Questo lavoro propone un confronto tra diversi strumenti utilizzabili per modellare la conoscenza di dominio in ambito didattico: le mappa concettuali, Novak e Cañas (2006), (uno strumento tradizionalmente utilizzato nelle scuole) e le ontologie computazionali (dei sistemi formali di modellazione concettuale, attualmente molto usati nei sistemi di intelligenza artificiale per le loro capacità di “ragionamento automatico”, si veda Guarino, (1995)). Nello specifico, questo articolo presenta il risultato di un un doppio esperimento sul campo condotto presso il Liceo Scientifico “Guido Parodi” (...) di Acqui Terme in cui gruppi di studenti paragonano lo strumento della mappa concettuale e quello dell’ontologia nella risoluzione di due problemi di “misconcezione” (o errata concettualizzazione): uno indotto attraverso la consegna di appunti e materiali didattici contenenti informazioni volontariamente contraddittorie tra loro (caso che potrebbe corrispondere alla situazione in cui uno studente prende - per qualche motivo - degli appunti in modo scorretto) e l’altro legato ad una complessità concettuale intrinseca all’argomento. (shrink)

Nel dibattito teorico, la metafora della mappa è stata spesso usata per esplorare il ruolo della nozione di verità nel rapporto tra linguaggio, rappresentazioni, realtà. Le mappe sono sempre prospettiche, legate a interessi (cognitivi e non cognitivi) di chi le elabora; come ha osservato Michael Lynch, "il mondo non si mappa da sé". Per quanto diverse esse siano, assumiamo in genere che le pratiche descrittive possano aspirare a qualche forma di verità e corrispondere al modo in cui le cose (...) stanno. Non è facile spiegare in che cosa consista questa "corrispondenza", anche perché è controversa la possibilità di distinguere quanto, nelle rappresentazioni linguistiche, dipende dal mondo e quanto dai nostri schemi concettuali. Il ruolo del concetto di verità diventa sempre più complesso, se si prendono sul serio le differenze nei modi di accedervi e nei campi oggettivi di riferimento; ciò dà spazio ad uno spettro molto ampio di posizioni filosofiche, fra loro contrastanti, che rimescolano le carte delle tradizionali controversie tra realisti, antirealisti, relativisti. I saggi compresi in questo volume costituiscono un momento di incontro volto ad afferrare e discutere la fisionomia di queste controversie. (shrink)

La tesi di Alfred Korzybski secondo cui «la mappa non è il territorio» non è semplice come appare. Seguendo le idee di Bateson al riguardo, potremmo comparare il «territorio» alla kantiana «cosa in sé», sfondo inaccessibile della percezione e della conoscenza, soggetta a procedure di oggettazione interminabili; ma se il «territorio» è concepito come inaccessibile in senso stretto, le nostre mappe possono fare riferimento soltanto ad altre mappe. Trattando l’argomento, questo articolo considera alcune varianti del problema mappa-territorio ed (...) argomenta che un osservatore umano conosce ed elabora le proprie credenze in una dimensione intermedia tra le mappe simbolico-concettuali e i territori percettivi. (shrink)

Recent articles in biomedical ethics have begun to explore both the relevance of family interests in treatment decisions and the resultant ramifications for physicians' obligations to patients. This article addresses two important questions regarding physicians' obligations vis-a-vis family interests: (1) What should a physician do when the exercise of patient autonomy threatens to negate the patient's moral obligations to other family members? (2) Does respect for patient autonomy typically require efforts on the part of physicians to keep patients' treatment decisions (...) from being influenced by family considerations? A series of clarifications about the concept of autonomy is also presented. (shrink)

This essay argues that Antony and Cleopatra’s pitting of Egypt against Rome is a cipher of aesthetic resistance to modern rationality. The coordinates are Adornian. Antony’s and Cleopatra’s complex identities elude the disenchanting, nominalist machinery in which diffuse indeterminacy necessitates conceptual imposition. Here, the individuals are essentially dramatized: sensate, embodied selves composed and expressed in relations of passionate recognition. The lovers’ deaths, and especially Cleopatra’s self-conscious theatre, rewrite the ascetic, dominative, and pseudo-theatrical rationality of Octavian Rome. The protest, the passion (...) and singularity, lives mainly through its expressive emphases – such as hyperbole – and the re-functioning of the very dominative roles and norms being opposed. This reflects the restricted but critical – aesthetic – status of early modern drama, and specifies its opposition to the deepening attack on sensate knowing in its world. (shrink)

: This article begins with a discussion of persistent vegetative state (PVS), focusing on concerns related to both diagnosis and prognosis and paying special attention to the 1994 Multi-Society Task Force report on the medical aspects of PVS. The article explores the impact of diagnostic and prognostic uncertainties on prospective thinking regarding the possibility of PVS and considers the closely related question of how prospective thinkers might craft advance directives in order to deal most effectively with this possibility.

This best-selling anthology of readings with case studies provides insightful and comprehensive treatment of ethical issues in medicine. Appropriate for courses taught in philosophy departments as well as in schools of medicine and nursing, the collection covers provocative topics such as conflicts of interest in medicine, advance directives, physician-assisted suicide, and the rationing of health care. The text's effective pedagogical features include chapter introductions, argument sketches, explanations of medical terms, headnotes, and annotated bibliographies.

Carol Gilligan has delineated two ethics, the ethic of rights and the ethic of care. In this article I argue that the two ethics are part of one overall system, the ethic of care functioning as a necessary base for the ethic of rights. 1 also argue that the system is seriously flawed. Because women are held accountable to both ethics and because the two ethics frequently conflict, women recurrently find themselves in a moral double bind.

In its seventh edition, "Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy" continues to provide material that will encourage reflective and critical examination of key contemporary moral problems. With additional readings and a new organization that groups related chapters together under four categories, this edition enhances the teachability that was the most salient characteristic of previous editions. The text maintains its ability to bring the central issues into clear focus, while allowing supporting arguments for widely diverse positions to be presented by those (...) who embrace them. (shrink)

This araticle examines elements of Jean-François Lyotard’s paradoxical negotiations with aesthetic experiences in order to characterize his critical involvement with discursivized forms of knowing and explanation. These elements are offered as salient and salutary correctives to the symmetrical dogmas of disenchanting naturalisms and culturalisms currently programming typical misprisions of the aesthetic. Lyotard’s 1971 Discourse, Figure, as well as some of his later writings on visual art and artists, are not interpretatively integrated here but instead explored in terms of an anti-discursive (...) logic that actually animates what appear to be their own anti-aesthetic commitments and conclusions. The article tracks the ambivalent, but persistent, role that perception, art-medium and sensate experience play in Lyotard’s efforts to see beyond them. This result impacts not only on the kinds of ‘demystification’ his work should be seen to espouse, but on that pervasive pseudo-category itself. (shrink)

The persistent failure of public schooling in low-income communities constitutes one of our nation's most pressing civil rights and social justice issues. Many school reformers recognize that poverty, racism, and a lack of power held by these communities undermine children's education and development, but few know what to do about it. A Match on Dry Grass argues that community organizing represents a fresh and promising approach to school reform as part of a broader agenda to build power for low-income communities (...) and address the profound social inequalities that affect the education of children. Based on a comprehensive national study, the book presents rich and compelling case studies of prominent organizing efforts in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, Denver, San Jose, and the Mississippi Delta. The authors show how organizing groups build the participation and leadership of parents and students so they can become powerful actors in school improvement efforts. They also identify promising ways to overcome divisions and create the collaborations between educators and community residents required for deep and sustainable school reform. Identifying the key processes that create strong connections between schools and communities, Warren, Mapp, and their collaborators show how community organizing builds powerful relationships that lead to the transformational change necessary to advance educational equity and a robust democracy. (shrink)

Research in ethical AI has made strides in quantitative expression of ethical values such as fairness, transparency, and privacy. Here we contribute to this effort by proposing a new family of metrics called “decisional value scores” (DVS). DVSs are scores assigned to a system based on whether the decisions it makes meet or fail to meet a particular standard (either individually, in total, or as a ratio or average over decisions made). Advantages of DVS include greater discrimination capacity between types (...) of ethically relevant decisions and facilitation of ethical comparisons between decisions and decision-making systems, including across different modalities (for instance: human, machine, or coupled human–machine systems). After clarifying ambiguities in the concept of “decision” itself, including the question of how to individuate the decisions made by a system, we discuss the role and meaning of “decision” in common AI and machine learning approaches such as decision trees, neural networks, SVMs, and unsupervised classifiers. We then show how DVSs may be defined for several ethical values of interest, with an extended discussion of transparency. Finally, we explore how such metrics can be applied to real decision-making systems through two case studies: evaluations of LLMs for transparency; and evaluations of criminal risk assessment tools for utility, rights violations, fairness, and transparency. (shrink)

In this paper an economics approach to assessing community values in health care priority setting is examined. The approach is based on the concept of ‘willingness to pay’ (WTP). Eighty two parents were interviewed with regard to three aspects of provision of child health services. For each aspect a choice of two courses of action was presented. Parents were asked which course of action they preferred and what was the maximum amount of money they would be prepared to pay for (...) this rather than their less preferred option. WTP responses are acceptable to the majority of respondents and appear to ‘behave’ in accordance witha priori expectations. A method of assessing the influence of ability to pay on preferences and WTP is outlined. Preferences and WTP do not appear to have been unduly distorted by ability to pay. Use of WTP data does have the potential to provide health care purchasers and providers with information on intensity as well as direction of the preferences of members of the community. (shrink)

This book's thirty essays explore philosophically the nature and morality of sexual perversion, cybersex, masturbation, homosexuality, contraception, same-sex marriage, promiscuity, pedophilia, date rape, sexual objectification, teacher-student relationships, pornography, and prostitution. Authors include Martha Nussbaum, Thomas Nagel, Alan Goldman, John Finnis, Sallie Tisdale, Robin West, Alan Wertheimer, John Corvino, Cheshire Calhoun, Jerome Neu, and Alan Soble, among others. A valuable resource for sex researchers as well as undergraduate courses in the philosophy of sex.

The thematic section of this issue of «Scienza & Politica» focuses on the problem of utopia. Though in the last decades Utopian Studies have developed significant analyses of this issue, their concept is still poor in reflexivity. The historiographical reconstructions and conceptual investigations operate through meanings of a concept which escape the control of their users: the many, and even incompatible, meanings of Utopia available today are often loosened from each other, with the result that scholars very often give rise (...) to dialogues that run the risk to be only apparent, since they develop through different semantics. The purpose of a research that engages today in an attempt to elaborate reflexively this category cannot be to look for a unifying meaning of the term: this, in fact, would add up a single definition to the others available on the marketplace of ideas. On the contrary it seems more promising to build an accurate repertoire of meanings in use, in which the concept of Utopia shows its varying boundaries and the contradictions characterizing its long tradition. (shrink)

The present paper deals with two distinct but related purposes: to shed light on certain controversial aspects of Gödel’s view toward mathematics by referring to that part of Gödel’s writings belonging to his Nachlass ; to discuss recent developments of the debate concerning some implications of Gödel’s well known incompleteness theorems, which have been looked by someone as a tool to ‘disprove’ the mechanistic view of human mind. We emphasize an ‘epistemological flavour’ of Gödel’s view which usually remains unnoticed on (...) one side. On the other, we try to introduce new topics in the debate by making reference to less conventional sources. (shrink)

Astory is an instruction manual of sorts, containing rules for the manufacture of fictional objects. Consider the opening sentence from E. F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia: "Though it was nearly a year since her husband's death, Emmeline Lucas still wore the deepest and most uncompromising mourning."1 As the sentence does not describe someone who exists, it does not press a truth claim that could be substantiated by observing the person in question. Instead, it is an invitation to construction: the reader (...) is presented with guidelines for what he or she is to imagine. These guidelines do not fully determine what is imagined, since the exact shape and constitution of what a... (shrink)

Within the Neoplatonic tradition, the absolute transcendence of the First Principle—the One-Good, from which the whole reality in its various articulations derives—plays a crucial role. This philosophical perspective implies, particularly in Plotinus and Proclus, some fundamental philosophical consequences, above all the transcendence of the Principle with respect to being and thought as well. This necessarily implies that the One-Good must be conceived of as beyond the intelligible Beauty itself. In this paper I aim to examine the theoretical implications and consequences (...) of this perspective with specific reference to the conception of God’s absolute transcendence outlined within two texts of the Corpus Areopagiticum, overall characterized by the reworking of some fundamental Neoplatonic concepts in the context of Christian theology: the De divinis nominibus and the De mystica theologia. Indeed, in the De divinis nominibus it is shown that the names/predicates attributed to God in the Sacred Scriptures must be understood only in an allegorical-symbolic meaning, because God is above any possible definition. Not even the character of Beauty can be attributed to him, since he radically transcends it: in fact, God constitutes the absolute foundation and the very first source of Beauty itself. Therefore, God must be understood as ἀκαλλής, that is, “devoid of the connotation of Beauty”, precisely because he completely transcends it. In line with this theological and theoretical perspective, in the De mystica theologia a form of radical and absolute apophatism is developed, which in turn must ultimately lead to its own overcoming for the sake of the henosis, the mystical union with God. (shrink)

La ricerca qui proposta si rivolge al programma di radicale naturalizzazione della mente e, in particolare, alla posizione del monismo materialistico che esso produce. L’articolo si propone di individuare gli assunti fondamentali sui quali tale programma poggia. Un primo assunto identificato e discusso criticamente all’interno del lavoro concerne una concezione corrispondentista della verità. Un secondo assunto fa riferimento ad una concezione secondo la quale lo studio della mente si riduce all’individuazione di relazioni causali e leggi che regolano processi meccanici, mentre (...) si possono considerare scientifiche solo quelle forme di indagine fondate sul principio di chiusura del mondo fisico. L’analisi si conclude sottolineando come il presupposto più significativo si riveli essere la negazione della soggettività e della coscienza, la quale viene ridotta/ricondotta a operazioni inconsce e inintelligenti. In problema rincontrato a questo rispetto è identificato nel fatto di non fare valere la fondamentale distinzione teoretica tra condizione empirica e condizione di intelligibilità. (shrink)

Quest’articolo prova ad offrire una ricostruzione storica e un’analisi teorica di due concetti che hanno pervaso il dibattito politico contemporaneo: post-verità e complottismo. Nel farlo, il principale obiettivo di chi scrive è quello di smentire la presunta filiazione tra post-strutturalismo e post-truismo. Questo tentativo si fonda sull’ipotesi che il passaggio da una società del segreto ad una società della trasparenza abbia prodotto di fatto una invisibilizzazione del reale attraverso la sua sovra-esposizione documediale.

The essay maintains that, despite the significant successive transformations, a ordoliberal moment operates within the neoliberal program. Ordoliberalism establishes a specific political anthropology based on the centrality of economic action and on an a-revolutionary temporality that enhances the normative continuity of the tradition. Even against the specific configurations that the State can assume, especially the democratic one, it also aims at the constant reactivation of a political as a fundamental decision in favor of the economic.

Nel corso dell’ultimo mezzo secolo, le «politiche della memoria» si sono imposte a livello teorico e pratico come una dimensione-chiave di quella costellazione di strumenti non punitivi di riscatto dalle atrocità del passato che siamo abituati ad approssimare attraverso le nozioni di «riparative» o «restorative justice». Tutt’altro che concordi appaiono però a tutt’oggi i giudizi degli studiosi sul più profondo significato politico assunto da questo tipo di misure nello specifico contesto dei processi di transizione alla pace e alla democrazia. Il (...) saggio si propone di ricostruire e discutere le principali linee di sviluppo di questo intenso dibattito, soffermandosi in particolare sul controverso rapporto tra memorie della violenza, giustizia di transizione e _agency_ collettiva che costituisce il tema centrale di questo fascicolo di _Scienza & Politica_. (shrink)