How has it been possible that the adoption of the passport – a measure closely associated to the Ancien Régime despotism – was generalized with the French Revolution? The article traces a genealogy of the identification regime that organized the government of mobility from within the liberal conceptual apparatus. The metamorphoses of police apparatus studied by social history are here considered in the light of constitutional debates of the Revolution. The concluding paragraph frames the political-economic implication of the emergence of (...) a modern rationality of identification in order to suggest a field of analysis and of historical periodization that I define «mobility regime». (shrink)

How has it been possible that the adoption of the passport – a measure closely associated to the Ancien Régime despotism – was generalized with the French Revolution? The article traces a genealogy of the identification regime that organized the government of mobility from within the liberal conceptual apparatus. The metamorphoses of police apparatus studied by social history are here considered in the light of constitutional debates of the Revolution. The concluding paragraph frames the political-economic implication of the emergence of (...) a modern rationality of identification in order to suggest a field of analysis and of historical periodization that I define «mobility regime». (shrink)

My goal is to emphasize the way we generally use the word ‘logic’ and the sort of problems related to the definition of logic and the sort of problems related to the definition of logic. I also wish to underline the differences between human intelligence and artificial intelligence.

This paper addresses the title question and provides an argument for the conclusion that so-called phenomenal intentionality, in both its relational and non-relational construals, cannot be identified with intentionality meant as the property for a mental state to be about something. A main premise of the argument presented in support of that conclusion is that a necessary requirement for a property to be identified with intentionality is that it satisfy the features taken to be definitory of it, namely: the possible (...) non-existence of the intentional object and aspectuality. By taking this premise on board, I attempt to show that phenomenal intentionality cannot be identified with intentionality because, appearances notwithstanding, it ultimately satisfies neither of the two above mentioned features. (shrink)

A noção de “interesse público” parece ter uma tradição antiga e profícua nos estudos políticos, em particular nas pesquisas sobre mídia, comunicação e política. No entanto, parece haver um aparente paradoxo entre a própria noção de “interesse” e a ideia de algo “público”: como uma ação ou decisão política pode contemplar a miríade de interesses de grupos e indivíduos diversos? Este artigo delineia alguns aspectos da noção de “interesse” no debate atual sobre comunicação política. Com base em uma pesquisa bibliográfica, (...) este artigo argumenta que, nas últimas décadas, as principais obras sobre o tema têm dedicado menos espaço à noção de 'interesse público' como uma entidade única em favor de uma visão mais nuançada e identitária cultural, noção que contempla a pluralidade de uma esfera pública repleta de novas formas de ativismo e demandas coletivas por espaço, igualdade e visibilidade. (shrink)

The epistemological problem of the truth of memory cannot be resolved without establishing a clear distinction between recollection and phantasy. Husserl’s position in this regard is both paradoxical and compelling. It is paradoxical because Husserl repeats his antiskeptical intention many times; but nevertheless in his phenomenology, recollection and phantasy are almost completely identical. Perhaps no philosopher has so radically approached the experience of remembering and the experience of fantasizing as Husserl. But at the same time, the recognition of this fundamental (...) similarity is precisely what allows the phenomenologist to avoid empiricist misunderstandings and thus approach the problem of the distinction between recollection and phantasy in a much more persuasive way than the traditional one. In this paper, I will first try to show how and why Husserl approaches recollection and phantasy. Then I will try to show how it is possible to establish a clear distinction between these two phenomena without misunderstanding the possibility of false memory. (shrink)

We present an overview of the recent developments in the study of the classification problem for automorphisms of C*-algebras from the perspective of Borel complexity theory.

Erleichtert die Konzeptualisierung der Patientenverfügung als bloßes Indiz für den mutmaßlichen Willen die notwendige Einbeziehung eines relationalen Autonomieverständnisses in eine zunehmend kulturübergreifende Bioethik? Ich lege dar, dass die Berücksichtigung relationaler Autonomiekonzepte kein überzeugendes Argument für die Bestimmung der Patientenverfügung als bloßes Indiz für den mutmaßlichen Willen ist, sondern vielmehr – neben einer Reihe anderer Argumente – für die Patientenverfügung als verbindliche Willensbekundung spricht. Diese erweist sich als flexibel genug, um unterschiedlichen Formen von Autonomie gerecht zu werden.

How the cilium appeared is still such a poorly defined question that current hypotheses range from a symbiotic spirochaete to a cellular eye. In this paper, the whole question is subdivided into a list of problems which are morphological, physiological and temporal. These problems are examined one by one, in order to analyse the most popular exogenous hypothesis of Margulis as well as other recent exogenous and endogenous hypotheses. To overcome fundamental topological and temporal difficulties, a new endogenous hypothesis is (...) expounded, according to which the cilium derives from a cellular peduncle reinforced with microtubules. This hypothesis implies a geometrical rationale for the ninefold symmetry. In the last paragraph the consequences of the various hypotheses are compared. (shrink)

Who or what is morally considerable? That is to say, what merits direct moral consideration—consideration in light of what it is? Mark Bernstein steers a middle course between the extremes he labels “chauvinism” and “deep ecology.” Chauvinists hold that, at most, all human beings are morally considerable. Deep ecologists are either individualists who hold that every living thing is morally considerable or holists who hold that ecosystems but not their constituent parts are considerable in themselves.

We present an introductory survey to first order logic for metric structures and its applications to C*-algebras.

In an era characterized by fast technological progress that introduces new unpredictable scenarios every day, working in the law field may appear very difficult, if not supported by the right tools. In this respect, some systems based on Artificial Intelligence methods have been proposed in the literature, to support several tasks in the legal sector. Following this line of research, in this paper we propose a novel method, called PRILJ, that identifies paragraph regularities in legal case judgments, to support legal (...) experts during the redaction of legal documents. Methodologically, PRILJ adopts a two-step approach that first groups documents into clusters, according to their semantic content, and then identifies regularities in the paragraphs for each cluster. Embedding-based methods are adopted to properly represent documents and paragraphs into a semantic numerical feature space, and an Approximated Nearest Neighbor Search method is adopted to efficiently retrieve the most similar paragraphs with respect to the paragraphs of a document under preparation. Our extensive experimental evaluation, performed on a real-world dataset provided by EUR-Lex, proves the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed method. In particular, its ability of modeling different topics of legal documents, as well as of capturing the semantics of the textual content, appear very beneficial for the considered task, and make PRILJ very robust to the possible presence of noise in the data. (shrink)

The paper focuses on two claims widely held in the philosophy of mind, namely, content externalism and phenomenological internalism. The question it addresses is which picture, if any, of the relationship between representational and phenomenal properties makes the conjunction between the two claims tenable. The main thesis of the paper is that the conjunction is tenable only within an account which treats the two kinds of properties as distinct, irreducible and yet related to each other. The relationship between them is (...) then articulated within a Frege-inspired framework that treats phenomenal properties as manners of presentation of representational properties. (shrink)

La brillantezza di molti edifici contemporanei può essere espressa attraverso l'immagine di uno specchio che riflette ciò che sta intorno, impedendo ogni contatto tra interno ed esterno. Ciò porta verso uno scenario articolato e ambiguo, che rappresenta il punto di contatto tra la riflessione architettonica e le formule sempre più spettacolarizzanti della comunicazione mediatica. L'estetica che prende forma da questo “paradigma dello specchio” perde il suo riferimento a una nozione pubblica e condivisa di bellezza, a favore di una sua considerazione (...) come oggetto di scambio individuale. Il concetto di “i-Aesthetics” prova a sintetizzare tale quadro, che diventa sempre più influente in riferimento al giudizio sull'architettura e al legame complessivo che instauriamo con lo spazio. (shrink)

There are two main ideas that inform the current reflection in the philosophy of mind, namely that the content of mental states is constitutively dependent on worldly, environmental facts and that phenomenology depends only on the intrinsic features of a subject. The question I shall address is whether it is possible to preserve both ideas within a strong intentionalist account. In other words, as the title goes: Can phenomenology be narrow if content is wide and phenomenology is claimed to depend (...) on intentionality? The paper has the following structure: I shall start by presenting a triad which seems to rule out the possibility of preserving both content externalism and phenomenological internalism. Then, after having claimed that the only way in which a strong intentionalist could stick to those two ideas is to make the phenomenal character of a mental state independent for its individuation on the mental state’s content, I shall present what I take to be the only possible variety of which is compatible with such a move. (shrink)

What can two philosophical texts contribute to the discourse 200 years after their first publication? This main question guides the identification and analysis of two models of global world order, developed by Kant and Fichte in two of their selected works. These are respectively a small text by Immanuel Kant bearing the title Zum ewigen Frieden and a supplement to Fichte’s legal doctrine entitled Der geschlossene Handelsstaat. It became evident that the authors support two opposite positions: A federation of politically (...) sovereign states, which engage in constant economic relationships on the one hand, and a closed nation-state, which can only maintain its internal economical and political balance in the absence of economic relations with other countries. A thematical comparison is undertaken with the intention to underpin the importance of these writings for current debates. A particular focus is put on the phenomenon of globalization, being the most important current challenge in the shaping of international political and economic relations. Was können zwei philosophische Beiträge knapp 200 Jahre nach ihrer Veröffentlichung zu aktuellen Themen noch beitragen? Diese zentrale Frage leitet die Ausarbeitung und Untersuchung der Modelle globaler Weltordnung, die Kant und Fichte in zwei ausgewählten Referenzwerken entwickelt haben, ein. Dabei handelt es sich um die kleine Schrift Kants Zum ewigen Frieden und um den Anhang zu Fichtes Rechtslehre, der unter dem Titel Der geschlossene Handelsstaat erschienen ist. Es kristallisieren sich zwei entgegengesetzte Entwürfe heraus: Eine Föderation freier Staaten, die sich in kontinuierlichen politisch-ökonomischen Verhältnissen aufeinander beziehen, steht einem geschlossenen Nationalstaat gegenüber, der nur ohne Kontakte mit dem Ausland die eigene innere wirtschaftliche und politische Harmonie beibehalten kann. Es wird ein thematischer Vergleich mit der Absicht vollzogen, die Bedeutung dieser Beiträge für aktuelle Diskussionen hervorzuheben. Besonders im Fokus steht das Phänomen der Globalisierun gals wichtigste gegenwärtige Herausforderung für internationale, politische und wirtschaftliche Beziehungen. (shrink)

Why is it so important to study Nietzsche? Many works about Nietzsche’s thought have been published over the years, from every conceivable position, including analytical philosophy.1 One more essay on Nietzsche may seem a bit repetitive. Yet, as Giuseppe Fornari wrote in the preface of Il Caso Nietzsche (The Nietzsche Case), it is fundamental to analyze Nietzsche deeply, because the most important themes of his works are still hidden among the pages of his books.2 René Girard has made an original (...) contribution to understanding Nietzsche by underlining the close connections between Nietzsche’s philosophy and the personal relationships he established during his life. In particular, Girard’s .. (shrink)

Brouwer's theorem of 1927 on the equivalence between virtual and inextensible order is discussed. Several commentators considered the theorem at issue as problematic in various ways. Brouwer himself, at a certain time, believed to have found a very simple counter-example to his theorem. In some later publications, however, he stated the theorem in the original form again. It is argued that the source of all criticisms is Brouwer's overly elliptical formulation of the definition of inextensible order, as well as a (...) certain ambiguity in his terminology. Once these drawbacks are removed, his proof goes through. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to highlight and discuss two problems of the biological philosophy of technology. In particular, I will analyse the work of André Leroi-Gourhan and Gilbert Simondon, and I will show that the meaning of the analogy between technical and natural objects that underlies the approach of the biological philosophy of technology remains problematic and the biological approach to technology is very effective for analysing tools and machines, but is not sufficient to describe the so-called information (...) technologies. In the last part of the article, I will argue that, in order to understand information technologies, it is necessary to integrate the biological approach to technology with a grammatological approach. I will try to show that, next to the tool and the machine, there is a third category of technical objects that can be better described using the notion of “writing” proposed by one of the masters of the so-called French Thought, Jacques Derrida. (shrink)

Human needs play a crucial role in the moral evaluation of distributions of goods and services. This role is attested by the rhetorical effectiveness of appeals to needs. But what moral currency do these appeals to needs. But what moral currency do these appeals have? Which needs are morally most important? ;I argue that our morally most important needs are what we require or find indispensable in order to avoid harm as damage, or as the impairment of our fundamental capabilities. (...) To illustrate their moral importance, I show that these needs are more important than are competing wants or desires. To this end, I offer a novel defense of the intuitively plausible view that universal moral claims to assistance in meeting needs have a presumptive precedence over competing claims to assistance in satisfying wants or desires. These needs have a presumptive precedence over competing wants largely because one person's reasons to meet these needs are presumptively stronger than another person's reasons to satisfy competing wants. ;Instead of considering the full moral importance of what we need in order to avoid harm as damage--an evaluation that requires studying the role played by these needs in other fundamental distributive principles, such as property rights--I turn to consider two challenges to this principle of precedence to needs in assistance. Is this principle not too demanding in requiring that one help others meet their needs before allowing one to help others satisfy competing wants and desires? Is this principle not too demanding in requiring one to help others meet their needs beyond what it would be fair for one to do? ;Although the first challenge is intuitively appealing, I reject it because the suggestions made about where to draw the limits to moral requirements of assistance on grounds of costs or burdensomeness are unsatisfactory. In order to evaluate the second challenge, I propose that we understand fair shares of a collective obligation of assistance as equally burdensome shares. I then argue we have little reason to think we are morally required to do only what it is fair for us to do in this sense. (shrink)

In recent years, the fight against money laundering has emerged as a key issue of financial regulation. The Wolfsberg Group is an important multistakeholder agreement establishing corporate responsibility principles against money laundering in a domain where international coordination remains otherwise difficult. The fact that 10 out of the 25 top private banking institutions joined this initiative opens up an interesting puzzle concerning the conditions for the participation of key industry players in the Wolfsberg Group. The article presents a fuzzy-set analysis (...) of seven hypotheses based on firm-level organizational factors, the macro-institutional context, and the regulatory framework. Results from the analysis of these 25 financial institutions show that public ownership of the bank and the existence of a code of conduct are necessary conditions for participation in the Wolfsberg Group, whereas factors related to the type of financial institution, combined with the existence of a black list, are sufficient for explaining participation. (shrink)

As colleges and universities seek to invigorate ethics education, they need methods to identify where and describe how ethics is already present across their curricula. Meeting this need is complicated by the fact that much ethics education occurs in courses not explicitly focused on ethics or morality. In this paper, we review recent methodological advances before presenting a new Ethics Course Identification Tool (ECIT) that combines application of an expert-derived weighted dictionary and natural language processing methods to identify ethics-related courses (...) based on their titles and course catalog descriptions, even when the terms “ethic” or “moral” are not present. Two studies, the second a pre-registered replication, revealed considerable interrater reliability among experts in ethics education regarding the ethical relevance of courses. Critically, both studies revealed strong correlations between expert judgments and ECIT scores. This empirical evidence points to a shared understanding of ethics education among experts, and it supports the valid use of the ECIT to rapidly and reliably identify ethics-related courses. Based on these findings, we propose that the ECIT can be used both to advance research on trends in ethics education and to help target interventions to improve ethics education at colleges and universities. (shrink)

The Civil Economy approach, as developed by Italian economists Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni, aims at introducing reciprocity into the economy as a humanizing factor. Despite being presented as an innovative perspective, the CE approach shares many characteristics with the German model of Social Market Economy. The present paper compares both approaches, showing that they in fact share a normative basis and similar aims but address them from diverse points of view; namely, CE addresses them from a virtue ethics perspective (...) and SME from an institutional ethics one. This leads them to stress different aspects and to focus on diverse problems. Therefore, CE would not constitute an alternative to SME but a complement. Thus, a combination of both approaches should allow each to take advantage of their respective strengths and lead to a better result in terms of the common good. (shrink)

The present article proposes a ‘heretic’ reading of Jan Patočka’s last work, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, usually considered as a profound philosophical reflection upon the nihili...

IntroductionPalliative care is an emotionally and spiritually high-demanding setting of care. The literature reports on the main issues in order to implement self-care, but there are no models for the organization of the training course. We described the structure of training on self-care and its effects for a Hospital Palliative Care Unit.MethodWe used action-research training experience based mostly on qualitative data. Thematic analysis of data on open-ended questions, researcher’s field notes, oral and written feedback from the trainer and the participants (...) on training outcomes and satisfaction questionnaires were used.ResultsFour major themes emerged: “Professional role and personal feelings”; “Inside and outside the team”; “Do I listen to my emotions in the care relationship?”; “Death: theirs vs. mine.” According to participants’ point of view and researchers’ observations, the training course resulted in ameliorative adjustments of the program; improved skills in self-awareness of own’s emotions and sharing of perceived emotional burden; practicing “compassionate presence” with patients; shared language to address previously uncharted aspects of coping; allowing for continuity of the skills learned; translation of the language learned into daily clinical practices through specific facilitation; a structured staff’s support system for emotional experiences.DiscussionSelf-care is an important enabler for the care of others. The core of our intervention was to encourage a meta-perspective in which the trainees developed greater perspicacity pertaining to their professional role in the working alliance and also recognizing the contribution of their personal emotions to impasse experienced with patients. (shrink)

Typical spatial descriptions, such as “The car is in front of the house,” describe the position of a located object (LO; e.g., the car) in space relative to a reference object (RO) whose location is known (e.g., the house). The orientation of the RO affects spatial language comprehension via the reference frame selection process. However, the effects of the LO's orientation on spatial language have not received great attention. This study explores whether the pure geometric information of the LO (e.g., (...) its orientation) affects spatial language comprehension using placing and production tasks. Our results suggest that the orientation of the LO influences spatial language comprehension even in the absence of functional relationships. (shrink)

BackgroundAdults with ADHD exhibit a neuropsychological profile that may present deficits in many cognitive domains, particularly attention and executive functions. However, some authors do not consider executive disfunction as an important part of the clinical profile of the syndrome; this could be related to the use of inappropriate neuropsychological tests, probably not adapted and not sufficiently ecological. Moreover, new data are required on specific correlation of attentive-executive symptoms with socio-demographic factors. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze the (...) neuropsychological performance of a group of adults with ADHD, also evaluating the influence of gender, age and education level.MethodsWe retrospectively collected health-related personal data of 40 adult ADHD patients, clinically diagnosed and evaluated via a battery of 4 neuropsychological tests and 1 self-administered questionnaire. Gender, age and years of education differences were assessed.ResultsAttention and EFs deficits have been highlighted mainly on the d2-R and 5-point neuropsychological tests, which therefore seem to be more sensitive in measuring the attention-executive dysfunction in an adult ADHD population, than TAP Go/No-go and ROCFT. ADHD patients also manifested subjective behavioral impulsivity disorders on BIS-11. There were no statistically significant gender differences in cognitive performance. On the contrary, younger patients performed worse on subscales TAP Go/No-go errors and 5-points number of drawings, while participants with a higher education level performed better on subscales d2-R speed of execution and d2-R errors. This supports a reduction in the number of errors and the execution time as a function of older age and a higher level of education. Finally, patients with higher education also self-reported greater impulsivity in planning.ConclusionOur preliminary findings suggest that adult ADHD is not a lifelong stable disorder, but it may change over time. Moreover, attention-executive deficits may be influenced and partially counterbalanced by experience and a higher level of education. This could underlie the development of specific psycho-behavioral and cognitive compensatory strategies. The use of self-administered questionnaires is therefore recommended to highlight attentional and executive difficulties that may not result in neuropsychological tests. (shrink)

At the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the 19th, Spain and the Italian States contributed to the development of European agricultural science and the improvement of manufacturing. They collaborated with each other and reworked the most advanced models of France, Central Europe and Great Britain. Despite their somewhat less prosperous economic status, they demonstrated great originality in research and experimentation. In this process, botanical knowledge served as a starting point for a new epistemological path. Through three case (...) studies – the botanists Antonio José Cavanilles and Domenico Nocca, and the agriculturist Filippo Re – my article analyses how Spanish and Italian naturalists and learned individuals contributed to forming the concept of ‘economic botany’ through the exchange of seeds, plant specimens, books, journals, and – more in general – opinions, becoming germinal forces in a large transnational network. (shrink)