal with this new human enterprise. Paul Dumouchel and Luisa Damiano will help us to get in contact with a scenario in which emotions, reason and ethics will be partially revised by a somehow different perspective about human-robot interaction and sociality.

At the end of the 1960s “Supports/Surfaces” artists start deconstructing paintings to jeopardize their representational qualities. Claude Viallat and Daniel Dezeuze, for example, process canvases and frames to highlight their phisical aspect as opposed to the illusionistic realm or representation. This way polarities such as form/space and illusionistic space/real space start having a new, dialectic relationship.

The main purpose of this paper is to introduce a class of algebraic structures related to many-valued ukasiewicz algebras. They are symmetrical Heyting algebras with a set of modal operators indexed by a finite completely symmetric poset. A representation theorem is given for these (not functionally complete) algebras.

Mutations in the CEBPA gene are present in 10–15% of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients. The most frequent type of mutations leads to the expression of an N‐terminally truncated variant of the transcription factor CCAAT/enhancer‐binding protein alpha (C/EBPα), termed p30. While initial reports proposed that p30 represents a dominant‐negative version of the wild‐type C/EBPα protein, other studies show that p30 retains the capacity to actively regulate gene expression. Recent global transcriptomic and epigenomic analyses have advanced the understanding of the distinct (...) roles of the p30 isoform in leukemogenesis. This review outlines direct and indirect effects of the C/EBPα p30 variant on oncogenic transformation of hematopoietic progenitor cells and discusses how studies of N‐terminal CEBPA mutations in AML can be extrapolated to identify novel gain‐of‐function features in oncoproteins that arise from recurrent truncating mutations in transcription factors. (shrink)

This article deals with the fear aroused by a pervasive and intangible disease caused by an imperceptible and indeterminate element: a virus. The author does not investigate the multiple historical-political-psychological aspects of the disease nor the social medicine issues which it arises. She rather wonders if and how this disease is intervening in our lives modifying our relationship with other people.

"Cover " -- "Title Page " -- "Copyright " -- "Contents " -- "Preface to the English Edition" -- "Introduction" -- "1. The Substitute" -- "2. Animals, Machines, Cyborgs, and the Taxi " -- "3. Mind, Emotions, and Artificial Empathy " -- "4. The Other Otherwise " -- "5. From Moral and Lethal Machines to Synthetic Ethics " -- "Notes" -- "Works Cited" -- "Acknowledgments" -- "Credits.

In this paper I demonstrate that there is an explanation of the number marking we see on nouns when they combine with the numeral _zero_ which combines Martí’s (Semant. Pragmat., 2020a, https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.13.3 ) account of the morphosyntax and semantics of the numeral-noun construction with Bylinina and Nouwen’s (Glossa 3(1):98, 2018 ) semantics for _zero_ and which does not need to appeal to any further principles (e.g., agreement).

Social robotics entertains a particular relationship with anthropomorphism, which it neither sees as a cognitive error, nor as a sign of immaturity. Rather it considers that this common human tendency, which is hypothesized to have evolved because it favored cooperation among early humans, can be used today to facilitate social interactions between humans and a new type of cooperative and interactive agents - social robots. This approach leads social robotics to focus research on the engineering of robots that activate anthropomorphic (...) projections in users. The objective is to give robots "social presence" and "social behaviors" that are sufficiently credible for human users to engage in comfortable and potentially long-lasting relations with these machines. This choice of ’applied anthropomorphism’ as a research methodology exposes the artifacts produced by social robotics to ethical condemnation: social robots are judged to be a "cheating" technology, as they generate in users the illusion of reciprocal social and affective relations. This article takes position in this debate, not only developing a series of arguments relevant to philosophy of mind, cognitive sciences, and robotic AI, but also asking what social robotics can teach us about anthropomorphism. On this basis, we propose a theoretical perspective that characterizes anthropomorphism as a basic mechanism of interaction, and rebuts the ethical reflections that a priori condemns "anthropomorphism-based" social robots. To address the relevant ethical issues, we promote a critical experimentally based ethical approach to social robotics, "synthetic ethics," which aims at allowing humans to use social robots for two main goals: self-knowledge and moral growth. (shrink)

The present paper aims at reviewing the complex of “Santa Agnese fuori le mura”, the most important architectural ensemble along the Via Nomentana, and one of the most renowned sanctuaries of the suburban landscape of Rome. This paper focuses, in particular, on today’s church, built right over the martyr’s burial by Pope Onorius between 628 and 635 A.D., and attempts to reconstruct its original appearance, taking into account both the status quaestionis and literary sources. Finally, research findings have been translated (...) into a 3-D reconstruction of the church, in order to highlight the ancient close relationship between the building and the adjacent land, which was compromised following the renovation works carried out at the beginning of the 17th century. (shrink)

The views of Celia Amorós, which are dealt with here, originate in the ideas which appeared, especially in the Enlightenment, and which demanded equality for women. Following this line of thought she studies some of the most powerful theories of Western philosophical tradition in order to carry out a critical feminist deconstruction. Since her work is a critique of the philosophical critique of the Enlightenment, one can identify traces , today almost forgotten, of a feminist tradition of thought which can (...) be considered as a discourse of emancipation. Furthermore, this critical exercise becomes an intellectual and social non-patriarchal project of a society free from gender restrictions. In this sense, Celia Amoros’ philosophical work develops into philosophical feminism, not only in terms of being critical revision of the history of ideas, but also and principally because it takes shape as critical reflection and as direct dialogue with present-day philosophical discourse. (shrink)

El término '"Dialéctica" hace referencia tanto al movimiento de autodesenvolvimento del concepto - en este caso el de derecho y, em sentido amplio - como a la estrutura de ese movimiento, al cual Hegel trata de encuadrar en esquemas provenientes de la Lógica dei concepto, especialmente en la triada 'tesis - antítesis - síntesis', lo cual potencia la complejidad dei texto y dificulta su comprensión. Uma hermenéÚtica esclarecedora de la lógica dialéctica en juego, donde a la contradicción!e cabe el papel (...) protagónico, exige tener en cuenta estos aspectos como también e: hecho de que Hegel, en su concepción de la Dialéctica asume la herencia de la filosofia aristotélica, tanto como del Idealismo Trascendental moderno, los que se entremezclan permanentemente en intrincada red de múltiples significaciones. La distinción de todos estas aspectos y de su rol en la exposición de la Filosofia del Derecho es imprescindible, tanto para una interpretación adecuada de su letra y espíritu, como de su significación actual. El presente trabajo se concibe como un intento de contribuir ai esclarecimiento de esta cuestión. (shrink)