In the following interview with Manlio Iofrida, Aldo Giorgio Gargani retraces the fundamental moments and key phases of his intellectual development: his early childhood and adolescence in Genoa, strongly marked by the influence of his artist father and of the social context of the immediate post-war situation; his studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, and subsequently at the University of Oxford, which resulted to his first book on Wittgenstein; the achievement during the 1960s of a distinctive philosophical (...) position of his own, reflected in the publication of the book Il sapere senza fondamenti [Knowledge without Foundations]; the renewal of philosophical culture in Italy in the 1980s and 1990s, in which Gargani himself was one of the main protagonists; the return to an engagement with Wittgenstein, after a period in which he had dedicated himself principally to literary questions and concerns, one pursued specifically in the context of the new issues raised at the beginning of the 21st century. This historical and autobiographical reconstruction of his intellectual career is accompanied at every turn by philosophical reflections on our contemporary situation and by specific critical responses to other contemporary philosophical trends and developments: the interview thus constitutes a telling summation of the fundamental themes and aspects of the author’s thought in general. (shrink)

Ontology has been proposed as a solution to the 'Tower of Babel' problem that threatens the semantic interoperability of information systems constructed independently for the same domain. In information systems research and applications, ontologies are often implemented by formalizing the meanings of words from natural languages. However, words in different natural languages sometimes subdivide the same domain of reality in terms of different conceptual categories. If the words and their associated concepts in two natural languages, or even in two terminological (...) traditions within the same language, do not have common referents in the real world, an ontology based on word meanings will inherit the 'Tower of Babel' problem from the languages involved, rather than solve it. In this paper we present evidence from a preliminary comparison of landscape terms in English with those in the Yindjibarndi language of northwestern Australia demonstrating that this problem is not just hypothetical. Some possible solutions are suggested. (shrink)

Current approaches used in educational research and practice to evaluate the quality of written arguments often rely on structural analysis. In such assessments, credit is awarded for the presence of structural elements of an argument, such as claims, evidence, and rebuttals. In this article, we discuss limitations of such approaches, including the absence of criteria for evaluating the quality of the argument elements. We then present an alternative framework, based on the Rational Force Model (RFM), which originated from the work (...) of a Nordic philosopher Næss. Using an example of an argumentative essay, we demonstrate the potential of the RFM to improve argument analysis by focusing on the acceptability and relevance of argument elements, two criteria widely considered to be fundamental markers of argument strength. We outline possibilities and challenges with using the RFM in educational contexts and conclude by proposing directions for future research. (shrink)

Originally published in 1933, in partnership with the Institute of Actuaries Students' Society, this book was written to provide actuarial students with an introduction to the operations of friendly societies. The text is highly accessible, avoiding references to external sources in favour of a more interconnected account of the subject. A concise bibliography is also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of friendly societies.

Genesis of the scientific ideas and views on intellectual capital is characterized by various approaches highlighting the role of knowledge, skill and professional employees as a form of productive capital. This tendency is mostly revealed at the present stage of economic science development in transiting to an information society. In these conditions the holistic study of intellectual capital requires an expansion of the methodological research base using the evolutionary theory of economic development of the world community, general theory of complex (...) systems, theory of informational economics and other disciplines. Moreover, in Russia there are a number of problems associated with creating a necessary institutional and regulatory environment for protecting the intellectual property. According to the authors, the study of the intellectual capital is necessary from the institutional analysis perspective, as it allows to more accurately determine the current state of the legal status of intellectual assets in the economic activity of an enterprise. (shrink)

In 1906, Henry Stephens Salt published a short collection of essays that presented several rhetorically powerful, if formally deficient arguments for the vegetarian position. By interpreting Salt as a moral sentimentalist with ties to Aristotelian virtue ethics, I propose that his aesthetic argument deserves contemporary consideration. First, I connect ethics and aesthetics with the Greek concepts of kalon and kalokagathia that depend equally on beauty and morality before presenting Salt’s assertion: slaughterhouses are disgusting, therefore they should not be promoted. I (...) suggest three areas of development since Salt’s death that could be fruitfully plumbed to rebuild this assertion into a contemporary argument: an updated analysis of factory farm conditions, insights from moral psychologists on the adaptive socio-biological benefits of disgust as a source of cognitive information, and hermeneutical considerations about the role of the audience that allow blameworthiness for slaughterhouse atrocities to be laid upon the meat-eater. (shrink)

Bernard Williams argues that human mortality is a good thing because living forever would necessarily be intolerably boring. His argument is often attacked for unfoundedly proposing asymmetrical requirements on the desirability of living for mortal and immortal lives. My first aim in this paper is to advance a new interpretation of Williams' argument that avoids these objections, drawing in part on some of his other writings to contextualize it. My second aim is to show how even the best version of (...) his argument only supports a somewhat weaker thesis: it may be possible for some people with certain special psychological features to enjoy an immortal life, but no one has good reason to bet on being such a person. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that personalization technologies used by Google for the purpose of tailoring search results for individual users create filter bubbles, which reinforce users’ political views. Surprisingly, empirical evidence for a personalization-induced filter bubble has not been forthcoming. Here, we investigate whether filter bubbles may result instead from a searcher’s choice of search queries. In the first experiment, participants rated the left-right leaning of 48 queries (search strings), 6 for each of 8 topics (abortion, benefits, climate change, sex (...) equality, immigration, nuclear family, Islam, and taxation). An independent sample of participants were then asked to select one of these queries for each of the 8 topics. With the exception of the topic of Islam, participants were significantly more likely to select a query corresponding to their own political leaning, compared to other queries, explaining between 12% and 39% of the variance. A second experiment investigated the effect of the political leaning of the same queries on the overall political leaning of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) in Google Search. The top six results of each SERP were rated collectively by a third group of participants, explaining 36.3% of the variance across all 48 search terms (p < .00001). That is, (1) participants in our experiments tended to select own-side search queries, and (2) using those queries tended to yield own-side search results when using the Google search engine. Our results are consistent with the notion of a self-imposed filter bubble in which query selection plays a salient role. (shrink)

This study is based on the 1983 Rural Health Survey of Ethiopia. Patterns and levels of child morbidity by age, sex, geographic region, and sanitary facilities are examined. Morbidity levels peak in the second year of life. Diarrhoeal diseases are of major importance, especially among infants and toddlers. Parasitic diseases, and respiratory diseases other than pneumonia, become increasingly important with age.There are no significant sex differentials in morbidity except for higher rates of diarrhoeal diseases among female children. Geographic differentials are (...) quite marked with particularly high morbidity levels from all disease types in the western mountainous regions of Ethiopia. Access to high quality drinking water, a latrine, and garbage disposal, are strongly related to reduced overall morbidity levels, though not necessarily to reduced diarrhoeal disease levels. (shrink)

I am now sitting in La Antigua, Guatemala. It's 6:00 a.m. Ancient church bells compete with their clanging. Some with a clear ringing, others of dead metal. For centuries this tiny town of some 20 square blocks was the very center of Christianity in the "new" world. Its philosophy was brought to this place, lock, stock, and barrel. And, from here it was funneled south to Peru and north to Mexico. Not a philosophy of "liberation." Just ask the Maya who (...) remain. (shrink)