Suppose you’re certain that a claim—say, ‘Frida is tall’—does not have a determinate truth value. What attitude should you take towards it? This is the question of the cognitive role of indeterminacy. This paper presents a puzzle for theories of cognitive role. Many of these theories vindicate a seemingly plausible principle: if you are fully certain that A, you are rationally required to be fully certain that A is determinate. Call this principle ‘Certainty’. We show that Certainty, in combination with (...) some minimal side premises, entails a very implausible claim: whenever you’re certain that it’s indeterminate whether A, it is rationally required that you reject A. This is a surprising result, which requires abandoning at least some intuitive views about indeterminacy and cognitive role. (shrink)

BackgroundThe ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines are widely endorsed but compliance is limited. We sought to determine whether journal-requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist improves full compliance with the guidelines.MethodsIn a randomised controlled trial, manuscripts reporting in vivo animal research submitted to PLOS ONE (March–June 2015) were randomly allocated to either requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist or current standard practice. Authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers were blinded to group allocation. Trained reviewers performed outcome adjudication (...) in duplicate by assessing manuscripts against an operationalised version of the ARRIVE guidelines that consists 108 items. Our primary outcome was the between-group differences in the proportion of manuscripts meeting all ARRIVE guideline checklist subitems.ResultsWe randomised 1689 manuscripts (control: n = 844, intervention: n = 845), of which 1269 were sent for peer review and 762 (control: n = 340; intervention: n = 332) accepted for publication. No manuscript in either group achieved full compliance with the ARRIVE checklist. Details of animal husbandry (ARRIVE subitem 9b) was the only subitem to show improvements in reporting, with the proportion of compliant manuscripts rising from 52.1 to 74.1% (X2 = 34.0, df = 1, p = 2.1 × 10−7) in the control and intervention groups, respectively.ConclusionsThese results suggest that altering the editorial process to include requests for a completed ARRIVE checklist is not enough to improve compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines. Other approaches, such as more stringent editorial policies or a targeted approach on key quality items, may promote improvements in reporting. (shrink)

Over the past twenty years, economic theory has begun to play a central role in antitrust matters. In earlier days, the application of antitrust rules was viewed almost entirely in formal terms; now it is widely accepted that the proper interpretation of these rules requires an understanding of how markets work and how firms can alter their efficient functioning. The Handbook of Antitrust Economics offers scholars, students, administrators, courts, companies, and lawyers the economist's view of the subject, describing the application (...) of newly developed theoretical models and improved empirical methods to antitrust and competition law in both the United States and the European Union. After a general discussion of the use of empirical methods in antitrust cases, the Handbook covers mergers, agreements, abuses of dominance, and market features that affect the way firms compete. Chapters examine such topics as analyzing the competitive effects of both horizontal and vertical mergers, detecting and preventing cartels, theoretical and empirical analysis of vertical restraints, state aids, the relationship of competition law to the defense of intellectual property, and the application of antitrust law to "bidding markets," network industries, and two-sided markets.ContributorsMark Armstrong, Jonathan B. Baker, Timothy F. Bresnahan, Paulo Buccirossi, Nicholas Economides, Hans W. Friederiszick, Luke M. Froeb, Richard J. Gilbert, Joseph E. Harrington, Jr., Paul Klemperer, Kai-Uwe Kuhn, Francine Lafontaine, Damien J. Neven, Patrick Rey, Michael H. Riordan, Jean-Charles Rochet, Lars-Hendrick Röller, Margaret Slade, Giancarlo Spagnolo, Jean Tirole, Thibaud Vergé, Vincent Verouden, John Vickers, Gregory J. WerdenPaolo Buccirossi is Director and Founder of Lear, a research center and an economics consulting firm in Rome, and has worked as an economic advisor at the Italian Competition Authority. (shrink)

Sulla scia di un percorso già segnato da appuntamenti importanti e coinvolgenti istituzioni e studiosi italiani e stranieri, centri di studi specializzati, il Volume che qui si presenta raccoglie i contributi del Convegno Internazionale di Studi dedicato a: Lévinas e la cultura del XX secolo, tenutosi a Napoli tra il 10 ed il 12 aprile 2000: G. Lissa, S. Trigano, I. Kajon, E. Méir, S. Petrosino, E. D’Antuono, M. Signore, M. Zarader, D. Cohen-Lévinas, J. Colette, E. Baccarini, D. Banon, P. (...) Amodio, E. Arseneva, è. Levine, F. Ciaramelli, M. Caporale, G. Giannini. (shrink)

Italian Abstract: Per giustificare l’autorità e la validità della scienza economica, gli economisti sono spesso ricorsi all’argomento che le leggi e i postulati di questo sapere sono verità scientifiche, nel senso di verità empiriche, logiche o autoevidenti. Tuttavia, questo discorso, in quanto discorso legittimante o discorso sull 'importanza' della scienza economica, sembra contraddire una siffatta argomentazione giacché non statuisce né verità empiriche né verità logiche, e tanto meno verità autoevidenti. A quale tipo di verità, allora, fa riferimento la predica della (...) scienza economica? Perché la scienza economica, in quanto sapere, viene predicata come una ‘legge’ a cui bisognerebbe obbedire? Esiste un legame storico e teoretico tra la struttura giuridico-politica della legittimità e la predica, la retorica e/o il discorso della scienza economia nella sfera pubblica? In che senso un sapere è un 'istituzione'? -/- In questo articolo esamino il ‘caso Einaudi’ come exemplum dei discorsi sulla scienza economica fatti dagli economisti nella sfera pubblica. Analizzando la predicazione e la riflessione epistemologica di Einaudi e confrontandola con quella di Pareto, Robbins, Weber e Schumpeter, vedremo come sullo sfondo di note dicotomie quali positivo/normativo, fatti/valori, essere/dover essere, analisi/visione, si stagli la contrapposizione epistemologico-antropologica tra Ragione e passioni, spesso assimilata a un’altra perdurante antitesi: Ragione e fede. Muovendo dalla prospettiva dell’«antropologia dogmatica» di Pierre Legendre, e attraverso un rovesciamento solo apparentemente paradossale delle categorie giuridiche e teologiche presenti nel discorso einaudiano, cercherò di formulare una nozione di normatività della scienza economica, estendibile anche ad altri saperi, in vista di un superamento della (falsa) contrapposizione tra Ragione e passioni. -/- English Abstract: To legitimate the authority and the validity of the economic science, economists have often claimed that the laws and the postulates of this savoir are scientific truths, in the sense of empirical, logical or self-evident truths. However, this discourse, as a legitimating discourse, or as a discourse on the ‘significance’ of the economic science, seems to contradict such a claim since it does not assert either empirical, logical or self-evident truths. To what type of truth, then, does the preaching of the economic science refer? Why is the economic science, as a savoir, preached as a ‘law’ to which one should obey? Is there an historical and theoretical nexus between the legal-political structure of the legitimacy and the preaching, rhetoric or discourse of the economic science? What does it mean that a savoir is an ‘institution’? -/- In this article I examine the ‘Einaudi case’ as an exemplum of the discourses on the economic science done by economists in the public sphere. Analysing Einaudi’s preaching and epistemological speculation and comparing it with that of Pareto, Robbins, Weber and Schumpeter, I will show how from the background of well known dichotomies – such as positive/normative, fact/values, to be/ought to be, analysis/vision – the epistemological-anthropological opposition between Reason and passions emerges. This opposition is often assimilated to another long-lasting antithesis: that between Reason and faith. Moving from the perspective of Pierre Legendre’s «dogmatic anthropology», and by an apparently paradoxical reversal of the juridical and theological concepts of Einaudi’s discourse, I will try to formulate a notion of normativity of economic science, which is also applicable to other sciences, in view of an overcoming of the (false) opposition between Reason and passions. (shrink)

Variations sur le survolRuyer, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze et le statut de la formeLa question principale que j’aborde dans cet article concerne la manière dont Merleau-Ponty et Deleuze assument l’héritage du finalisme du vingtième siècle.En analysant certains textes fondamentaux de ces deux auteurs, on aperçoit en effet clairement leur dette à l’égard, notamment, du néo-finalisme de Raymond Ruyer. Autant Merleau-Ponty que Deleuze lisent l’oeuvre de Ruyer en la séparant de son contexte d’origine et de ses intentions explicites, à savoir hors de toute (...) exigence de nature épistémologique. Entre ces deux auteurs subsiste toutefois une différence substantielle dans la manière d’employer les concepts ruyériens. Merleau-Ponty réfute l’hypothèse d’une forme qui survole les matériaux constituant l’organisation idéale, mais valorise l’idée d’un thématisme immanent, d’une essence qui subsiste seulement à l’intérieur de ses variations. Deleuze, lui, semble reprendre sans réserve à son compte ces mêmes notions de forme et de survol parce qu’il les interprète comme des concepts plutôt que comme des causes formelles ou finales. Le concept deleuzien n’est pas pris dans la « pâte » du vécu, mais survole toute expérience vécue et tout état de choses. C’est pourquoi il ne peut être que créé, et c’est pourquoi la philosophie ne peut pas être uneactivité descriptive, à la manière de la phénoménologie, mais doit être nécessairement constructive.Variations on the SurveyRuyer, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and the Status of the FormThe main question that I confront in this article concerns the way in which Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze take up the heritage of 20th century finalism. By analyzing some of both of these authors’ basic texts, we clearly perceive their debt to, particularly, the neofinalism of Raymond Ruyer. Merleau-Ponty as much as Deleuze read Ruyer’s work separately from its original context and its explicit intentions, that is, they read it outside of any sort of epistemological demand. Nevertheless, we still find between the two a substantial difference in the manner of using Ruyer’s concepts. Merleau-Ponty refutes the hypothesis of a form that surveys the materials that constitute the ideal organization, but valorizes the idea of an immanent thematism, of an essence that only subsists within its variations. Deleuze, for his part, appears by contrast to take unreservedly into his own account these same notions of form and survey because he interprets them as concepts rather than formal and final causes. The Deleuzian concept is not “infested” with the lived, but surveys all lived experience and every state of things. That is why itcan only be created and that is why philosophy cannot be a descriptive activity, in the manner of phenomenology, but will necessarily be constructive. (shrink)

Variations sur le survolRuyer, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze et le statut de la formeLa question principale que j’aborde dans cet article concerne la manière dont Merleau-Ponty et Deleuze assument l’héritage du finalisme du vingtième siècle.En analysant certains textes fondamentaux de ces deux auteurs, on aperçoit en effet clairement leur dette à l’égard, notamment, du néo-finalisme de Raymond Ruyer. Autant Merleau-Ponty que Deleuze lisent l’oeuvre de Ruyer en la séparant de son contexte d’origine et de ses intentions explicites, à savoir hors de toute (...) exigence de nature épistémologique. Entre ces deux auteurs subsiste toutefois une différence substantielle dans la manière d’employer les concepts ruyériens. Merleau-Ponty réfute l’hypothèse d’une forme qui survole les matériaux constituant l’organisation idéale, mais valorise l’idée d’un thématisme immanent, d’une essence qui subsiste seulement à l’intérieur de ses variations. Deleuze, lui, semble reprendre sans réserve à son compte ces mêmes notions de forme et de survol parce qu’il les interprète comme des concepts plutôt que comme des causes formelles ou finales. Le concept deleuzien n’est pas pris dans la « pâte » du vécu, mais survole toute expérience vécue et tout état de choses. C’est pourquoi il ne peut être que créé, et c’est pourquoi la philosophie ne peut pas être uneactivité descriptive, à la manière de la phénoménologie, mais doit être nécessairement constructive.Variations on the SurveyRuyer, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and the Status of the FormThe main question that I confront in this article concerns the way in which Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze take up the heritage of 20th century finalism. By analyzing some of both of these authors’ basic texts, we clearly perceive their debt to, particularly, the neofinalism of Raymond Ruyer. Merleau-Ponty as much as Deleuze read Ruyer’s work separately from its original context and its explicit intentions, that is, they read it outside of any sort of epistemological demand. Nevertheless, we still find between the two a substantial difference in the manner of using Ruyer’s concepts. Merleau-Ponty refutes the hypothesis of a form that surveys the materials that constitute the ideal organization, but valorizes the idea of an immanent thematism, of an essence that only subsists within its variations. Deleuze, for his part, appears by contrast to take unreservedly into his own account these same notions of form and survey because he interprets them as concepts rather than formal and final causes. The Deleuzian concept is not “infested” with the lived, but surveys all lived experience and every state of things. That is why itcan only be created and that is why philosophy cannot be a descriptive activity, in the manner of phenomenology, but will necessarily be constructive. (shrink)

Ponto de partida do presente artigo é uma interrogação acerca do significado existencial das proposições. Em primeiro lugar, é considerada a ideia de existência simbólica na lógica de MacColl, ao mesmo tempo que se assinalam os problemas que, na perspectiva de Bertrand Russell, estão associados com a auta-referência e o significado da classe-nula. Por outro lado, o artigo demonstra também até que ponto a própria perspectiva de Russell não está livre de problemas, de ambiguidades e de mudanças de opinião. O (...) autor do artigo partilha a crítica de Russell sobre o significado do quantificador, acabando por usar Russell contra Russell, ou seja, a réplica russelliana de 1957 a G. J. Warnock contra a réplica russelliana de 1905 a MacColl. Assim, a partir de uma análise lógica do debate entre Russell e MacColl, o artigo procede a uma investigação da relação entre Lógica e Ontologia, considerando de um modo especial o caso dos objectos não-existentes. /// Moving from a technical, logical point of view in the RusselUMacColl debate about the existential import of propositions and the significance of the null-class, the paper tries to inquiry the relationship between logic and ontology, considering in special the case ofnon existing objects, Russell's philosophical treatment of the existential quantification gains his full meaning in his realistic perspective. But it is possible to use this treatment versus Russell intentions, to deny that there is a supplementary (in space-time) existence, that "lies wholly outside Symbolic Logic". (shrink)

We present some results related to Zilber’s Exponential-Algebraic Closedness Conjecture, showing that various systems of equations involving algebraic operations and certain analytic functions admit solutions in the complex numbers. These results are inspired by Zilber’s theorems on raising to powers.We show that algebraic varieties which split as a product of a linear subspace of an additive group and an algebraic subvariety of a multiplicative group intersect the graph of the exponential function, provided that they satisfy Zilber’s freeness and rotundity conditions, (...) using techniques from tropical geometry.We then move on to prove a similar theorem, establishing that varieties which split as a product of a linear subspace and a subvariety of an abelian variety A intersect the graph of the exponential map of A (again under the analogues of the freeness and rotundity conditions). The proof uses homology and cohomology of manifolds.Finally, we show that the graph of the modular j-function intersects varieties which satisfy freeness and broadness and split as a product of a Möbius subvariety of a power of the upper-half plane and a complex algebraic variety, using Ratner’s orbit closure theorem to study the images under j of Möbius varieties.Abstract prepared by Francesco Paolo GallinaroE-mail: [email protected]: https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/31077/. (shrink)

La philosophie contemporaine et la phénoménologie du corps, en visant à rendre le corps plus multiple, plus habité par l'altérité y compris technique (J. Derrida, J.-L. Nancy), ont fait évoluer profondément le problème du lien entre "l'âme" et le corps ; et cela au-delà des contours de la problématique marquée par les recherches cognitives du XXe siècle, qui ont pourtant donné une accélération remarquable à l'étude des rapports entre le cerveau et la machine corporelle. Ces perspectives ont introduit dans le (...) cadre de l'ancien débat, d'origine cartésienne, des variantes liées surtout à l'art, l'écriture et la pensée environnementale. L'Orient et l'Occident se retrouvent ainsi confrontés à un corps aux multiples "décors", qui le spécifient, l'entourent, l'enrichissent, etc. Le Mind Body Problem d'ordre simplement épistémologique, suivant la tradition jusqu'à la seconde moitié du siècle dernier, s'est changé en problème culturel, cognitif, écologique qui récupère de façon critique la notion générale de "vie", de "contexte phénoménologique de vie", d'existence également. Ce volume, issu d'un Colloque organisé par le Collège International de Philosophie, a voulu reconsidérer les tenants et aboutissants de ce changement, pour le développement d'une perspective de philosophie du corps impliquant une multitude d'intersections trans-et multidisciplinaires et trans- et multiculturelles : entre esthétique, arts du spectacle, phénoménologie, écologie, histoire de l'art et de la pensée de l'art, pensée orientale, nouvelles sciences cognitives, Cultural Studies. (shrink)

This translation of a classic and original work of intellectual history is beautifully done. Rossi’s book Clavis Universalis was first published in Italian in 1960, but Clucas translates the second, revised edition of 1983. The book is about Renaissance and 17th-century encyclopedism, hieroglyphics and cryptography, the techniques of artificial memory, the history of rhetoric, changes in views about logic and method in the scientific revolution, and new ideas about how language and images might reflect or capture reality. Frances Yates’s brilliant (...) The Art of Memory, published in 1966, has so far had much more influence in the English-speaking world. Despite warm citations and many points of contact with Yates’s work, Rossi is less interested in uncovering hidden occult traditions, and more focussed on the way major 17th-century thinkers’ work must be understood against the rich background of schemes for universal grammar and local memory. He shows that scholars working on Bacon, Descartes, and Leibniz miss key references to this intellectual heritage. Half of the book [152] introduces relevant mnemonic, rhetorical, linguistic, medical, and occult writings. Rossi includes illuminating discussions not only of Ramon Lull, Petrus Ramus, Cornelius Agrippa, Giordano Bruno, and all, but also of fascinating minor writers like Guglielmo Gratorolo who systematized advice on medical aids to memory in the mid-16th century, and the wonderful Johannes Spangerbergius, who classified various forms of amnesia in 1570. He then argues that polemic against the arts of memory in both Bacon and Descartes coexisted with intense interest on their part in the supplementing of weak powers of natural memory by various artificial aids and objects outside the boundaries of skull and skin. Rossi tells the strange stories of the great 17th-century encyclopedists and universal language schemers—Alsted, Comenius, Wilkins, Dalgarno—making important connections between Wilkins’s scheme and worries about methods for botanical classification in the early Royal Society. The final chapter is a tour de force on ‘the sources of Leibniz’s universal character’, placing him (as Clucas neatly puts it) ‘at the “end” of a Renaissance intellectual tradition rather than reading him “forwards” as an innovative precursor of modern formal logic’. Historians of science, linguistics, and philosophy have built on many aspects of Rossi’s work since 1983, and Clucas contributes an outstanding introduction which summarizes key strands of recent scholarship. (shrink)

Every time that one refers to the political philosophy that could be drawn from the so called " Last Wittgenstein ", the most habitual thing is to associate it with conservative positions, given that the majority of the available literature on the matter does it so. Nevertheless, in the last few years some philosophers, such as Chantal Mouffe and Paolo Virno, have tried to offer a new picture in which Wittgenstein fits better with democratic political ideas, even though this (...) manoeuvre requires to go beyond some presuppositions of Wittgenstein philosophy. My aim is to twofold. First, I will analyze why it has been thought that some elements ofWittgenstein’s late philosophy are compatible with political conservatism. Second, I will try to point out what notions of this network should be discarded in order to make it useful to elaborate democratic anticonservative models. This last task is necessary since it is logical to think that the same body of thought cannot be coherent with so different and even opposite political derivations. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory is widely recognized as a management theory, yet very little research has considered its implications for individual managerial decision-making. In the two studies reported here, we used stakeholder theory to examine managerial decisions about balancing stakeholder interests. Results of Study 1 suggest that indivisible resources and unequal levels of stakeholder saliency constrain managers’ efforts to balance stakeholder interests. Resource divisibility also influenced whether managers used a within-decision or an across-decision approach to balance stakeholder interests. In Study 2 we (...) examined instrumental and normative implications of these two approaches. We conclude by considering the contributions of this research. (shrink)

This article examines the regalist reforming critique and the curial defence of papal temporal dominion in the eighteenth-century Italian peninsula. The discussion examines the little-explored links between the justification for papal supremacy in the Church and the historico-theological defence of its theocratic rule. The refusal of the Curia to grant reform gave rise to a radical reforming movement which produced some astoundingly bitter anti-curial polemics little known outside Italian studies, but of some significance in the history of political thought.

The purported failures of ergodic theory (seen in its often proved ineptitude to ground a mechanical explanation of thermodynamics) are shown to arise from misconception of the functions served by scientific explanation. In fact, the predictive failures of ergodic theory are precisely its points of greatest physical utility, where genuinely new knowledge about actual physical systems can be obtained, once the links between explanation and reconstructive estimation are recognized.