This paper examines whether Giordano Bruno’s philosophy should be considered pantheist or immanentist—two philosophies that scholars regard as partly equivalent. However, this paper distinguishes them and argues that Bruno either identified the whole of nature with God or recognized a primary principle that is immanent, yet distinguishable, from matter. In terms of Bruno’s interpretation of the Aristotelian notions of form and matter, the difference between an immanentist view and a pantheist one lies in the role that form (or act) assumes (...) with regard to matter (or potency). This paper maintains that Bruno interpreted and adapted Aristotle’s philosophy to find his own immanentist metaphysics, which is built on the traditional Aristotelian system. This argument was based on the reconstruction of how he used Aristotelian thought as an instrument to subvert Aristotelianism. In particular, Bruno attested that intellect exists within nature, but it is not co-extensive with the whole nature. Finally, the paper highlights how Bruno applied Aristotle’s language, method, and themes to criticize the fundamentals of Aristotelian philosophy and the related traditions. (shrink)

The volume focuses on the relation between Cusanus and Aristotle or the Aristotelian tradition - an issue addressed by recent scholarship only with partial or provisional results. Through a general survey, the essays included in the book aim at systematically verifying how Cusanus received Aristotle's thought and its different sciences, and how he dealt with Aristotelianism in its philosophical and theological implications."-- Back cover.

Neste estudo procedemos a uma leitura detalhada da obra editada por Emmanuele Vimercati e Valentina Zaffino, Nicholas of Cusa and the Aristotelian Tradition. A Philosophical and Theological Survey, cuja oportunidade começamos por realçar. Os estudos que a constituem abordam a relação do pensamento cusano com Aristóteles e a tradição aristotélica e o modo como essa tradição chega a Nicolau de Cusa, mostrando ecos da sua presença na Lógica e na Epistemologia, na Física e na Psicologia, na Metafísica, na (...) Ética e na Política, incluindo ainda um capítulo especial dedicado aos sermões do Cardeal alemão. A conclusão gral é a de que a inscrição do pensamento deste autor no neoplatonismo e na corrente mística, esquece habitualmente, de modo injusto, o papel que o diálogo com a tradição aristotélica desempenhou na sua constituição. Neste estudo crítico, a par do reconhecimento do elevado mérito dos contributos reunidos na obra, são também deixadas algumas notas críticas relativamente a alguns pormenores, o que não altera a perceção muito positiva que a leitura do livro nos deixou. (shrink)

We examine whether a taxpayer’s decision to choose a taxpayer-favorable characterization of income is associated with contextual and individual dimensions of that decision. Using a 2 × 2 factorial experimental design, we manipulate the prevailing social norm on whether there is a general belief that a specific form of income should be characterized as a capital gain or as ordinary income, and the group affiliation on whether the individual is making a tax characterization decision as a sole proprietor or as (...) a member of a group practice. Moreover, we measure participants’ fairness perception of characterizing the income as capital gains versus ordinary. We study the decisions of 180 graduate business and accounting students from two US business schools to explore these dimensions using a tax-ambiguous income situation. Results indicate that both contextual and individual dimensions impact taxpayer decisions. Specifically, the social norm and fairness perception of characterizing income as capital gains affects the likelihood of choosing such a characterization. Being a sole proprietor or a member of a group practice does not have any significant main effect. However, relative to all other conditions, taxpayers are most likely to characterize income as capital gains when both the social norms are for capital gains characterization and when the taxpayer is a member of a group practice. Results remain largely robust to a variety of alternative explanations. We conclude the paper with a discussion of our findings and their implications for tax policy, enforcement, and research. (shrink)

The paper addresses the problem of imaginative resistance in science, that is, why and under what circumstances imagination sometimes resists certain scenarios. In the first part, the paper presents and discusses two accounts concerning the problem and relevant for the main thesis of this study. The first position is that of Gendler (Journal of Philosophy 97:55–81, 2000), (Gendler, in: Nichols (ed) The Architecture of the Imagination: New essays on pretence, possibility and fiction, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006a), (Gendler & (...) Liao, in: Gibson, Carroll (eds) The routledge companion to philosophy of literature, Routledge, New York, 2016), according to which imaginative resistance mainly concerns evaluative scenarios, presenting deviant moral attitudes. The second account examined is that of Kim et al. (in: Cova, Réhault (eds) Advances in experimental philosophy of aesthetics, Bloomsbury, London, 2018), who insisted on the link between imaginative resistance on the one hand and counterfactual and counterdescriptive scenarios on the other. In the light of both theories, this paper discusses the importance of addressing the problem of imaginative resistance in the scientific enterprise in the light of some mechanisms of embodied simulation, based on the activity of mirror neurons and investigated within the framework of the Embodied Simulation Theory. (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)

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)

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)

We consider a recursive model and an additional recursive relation R on its domain, such that there are uncountably many different images of R under isomorphisms from to some recursive model isomorphic to . We study properties of the set of Turing degrees of all these isomorphic images of R on the domain of.

This book presents a collection of chapters on the nature, flexibility and acquisition of lexical categories. These long-debated issues are looked at anew by exploring the hypothesis of lexical polycategoriality –according to which lexical forms are not fully, or univocally, specified for lexical category– in a wide number of unrelated languages, and within different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Twenty languages are thoroughly analyzed. Apart from French, Arabic and Hebrew, the volume includes mostly understudied languages, spoken in New Guinea, Australia, New (...) Caledonia, Amazonia, Meso- and North America. Resulting from a long-standing collaboration between leading international experts, this book brings under one cover new data analyses and results on word categories from the linguistic and acquisitional point of view. It will be of the utmost interest to researchers, teachers and graduate students in different fields of linguistics (morpho-syntax, semantics, typology), language acquisition, as well as psycholinguistics, cognition and anthropology. (shrink)

Several theories propose that one of the core functions of inner speech (IS) is to support subjects in the completion of cognitively effortful tasks, especially those involving executive functions (EF). In this paper we focus on two populations who notoriously encounter difficulties in performing EF tasks, namely, people diagnosed with schizophrenia who experience auditory verbal hallucinations (Sz-AVH) and people within the Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). We focus on these two populations because they represent two different ways in which IS can (...) fail to help in EF tasks, which can be illustrative for other mental conditions. First, we review the main components of EF (Section 1). Then we explain the functions that IS is taken to perform in the domain of EF (Section 2) and review the evidence concerning problems about EF in the two populations of our study: Sz-AVH (Section 3) and ASC (Section 4). After this we further detail our account about what a properly functioning IS can do for both populations and how different IS profiles may impact EF performance: in the case of Sz-AVH, the uncontrolled and intrusive character of IS negatively affects EF performance, whereas in ASC, EF is not sufficiently supported by IS, given the tendency in this population to present a diminished use of IS (Section 5). We finally briefly discuss Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Developmental Language Disorders (DLD). (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present an interpretation of the nature and role of absolute knowing, which rests upon the concepts of Form and Gestalt (shape). These concepts constitute the essential dimensions of absolute knowing, in virtue of which it is possible to give an account of its structure and central properties. The first dimension – “first” thanks to the ontological value it can be ascribed to – is Form, which expresses the conceptual structure of absolute knowing; the (...) second one, Gestalt, is the exemplification of that structure in the sphere of existence. By examining selected passages from the absolute knowing chapter it can be shown how Hegel uses these terms to refer respectively to the logical-conceptual structure of absolute knowing and to its concrete exteriorization, emphasizing from time to time one of the two sides. Hence it is shown that absolute knowing is fully achieved only insofar as consciousness attributes to its content both the Form and the Gestalt of the self or, in other words, insofar as it acknowledges that the properties of content are the same as its own, and conversely realizes that the properties of thought do reflect the structure of its content. The article concludes with the examination of some questions about the subject of absolute knowing in order to highlight the pivotal role played by the temporal-historical dimension. (shrink)

Despite several criticisms surrounding the DSM classification in psychiatry, a significant bulk of research on mental conditions still operates according to two core assumptions: a) homogeneity, that is the idea that mental conditions are sufficiently homogeneous to justify generalization; b) additive comorbidity, that is the idea that the coexistence of multiple conditions in the same individual can be interpreted as additive. In this paper we take autism research as a case study to show that, despite a plethora of criticism, psychiatric (...) research often continues to operate in accordance with this model. Then we argue that such a model runs into problems once facts about comorbidity are taken into account. Finally, we offer some suggestions on how to tackle the challenge raised by comorbidity and its impact on heterogeneity. To do so, we explore transdiagnostic stratification accounts and network models to show that combining these approaches can move us in the right direction. (shrink)

Characterizations of autism include multiple references to rigid or inflexible features, but the notion of rigidity itself has received little systematic discussion. In this paper we shed some light on the notion of rigidity in autism by identifying different facets of this phenomenon as discussed in the literature, such as fixed interests, insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, black-and-white mentality, intolerance of uncertainty, ritualized patterns of verbal and non-verbal behavior, literalism, and discomfort with change. Rigidity is typically approached in (...) a disjointed fashion (i.e., facet by facet), although there are recent attempts at providing unifying explanations. Some of these attempts assume that the rigidity facets mainly relate to executive functioning: although such an approach is intuitively persuasive, we argue that there are equally plausible alternative explanations. We conclude by calling for more research on the different facets of rigidity and on how they cluster together in the autistic population, while suggesting some ways in which intervention could benefit from a finer-grained view of rigidity. (shrink)

Writing about secession is not an easy task for a political philosopher. Yet, writing about secession in India raises further practical and theoretical problems. The incredible task of professor Chandhoke’s book, Contested Secessions, is thus to provide a restatement of a liberal theory of secession, understood as a remedial right theory, which is still compatible with situations of contested secessions, such as those occurring in post-colonial societies like India. This paper focuses on two distinct yet related aspects of Chandhoke’s theory: (...) her distinctive version of remedial right theory, and her emphasis on a form of comprehensive pluralist liberalism. I argue that this approach might result in inconsistency due to the conflicting demands of these two approaches. If we take seriously Chandhoke’s political claim in favour of the legitimacy of what she calls “formal” democracy, further clarifications are needed with respect to the account of pluralism she proposes. (shrink)

A substantial body of experimental evidence has demonstrated that labels have an impact on infant categorization processes. Yet little is known regarding the nature of the mechanisms by which this effect is achieved. We distinguish between two competing accounts: supervised name‐based categorization and unsupervised feature‐based categorization. We describe a neurocomputational model of infant visual categorization, based on self‐organizing maps, that implements the unsupervised feature‐based approach. The model successfully reproduces experiments demonstrating the impact of labeling on infant visual categorization reported in (...) Plunkett, Hu, and Cohen (2008). It mimics infant behavior in both the familiarization and testing phases of the procedure, using a training regime that involves only single presentations of each stimulus and using just 24 participant networks per experiment. The model predicts that the observed behavior in infants is due to a transient form of learning that might lead to the emergence of hierarchically organized categorical structure and that the impact of labels on categorization is influenced by the perceived similarity and the sequence in which the objects are presented. The results suggest that early in development, say before 12 months old, labels need not act as invitations to form categories nor highlight the commonalities between objects, but they may play a more mundane but nevertheless powerful role as additional features that are processed in the same fashion as other features that characterize objects and object categories. (shrink)

With every new recursive relation R on a recursive model , we consider the images of R under all isomorphisms from to other recursive models. We call the set of Turing degrees of these images the degree spectrum of R on , and say that R is intrinsically r.e. if all the images are r.e. C. Ash and A. Nerode introduce an extra decidability condition on , expressed in terms of R. Assuming this decidability condition, they prove that R is (...) intrinsically r.e. if and only if a natural recursive-syntactic condition is satisfied. We show that, while a recursive non-intrinsically r.e. relation may have a two element degree spectrum, a non-intrinsically r.e. relation which satisfies the Ash–Nerode decidability condition has an infinite degree spectrum. We also study several related decidability conditions and their effects on the degree spectra, including some conditions which are sufficient to obtain every r.e. degree in a spectrum. (shrink)

Some philosophers claim that perception immediately and prima facie justifies belief in virtue of its phenomenal character (Huemer, Skepticism and the veil of perception. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 2001; Pryor, There is immediate justification. In: Steup M, Sosa E (eds) Contemporary debates in epistemology. Blackwell, London (2014), pp. 181–202, 2005). To explain this special justificatory power, some appeal to perception’s presentational character: the idea that perceptual experience presents its objects as existing here-and-now (Chudnoff, Intuition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013; Berghofer, (...) Husserl Stud 34(2):145–170, 2018). As some philosophers have noted, if perception justifies in virtue of its presentational character alone, the kind of content perception has should not matter for perceptual justification; more precisely, it should not matter whether perceptual content is propositional or not (e.g., Smithies, The epistemic role of consciousness. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019; Kriegel, Australas J Philos, 2021). However, most philosophers tend to resist this conclusion, holding that perception must be propositional in order to justify, on the ground that all our model of justification are propositional (e.g., Gauker, Philos Perspect 26(1):19–50, 2012). This paper challenges this claim. The paper consists of a negative and a positive part. In the negative part, I discuss and reject the master argument for the propositionality of perception; the conclusion is that propositional content is neither sufficient nor necessary to explain perception’s justificatory power. In the positive part, I take this conclusion seriously and outline an objectual model of perceptual justification. I define objectual attitudes as mental states whose content is not a full proposition, but a sub-propositional representational item, such as the representation of objects, properties, and kinds (Grzankowski and Montague, Non-propositional intentionality. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018), and show that it is plausible that some perceptions and some beliefs are attitudes of this kind. I then argue that objectual perceptual experiences have the right kind of phenomenal character and the right kind of structure to serve for immediate prima facie justification. I conclude by defending my objectual model from three objections. (shrink)

Nel 1885 Spyridon Lambros pubblicava, nel I volume del Supplementum Aristotelicum, gli Excerpta Constantini de natura animalium, una silloge di carattere zoologico in due libri (tanti ce ne sono giunti dei quattro presunti) attribuita all'imperatore Costantino VII Porfirogenito.

The contemporary State power is concentrated in the hands of the legislative, executive and judicial powers, which is traditionally referred to as the principle of the division of State power. The separation of State power and the attribution of the function of the interpretation and application of statutory law to courts were like “letting the genie out of the bottle”. Having started with a mechanical application of the statutory law, the courts, armed with various doctrines on interpretation of law, have (...) in the meantime started creating rules themselves and turned into rivals to the legislator. In addition to having started making the law, the courts have also begun exerting control over both the legislative (constitutional justice) and the executive (administrative justice) powers. The acknowledgement of the fact that by interpreting and applying the law, the court is simultaneously making it, gives rise to a host of questions, e.g.: if the court is the guardian of law, who is the guardian of the court? How to separate the interpretation of law from its creation? If the court acts as a lawmaker, then maybe in future, the court will turn into a sole lawmaker?, etc. (shrink)

A study on the complex relationship between Platonism and the East, and on the Neoplatonic interpretations of some eastern cults in the Roman world, including Isis, Magna Mater, Mithras, and Sol Invictus.