According to the theory of meaning as justification, semantics is closely entangled with epistemology: knowing the meaning of an utterance amounts to knowing the justification one may offer for it. In this perspective, the theory of meaning is connected with the epistemic theory of justification, namely the theory that undergoes the more explicit attempts of naturalization. Is it possible to extend those attempts to the notion of meaning? There are many ways of naturalizing the notion of meaning, independently of its (...) links with the notion of justification. Our goal in this paper is to explore the possibility of naturalizing meaning using those very links. To this aim, we will evaluate in brief three main directions: a) the interaction between justification and discovery; b) Quine's naturalized epistemology; c) the naturalization of logic. (shrink)

Determining whether and/or how to enable older persons with disabilities to engage in sex raises several ethical considerations. With the goal of enabling the sexual functioning of older adults with disabilities, Jecker argues that sex robots could be used as a helpful tool. In her article, ‘Nothing to be Ashamed of: Sex Robots for Older Adults with Disabilities’, Jecker acknowledges the importance of sexual functioning and the fact that ageist assumptions incorrectly classify older persons as asexual. Additionally, older adults may (...) experience disabilities that negatively influence their sexual functioning, which is problematic since sex may be linked to the following capabilities: developing a meaningful life narrative; being healthy; experiencing bodily integrity; feeling and communicating emotions; affiliating with others and reflecting on and choosing a life plan.1 In accordance with Nussbaum’s capabilities approach,2 Jecker says that society has a duty to support these capabilities at a minimal threshold. And insofar as sexual functioning may be relevant to the capabilities for older adults with disabilities, then we need to respond accordingly. One way of achieving this aim is by providing access to sex robots. I agree that sex robots ought to be made available for older adults with disabilities. Nevertheless, the article inspires several areas for further exploration. As Jecker rightfully mentions, older adults are often incorrectly labelled as non-sexual. For instance, in their analysis of older individuals’ views on sex and quality of life, Gott …. (shrink)

This paper provides an overview of semiotic studies about advertising, beginning with the early work done in the 1960s. Advertising communication plays a particular role in semiotic studies in the second half of the twentieth century. Pioneering studies of advertising messages, in particular those of Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco, date to the 1960s and were carried out for the most part using the tools of classical rhetoric. Following a period in which semiotics displayed a relative lack of interest in (...) advertisements, in the 1980s advertising texts were used as examples in applied narratological analysis by Jean-Marie Floch and others. This occurred at the same time as the so-called “passion turn of semiotics,” which stressed that the passions and emotions present in texts are crucial issues in textual semiotics, and it also seemed to offer fresh perspectives for the analysis of advertising communication. The passion turn took account of the evolution of advertising itself, since modern advertising is more and more interested in conveying passions and emotions. The effectiveness of an advert tends to be closely bound up with the presentation of sensations associated with a given product or brand. Recently, semioticians have begun to study more general features of advertising and marketing discourse. (shrink)

Benedetto Varchi and Averroism. The article examines the role played by Averroes and the Averroist tradition in Benedetto Varchi's philosophical works. The first part clarifies why Varchi defines Dante as an "Averroist" and reconstructs his ori-­ ginal reading of the first verse in Paradise. The second part argues that Varchi's plan to vernacularize philosophy, often interpreted as an attempt to "demo-­ cratize" knowledge, should not prevent us from recognizing that he emphasizes the moral and intellectual differences existing among human beings. (...) Though following Aristotle in saying that "all men by nature desire to know", Varchi shows no qualms in acknowledging that most of them cannot fulfil this desire and, referring to Averroes and Galen, claims that because of their complexio most people cannot understand phi-­ losophy. (shrink)

In Hájek et al. (J Symb Logic 65(2):669–682, 2000) the authors introduce the concept of supersound logic, proving that first-order Gödel logic enjoys this property, whilst first-order Łukasiewicz and product logics do not; in Hájek and Shepherdson (Ann Pure Appl Logic 109(1–2):65–69, 2001) this result is improved showing that, among the logics given by continuous t-norms, Gödel logic is the only one that is supersound. In this paper we will generalize the previous results. Two conditions will be presented: the first (...) one implies the supersoundness and the second one non-supersoundness. To develop these results we will use, between the other machineries, the techniques of completions of MTL-chains developed in Labuschagne and van Alten (Proceedings of the ninth international conference on intelligent technologies, 2008) and van Alten (2009). We list some of the main results. The first-order versions of MTL, SMTL, IMTL, WNM, NM, RDP are supersound; the first-order version of an axiomatic extension of BL is supersound if and only it is n-potent (i.e. it proves the formula ${\varphi^{n}\,\to\,\varphi^{n\,{+}\,1}}$ for some ${n\,\in\,\mathbb{N}^+}$ ). Concerning the negative results, we have that the first-order versions of ΠMTL, WCMTL and of each non-n-potent axiomatic extension of BL are not supersound. (shrink)

Variable responses to transcranial direct current stimulation protocols across individuals are widely reported, but the reasons behind this variation are unclear. This includes tDCS protocols meant to improve attention. Attentional control is impacted by top-down and bottom-up processes, and this relationship is affected by state characteristics such as anxiety. According to Attentional Control Theory, anxiety biases attention towards bottom-up and stimulus-driven processing. The goal of this study was to explore the extent to which differences in state anxiety and related measures (...) affect visual attention and category learning, both with and without the influence of tDCS. Using discovery learning, participants were trained to classify pictures of European streets into two categories while receiving 30 min of 2.0 mA anodal, cathodal, or sham tDCS over the rVLPFC. The pictures were classifiable according to two separate rules, one stimulus and one hypothesis-driven. The Remote Associates Test, Profile of Mood States, and Attention Networks Task were used to understand the effects of individual differences at baseline on subsequent tDCS-mediated learning. Multinomial logistic regression was fit to predict rule learning based on the baseline measures, with subjects classified according to whether they used the stimulus-driven or hypothesis-driven rule to classify the pictures. The overall model showed a classification accuracy of 74.1%. The type of tDCS stimulation applied, attentional orienting score, and self-reported mood were significant predictors of different categories of rule learning. These results indicate that anxiety can influence the quality of subjects’ attention at the onset of the task and that these attentional differences can influence tDCS-mediated category learning during the rapid assessment of visual scenes. These findings have implications for understanding the complex interactions that give rise to the variability in response to tDCS. (shrink)

With its focus on evidence, psychology has grown into a mature, professional, and scientifically supported practice over the last decades. In general, psychotherapy and psychological counselling have shown to be more efficacious than waiting it out and a staggering 350 specific treatments have been scientifically supported as effective. Although, evidencebased treatments seem to work equally well, not all people benefit from evidence-based treatments, and it often remains unclear why. This raised the field-wide concern of what works for whom and sparked (...) a wealth of research on specific ingredients, common factors, process factors, and intra- and... (shrink)

In 1950, B.A. Trakhtenbrot showed that the set of first-order tautologies associated to finite models is not recursively enumerable. In 1999, P. Hájek generalized this result to the first-order versions of Łukasiewicz, Gödel and Product logics, w.r.t. their standard algebras. In this paper we extend the analysis to the first-order versions of axiomatic extensions of MTL. Our main result is the following. Let \ be a class of MTL-chains. Then the set of all first-order tautologies associated to the finite models (...) over chains in \, fTAUT\, is \ -hard. Let TAUT\ be the set of propositional tautologies of \. If TAUT\ is decidable, we have that fTAUT\ is in \. We have similar results also if we expand the language with the Δ operator. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present the origins of the marxian criticism of politics. Finding its place between the years of 1842 and 1843, this criticism emerges from within a review of the hegelian philosophy and takes is first form as a philosophical criticism of politics. The criticism of politics developed by Marx was, thus, rigorously a philosophical undertaking, yet of a philosophy that took the world as its object and flowed outwardly, manifesting itself externally as a criticism (...) of the society of that time and a negation of the existing politics.O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar as origens da crítica marxiana da política. Encontrando seu lugar entre os anos de 1842 e 1843 essa crítica nasce no interior de uma revisão da filosofia hegeliana e assume uma primeira forma como crítica filosófica da política. A crítica da política desenvolvida por Marx era, assim, rigorosamente, um empreendimento filosófico, mas de uma filosofia que assumia o mundo como seu objeto e se vertia para fora de si própria manifestando-se externamente como uma crítica da sociedade da época e como uma negação da política existente. (shrink)

This contribution sheds light on the role of infinite idealization in structural analysis, by exploring how infinite elements and finite element methods are combined in civil engineering models. This combination, I claim, should be read in terms of a ‘complementarity function’ through which the representational ideal of completeness is reached in engineering model-building. Taking a cue from Weisberg’s definition of multiple-model idealization, I highlight how infinite idealizations are primarily meant to contribute to the prediction of structural behavior in Multiphysics approaches.

Con Giordano Bruno asistimos a la recuperación de doctrinas neoplatónicas y herméticas que conducen a una comprensión animista y dinámica de la naturaleza, así como a una exaltación del hombre en tanto conoce y actúa sobre el mundo. En el contexto de un universo vivo y animado, Bruno necesita mediaciones en el espacio que hay entre, por un lado, la naturaleza finita del hombre y, por el otro, la divinidad infinita explicada en la naturaleza para fundamentar la teoría mágica de (...) sus obras latinas. Precisamente, la existencia de los demonios en los sistemas neoplatónicos viene a cumplir con este propósito. Sostenemos que existe una continuidad entre la doctrina demonológica que Bruno presenta en su obra latina y la metafísica y cosmología de sus diálogos italianos. Esta continuidad se verifica en la presencia de dos categorías filosóficas importantes del pensamiento bruniano presente en la demonología del De magia naturali : imaginación y vínculos. Así pues, en primer lugar, indagaremos la recepción de la doctrina neoplatónica en la demonología de los siglos XV y XVI, a partir de la cual Bruno desarrolla el marco teórico y filosófico de su doctrina demonológica. En segundo lugar, estudiaremos la naturaleza y función de los demonios en el De magia naturali y su relación con la imaginación y los vínculos en la filosofía del Nolano. (shrink)

RESUMO Este artigo procura mostrar como a linguagem e o estilo empregados por Dostoiévski já em seu romance de estreia, Gente pobre, contribuíram para a grande inovação realizada por ele na forma literária. Ao tomar como objeto de representação a realidade prática de camadas inferiores da sociedade e adotar em sua obra uma linguagem também considerada de nível inferior, própria à maneira de se expressar dessas camadas sociais, Dostoiévski não só transcende todas as regras literárias estabelecidas como também as já (...) transgredidas até então, porque ele leva a sério não só a realidade cotidiana como a linguagem, o nível de estilo próprio a elas. Com isso ele se aproxima da representação séria e elevada da realidade cotidiana sem mudar as regras de estilo, como fizeram os franceses. O que ele muda é o ponto de vista, o foco narrativo, de um modo que não encontra precedente nem mesmo na literatura Ocidental. ABSTRACT This article seeks to show how the language and style employed by Dostoevsky since his debut novel, Poor Folk, contributed to the great innovation that he introduced into literary form. By adopting the practical reality of the lower strata of society as his object of representation and, accordingly, a low-style language, Dostoevsky transcended all established literary rules, as well as others that were already being transgressed. He took seriously both the reality of everyday life and its language, the style level proper to it. In so doing, he approached the serious and elevated representation of everyday reality without changing the rules of style, as the French did. What he changed is the point of view, the narrative focus, and he did so in a way that had no precedent even in Western literature. (shrink)

À l’origine de ce recueil, un double colloque international, l’un à Lyon, l’autre à Naples, a réuni des spécialistes de philosophes du XVIIe siècle et du XVIIIe siècle pour traiter de l’apport des courants dits "libertins" et, plus largement, de la libre pensée à ceux qu’une historiographie traditionnelle, mais encore vivace, reconnaît comme seuls "philosophes": Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Pascal, Bayle, Leibniz, Kant... Il s’agit donc, d’une part, de reconnaître l’apport de la libre pensée à l’évolution des idées et, d’autre part, (...) de mettre les grands penseurs en dialogue avec le contexte historique qui fut le leur. L’ensemble des interventions met remarquablement en évidence l’importance des arguments de la pensée critique et de la libre pensée à l’âge classique, qu’ils soient acceptés, refusés ou réutilisés, tout en montrant la complexité d’une époque où, malgré la censure régnante, les idées progressent à travers et grâce à un dialogue constant, qu’il soit paisible ou conflictuel, entre les penseurs plus ou moins religieux. --. (shrink)

This article focuses on the significance of space in the display of hegemonic power in the La Scala opera house in the years 1776–1850s. More specifically, it traces the changes in the use of space from Napoleon’s attempt to “democratise” La Scala by attacking the display of hegemonic hierarchy and subverting the status quo, to the Habsburgs’ attempt to “restore” a display of hegemonic rule. The analysis of primary findings demonstrates that the space of the opera house was reshaped not (...) only physically through renovation but also by imposing rules and structuring attendance during performances. The social significance of La Scala’s theatrical space is also explored by identifying the means the Habsburg authorities used to control it as part of their response to the rise of the Risorgimento. The article thus traces the historical shifts in the political functions of space in La Scala from its early role of displaying aristocratic authority through the period of Napoleonic democratisation and finally the Hapsburgs’ restoration politics of surveillance. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 206 Seiten: 109-127.

The Disputation or Cathechesis of Tortosa with its sixty-nine sessions (February 7, 1413-November 12, 1413) was the longest of the Jewish Christian encounters in the Middle Age. Stirred by the Avignonesian Pope Benedict XIII, Geronimo de Sancta Fide, olim Yehoshua ha-Lorki, summoned a group of Catalan and Aragonese rabbis to inform them that the Messiah was already came. Not only the Papal notaries recorded the excruciating debates, but also two Hebrew sources: the anonymous and fragmentary letter published by Halberstam in (...) 1868 and the chapter 40 of the Shebet Yehuda. They encompass the first nine sessions carried out orally, before the Pope requested for written texts to be debated lately. Since these sources disagree on many details, this paper aims at examining them anew. That examination has shown that the anonymous account is more accurate than the fictional report of the Shebet Yehuda as far as the internal chronology of the sessions, the speeches of the Jewish delegates and their identities are concerned. The internal evidence leads us to subscribe with Riera i Sans in ascribing its authorship to Bonastruc Desmestre from Girona, who was at Tortosa on request of the Pope. He probably knew other Jewish chronicle and added some new materials from the Vikkuach Ramban, Salomon Ibn Verga, the author of Shebet Yehuda, built upon this chronicle and created a fictional account around Vidal Benveniste or the ‘ideal’ portrait of the Pope and added some materials from the Latin Protocols or from unknown Jewish sources. (shrink)

We present the logic BLChang, an axiomatic extension of BL (see [23]) whose corresponding algebras form the smallest variety containing all the ordinal sums of perfect MV-chains. We will analyze this logic and the corresponding algebraic semantics in the propositional and in the first-order case. As we will see, moreover, the variety of BLChang-algebras will be strictly connected to the one generated by Chang’s MV-algebra (that is, the variety generated by all the perfect MV-algebras): we will also give some new (...) results concerning these last structures and their logic. (shrink)

Während Adorno bisher kaum in den zeitgenössischen Debatten des affective turn rezipiert wird, sucht der vorliegende Aufsatz eine bisher weitestgehend vernachlässigte affekttheoretische Lektüre von Adornos Schriften zu entwickeln. Mit Adornos Formulierung ‚unter dem und wider den Bann des Einheitsprinzips‘, die er in der Negativen Dialektik von 1966 entwickelt hat, soll eine bis heute relativ vernachlässigte Doppelperspektive auf Adornos Verständnis von Affekten herausgearbeitet werden: Zum einen wird die affektive Bereitschaft der Subjekte gezeigt, sich mit der Macht der „verwalteten Welt“ zu identifizieren (...) und sich also an sie zu binden. Diese Perspektive wird in dem Aufsatz anhand der Formulierung ‚unter dem Bann des Einheitsprinzips‘ skizziert. Zum anderen wird ebenso die affektive Bereitschaft der Subjekte herausgearbeitet, durch die Subjekte sich auch von ihren Bindungen an die Mächte der „verwalteten Welt“ desidentifizieren und tiefere Klarheit über den Zustand ihres Weltbezugs und ihrer eigenen Situation gewinnen können. Diese Sicht wird durch die Formulierung ‚wider den Bann des Einheitsprinzips‘ erläutert. (shrink)

O presente artigo visa explorar as ricas relações entre Voltaire e Genebra, destacando as questões e o contexto que formam a obra Ideias republicanas e seu combate pela tolerância.

The article examines Voltaire's hypochondriac obsession with death and illness, as can be seen in his Correspondence throughout his entire life. His death is described by his secretary Wagničre in Mémoires sur Voltaire and by Condorcet in Vie de Voltaire. Both of them talk of his belief in reason and deism. As regards Voltaire's attitude toward death in the last years of his life, he at times seems to play with the idea of death, as in his Épître ŕ Horace. (...) More often, he is questioning the philosophical meaning of death where the individual disappears and only the species survives. Voltaire values "philosophical death" and believes that philosophy can help us to accept life and death. (shrink)

The article discusses both the affinities between Vauvenargues and Spinoza, and the way Laurent Bove examines the relation. Despite all the efforts made by Vauvenargues to mislead his readers and, especially, the censorship, Bove’s endeavor consists in reconstructing Vauvenargues concealed metaphysical premises. As we explore Vauvenargues’ philosophy, in which Pascal plays a major role, it becomes clear the conceptual twists made by the provençal writer in favor of a kind of philosophy where the finite, man’s ontological condition, is valued – (...) and that is a sort of spinozism. (shrink)

Martin Gustafsson and Richard Sørli. The Philosophy of J. L. Austin. Oxford. Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN: 9780199219759 Reviewed by Claudia Bianchi.

The development of empirical research methods in both the social and the natural sciences has had a deep impact on the self-conception of philosophy. Jürgen Habermas aims to strike a balance between two ways of understanding the relationship between philosophy and the sciences: between a conception of philosophy as an Archimedean point from which to view the human condition and a conception of philosophy as a mere artefact of Western culturally embedded assumptions. Against the first, Habermas aims to integrate the (...) resources and methods of the social sciences into philosophy and to deny that philosophy can proceed outside of historical and social contexts. On his view, philosophical knowledge is produced communicatively, through socially embedded dialogue. Against the second, Habermas claims fundamental questions about the human condition cannot be answered by purely social or natural scientific approaches. His “postmetaphysical” methodology aims to integrate empirical resources into philosophy without losing sight of what is unique to philosophy: namely, its ability to step back from the empirical data in order to reconstruct in a systematic way underlying universal truths about us, our societies and our place in the world. (shrink)

Analyzes Aristotle's natural philosophy and metaphysics from a feminist, deconstructive, psychoanalytic perspective, showing that Aristotelian teleology relies on the disparagement of chance and the feminine simultaneously and finding resources therein for contemporary feminist thought.

Eating disorders are mental illnesses that can have a significant and persistent physical impact, especially for those who are not treated early in their disease trajectory. Although many persons w...

Considérez les énoncés suivants : « La bombe a causé la destruction du pont » ; « L’explosion de la bombe a causé la destruction du pont » ; « Booth a causé la mort de Lincoln » ; et « Le tir de Booth a causé la mort de Lincoln ». Ces énoncés suggèrent que les objets, tels que les bombes ou les personnes, font partie de la catégorie ontologique des causes, au même titre que les évènements, comme le (...) tir de Booth et l’explosion de la bombe. À première vue, le fait que les objets et les personnes puissent être des causes n’a rien de particulièrement surprenant. Cependant, les philosophes du XXe siècle ont fait preuve d’une extrême méfiance à l’égard de cette idée. Une majorité de philosophes ont trouvé l’idée même de causalité par des objets ou des agents inintelligible, à tel point que les théories standards de la causalité présupposent que les entités reliées comme causes à effets sont des évènements, ou encore des faits, des propriétés ou des états. Pourtant, cette hostilité à l’égard de la causalité des objets est relativement récente ; la causalité agentive semble, au moins jusqu’à Thomas Reid (1710-1796), avoir été la norme, et non le mystère. La mise à l’écart des objets et des agents de la catégorie de cause est-elle justifiée ? Un nombre grandissant de philosophes, les agentialistes (agent-causalists), soutiennent que non et cherchent à réhabiliter l’idée de causalité agentive (par des agents) et/ou substantielle (par des substances), tandis que d’autres, les évènementialistes (event-causalists), défendent que celle-ci est au mieux réductible à la causalité entre évènements, ou au pire que l’idée est incohérente. L’importance de cette question n’est pas négligeable, car elle revient à demander quels sont les moteurs du changement. En effet, nous voulons savoir si certains objets tels que les couteaux, les bombes, les animaux et les personnes sont parfois à l’origine du changement, ou si tout effet procède uniquement de changements antérieurs, d’évènements. Existe-t-il une relation causale, la causalité agentive ou substantielle, reliant objets et changements, différente des relations causales habituellement traitées par les philosophes de la causalité ? Quelle est sa relation avec la causalité évènementielle ? Et comment fonctionne-t-elle ? (shrink)

In conceptual debates involving the quantum gravity community, the literature discusses the so-called “emergence of space–time”. However, which interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM) could be coherent with such claim? We show that a modification of the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM is compatible with the claim that space–time is emergent for the macroscopic world of measurements. In other words, pure quantum states do not admit space–time properties until we measure them. We call this approach “Achronotopic” (ACT) Interpretation of QM, which yields (...) a simple and natural interpretation of the most puzzling aspects of QM, such as particle-wave duality, wave function collapse, entanglement, and quantum superposition. Our interpretation yields the same results in all measurements as the Copenhagen Interpretation, but provides clues toward the sub-Planckian physics. In particular, it suggests the non-existence of quantum gravity in the conventional sense understood as the quantization of a classical theory. (shrink)