We exhibit several counterexamples showing that the famous Serrin's symmetry result for semilinear elliptic overdetermined problems may not hold for partially overdetermined problems, that is when both Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions are prescribed only on part of the boundary. Our counterexamples enlighten subsequent positive symmetry results obtained by the first two authors for such partially overdetermined systems and justify their assumptions as well.

Assessment relativism, as developed by John MacFarlane, is the view that the truth of our claims involving a variety of English expressions—‘tasty’, ‘knows’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘might’, and ‘ought’—is relative not only to aspects of the context of their production but also to aspects of the context in which they are assessed. Assessment relativism is thus a form of truth relativism which is offered as a new way of understanding perspectival thought and talk. In this article, I present the main theses of (...) assessment relativism, focusing in particular on highlighting the points of commonality and contrast with other forms of truth relativism. I then offer some critical remarks concerning the motivation of assessment relativism in relation to matters of taste. (shrink)

We hypothesize that heritable epigenetic changes can affect rates of fitness increase as well as patterns of genotypic and phenotypic change during adaptation. In particular, we suggest that when natural selection acts on pure epigenetic variation in addition to genetic variation, populations adapt faster, and adaptive phenotypes can arise before any genetic changes. This may make it difficult to reconcile the timing of adaptive events detected using conventional population genetics tools based on DNA sequence data with environmental drivers of adaptation, (...) such as changes in climate. Epigenetic modifications are frequently associated with somatic cell differentiation, but recently epigenetic changes have been found that can be transmitted over many generations. Here, we show how the interplay of these heritable epigenetic changes with genetic changes can affect adaptive evolution, and how epigenetic changes affect the signature of selection in the genetic record. (shrink)

Per il dialeteismo ci sono contraddizioni vere. Questa concezione filosofica ha assunto una forma chiara e definita a partire dal lavoro del filosofo e logico Graham Priest – uno dei suoi padri fondatori, nonché uno dei suoi più strenui difensori. Questo libro intende portare il dialeteismo all’attenzione di un ampio pubblico, che non sia solo quello degli addetti ai lavori. Il volume è suddiviso in due parti. La prima include le cinque lezioni su "Dialeteismo e storia della filosofia" tenute da (...) Priest e Filippo Casati a Padova nel 2016, in occasione del Corso di Eccellenza per il dottorato in filosofia dell’Università di Padova. La seconda contiene quattro contributi sul dialeteismo di autori italiani. (shrink)

Parto de uma conceitualização geral de como o problema do mal fora abordado ao longo da tradição filosófica e religiosa, enquanto problema ontológico e relativo, no mais das vezes, a uma teodiceia que busca explicar a existência do mal no mundo. Em seguida, abordo uma nova forma de se pensar o problema do mal através do pensamento idealista de Immanuel Kant, que movimentou a problemática em uma direção outra àquela anterior, ou seja, afirmando que o mal não era um problema (...) localizado na realidade, mas no sujeito enquanto ser dotado de moralidade, residindo na dimensão mais radical da natureza humana. Em Arendt, o mal deixa o plano do sujeito singular e passa a ser compreendido enquanto um fenômeno político. Para a autora, o mal não deve ser um fenômeno político, todavia com a ascensão dos movimentos totalitários e outros fenômenos de ruptura com o fio da tradição, esse problema passa a ocupar a dimensão da vida pública. Desta forma, o objetivo da autora é tentar compreender as condições para se pensar o mal enquanto fenômeno político, assim como aquilo que lhe fundamenta e garante legitimidade. O fio condutor deste artigo são as obras Origens do Totalitarismo (ARENDT, 2018) e o conjunto de ensaios publicados no período de 1930-54 (ARENDT, 2008). O produto da presente análise refere-se à experiência humana da solidão enquanto fundamento do mal na esfera política. (shrink)

Is truth itself natural? This is an important question for both those working on truth and those working on naturalism. For theorists of truth, answering the question of whether truth is natural will tell us more about the nature of truth (or lack of it), and the relations between truth and other properties of interest. For those working on naturalism, answering this question is of paramount importance to those who wish to have truth as part of the natural order. In (...) this paper, we focus primarily on the kinds of theories of truth that occupy the central positions in current debates about truth, namely correspondence theories, deflationary theories, epistemic theories, and pluralist theories, and aim to discern the extent to which truth is a natural property on each view. (shrink)

Language policies are increasingly acknowledged as being a necessary component of many decisions taken in the areas of the labor market, education, minority languages, mobility, and social inclusion of migrants. They can affect the democratic control of political organizations, and they can either entrench or reduce inequalities. These are the central topics of this book. Economists, philosophers, political scientists, and sociolinguists discuss – from an interdisciplinary perspective – the distributive socio-economic effects of language policies, their impact on justice and inequality (...) at the national or international level, as well as the connection between language choices and an inclusive access to public services. The range of social and economic issues raised by linguistic diversity in contemporary societies is large, and this requires new approaches to tackle them. This book provides new input to design better, more efficient, and fair language policies in order to manage linguistic diversity in different areas. Topics covered include: theoretical models of linguistic justice and linguistic disadvantage; the assessment of the socio-economic consequences of language policies; the evaluation of the costs, benefits, and degree of inclusion of language planning measures; the politics of migrants’ linguistic integration; as well as multilingualism and economic activities. These topics are discussed in different contexts, including the areas inhabited by linguistic minorities, cities receiving migrants, and supranational organizations. (shrink)

Niccolo Machiavelli is one of the very few authors to assign a positive role and political value to the theme of social conflict. Although not repudiating this principle, in the Discourses Machiavelli seems to distinguish between a form of conflict that is moderate and positive and another form that is violent and extreme, ultimately leading to the ruin of Rome. In his more mature work Florentine Histories, the tone changes and the distinction becomes less consistent. Moreover, analysis of the institutional (...) results of conflict is enriched by novel elements, revealing Machiavelli's attention to the economic causes and motives of social struggles. While in the first model crisis and power are counter-posed to one another, in the second they are inseparable and this couplet becomes the key to a theoretical understanding of Machiavelli's political thought. (shrink)

Logical abductivism is the epistemic view about logic according to which logical theories are justified by abduction (or Inference to the Best Explanation), that is on how well they explain the relevant evidence, so that the correct logical theory turns out to be the one that explains it best. Arguably, this view should be equally applied to both deductive and non-deductive logics, abduction included. But while there seems to be nothing wrong in principle in using abduction to determine the correct (...) logical theories of deduction and induction, things might be more complicated regarding logical theories of abduction. We may wonder whether allowing for an abductive justification of a theory of abduction is an epistemically legitimate move, since here circularity casts its shadow and makes the situation darker. This is the issue to which this work is devoted. I will defend that, to be effective, an abductive justification for a theory of abduction calls for a justification of abduction in advance, which we do not yet have. (shrink)

We show in rather informal terms how witness sets can be useful in both explicating some basic intuitions about scope and understanding how particular denotational semantic differences between noun phrases affect their abilities to bear out certain scopal patterns. More generally we suggest that the usual notion of scope needs to be factored into variation distributivity and maximality. This part lays some groundwork for several of the subsequent chapters and is thus of interest to all readers. The second part shows (...) that already in this initial raw form the above insights can be applied to make a novel claim concerning the availability of so-called branching readings. In logical terms a branching reading can be defined for any sentence with a subject and a direct object. However speakers of English accept only a fraction of these readings, so the question arises how the data can be predicted from the meanings of the participating quantifiers and the syntactic structure of the sentence. We propose that thinking about the behavior of quantifiers along the lines introduced in the first part leads to a simple answer to this question. (shrink)

The global spread of the novel coronavirus is affected by the spread of related misinformation—the so-called COVID-19 Infodemic—that makes populations more vulnerable to the disease through resistance to mitigation efforts. Here, we analyze the prevalence and diffusion of links to low-credibility content about the pandemic across two major social media platforms, Twitter and Facebook. We characterize cross-platform similarities and differences in popular sources, diffusion patterns, influencers, coordination, and automation. Comparing the two platforms, we find divergence among the prevalence of popular (...) low-credibility sources and suspicious videos. A minority of accounts and pages exert a strong influence on each platform. These misinformation “superspreaders” are often associated with the low-credibility sources and tend to be verified by the platforms. On both platforms, there is evidence of coordinated sharing of Infodemic content. The overt nature of this manipulation points to the need for societal-level solutions in addition to mitigation strategies within the platforms. However, we highlight limits imposed by inconsistent data-access policies on our capability to study harmful manipulations of information ecosystems. (shrink)

According to the form of logical pluralism elaborated by Beall and Restall there is more than one relation of logical consequence. Since they take the relation of logical consequence to reside at the very heart of a logical system, different relations of logical consequence yield different logics. In this paper, we are especially interested in understanding what are the consequences of endorsing Beall and Restall’s version of logical pluralism vis-à-vis the normative guidance that logic is taken to provide to reasoners. (...) In particular, the aim of this paper is threefold. First, in Sections 2 and 3, we offer an exegesis of Beall and Restall’s logical pluralism as a thesis of semantic indeterminacy of our concept of logical consequence – i.e. understood as indeterminacy logical pluralism. Second, in Sections 4 and 5, we elaborate and critically scrutinize three models of semantic indeterminacy that we think are fit to capture Beall and Restall’s indeterminacy logical pluralism. Third, in Section 6, following Beall and Restall’s assumption that the notion of logical consequence has normative significance for deductive reasoning, we raise a series of normative problems for indeterminacy logical pluralism. The overall conclusion that we aim to establish is that Beall and Restall’s indeterminate logical pluralism cannot offer an adequate account of the normative guidance that logic is taken to provide us with in ordinary contexts of reasoning. (shrink)

As a step towards a systematic comparative evaluation of the fairness of different language policies, a rationale is presented for the design of an index of linguistic justice based on public policy analysis. The approach taken is to define a ‘minimum threshold of linguistic justice’ with respect to government language policy in three domains: law and order, public administration, and essential services. A hypothetical situation of pure equality and freedom in the choice of language used by all members of society (...) in communicating with the state is used as a theoretical benchmark to study the distributive effects of policy alternatives. Departures from this standard incur lower scores. Indicators are chosen to assess effective access to three kinds of language rights: toleration (the lack of state interference in private language choices), accommodation (accessibility of public services in different languages), and compensation (symbolic and practical recognition of languages outside the dominant one). In order to take account of the cost-benefit trade-offs involved in providing language-related goods to language groups of varying sizes, a method is adopted for weighting scores with respect to compensation rights so that lack of recognition for larger groups incurs greater penalties, while factoring in the particular characteristics of each language-related good. A trial set of ten indicators illustrates the compromises entailed in balancing theoretical rigour with empirical feasibility. (shrink)

Currently, the autonomy of artificial systems, robotic systems in particular, is certainly one of the most debated issues, both from the perspective of technological development and its social impact and ethical repercussions. While theoretical considerations often focus on scenarios far beyond what can be concretely hypothesized from the current state of the art, the term autonomy is still used in a vague or too general way. This reduces the possibilities of a punctual analysis of such an important issue, thus leading (...) to often polarized positions. The intent of this paper is to clarify what is meant by artificial autonomy, and what are the prerequisites that can allow the attribution of this characteristic to a robotic system. Starting from some concrete examples, we will try to indicate a way towards artificial autonomy that can hold together the advantages of developing adaptive and versatile systems with the management of the inevitable problems that this technology poses both from the viewpoint of safety and ethics. Our proposal is that a real artificial autonomy, especially if expressed in the social context, can only be achieved through interdependence with other social actors, through continuous exchanges and interactions which, while allowing robots to explore the environment, guarantee the emergence of shared practices, behaviors, and ethical principles, which otherwise could not be imposed with a top-down approach, if not at the price of giving up the same artificial autonomy. (shrink)

PurposeInternational organizations are working on an unprecedented number of development initiatives relevant to people with disabilities. This makes it essential for the global disability community to be able to participate effectively in the decision-making processes associated with these programs. In light of this, this study aims to explore whether information technologies can help create a more inclusive global governance, forming the basis for equitable development for people with disabilities.Design/methodology/approachThe results of a global survey of disabled people’s organizations’ leaders are discussed. (...) This asked disability rights advocates about their experiences with accessibility and barriers to effective participation, low-cost accessible technological solutions for remote participation and freely available “off-the-shelf” online technologies – in particular social media platforms – to bridge the gap between the disability community and global governance processes.FindingsAlthough only a small number of international conferences offer accessible virtual participation through web conferencing and other tools, responses from DPO advocates suggest that there is a strong demand for this technology and provide evidence of its potential for improving accessibility in global governance. Furthermore, disability organizations all over the world have embraced social media platforms to liaise with their grassroots and enable them to part-take in policy-making processes.Originality/valueThis study highlights community-backed technological solutions to persisting barriers that systematically exclude people with disabilities from fundamental global governance processes, illuminating the nexus of disability, accessibility, and participation. (shrink)

The last quarter of a century has featured a surge in interest and studies on the commons, spearheaded, of course, by the efforts of Elinor Ostrom. These efforts have problematized the once well-established paradigm of the tragedy of the commons most clearly described by Garrett Hardin in 1968. One could say that the commons, thus, have become a fundamental field of study in most social sciences. This is not the case in the field of legal scholarship, which leads me to (...) the overarching issue of this essay, namely the difficult relationship between jurists and the commons. The phrase?difficult relationship? does not refer to an explicit antagonism, but to something even worse: complete indifference and a scandalous lack of knowledge. While my main purpose is to try to explain this sorry state of affairs, I also hope to make a more general point on the nature of law and legal change. In this sense, the commons can be considered a case-study in legal theory. The main issue of this paper is to tackle following sub-questions. What is the status of commons in the Western European legal discourse? Why do most legal scholars pay such a poor attention to the growing literature on the commons in other disciplines? What factors contribute to this peculiar case of cultural deafness? What promise of improvement does the future hold? nema. (shrink)

In the past two decades academic and research literature on “corruption” has flourished. During the same period organizations and initiatives fighting against corruption have also significantly expanded, turning “anti-corruption” into a new research subject. However, despite a few exceptions there is a division of labor between scholars who study corruption itself and those who study the global anti-corruption industry. Juxtaposing corruption’s local discourses and anti-corruption international practices, this article is an attempt to bring together these two intertwined research dimensions and (...) explore how an ethnographic approach might contribute to framing them together. Firstly, it describes how corruption in Romania is often conceptualized and explained in terms of national heritage, something related to old and recent cultural history, including traditional folklore. Secondly, it explores how anti-corruption works in practice, focusing on international legal cooperation projects monitoring the progress and shortcomings both prior to and post Romania’s accession to the European Union. Finally, revealing the articulations of these two apparently unrelated research fields, the article argues that corruption’s local explanations and the circular logic of auditing observed within the anti-corruption industry share a common developmental ideology mirroring the crypto-colonialist structure of power relations and dependency among European nation-states emerging out of the Cold War. (shrink)

Radical relativism was born with a promise: to account for certain phenomena that opposite views are unable to explain. One example is the phenomenon of “faultless disagreement”, according to which two people, while disagreeing, are not at fault in any substantive way. The phenomena of retraction and assessments of truth in cases of eavesdropping are others. All these phenomena have been claimed to pose serious problems for rival views and be best accounted for within a radical relativistic framework. While “faultless (...) disagreement” and the notion of disagreement in general has benefited from extensive discussion in current debates over semantic content, retraction has not been in the spotlight that much. In particular, very few things have been said about what retraction exactly amounts to and how to conceive of its normative profile. This will be the focus of our paper. (shrink)

En la reconstrucción de la génesis del debate sobre la globalización, hay que conceder un papel destacado al politólogo australiano Hedley Bull. Su análisis del papel del Estado en la sociedad internacional, basado en un sofisticado instrumental epistemológico abierto a la interdisciplinariedad, ha tenido el mérito de cuestionar ese binomio soberanía/conflicto: un binomio que, paradójicamente, ha unido tanto al realismo político como a la tradición cosmopolita. Más que intentar eliminar la soberanía estatal, según Bull, hay que potenciar la dinámica cooperativa (...) y solidaria de la sociedad internacional. Esta orientación es tanto más necesaria en un momento en que el paradigma estatal ha experimentado una proliferación excepcional. Al escribir tras la descolonización, Bull subrayó cómo precisamente la noción de soberanía ha sido un instrumento importante para salvaguardar la pluralidad de culturas y el politeísmo de valores. (shrink)

This dissertation examines aspects of the interplay between computing and scientific practice. The appropriate foundational framework for such an endeavour is rather real computability than the classical computability theory. This is so because physical sciences, engineering, and applied mathematics mostly employ functions defined in continuous domains. But, contrary to the case of computation over natural numbers, there is no universally accepted framework for real computation; rather, there are two incompatible approaches --computable analysis and BSS model--, both claiming to formalise algorithmic (...) computation and to offer foundations for scientific computing. The dissertation consists of three parts. In the first part, we examine what notion of 'algorithmic computation' underlies each approach and how it is respectively formalised. It is argued that the very existence of the two rival frameworks indicates that 'algorithm' is not one unique concept in mathematics, but it is used in more than one way. We test this hypothesis for consistency with mathematical practice as well as with key foundational works that aim to define the term. As a result, new connections between certain subfields of mathematics and computer science are drawn, and a distinction between 'algorithms' and 'effective procedures' is proposed. In the second part, we focus on the second goal of the two rival approaches to real computation; namely, to provide foundations for scientific computing. We examine both frameworks in detail, what idealisations they employ, and how they relate to floating-point arithmetic systems used in real computers. We explore limitations and advantages of both frameworks, and answer questions about which one is preferable for computational modelling and which one for addressing general computability issues. In the third part, analog computing and its relation to analogue (physical) modelling in science are investigated. Based on some paradigmatic cases of the former, a certain view about the nature of computation is defended, and the indispensable role of representation in it is emphasized and accounted for. We also propose a novel account of the distinction between analog and digital computation and, based on it, we compare analog computational modelling to physical modelling. It is concluded that the two practices, despite their apparent similarities, are orthogonal. (shrink)

COVID-19 has brought to light the severity of economic inequalities by testing the capacity of the poorest families to make ends meet. Food insecurity has in fact soared all over the UK, with many people forced to rely on food support providers to not go hungry. This paper uses a unique dataset on 55 food support organizations active in Greater Manchester during the first COVID-19 wave, and 41 semi-structured interviews with food aid spokespersons and stakeholders, to shed light on what (...) they overcame, the complications and drawbacks of the food emergency response plan put in place. The results indicate that food aid organizations that remained open were surprisingly effective despite the growth in user demand and the decrease in volunteers. However, the necessity to maintain a timely supply food at all costs came with important drawbacks. The lockdown measures that followed COVID-19 not only affected the financial stability and management of the organizations, and the availability of food, but undermined the ways in which food support providers used to operate. Owing to physical distancing measures and to the increasing numbers of users, more or less intangible forms of support such as financial advice, empathic listening and human warmth were partially lost, probably when they were needed more than ever. (shrink)

This paper considers Niccolò Machiavelli’s contribution to a theory of constituent power. Modern authors who have analysed the concept of constituent power generally agree on its ambiguous, paradoxical and apparently contradictory essence. With few exceptions, Machiavelli is absent from both the historical reconstructions of and the theoretical debates on the origin of constituent power. My argument is built around two main theses: reintroducing Machiavelli to the debate on constituent power offers an original response to the theoretical fallacies and inconsistencies identified (...) by modern scholars. In particular, Machiavelli’s philosophy contributes to the comprehension of constituent power as a living force within social order. My second thesis is that by tracing the source of constituent power back to Machiavelli, we can overcome the main theoretical problem implied by this concept, namely the problem of the priority of the factual or the juridical, by providing a vision that emphasises their immanent coexistence. (shrink)

Fish Night, an episode of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (S01E12, 2019) based on a 1982 short story by Joe R. Lansdale, can be interpreted as an allegory of the impossibility of immersive experience: if real, it is deadly, because the images are no longer such or ghosts but living beings present in a shared environmental habitat, acting with but also against the subject, in turn no longer a spectator. Comparing the story and film, and ancient ekphrastic literature, I discuss, in (...) a trans-medial imaginary genealogical perspective, the symptoms of this cultural topos and of the regressive desire for immersion and for transparent immediacy that shapes and drives it, dwelling in particular on the ambivalent phenomenological and ontological relations between living bodies, pictures and media as deep time-bending. (shrink)

Potentialities of attention and distraction with respect to images are critically reprised by Neapolitan artist Domenico Antonio Mancini. In Landscapes (2019), Google Street View addresses painted on canvases take the place of outlying areas of Italian cities, and of canonical oil ‘vedute’ paintings, obliging the viewer to switch from aesthetic absorption to a multitasking, reflexive attention enabled by the tools of mobile devices and the operative agency between the displayed and depicted images. Attracted by the ephemeral, geo-localized vistas displayed on (...) their smartphones, spectator-users must deal with the dynamis of the on-line GSV images: rhetorical and predictable, though, at the same time, and perhaps unintentionally, serendipitous and figural. (shrink)

Wason’s selection task is a paramount experimental problem in the study of human reasoning, often connected with the celebrated ravens paradox in the philosophical literature. Various normative accounts of the selection task rely on a Bayesian approach. Some claim vindication of participants’ rationality. Others don’t, thus following Wason’s original intuition that observed responses are mistaken. In this article we argue that despite claims to the contrary, all these accounts actually speak to the same effect: Wason was right. First, we provide (...) a new accuracy-based analysis of the selection task that includes the existing proposals as special cases. We then show on this basis that none can actually vindicate participants’ rationality. We conclude that all normative renditions considered eventually concur: all in all, Bayesians should follow Wason in the selection task. (shrink)

This book offers a clear, analytic, and innovative interpretation of Heidegger's late work. This period of Heidegger's philosophy remains largely unexplored by analytic philosophers, who consider it filled with inconsistencies and paradoxical ideas, particularly concerning the notions of Being and nothingness. This book takes seriously the claim that the late Heidegger endorses dialetheism--namely the position according to which some contradictions are true--and shows that the idea that Being is both an entity and not an entity is neither incoherent nor logically (...) trivial. The author achieves this by presenting and defending the idea that reality has an inconsistent structure. In doing so, he takes one of the most discussed topics in current analytic metaphysics, grounding theory, into a completely unexplored area. Additionally, in order to make sense of Heidegger's concept of nothingness, the author introduces an original axiomatic mereological system that, having a paraconsistent logic as a base logic, can tolerate inconsistencies without falling into logical triviality. This is the first book to set forth a complete and detailed discussion of the late Heidegger in the framework of analytic metaphysics. It will be of interest to Heidegger scholars and analytic philosophers working on theories of grounding, mereology, dialetheism, and paraconsistent logic. (shrink)