Against the assumption that legal and normative systems are coextensive with geopolitical units and national spaces, the article advocates for the need to study how different legal and normative semiospheres, within the same geopolitical unit and national space, often give rise to ‘normolects’ that are transversal to socio-economic classes, ethnicities, and cultural lifestyles. The concept of legal and normative ‘imaginaries’ is useful to come to terms with the legal and normative semiotic ideology of such normolects, including their non-verbal dimension and (...) legal-normative semiotic ideologies. More generally, the article prompts legal scholars, and particularly semioticians of law, not to focus exclusively on inter-cultural awareness in legal-normative language but to concentrate also on intra-cultural awareness. As a case study, the article analyses a drawing through which the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi visualized and advertised for a bill of reform of the Italian judicial system by his Minister of Justice, Angelino Alfano. The semiotic analysis of this visual artifact casts new light on the controversial political and judicial figure of Mr Berlusconi. The drawing is read as a visual embodiment of the conflict between two different legal and normative ideologies within the present-day Italian political and judicial arena. The paradoxes that underpin this iconography of law and mar a rational confrontation of legal-normative arguments in contemporary Italy are uncovered. (shrink)

In 2006, acclaimed Italian film director Nanni Moretti released Il caimano [“the Caiman”], a surreal depiction of Silvio Berlusconi’s career as controversial businessman and politician. In one of the last sequences, an indicted Berlusconi leaves the courthouse of Milan, while his supporters besiege its premises and set them on fire. Admired for his capacity of prophetically foreseeing the developments of Italian society, Nanni Moretti’s apocalyptic vision was confirmed by reality on March 11, 2013, when a group of deputes and (...) senators from PDL, Silvio Berlusconi’s political party, ‘besieged’ the courthouse of Milan in order to interfere with the new trials the political leader was involved in: an affair of prostitution of minors, known as “the Ruby case”, and the alleged corruption of a senator. Since when Silvio Berlusconi has been the center of the Italian both political and juridical arena, and with the increasing representation of his trials in Italian and international media, the courthouses of such trials, and particularly that of Milan, have turned more and more into the theater of a socio-political showdown, in which what matters though is not only what takes place in the Court, but also, and perhaps even more, what happens in the area surrounding its premises. Here pro- and -anti Berlusconi partisans have gathered daily in order to manifest their stand to both the citizenry and the media; here media professionals have been stationed 24/7, waiting for the next scandal; and here a dramatic battle line between the political power and the juridical one inexorably materializes with all the violent evidence of its proxemics. The essay analyzes through semiotics a series of verbal and especially visual texts representing the courthouses of Silvio Berlusconi’s trials, with the goal of understanding what this imagery reveals of the current trends of Italian socio-political and juridical arena. More broadly, the essay compares this case study with other instances of courthouses besieged by crowds, so as to semiotically seize the delicate equilibrium of the judiciary proxemics between totalitarian and populist ideologies of law. (shrink)

The article proposes a phenomenological and semiotic theoretical framework for the intelligibility of the meaning of belonging, one of the most fundamental concepts in present-day cultures and societies. After defining belonging as a spatial enunciation that brings about 1) the frontiers of a space of belonging; 2) the consequent opposition between an environment of belonging and one of non-belonging; and 3) the relation between, on the one hand, the subject of enunciation and, on the other hand, the opposition /environment of (...) belonging/ versus /environment of non-belonging/, the article articulates a typology of “figures of crossing,” in which belonging is manifested through the narrative dialectics between placement and displacement. In the theoretical framework of tensive phenomenology and semiotics, four macro-regimes of belonging are singled out: “sedentary estrangement,” “nomadic belonging,” “nomadic estrangement,” and “sedentary belonging.” Moreover, four semantic paths dynamically representing the transition between these regimes are identified: “exile/invasion,” “cosmopolitanism/curiosity,” “acclimation/tolerance,” and “alienation/suspicion.” In the conclusion, the theoretical framework developed by the article is proposed as instrument for the analysis of the “rhetorics of belonging” in present-day cultures and societies. (shrink)

The way in which people change and represent their spiritual evolution is often determined by recurrent language structures. Through the analysis of ancient and modern stories and their words and images, this book describes the nature of conversion through explorations of the encounter with the religious message, the discomfort of spiritual uncertainty, the loss of personal and social identity, the anxiety of destabilization, the reconstitution of the self and the discovery of a new language of the soul.

This essay aims to summarize and explore two issues that, in the exegetical and representational traditions of the biblical text, have triggered a myriad of semiotic intelligences. First, the nature of Cain’s face at the moment of the sacrifice refused him by the Lord, a face variously interpreted as angry, sad, dejected, depressed, dark. Second, the nature of the sign imposed by God on Cain following Abel’s fratricide. After exploring Jewish and Christian exegesis, ancient and modern, with some reference to (...) contemporary narrative versions (and especially to Saramago’s _Cain_), the reflection will turn to the question of whether this kind of exegetical questioning can be part of the objects of a discipline like semiotics, the modern science of signs. (shrink)

The prologue of the Sophistici elenchi is as close an Aristotelian text gets to dealing with language as a subject matter in its own right, only in reverse. Language and its features bear consideration to the extent that they account for some major predicaments discursive reasoning is prone to, both as a separate and as a common endeavour. That being said, the linguistic pitfalls that trick us into thinking that whatever is the case for words and word-compounds is also the (...) case for the things and facts linguistic items stand for reveal as much about good linguistic habits and sound argumentation as they themselves are revealed by the principles and rules our argumentation goes by. In this connection, Aristotle resorted to a curious (or not so curious) analogy between words and counters which played a major role in explaining why language is such a powerful source of illusion and deception. As it happens, Aristotle accounting analogy is a case in point for showcasing the level of sophistication medieval Latin literature on fallacies achieved as early as the first half of the twelfth century. As a matter of fact, Western commentators managed to build compelling cases both in favour of and against the understanding that was to become and still is the standard story – which, of course, speaks volumes about their exegetical proficiency and technical expertise. On the one hand, trusting implicitly Boethius’ translation and well aware of his views on disputational hazards as opposed to computational reliability, they usually understood Aristotle’s comparison as if it was an analogy in name only. On the other hand, despite Boethius’ translation put them at a considerable disadvantage, Latin commentators were able to construe Aristotle’s analogy as bringing together two sets of symbolic variables (words and counters) that are neither entirely free nor entirely bound – which expose them to subtle but critical shifts in value and meaning. (shrink)

Um pouco como sucedeu com Portugal, Hoje de José Gil, esta edição de As Farpas surgiu num contexto do espaço mediático português muito marcado por um momentâneo extre­mar das suas características mais venais, o que, se teve algum proveito em termos de vendas, contribuiu também para que a recepção imediata desta edição reproduzisse acriticamente os tropos e os topos do costume sobre Eça (Ramalho é como se nem estivesse lá...). Sem lamen­tação nem indignação, não custa compreender que, além das...

Latin commentators came across the « Third Man » in Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi. The way they dealt with the argument is a fair illustration of how they were both faithful to the text and innovative in their understanding of its most challenging issues. Besides providing a detailed survey of all manuscript sources, the introductory essay shows that Latin interpretation originates from a mistake in Boethius’ translation which radically transformed the argument. The edition makes available for the first time a considerable (...) amount of new documentary evidence which made it possible to solve the riddle of the Latin « Third Man ». (shrink)

The aim of this article is to look at the historiographical phenomenon of Scotism in the light of its diffusion in Puglia region from the period following the death of John Duns Scotus (1308) to the 18th century. The intellectual link between Scotist thought and Puglia already arose in the time immediately following Scotus’ death, with the figure of William of Alnwick (bishop of Giovinazzo in 1329/1330), and it is further confirmed and fostered by the widespread presence of Franciscan convents (...) in the region. These convents constitute study centres (schools, Studia, libraries, etc.) promoting cultural debates and the formation of a substantial number of intellectuals who adhere to the Scotist magisterium. These are authors who, seemingly from a peripherical area with respect to the major centres of Scotism, as a matter of fact participate dynamically, through their works and teaching, in the most important theological and philosophical debates of the time relating to the doctrine of Duns Scotus. (shrink)

Religion can bring about social harmony as well as social conflict. Religious law is a key element in both cases. Scholars can explain how religious law changes according to historical and socio-cultural context. They can also help reengineering prescriptions that cause social conflict. Changes in religious law can be explained according to a chronological rhetoric (certain agents cause certain changes) or according to a logical rhetoric (a change acquires its meaning in opposition to other possible changes). The two approaches are (...) complementary, but the semiotics of religious law predominantly adopts the second one. In both cases, the explanation of how a religious law changes and the reengineering of a religious prescription are related activities. The semiotics of religious law is particularly equipped to propose alternatives for conflicting prescriptions. However, there is a difference between showing that some alternatives exist and advocating which alternatives should be taken. Whilst the latter position is similar to that of semiotic guerrilla warfare, the former rather configures the semiotics of religious law as a therapy. Semiotic guerrilla warfare stresses the need to demystify the discourse of power that subjugates individuals or groups to a certain religious law. Semiotic therapy does not focus on demystification but on reconciliation. The task of the semiotic therapy of religious law is to show that situations of social conflict generated by certain prescriptions can be decreased or eliminated by adopting alternative paths of meaning. The semiotic therapist of religious law can be effective in showing these alternatives only if some pragmatic and semantic preconditions are met: a correct involvement with the sets of religious core values at stake and an articulated analysis of the paths of meaning to which these values give rise. (shrink)

Ao cabo de toda uma carreira universitária que quase pode ser confundida com a reflexão sobre Hume em língua portuguesa, a ponto de outros interesses, capazes de originar empresas como a tradução do Leviathan de Hobbes (também na INCM), serem como que laterais ao percurso do seu autor, João Paulo Monteiro publica Realidade e Cognição, uma obra que não se afasta dos domínios de gnoseologia e epistemologia contemporâneas que lhe são familiares nem da influência humeana que aqui surge explicitam...

Um aspecto poucas vezes (se é que alguma vez) referido a propósito deste livro de José Gil é o modo como sintetiza tantos aspectos da sua obra anterior. O que é tanto mais interessan­te quanto o faz recorrendo quer a noções centrais dela como a aspectos quase desconhecidos, e isto através de uma reflexão sobre mentalidades que não é muito frequente destacar-se nos seus trabalhos. Mais ainda do que «a intensidade que uma relação com este país supõe» (p. 142), que (...) José Gil refere ao terminar, e... (shrink)

We question memory reconsolidation and emotional arousal as sufficient determinants of therapeutic change. Generating new feelings and meanings must be contrasted with activating and stabilizing the evolving memories that reflect those novel experiences. Some therapeutic changes are not attributable to a memory model alone. “Emotional processing” is also needed and is often an undeclared form of complex executive problem solving.

Scholarly dissatisfaction with Aristotle’s fallacy of accident has traditionally focused on his examples, whose compatibility with the fallacy’s definition has been doubted time and again. Besides a unified account of the fallacy of accident itself, the paper provides a formalized analysis of its several examples in Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi. The most problematic instances are dealt with by means of an internal reconstruction of their features as conveyed by Aristotle’s text and an extensive survey of their interpretation in the Byzantine and (...) Latin exegetical tradition. Carefully handled a doxographical approach, as opposed to rapid results oriented practices, proves to be most effective in that it supplies both useful albeit ordinarily overlooked insights and a comprehensive framework of reference for further investigations. (shrink)

Hasdai Crescas (1340-1411) fue un filósofo, rabino y figura pública que vivió en un período muy turbulento para las comunidades judías ibéricas y provenzales de la Baja Edad Media. Crescas lanzó una crítica vehemente contra el paradigma aristotélico recibido de la _falsafa_, que fue utilizado por Maimónides para sustentar y probar la existencia, unidad e incorporeidad de Dios, conceptualizado en la _Guía de los perplejos_ como el ser necesario absolutamente trascendente en relación con el ser contingente, es decir, el mundo. (...) En _Or Hashem_, Crescas elabora un concepto alternativo del ser necesario, en el que las dos nociones antitéticas de inmanencia y trascendencia divinas se relacionan con la distinción en el ser necesario entre su esencia simple y sus atributos infinitos. La esencia simple, una e inefable del ser necesario, se expresa en infinitos atributos en el acto eterno y constante de otorgar en la univocidad del ser su bondad y su actualidad a los infinitos seres contingentes. Crescas defiende que el universo, aunque ontológicamente contingente, es infinito en su actualidad. Dios es así concebido como la primera causa, eterna y constante, entelequia y “Lugar del Mundo”. (shrink)

Brazilian women rely on sterilization as the main source of birth control. Sterilization has been one of the causes of the steep decline in fertility in Brazil, at least since the second half of 1970. It is hypothesized that understanding couples’ relationships might be key to explaining this high rate of female sterilizations. Possible reasons for the higher level of fertility among women in unstable unions than among women in stable ones could be the less effective use of contraceptive methods, (...) or that women in unstable unions tend to use less effective or reversible contraceptive methods. In this paper discrete time modelling of the timing of sterilization according to union histories is presented. The analysis uses the calendar data of the 1996 Brazilian DHS. It is shown that women in second or higher order unions have a lower risk of sterilization. This result should be taken into account in the analysis of the determinants of female sterilization in Brazil. (shrink)

Even if somebody considers inappropriate any geographic adjective for Bioethics, nevertheless we think that there are some specific features of “Mediterranean” Bioethics that could distinguish it from a “Northern-European and Northern-American” one. First of all we must consider that medical ethics was born and grew in Mediterranean area. First by the thought of great Greek philosophers as Aristotle (that analyse what ethics is), then by Hippocrates, the “father” of medical ethics. The ethical pattern of Aristotle was based on “virtues” and (...) their practice. In this perspective we can already note a strong difference with actual North-European or American principialist ethics. But a second consideration concerns the role that great Mediterranean religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) had in the construction of the ethical thought especially on the matter of life and its respect. So, in our pluralistic and multicultural society is absolutely necessary to rescue an approach that considers both “lungs” of ethical thought (Mediterranean and Northern one) and highlights the role that Mediterranean Ethics still has in this way. (shrink)

Este trabalho, uma das primeiras obras dedicadas ao significado do Tratado de Lisboa (2007) nas suas vertentes política, histórica e jurídica, constitui não apenas uma reflexão clara e bem fundamentada sobre o seu objecto (o que já seria notável dada a sua complexidade e ainda relativa novidade) mas serve ainda ao leitor, especialista ou não nas matérias da União Europeia, como um guia para a análise do Tratado de Lisboa e do processo que lhe deu origem, a falhada «Constituição Europeia», (...) a d... (shrink)

A indústria cultural tem nos aniversários mais diversos oportunidades de (auto) celebração com virtualidades cada vez mais exploradas. Neste caso interessa-nos a celebração dos 150 anos do nascimento de Freud, embora outros exemplos, à primeira vista até mais originais, fossem possíveis (como a ainda recente azáfama em torno dos 250 anos do terramoto de Lisboa). O que torna o caso dos 150 anos de Freud tão interessante é ver como em seu torno se procedeu à habitual evocação festiva, típica da...

Este pequeno volume (160 pp.) reúne as intervenções no colóquio com o mesmo título realizado na Faculdade de Ciências Humanas no ano de 2004. O habitual lapso de tempo prolongado entre estes encontros e a publicação dos seus resultados resulta, neste caso, interessante, atendendo às evoluções que se verificaram em tantos (todos?) os temas propostos pela organização desta conferência internacional e desenvolvidos pelos participantes (no caso da intervenção de José Cutileiro, esse lapso é abert...

Few arguments from the past have stirred up as much interest as Aristotle’s “Third man” and not so many texts have received as much attention as its account in chapter 22 of the Sophistici elenchi. And yet, several issues about both remain highly controversial, starting from the very nature of the argument at stake and the exact signification of some of its features. The essay provides a close commentary of the text, dealing with its main difficulties and suggesting an overall (...) interpretation of Aristotle’s discussion of the “Third Man” argument. (shrink)

Les commentateurs latins ont rencontré pour la première fois le « Troisième homme » d’Aristote dans le chapitre vingt-deux des Sophistici elenchi. Cette rencontre illustre bien à la fois leur respect de la lettre et la radicalité de certaines de leurs innovations. Influencée par la traduction de Boèce, leur exégèse de l’argument a tenu compte de l’ensemble des indications du texte tout en lui conférant une tournure inédite.

Few arguments from the past have stirred up as much interest as Aristotle’s “Third man” and not so many texts have received as much attention as its account in chapter 22 of the Sophistici elenchi. And yet, several issues about both remain highly controversial, starting from the very nature of the argument at stake and the exact signification of some of its features. The essay provides a close commentary of the text, dealing with its main difficulties and suggesting an overall (...) interpretation of Aristotle’s discussion of the “Third Man” argument. (shrink)

Identification is a primary need of societies. It is even more central in law enforcement. In the history of crime, a dialectics takes place between felonious attempts at concealing, disguising, or forging identities and societal efforts at unmasking the impostures. Semiotics offers specialistic skills at studying the signs of societal detection and identification, including those of forensics and criminology. In human history, no sign more than the face is attached a value of personal identity. Yet, modern forensics realizes that the (...) face can mislead and, inspired by eastern models, adopts fingerprinting. In the digital era, however, fingerprinting first goes digital, then it is increasingly replaced by facial recognition. The face is back in digital AI forensics, together with a tangle of sociocultural biases. Semiotics can play a key role in studying their surreptitious influence. (shrink)

Este artigo enfoca a concepção de infinito atual do filósofo judeu medieval Hasdai Crescas, formuladas no livro Or Hashem às três primeiras proposições de Maimônides, tal como são enunciadas na segunda parte do Guia dos Perplexos. As teses de Maimônides têm como objetivo negar a possibilidade do infinito atual como magnitude imaterial ou material, como conjunto infinito de seres finitos e como série infinita de causa e efeito. Após uma breve exposição da trajetória dos conceitos de infinito nas diversas tradições (...) sapienciais judaicas recebidas na Idade Média, indicamos como a argumentação em prol da ideia de infinito atual em Crescas dialoga com elas. Desse diálogo, emerge o conceito de infinito como singularidade atualizada paralelamente no real como vácuo infinito, lugar de coexistência de infinitos universos, e como infinito atual divino como Kavod, Glória, que preenche o universo infinito e como causa imanente da série infinita de causa e efeito que constitui a existência eterna dos seres contingentes. Na crítica à terceira proposição maimonidiana, a causa primeira é descrita como causa ontológica e imanente da série infinita de causas e efeitos. Nessa discussão, Crescas aponta para uma ideia de Deus muito diferente daquela elaborada por Maimônides. Temos aqui o debate judaico medieval entre os defensores da transcendência divina e os defensores da imanência. Esse tema é importante para a compreensão da recepção da obra de Hasdai Crescas por Picco Della Mirandolla, Bruno e Espinosa. (shrink)

Neste artigo,é exposto e discutido o caminho percorrido por Hasdai Crescas , filósofo judeu medieval que viveu em Barcelona, na elaboração de sua prova para a existência de Deus, formulada com base em sua crítica às provas apresentadas por Maimônides no "Guia dos Perplexos". A crítica de Crescas parte da formulação de um conceito geral de existência aplicável tanto ao ser necessário quanto aos seres contingentes. Outro aspecto interessante em seu caminho para a elaboração da prova da existência de Deus (...) é a distinção que ele faz entre quididade e existência no ser necessário, posição única entre os medievais e que introduz um importante aspecto de imanência em sua ideia de Deus, distinguindo-a radicalmente daquela defendida por Maimônides. This article presents and discusses the path followed by Hasdai Crescas , medieval Jewish philosopher who lived in Barcelona for the elaboration of his proof for existence of God, formulated from his critique of the evidence presented by Maimonides in the "Guide of the Perplexed". Crescas's critique starts with the formulation of a general concept of existence applicable to both the necessary being as to the contingent beings. Another interesting aspect of his way to formulate his proof is Crescas's distinction between existence and quiddity in the necessary being, a unique position among the medieval philosophers that introduces an important aspect of immanence in his idea of God, which radically differs from that advocated by Maimonides. (shrink)

A vast literature exists on the concept of “linguistic ideology.” Scholars generally agree on defining it as a set of ideas that the members of a community hold about the role of language in the community. Nevertheless, scholars generally disagree on whether these ideas are explicit or implicit. Different views on this point imply different methodologies: the analysis of explicit considerations on language in the first case, that of a more multifarious material in the second one. However, excluding implicit ideas (...) from the analysis is too restrictive. A better option is to distinguish between explicit beliefs and implicit assumptions. Whereas the first ones must be studied through socio- or ethno-logical methods, the second ones must be studied through semiotics: the discourses that are produced in a community are considered as signs of implicit assumptions that such community holds about language. The paper deals with a case-study: the semiotic ideology behind denegation in the contemporary Italian political discourse. (shrink)

Until now studies on the historical development of atomic spectroscopy have focused on three main aspects-its first applications as a method of chemical analysis, the formulation of spectral laws , and the rise of the old quantum theory. These developments of spectroscopy were based on the same assumption: the invariance of the atomic spectrum after fixing the chemical element . This paper shows that running alongside these lines of research there was another, no less important area of study based on (...) the negation of this assumption. The focus of these latter studies was the behaviour of atomic spectra as a function of different working conditions. English astrophysicist Sir Norman Lockyer played a central role in this research. While studying the effect of temperature on spectral lines and comparing stellar spectra with laboratory spectra, he discovered a new class of spectral lines . In an attempt to explain the origin of these lines, Lockyer, at the beginning of 1897 , hypothesized the 'dissociation' of the chemical elements into simplified forms of matter, named proto-elements. Lockyer's studies are mentioned by Thomson in the paper which introduces the corpuscle for the first time. In this paper we have tried to reconstruct the history of Lockyer's proto-elements and highlight the links between them and Thomson's corpuscle. Our analysis has shown that not only the famous studies on discharges in rarefied gases but also Lockyer's stellar spectroscopy played an important role in the work of J. J. Thomson, convincing him that the atom was complex and divisible. (shrink)

This original and interdisciplinary volume explores the contemporary semiotic dimensions of the face from both scientific and socio-cultural perspectives, putting forward several traditions, aspects, and signs of the human utopia of creating a hybrid face. The book semiotically delves into the multifaceted realm of the digital face, exploring its biological and social functions, the concept of masks, the impact of COVID-19, AI systems, digital portraiture, symbolic faces in films, viral communication, alien depictions, personhood in video games, online intimacy, and digital (...) memorials. The human face is increasingly living a life that is not only that of the biological body but also that of its digital avatar, spread through a myriad of new channels and transformable through filters, post-productions, digital cosmetics, all the way to the creation of deepfakes. The digital face expresses new and largely unknown meanings, which this book explores and analyzes through an interdisciplinary but systematic approach. The volume will interest researchers, scholars and advanced students who are interested in digital humanities, communication studies, semiotics, visual studies, visual anthropology, cultural studies, and, broadly speaking, in innovative approaches about the meaning of the face in present-day digital societies. (shrink)

The authors examine the conceptual frameworks and substantive ideas of three authors, Lawrence Cremin, Neil Postman and Christopher Lasch, all of whom view technologies as educators. The authors focus on the television as educator and exposit these thinkers' views about relations between television's education and the education of schools, families and communities. The broader social significance involves an examination of the extent to which television's education impoverishes public discourse, the lifeblood of democracy; and the extent to which television's education weakens (...) parents' efforts to educate their children. Cremin and Postman lead the way in respectively providing a framework of analysis and identifying the problems but Cremin fails to recognize the severity of the problems and Postman does not adequately address them. Lasch's work is most promising, his formu lations fit neatly within Cremin's framework but address the problems in a way that improves upon Postman. (shrink)

Ontologies represent the standard way to model the knowledge about specific domains. This holds also for the legal domain where several ontologies have been put forward to model specific kinds of legal knowledge. Both for standard users and for law scholars, it is often difficult to have an overall view on the existing alternatives, their main features and their interlinking with the other ontologies. To answer this need, in this paper, we address an analysis of the state-of-the-art in legal ontologies (...) and we characterise them along with some distinctive features. This paper aims to guide generic users and law experts in selecting the legal ontology that better fits their needs and in understanding its specificity so that proper extensions to the selected model could be investigated. (shrink)