We introduce a novel modal logic, namely the doxastic μ-calculus with error control (DμCEC), and propose a formalization of probabilistic anonymity and oblivious transfer in the logic, and the validation of these formalizations on implementations formalized in probabilistic CCS. The distinguishing feature of our logic is to provide a combination of dynamic operators for belief (whence the attribute “doxastic”) with a control on the possible error of apprehension of the perceived reality, and for internalized probability. Both operators are dynamic (non-monotonic) (...) thanks to the possibility of combining them with temporal operators, and are parameterized with a lower and upper probability bound (the error control). (shrink)

Roberto Esposito is one of the most prolific and important exponents of contemporary Italian political theory.

Holes are a good example of the sort of entity that down-to-earth philosophers would be inclined to expel from their ontological inventory. In this work we argue instead in favor of their existence and explore the consequences of this liberality—odd as they might appear. We examine the ontology of holes, their geometry, their part-whole relations, their identity and their causal role, the ways we perceive them. We distinguish three basic kinds of holes: blind hollows, perforating tunnels, and internal cavities, treating (...) these uniformly as immaterial bodies. We develop a morphology of holes, focusing on the way a hole can be filled, and then look at the main properties of the resulting conceptual framework: holes are parasitic upon the surfaces of their hosts; holes can move, fuse into each other, split; they can be born, develop, and die. Finally, we examine how some morphological features of holes are represented in perception, including the conditions whereby we have the impression that we see, feel, or even hear a hole. The book has over 150 pictures and is completed by a formal appendix, a section with puzzles and exercises, and a extensive annotated bibliography. (shrink)

This paper argues that some of the misunderstandings surrounding the meaning and function of the concept of human dignity in bioethics arise from a lack of distinction between two different roles that this notion plays: one as an overarching policy principle, and the other as a moral standard of patient care. While the former is a very general concept which fulfils a foundational and a guiding role of the normative framework governing biomedical issues, the latter reflects a much more concrete (...) and context-specific understanding of the patient as a “person”. The importance of dignity as a policy principle will be described by appealing to the distinction between principles and rules as developed by some legal philosophers. The value of dignity as a standard of patient care will be illustrated with the help of concrete examples and by drawing on the taxonomies of dignity proposed by Jonathan Mann and other scholars. The overall scope of the article is to highlight this double and complementary role of human dignity in bioethics. (shrink)

The persistent educational challenges that fractions pose call for developing novel instructional methods to better prepare students for fraction learning. Here, we examined the effects of a 24-session, Cuisenaire rod intervention on a building block for symbolic fraction knowledge, continuous and discrete non-symbolic proportional reasoning, in children who have yet to receive fraction instruction. Participants were 34 second-graders who attended the intervention (intervention group) and 15 children who did not participate in any sessions (control group). As attendance at the intervention (...) sessions was irregular (median = 15.6 sessions, range = 1–24), we specifically examined the effect of the number of sessions completed on their non-symbolic proportional reasoning. Our results showed that children who attended a larger number of sessions increased their ability to compare non-symbolic continuous proportions. However, contrary to our expectations, they also decreased their ability to compare misleading discretized proportions. In contrast, children in the Control group did not show any change in their performance. These results provide further evidence on the malleability of non-symbolic continuous proportional reasoning and highlight the rigidity of counting knowledge interference on discrete proportional reasoning. (shrink)

We investigate certain Brouwer-Zadeh lattices that serve as abstract counterparts of lattices of effects in Hilbert spaces under the spectral ordering. These algebras, called PBZ*-lattices, can also be seen as generalisations of orthomodular lattices and are remarkable for the collapse of three notions of “sharpness” that are distinct in general Brouwer-Zadeh lattices. We investigate the structure theory of PBZ*-lattices and their reducts; in particular, we prove some embedding results for PBZ*-lattices and provide an initial description of the lattice of PBZ*-varieties.

In Metaphysics B 3 Aristotle sets out a famous argument for the thesis that being is not a genus. In his commentary on Metaphysics B, Syrianus criticizes this argument and explains in what sense being is to be regarded as a genus. I reconstruct both Syrianus’ criticisms and his own view. I bring out ways in which they can help us rethink key assumptions of Aristotle’s ontology and shed light both on Syrianus’ critical attitude towards Aristotle and on some of (...) Syrianus’ main views in metaphysics. (shrink)

We introduce the notion of quantum MV algebra (QMV algebra) as a generalization of MV algebras and we show that the class of all effects of any Hilbert space gives rise to an example of such a structure. We investigate some properties of QMV algebras and we prove that QMV algebras represent non-idempotent extensions of orthomodular lattices.

El artículo analiza el vínculo entre derecho y violencia en Walter Benjamin y Franz Rosenzweig. Primero, se estudia la relación entre Benjamin, Rosenzweig y Carl Schmitt, y, a continuación, la proximidad entre las concepciones benjaminiana y rosenzweiguiana de la historia y de la temporalidad mesiánica, así como la relación entre justicia, derecho y eternidad. Finalmente, se presenta la propuesta derridiana de una deconstrucción de la crítica benjaminiana de la violencia y su antecedente en _La estrella de la redención_.

Politicians, pundits, and Pentagon officials are singing the praises of a kinder, gentler American counterinsurgency. Some claim that counterinsurgency is so sophisticated and effective that it is the “graduate level of war.” Private military contracting firms have jumped on the bandwagon, and many have begun employing anthropologists, political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists to help meet the Department of Defense’s new demand. The $60 million Human Terrain System, an intelligence gathering program that embeds social scientists with combat brigades in Iraq and (...) Afghanistan, dramatically illustrates the approach. But when the military, transnational corporations, and the human sciences become obsessed with controlling the “human terrain”—the civilian populations of Iraq and Afghanistan—what are the consequences? In this timely pamphlet, Roberto González offers a searing critique of HTS, showing how the history of anthropology can be used to illuminate the problems of turning “culture” into a military tool. (shrink)

O tema do artigo é o caráter grego da filosofia entendida como metafísica desde o enfoque permitido pelo pensamento de M. Heidegger (1889-1976). Temos o objetivo de apresentar que a metafísica tem seu ethos em uma experiência grega de origem. Pretendemos validar a hipótese de que: náo pode pretender legitimidade as tentativas de atrair o mérito do surgimento da metafísica para outro solo que o referido . Para fundamentaçáo de nossos argumentos, utilizaremos o comentário de G. Reale e extratos de (...) algumas preleções de G. W. F. Hegel. A problematizaçáo dessas idéias aponta para uma ratificaçáo do caráter grego da filosofia e deste como lugar de sua plena realizaçáo. (shrink)

In _Sociocybernetics and Political Theory in a Complex World_, Roberto Mancilla offers new takes on known ideas of political and constitutional theory; the advent of information technology and globalization puts them in crisis, as many stem from centuries past.

Roberto Frega & Giovanni Maddelena – Can you recollect what the situation was concerning the study of pragmatism when you were in college? Richard J. Bernstein – I was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago from 1949 to 1951. At the time the “Hutchins College” was an unusual institution. The entire curriculum was fixed and it was organized around reading many of the great books of the Western tradition. From the time I arrived, I was reading Plato, Aristotle, (...) Galileo, Darwin, Herodotus... (shrink)

Este artículo analiza dos proyectos de renovación programática de las Humanidades, los cuales se centran en la noción de información. Consideraremos, por una parte, la propuesta de Friedrich Kittler acerca de un materialismo teórico-informacional, y por otra, la axiomática de las ciencias humanas de Gilbert Simondon. La pregunta que guía nuestro examen crítico es la siguiente: ¿de qué manera, en cada uno de esos proyectos, la noción de información funge como centro para una propuesta renovadora de las Humanidades? Nuestra hipótesis (...) sostiene que hay un común denominador en ambas propuestas, el cual puede formularse en términos foucaultianos del siguiente modo: la información es entendida allí como el a priori histórico actual. (shrink)

Leibniz’s question “why is there something rather than nothing?”, also known as the Primordial Existential Question, has often been the focus of intense philosophical controversy. While some authors take it to pose a profound metaphysical puzzle, others denounce the alleged lack of meaning or the inconceivability of the idea of nothingness. In a series of articles, Adolf Grünbaum develops an empirically informed critique with the aim to demonstrate that the Primordial Existential Question poses a “non-issue” which does not require explanation. (...) Grünbaum’s critique prompted heated debates in the recent literature. In this paper, I examine each step of Grünbaum’s reasoning and argue that it fails to show that the Primordial Existential Question is ill-founded. Moreover, I identify and rebut several strategies that one may employ to amend Grünbaum’s critique. In doing so, I address various issues related to the Primordial Existential Question, including the alleged need for its proponents to rely on contentious metaphysical presuppositions and the purported availability of empirical evidence which answers or dissolves such a question. (shrink)

The history of the influences and interactions between pragmatism and the social sciences is as rich as it has been neglected as a field of research. This volume – the first of a series of two – tries to explore both historically and theoretically some of these multiple relationships, building upon the assumption that pragmatism has been one of the philosophical traditions that have taken most seriously the study of the social. In fact, since its origins classical American pragmatism has (...) been... (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called 'poisoning the well' (PTW). There are some forms of ad hominem varieties that are usually a response to an interlocutor's claims. Unlike them, PTW occurs when we illegitimately prime our audience with a pre‐emptive strike against, or with adverse information about, an argumentative opponent before the latter has had a chance to say anything in her own defense, or in defense of her point of view. This has (...) the insidious effect of creating a conceptual framework according to which the audience – and maybe even the interlocutor herself – will interpret her claims as 'fulfilling' and 'confirming' the presumptions buried inside this conceptual trap. Most of the time Karl Popper's criterion of falsifiability is still quite a useful tool and one that can help us gain a firmer understanding of PTW. (shrink)

SILVA, Roberto Donizeti da. (Pós) Modernidade, Razão e Religião Cristã: o Pensamento de Zygmunt Bauman e José Maria Mardones. 2013. 98p. Dissertação (Mestrado em Ciências da Religião) - Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Belo Horizonte.

This book intends to make known, in a detailed but accessible way to the general public, an old idea, but which has had a renewed interest in recent years: the proposal of attributing an unconditional basic income for all. This idea, often discarded and disqualified for allegedly belonging to the mere domain of utopia, understood in a pejorative sense as something unrealizable, has been the target of the interest of many people (academics, politicians, businesspeople, activists and, of course, all citizens (...) concerned with the common good) is presented as being feasible through several concrete experiences and pilot projects. (shrink)

RESUMEN Así como Hume despertó a Kant del sueño dogmático y Rousseau le descubrió el mundo moral, Diderot le habría hecho acceder al universo de la política. El último Kant podría estar muy influido, sin saberlo, por el Diderot que convirtió la Historia de las dos Indias en la "Biblia de las revoluciones", así como por el de la Enciclopedia. Se defiende la tesis de que todo el proyecto ilustrado tendría una índole radical, y conviene matizar la distinción entre Ilustración (...) moderada e Ilustración radical, toda vez que los puntos en común parecen superar a las discrepancias. Spinoza y Heine podrían resultar útiles para enfatizar este parecer. ABSTRACT Just as Hume awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber and Rousseau unveiled the moral world for him, Diderot may have introduced him to the universe of politics. Without knowing it, the mature Kant might have been quite influenced by both the Diderot who made the History of the Two Indies the "Bible of revolutions" and that of the Encyclopedia. The article defends the thesis that the entire Enlightenment project was a radical one and that it is convenient to downplay the distinction between moderate and radical Enlightenment, given that their commonalities seem to outweigh their differences. Spinoza and Heine could be useful in terms of highlighting this idea. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es investigar la evolución intelectual de Schelling que le condujo a desarrollar la diferencia entre filosofía negativa y filosofía positiva, idea central en el desarrollo final de su pensamiento filosófico. Primero nos detenemos en la crítica al idealismo que encontramos en la Freiheitsschrift; después en una parte de las conferencias de Erlangen; continuamos investigando la crítica de Schelling a Hegel y la identificación entre hegelianismo y filosofía negativa. Finalizamos este trabajo analizando la dicotomía entre las (...) filosofías negativa y positiva. (shrink)

A partir da denúncia da contraditória presença de pressupostos morais dogmáticos na formulação dos princípios norteadores da atividade científica, Nietzsche concebe uma outra noção de cientificidade, compatível com a opção hegemônica pelo saber, que ele reconhece como presente na cultura ocidental. O presente artigo visa a discutir sob quais parâmetros Nietzsche, no período intermediário de sua produção filosófica, empreende sua interpretação da cientificidade ocidental e como, apresentando-se como seu fomentador, ele formula uma crítica desmistificadora desta.

Listening to the landscape means hearing the world differently, this article contends. Since its theorization in the pictorial figuration of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, landscape has been conceived as a spatial extent delimited by the gaze of a spectator. In the late 1960s a more complex and sensitive approach to landscape, including reflection on its sound and acoustic aspects, began to emerge. Despite this new focus, a certain oculo-centrism still persists. The ecosophical approach — which complicates and goes beyond (...) the antitheses of subject/object, ethics/aesthetics, nature culture — that is put forward here promotes a new aesthetic dimension focused on listening. Based on the notions of presence, holism and non-separation, this approach makes it possible to combine the individual and the collective imagination with social relations and natural processes. (shrink)

Attraverso lo studio di due singolari planimetrie inedite e non datate viene fatta luce su una pagina sconosciuta della museologia palermitana: la proposta, mai attuata, di Antonino Salinas, appoggiata anche da Giuseppe Fiorelli e da Paolo Boselli, di trasferire tra il 1887 ed il 1910 tutte le raccolte archeologiche, di arte medievale e moderna dai locali dell’ex convento dei padri Filippini all’Olivella nel complesso medievale di Palazzo Chiaramonte o Steri. L’infelice scelta post-unitaria di destinare l’ex convento a sede del Museo (...) di Palermo, l’Esposizione Nazionale del 1891/1892 ed il “taglio” della via Roma, praticato nei primi anni del ‘900 per la realizzazione della nuova grande arteria cittadina, sono i moventi, che sollecitano gli attori della vicenda a sollevare la questione. La ricerca documentale, che descrive gli eventi sino al 1932, svela molte delle dinamiche e delle problematiche inerenti ai fatti come la possibile costituzione di un nuovo polo museale, una suggestiva area urbana riqualificata, che risulta quasi un intero quartiere dedicato ai musei. Il nuovo progetto espositivo del Salinas è in linea di continuità con la ben nota idea dell’archeologo palermitano di celebrare la “storia delle arti di tutta la Sicilia” ed allo stesso tempo anticipa alcune delle scelte espositive, che saranno adottate in seguito dal Marconi e dall’Accascina: un unicum tra i coevi musei nazionali della penisola. (shrink)

The present article focuses on certain points in the semantics/pragmatics debate. Among these, one of the most interesting is the possibility of reconciling, independent of the context, certain aspects of meaning which have always been the subject of discussion in formal semantics, with the view that meaning is socially and situationally conditioned. Recent new insights concerning the importance of pragmatics for enriching the propositional content of the utterance should not lead to a radical contextualism that denies the assignment of any (...) role at all to semantics. Instead, it is possible to argue that both dimensions, semantics and pragmatics, along with their constituent parts, offer fundamental contributions to the transmission and understanding of the overall meaning of a (spoken or written) text. (shrink)

Vário é o conteúdo da presente edição de Filosofia e Educação, não sendo possível estabelecer uma unidade temática, embora entre os textos possam ser vislumbrados aspectos e elementos comuns. Daí o título múltiplo, compósito, reticente...