The late Fifties were going to be eventful for physics in Italy. CERN had officially started its activities in the fall of 1954; however, the single European countries, Italy in the first place, were not in the condition to compete at the highest international level. A peculiar form of international distribution of the forms of research activities was then going to characterize those years, in particular as far as relationships between Italy and the United States were concerned. Italian physicists who (...) had become known in the United States and were in close relationship with their colleagues active on the opposite shore of the Atlantic obtained that the analysis of data collected in American labs.---in particular bubble chamber data---could be partially carried out in Italy. I try here to give a feeling of the kind of theoretical activity that involved Franco Selleri, among others, in that context. (shrink)

Die jüngst publizierten "Schwarzen Hefte" Heideggers und auch der Neufund des Heftes von 1945/46 machen deutlich: Heidegger entwickelt hier eine Theorie der Globalisierung. Diese führt er nicht auf eine jüdische Weltverschwörung zurück -- da wäre nur eine "Machenschaft" auf eine andere reduziert -- sondern auf die abendländische Kulturgeschichte selbst. Insbesondere der neuzeitliche Siegeszug des "rechnenden Denkens" habe eine Geschichte des Herrschaftsdenkens und des Expansionismus in Gang gesetzt. Darin sieht Heidegger ab 1934 das Dritte Reich wie auch den Bolschewismus und den (...) Kolonialismus Englands und der USA involviert. Heidegger setzt dem entfesselten Herrschaftsdenken auch nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg -- ihrer "Vernutzung der Erde" und "Verrechnung der Welt" -- die Lehre vom "andren Anfang" der Geschichte entgegen: eine Kulturpraxis der Schonung und Nachhaltigkeit. (shrink)

This article suggests developing the concept of spiritual ecology into that of balanced spiritual ecosystems. Philosophies, theologies, education systems, political parties, and gender-based and ethnic identity politics need to be critiqued both from within and without so that they can finally contribute to the creation, maintenance and flourishing of balanced spiritual ecosystems.Contribution: Spiritual ecology is a concept on which converge different worldviews. This article recommends using balanced spiritual ecosystems, instead. The new concept could provoke further reflection on how our -ontologies (...) and communities co-exist and whether they do it organically and spiritually. This article befits HTS’s interest in ‘theology and nature’. (shrink)

Vision is the main entrance for environmental input to the human brain. Even if vision is our most used sensory modality, its importance is not limited to environmental exploration. Rather it has strong links to motor competences, further extending to cognitive and social aspects of human life. These multifaceted relationships are particularly important in developmental age and become dramatically evident in presence of complex deficits originating from visual aberrancies. The present review summarizes the available neuropsychological evidence on the development of (...) visual competences, with a particular focus on the associated visuo-motor integration skills in health and disease. With the aim of supporting future research and interventional settings, the goal of the present review is to constitute a solid base to help the translation of neuropsychological hypotheses into straightforward empirical investigations and rehabilitation/training protocols. This approach will further increase the impact, ameliorate the acceptance, and ease the use and implementation of lab-derived intervention protocols in real-life situations. (shrink)

Does Wittgenstein have a coherent philosophy of mathematics? Here, I will be concerned with showing that the answer is positive. However, given that his life-long philosophical perspective on mathematics tends to be misleading, I focus on the specific problem posed by Paul Benacerraf in ‘Mathematical Truth’, that is: the puzzle about how to reconcile the metaphysics with the epistemology for mathematics. My aim is to show that there is an adequate anti-platonistic solution to that puzzle in the mature writings of (...) the Austrian philosopher. (shrink)

The density matrix ρ describing a decaying system can be expressed in terms of correlations among observables belonging to the subsystems. Due to this structure and to the difficulties in measuring higher rank tensors of decay products for a single decay event, it is found that the mean value of ρ cannot be determined, in general, from measurements on the decay products. We also discuss the consequences of this conclusion as far as tests of quantum mechanics are concerned.

La dicotomia tra sapere e sapienza, presente fin dai primordi nella speculazione, ritorna prepotentemente alla ribalta nell’attuale contesto, assumendo spesso una connotazione fortemente interdisciplinare. I contributi accolti nel volume rappresentano, nella loro eterogeneità (che spazia dall’ambito filosofico a quello giuridico, a quello sociologico e a quello del linguaggio espressivo) un momento di riflessione odierna sulla dicotomia sopra indicata, in cui l’approccio sincronico si alterna a quello diacronico e in cui alla prospettiva analitico-ricognitiva si accompagna quella ermenuetico-interpretativa.

Werte sind kollektive Leitvorstellungen fur das Denken und Handeln. Unser menschliches Denken und Handeln wird von Werten bestimmt und gesteuert. Die Werte selbst sind Ergebnisse der jeweiligen Kulturgeschichte. Das Buch stellt zentrale Werte der europaischen Kulturgeschichte vor. Es sind vor allem drei Werte-Familien, die Europas Kulturgeschichte gepragt haben und nach wie vor pragen: Erstens die europaische Rationalitatskultur mit dem Leitwert des eigenstandigen Denkens, der Suche nach Wahrheit, Kritik und Kritikfahigkeit, Demokratie und Toleranz, Freiheit, Individualitat, Bildung, aber auch Rechtssicherheit, Wehrhaftigkeit, Technizitat, (...) Macht und Wohlstand. Die zweite Werte-Familie umfasst religiose Werte wie die Offenheit fur die religiose Erfahrung selbst sowie genuin christliche Werte wie Nachstenliebe, soziale Fursorge, Empathie, Solidaritat, Friedfertigkeit, Schutz der Schopfung, also Nachhaltigkeit. Die dritte Gruppe umfasst patriotische Werte wie Muttersprache, Heimat, Vaterland und den historisch eher spaten Wert der Nation. Menschen, politische Gruppen sowie historische Epochen werden gepragt durch die fur sie bedeutsamen Werte. Werte stehen somit im Konflikt miteinander und uberlagern sich auch. Politische Einstellungen und ganze Epochen konnen daher nach ihren Werte-Dominanzen unterschieden werden. In Zeiten des Werte-Zerfalls pladiert der Autor abschliessend fur eine Balance der Werte und einen europaischen Werte-Patriotismus. (shrink)

O Argumento da Terra Gêmea Moral (ATGM) é o desafio semântico central para o Realismo Moral Naturalista (RMN). À fim de evitar tal problema, os defensores do RMN têm articulado uma série de réplicas ao ATGM. Neste artigo, abordo algumas dessas réplicas e defendo a tese de que elas não refutam o ATGM. Considero duas propostas em específico: o Argumento da Tradução, de D. Copp, e o Argumento do Fim da Investigação Moral, de A. Viggiano. Apresento essas objeções, mostro em (...) que sentido pretendem responder ao ATGM e argumento que cada uma delas é vulnerável a vários problemas. Concluo que os ataques de Copp e Viggiano ao ATGM devem ser recusados e que o desafio semântico ao RMN persiste. (shrink)

Abstract.Formal topologies are today an established topic in the development of constructive mathematics. One of the main tools in formal topology is inductive generation since it allows to introduce inductive methods in topology. The problem of inductively generating formal topologies with a cover relation and a unary positivity predicate has been solved in [CSSV]. However, to deal both with open and closed subsets, a binary positivity predicate has to be considered. In this paper we will show how to adapt to (...) this framework the method used to generate inductively formal topologies with a unary positivity predicate; the main problem that one has to face in such a new setting is that, as a consequence of the lack of a complete formalization, both the cover relation and the positivity predicate can have proper axioms. (shrink)

In the literature, the nature of the relationships between memory processes and summary evaluations is still a debate. According to some theoretical approaches (e.g., “two-memory hypothesis”; Anderson, 1989) retrospective evaluations are based on the impression formed while attending to the to-be-assessed stimuli(on-line judgment) – no functional dependence between information retrieval and judgment is implied. Conversely, several theories entail that judgment must depend, at least in part, on memory processes (e.g., Dougherty, Gettys, & Ogden, 1999; Schwarz, 1998; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). (...) The present study contributes to this debate by addressing two important issues. First, it shows how more comprehensive memory measures than those used previously (e.g., Hastie & Park, 1986) are necessary in order to detect a relationship between memory and retrospective evaluations. Secondly, it demonstrates how memory strategies influence the relationship between memory and judgment. Participants recalled lists of words, after having assessed each of them for their pleasantness. Results showed a clear association between memory and judgment, which was mediated by the individual strategies participants used to recall the items. (shrink)

We illustrate a generalization of Bell's inequality which is not limited to spin-1/2 or photon systems and does not depend on model-dependent assumptions. We then construct a specific class of examples, in terms of the decaying state and the correlated observables to be measured on the decay products, for which this inequality is violated by quantum mechanics. Finally we discuss the basic and practical problems involved in the measurement of these correlations.

By using some classical reasoning we show that any countably presented formal topology, namely, a formal topology with a countable axiom set, is spatial.