Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 206 Seiten: 89-108.

Nell’articolo vengono individuati tre punti in cui il testo tràdito delle Meditazioni di Cartesio dev’essere corretto. Va segnalato che l’autore delle seconde e delle seste obiezioni alle Meditazioni, è Mersenne; nel quale viene identificato anche il cosiddetto, tradizionalmente, "Hyperaspistes", autore di ulteriori obiezioni. Si propone di datare il frammento La recherche de la vérité nella seconda metà del 1641.

In this review, we will focus on the role played by transcription factors of the E2F/DP family in controlling the expression of genes that carry out important cell‐cycle control functions, thereby ensuring ordered progression through the mammalian cell division cycle. The emerging picture is that cell‐cycle progression depends on the execution of a regulatory cascade of gene expression, driven by E2F/DP transcription factors, which are in turn regulated by the products of some of these genes. That E2F factors are potent (...) regulators of cell‐cycle checkpoints in mammalian cells is supported by experiments demonstrating that ectopic expression of individual E2F family members is sufficient to modulate cell proliferation and apoptosis. It is also clear that deregulation of E2F activity will result in the loss of particular checkpoint controls, thereby predisposing cells to malignant conversion. BioEssays 21:221–230. 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. -/- . (shrink)

Organizational legitimacy is an important resource, which provides access to other resources. As such, it impacts the survival chances of organizations. In this study, we examine the individual judgments of the owner-managers of small-and-medium size enterprises (SMEs) of the legitimacy of their own enterprise as well as their perception of the legitimacy evaluations of relevant stakeholders. This research is based on interviews with owner-managers of SMEs located in the Lorraine region of France. The results show that when legitimacy is perceived (...) as acquired, their judgments are based on instrumental, relational and moral evaluations, whereas when legitimacy is perceived as being deferred, judgement is based on mainly instrumental evaluations and when they report not being in position to judge their own legitimacy, their judgements are based on moral evaluations. In addition, the legitimacy judgements employed are associated with the different types of legitimacy sought by the SME owner-managers. Moreover, they perceive the validity cues coming from clients and employees as the most important sources of legitimacy. Other stakeholders are accorded secondary importance in granting legitimacy. (shrink)

The volume will implement the research efforts of both Machiavelli scholars and those in related general and specific fields.

Este texto pretende examinar os pressupostos da Terra-gêmea-moral, argumento formulado por Terence Horgan e Mark Timmons com intenção de refutar a proposta realista naturalista da moral conhecida como realismo de Cornell. A Terra-gêmea-moral fornece alguma evidência intuitiva de que termos que nomeiam tipos morais não são designadores rígidos de propriedades naturais e que, portanto, não é possível oferecer uma definição naturalista para eles, o que deveria ser um comprometimento do realismo de Cornell. Entretanto, neste texto, procuramos demonstrar que o realismo (...) de Cornell não se compromete com relações de designação rígida entre termos para tipos morais e propriedades naturais para sustentar sua postura naturalista. Em vez da relação de identidade entre tipos morais e naturais que seria trazida pela designação rígida, o realismo de Cornell mantém apenas a tese metafísica segundo a qual tipos morais são constituídos ou realizados por propriedades naturais deixando aberta a possibilidade de múltipla realização dos tipos morais. Como o realismo de Cornell não se compromete com a tese semântica que Horgan e Timmons criticam, então a Terra-gêmea-moral não parece oferecer uma objeção à posição realista. (shrink)

Tobacco, divine, rare superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all panaceas, potable gold and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases.Although most of the toxicity, including cancerogenicity, of tobacco is related to a mix of components other than nicotine present in cigarettes (U.S. Surgeon General 2010), it is indeed nicotine that causes addiction to smoking (Benowitz 2010; Russo et al. 2011).In 1988, the U.S. Surgeon General's Report concluded that cigarettes and other forms of tobacco are addictive as a result (...) of their nicotine content, and that the processes determining tobacco addiction "are similar to those that determine addiction to drugs such as heroin and cocaine." Previously, in .. (shrink)

According to the principle known as “the principle of present-tense ascription immunity”, “It is impossible for anyone to have or entertain thoughts without being aware—immediately and self-evidently—that he is thinking that thought”. In other words, my thoughts are fundamentally experienced as mine, and I typically have this experience of mineness immediately, that is, without any inference based on evidence about who is the thinker of the thought. Thought insertion reveals instead that, under particular pathological conditions, people can be startlingly in (...) error about who is thinking a thought. How can this happen? In the attempt to specify how the capacity for self-ascription of a thought can.. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to the legal domain is gaining ground. AI is argued to be particularly helpful with labour-intensive activities and repetitive tasks. Amongst the various AI solutions, ChatGPT has gathered momentum and its acclaimed advantages are, amongst others, document generation and contract review. This paper wishes to assess the effectiveness of two chatbots in contract drafting. To this aim, ChatGPT (by OpenAI) and Gemini (by Google) are prompted to write two supply contracts each, the first one written in (...) English according to the laws of England and Wales, and the other one still written in English, but according to the laws of the Republic of Italy. The paper finds that each contract pair generated by the AI solutions is identical, thus disregarding legal-system specificities and language conventions. Therefore, the drafts present a number of fallacies, either because they are incomplete, or because they include clauses that are redundant or inapplicable in a given legal system. The paper claims that human intervention and supervision are necessary to tackle the shortcomings generated by AI, at least as far as contract generation is concerned and with regard to the two chatbots addressed. (shrink)

Patrizia Pedrini | : In this paper, I argue that paradigmatic-state accounts of self-deception suffer from a problem of restrictedness that does not do justice to the complexities of the phenomenon. In particular, I argue that the very search for a paradigmatic state of self-deception greatly overlooks the dynamic dimension of the self-deceptive process, which allows the inclusion of more mental states than paradigmatic-state accounts consider. I will discuss the inadequacy of any such accounts, and I will argue that (...) we should replace them with a dynamic view of self-deception that is more liberal regarding the mental states in which self-deceivers may find themselves. | : Dans cet article, je soutiens que les explications de l’auto-illusion en termes d’un état « paradigmatique » souffrent d’un problème de limitation qui ne rend pas justice à la complexité du phénomène. Plus précisément, j’avance que la recherche même d’un état paradigmatique néglige tout à fait la dimension dynamique du processus d’auto-illusion, de sorte à inclure davantage d’états mentaux que ne le font les explications en termes d’un état paradigmatique. Après avoir démontré l’insuffisance de ces dernières, je proposerai que nous devrions les remplacer par une conception dynamique de l’auto-illusion qui serait plus flexible quant aux états mentaux potentiellement vécus par des personnes sous l’emprise de l’auto-illusion. (shrink)

John McDowell and Christine Korsgaard have defended the claim that when human beings judge or believe that p, they are exercising a fundamental kind of freedom, the “freedom of judging.” David Owens has challenged the view: he argues that they offer us at best no more than a modest notion of freedom, which does not vindicate the claim that we are free in many relevant instances of judgment, in particular in perceptual judgment. I argue that Owens is right if we (...) view the freedom of judgment along the lines of McDowell’s and Korsgaard’s proposals – as being a form of freedom which is describable as “freedom of choosing between alternatives,” but that that is not the only option available. In order to secure the nexus between reason and freedom, we can exploit a quite distinct model of freedom, which is the “freedom of autonomy.”. (shrink)