Incorporating techniques from book history into traditional intellectual history, this article traces the effective origin of indexing to the early printed editions of two lexicographical works, Lorenzo Valla's Elegantie and Niccolò Perotti's Cornu copiae, and then follows its development through the editions of the Roman poet Virgil published between 1500 and 1800. Indexing practices turn out to be tied to how books were read, with a new way of consuming books, which is labeled "transverse reading," emerging during this period.

This collection offers a synoptic view of current philosophical debates concerning the relationship between facts and values, bringing together a wide spectrum of contributors committed to testing the validity of this dichotomy, exploring alternatives, and assessing their implications. The assumption that facts and values inhabit distinct, unbridgeable conceptual and experiential domains has long dominated scientific and philosophical discourse, but this separation has been seriously called into question from a number of corners. The original essays here collected offer a diversity of (...) responses to fact-value dichotomy, including contributions from Hilary Putnam and Ruth Anna Putnam who are rightly credited with revitalizing philosophical interest in this alleged opposition. Both they, and many of our contributors, are in agreement that the relationship between epistemic developments and evaluative attitudes cannot be framed as a conflict between descriptive and normative understanding. Each chapter demonstrates how and why contrapositions between science and ethics, between facts and values, and between objective and subjective are false dichotomies. Values cannot simply be separated from reason. _Facts and Values_ will therefore prove essential reading for analytic and continental philosophers alike, for theorists of ethics and meta-ethics, and for philosophers of economics and law. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics, with its revolutionary implications, has posed innumerable problems to philosophers of science. In particular, it has suggested reconsidering basic concepts such as the existence of a world that is, at least to some extent, independent of the observer, the possibility of getting reliable and objective knowledge about it, and the possibility of taking (under appropriate circumstances) certain properties to be objectively possessed by physical systems. It has also raised many others questions which are well known to those involved (...) in the debate on the interpretation of this pillar of modern science. One can argue that most of the problems are not only due to the intrinsic revolutionary nature of the phenomena which have led to the development of the theory. They are also related to the fact that, in its standard formulation and interpretation, quantum mechanics is a theory which is excellent (in fact it has met with a success unprecedented in the history of science) in telling us everything about what we observe, but it meets with serious difficulties in telling us what is. We are making here specific reference to the central problem of the theory, usually referred to as the measurement problem, or, with a more appropriate term, as the macro-objectification problem. It is just one of the many attempts to overcome the difficulties posed by this problem that has led to the development of Collapse Theories, i.e., to the Dynamical Reduction Program (DRP). As we shall see, this approach consists in accepting that the dynamical equation of the standard theory should be modified by the addition of stochastic and nonlinear terms. The nice fact is that the resulting theory is capable, on the basis of a unique dynamics which is assumed to govern all natural processes, to account at the same time for all well-established.. (shrink)

In this compendium of essays, some of the world's leading thinkers discuss their conceptions of space and time, as viewed through the lens of their own discipline. With an epilogue on the limits of human understanding, this volume hosts contributions from six or more diverse fields. It presumes only rudimentary background knowledge on the part of the reader. Time and again, through the prism of intellect, humans have tried to diffract reality into various distinct, yet seamless, atomic, yet holistic, independent, (...) yet interrelated disciplines and have attempted to study it contextually. Philosophers debate the paradoxes, or engage in meditations, dialogues and reflections on the content and nature of space and time. Physicists, too, have been trying to mold space and time to fit their notions concerning micro- and macro-worlds. Mathematicians focus on the abstract aspects of space, time and measurement. While cognitive scientists ponder over the perceptual and experiential facets of our consciousness of space and time, computer scientists theoretically and practically try to optimize the space-time complexities in storing and retrieving data/information. The list is never-ending. Linguists, logicians, artists, evolutionary biologists, geographers et cetera, all are trying to weave a web of understanding around the same duo. However, our endeavour into a world of such endless imagination is restrained by intellectual dilemmas such as: Can humans comprehend everything? Are there any limits? Can finite thought fathom infinity? We have sought far and wide among the best minds to furnish articles that provide an overview of the above topics. We hope that, through this journey, a symphony of patterns and tapestry of intuitions will emerge, providing the reader with insights into the questions: What is Space? What is Time? Chapter [15] of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. (shrink)

The Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) was developed over the last two decades by consistently putting together theories from areas such as formal ontology in philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics, and philosophical logics. It comprises a number of micro-theories addressing fundamental conceptual modeling notions, including entity types and relationship types. The aim of this paper is to summarize the current state of UFO, presenting a formalization of the ontology, along with the analysis of a number of cases to illustrate the application of (...) UFO and facilitate its comparison with other foundational ontologies in this special issue. (The cases originate from the First FOUST Workshop – the Foundational Stance, an international forum dedicated to Foundational Ontology research.). (shrink)

This collection offers a synoptic view of current philosophical debates concerning the relationship between facts and values, bringing together a wide spectrum of contributors committed to testing the validity of this dichotomy, exploring alternatives, and assessing their implications. The assumption that facts and values inhabit distinct, unbridgeable conceptual and experiential domains has long dominated scientific and philosophical discourse, but this separation has been seriously called into question from a number of corners. The original essays here collected offer a diversity of (...) responses to fact-value dichotomy, including contributions from Hilary Putnam and Ruth Anna Putnam who are rightly credited with revitalizing philosophical interest in this alleged opposition. Both they, and many of our contributors, are in agreement that the relationship between epistemic developments and evaluative attitudes cannot be framed as a conflict between descriptive and normative understanding. Each chapter demonstrates how and why contrapositions between science and ethics, between facts and values, and between objective and subjective are false dichotomies. Values cannot simply be separated from reason. Facts and Values will therefore prove essential reading for analytic and continental philosophers alike, for theorists of ethics and meta-ethics, and for philosophers of economics and law. (shrink)

The paper examines some of the questions emerging from the debate on mindreading regarding Quine’s legacy and contribution to a new agenda on the issue. Since mindreading is an exercise in folk-psychology, a) which role folk psychology has to play according to Quine? b) was Quine’s account of mindreading closer to theory-theory, simulation theory or hybrid theory? c) was Quine a rationality theorist? d) are hybrid-theory and rationality theory incompatible as many would suggest? On the score of the answers to (...) these questions, the paper tries to suggest a Quinean inspired blend of rationality-based and hybrid view-based strategies to explain mindreading. (shrink)

Summary The present work focuses on the transformations of the psychotherapeutic field through the relationship dynamics which occur within it. The first part of this article starts with a brief outline of the Gestalt psychological understanding of the field concept, also in its application to the psychotherapeutic situation, followed by a brief review of the introduction of the field concept into the psychoanalytic theory formation. After this, the first author first presents the theoretical concept underlying a new approach he has (...) developed for observing the relationship dynamics in psychotherapy. Mirroring a formation of both psychoanalytic and Gestalt theory of the main author, this new approach is based on the combination of psychoanalytic and Gestalt psychological concepts. According to the clinical experience and insights of the author, the phenomenological and relational approach of Gestalt theory fits well with the psychoanalytic approach; on this basis, a criterion for recording the progress of therapy can be developed. This criterion is the phenomenology of the development of the qualities of the relationships of the client, as they become visible in his dream narrations and the subsequent associations in the analysis room and continue to develop during the session and the further course of therapy. The relationship dynamics in the dream narration is thus compared with those which develop in the course of the subsequent associations. This is demonstrated and further elaborated in the second part of this article on the basis of a clinical case. The clinical example shows how the relationship dynamics develop in this sense in the individual therapy sessions and over a longer course of therapy. The associated transformations of the therapeutic field give a good indication of the progress of therapy. The main author gained such insights into the transformations of the therapeutic field and the progression of therapy, which are visible in the course of therapy, from the careful application of the criterion “MDAC of relational dynamics”. In the specific case, there was also a high degree of correspondence between the results of the application of this phenomenological criterion and the empirical evidence of the symptom questionnaire, a self-report measure requested by the patient himself during the course of the therapy. (shrink)

Types are fundamental for conceptual modeling and knowledge representation, being an essential construct in all major modeling languages in these fields. Despite that, from an ontological and cognitive point of view, there has been a lack of theoretical support for precisely defining a consensual view on types. As a consequence, there has been a lack of precise methodological support for users when choosing the best way to model general terms representing types that appear in a domain, and for building sound (...) taxonomic structures involving them. For over a decade now, a community of researchers has contributed to the development of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) - aimed at providing foundations for all major conceptual modeling constructs. At the core of this enterprise, there has been a theory of types specially designed to address these issues. This theory is ontologically well- founded, psychologically informed, and formally characterized. These results have led to the development of a Conceptual Modelling language dubbed OntoUML, reflecting the ontological micro-theories comprising UFO. Over the years, UFO and OntoUML have been successfully employed on conceptual model design in a variety of domains including academic, industrial, and governmental settings. These experiences exposed improvement opportunities for both the OntoUML language and its underlying theory, UFO. In this paper, we revise the theory of types in UFO in response to empirical evidence. The new version of this theory shows that many of OntoUML’s meta-types (e.g. kind, role, phase, mixin) should be considered not as restricted to substantial types but instead should be applied to model endurant types in general, including relator types, quality types, and mode types. We also contribute with a formal characterization of this fragment of the theory, which is then used to advance a new metamodel for OntoUML (termed OntoUML 2). To demonstrate that the benefits of this approach are extended beyond OntoUML, the proposed formal theory is then employed to support the definition of UFO-based lightweight Semantic Web ontologies with ontological constraint checking in OWL. Additionally, we report on empirical evidence from the literature, mainly from cognitive psychology but also from linguistics, supporting some of the key claims made by this theory. Finally, we propose a computational support for this updated metamodel. (shrink)

This article aims at proposing the construct of living and working together in organizations as an interpretation and tool proposed in a Juvenile Criminal Mediation Service, in order to highlight how important it was as a turning point in activating the working group's reflexive function as far as their sense of belonging, otherness, culture of diversity, and work subject matter are concerned and start an important transformation process in the very service delivery. Our proposal finds its roots in a follow-up (...) experience regarding the aforementioned service, which has been taking place for almost three years. It was structured in three different phases: a research phase evaluating process and results of the activity that was carried out; a phase of monitoring the mediation practice; a research-action phase in a clinical perspective on the working group's operating mode. The leverage of living and working together in organizations is specifically proposed as far as this last working phase is concerned, las... (shrink)

We reconsider the problem of the compatibility of quantum nonlocality and the requests for a relativistically invariant theoretical scheme. We begin by discussing a recent important paper by T. Norsen on this problem and we enlarge our considerations to give a general picture of the conceptually relevant issue to which this paper is devoted.

Medical students will face ethical issues throughout their lives as doctors. The present study aims to investigate medical students’ opinions on controversial ethical issues and factors associated with these opinions.

During the so-called Ancien Régime, the «Process of Civilization» consisted in an education of the body and the language resulting in what we still call politeness. Being polite was to be politum, that is to say clean of any element not corresponding to an average condition. Such process tended to make equal all polite men, those who shared the same ideal of honnêtété. But, if all honnête-hommes had to be equal, or better identical, then identity resulted in the condition of (...) being like all the others. In order to face this paradox, XVIIth and XVIIIth Century European culture developed a keen reflexion on the mask and the arrangement to society and the social eye. The first western theories of the mimetical identity think of identity as the result of a social transaction. (shrink)

Theoretical approaches to public opinion are hard to find in the sociological literature, with the exception of the seminal work of Jürgen Habermas. One important alternative, although almost unknown in the English-speaking world, is offered in a few contributions by the systems theoretician Niklas Luhmann. Both critical theory and systems theory start from a historical analysis of the conditions that led to the rise of a public sphere and understand its function as the limitation and control of the arbitrariness of (...) power. Critical theory considers the public sphere as a social space where citizens can participate and discuss freely and without constraints. Thus, it legitimizes political power. Systems theory presents a completely different concept of the public sphere and conceives of it in terms of second-order observation. Through public opinion the modern political system observes itself and stimulates as well as limits its decision-making processes. This paper argues that both approaches share the idea that the political system, like every other social subsystem, must generate a system-specific uncertainty in order to limit its own arbitrariness and to be able to develop its decision-making potential. Both approaches locate this uncertainty in the sphere of public opinion. But they radically differ in the way they conceptualize public opinion’s effects on modern politics. Such differences between critical theory and systems theory are illustrated by an analysis of recent political events. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics describes the behavior of subatomic particles. Since its inception, physicists and philosophers have struggled to work out the meaning of quantum mechanics. This book sets out what we know about the quantum world, how we came to this understanding, where we disagree, and where we are heading in our quest to comprehend it.

Naturalizzazione, mente e conoscenza - A controversial issue regarding Quine’s naturalised epistemology is that it may involve some form of reductionism. This article focuses on one of these forms, analysing the interplay of his philosophy of mind and epistemology. It aims to show that if we take into proper consideration the way in which the version of anomalous monism embraced affects his conception of mental states like sensations and propositional attitudes, Quine’s philosophy of mind should be regarded as anti-reductionist. Through (...) a discussion of his theory of perception, I try to argue that what is entailed by it is, in a sense only partially accepted by Quine himself, that neither perception nor observational language can be strictly reduced to their stimulatory conditions. By pointing out the relevance that Quine attributes to the mechanism of empathy as a means for ascribing propositional attitudes, a further interesting argument is provided to underline that, within a naturalized epistemology, there is room for a non-reductive description of mind in some ways close to the results of the hermeneutic tradition. (shrink)

The propositions, that what we see around us is real and that reality should be represented by the statevector, conflict with quantum theory. In quantum theory, the statevector can readily become a sum of states of comparable norm, each state representing a different reality. In this paper we present the Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) theory, in which a modified Schrodinger equation, while scarcely affecting the dynamics of a microscopic system, rapidly "reduces" the statevector of a macroscopic system to a state (...) appropriate for representing individual reality. (shrink)

During the second half of the 16th century, some members of the Society of Jesus began to develop different interpretations around the doctrine of causality within the history of Aristotelian commentaries. Since Aristotle had not proposed an unambiguous definition of cause, the debate grew between the interpreters of his Physics and Metaphysics. Therefore, before Suarez systematized the theories in his Metaphysical Disputations, the professors of the Colleges of Arts and Jesuit Universities discussed the definition of cause (ratio formalis causae). In (...) this essay, I intend to reconstruct the history of causality debate before 1597 when Suarez published his successful metaphysical work and went to Coimbra as a professor of theology. The aim of this essay is to analyse some of the most influential Portuguese professors from Evora and Coimbra and their commentaries on the Aristotle’s works including those proposed by Ignatio de Tolosa (1564), Pedro da Fonseca (1589) and Manuel de Gois (1592). In this way, knowledge of the different views within the Society of Jesus will allow a better understanding of the developments made by Suarez to define causality as principle in the new metaphysical (theological and trinitarian) perspective towards Modernity. (shrink)

Summary The present work focuses on the transformations of the psychotherapeutic field through the relationship dynamics that occur within it. The first part of this article starts with a brief outline of the Gestalt psychological understanding of the field concept, also in its application to the psychotherapeutic situation, followed by a brief review of the introduction of the field concept into the psychoanalytic theory formation. After this, the first author first presents the theoretical concept underlying a new approach he has (...) developed for observing the relationship dynamics in psychotherapy. Mirroring a formation both psychoanalytic and gestaltic of the main author, this new approach is based on the combination of psychoanalytic and Gestalt psychological concepts. According to the clinical experience and insights of the author, the phenomenological and relational approach of Gestalt theory fits well with the psychoanalytic approach; on this basis, a criterion for recording the progress of therapy can be developed. This criterion is the phenomenology of the development of the qualities of the relationships of the client, as they become visible in his dream narrations and the subsequent associations in the analysis room, and continue to develop during the session and the further course of therapy. The relationship dynamics in the dream narration is thus compared with those that develop in the course of the subsequent associations. This is demonstrated and further elaborated in the second part of this paper on the basis of a clinical case. The clinical example shows how the relationship dynamics develop in this sense in the individual therapy sessions and over a longer course of therapy. The associated transformations of the therapeutic field give a good indication of the progress of therapy. The main author gained such insights into the transformations of the therapeutic field and the progression of therapy, which are visible in the course of therapy, from the careful application of the criterion “manifest dream/associations comparison of relational dynamics”. In the specific case, there was also a high degree of correspondence between the results of the application of this phenomenological criterion and the empirical evidence of the symptom questionnaire, a self-report measure requested by the patient himself during the course of the therapy. (shrink)

The last century was marked by a characteristic that has accompanied many human activities. In philosophy, attempts have been made to convince professionals, students and the more educated population that truth is unattainable, or does not even exist, or is only a reflection of thought. In the field of politics, ethics and morals, the new means of communication of the first half of the 20th century, first and foremost the radio followed by the press, and the powerful who controlled them, (...) they succeeded in the unprecedented feat of making very large sections of the population believe that the exponents of an ethnic group were not human beings, and that they could be subjugated and subjected to the most criminal oppressions, or even erased from the face of the Earth with a never before conceived final solution. The disintegration of realism has also marked the arts, and it was to be expected that the sciences were no less with the relativistic drift on the one hand and indeterministic probabilistic on the other in the foundations of science. The “_Shut up and calculate_” prevailed or the disinterest in the real causes of the phenomena as a typical dress of the professional physicist. The 20th century was therefore not the _short century_, but on the contrary the _long century_, which also extends into ours with its negative cultural effects. A change of course in Earth Sciences could trigger a domino effect for the renewal of other disciplines and put an end to the _long century_. _SUNTO_ Il secolo scorso è stato improntato da una caratteristica che ha accomunato molte attività umane. In filosofia si è tentato di convincere gli addetti ai lavori, gli studenti e la popolazione più istruita, che la verità è irraggiungibile, o addirittura non esiste, o è solo riflesso del pensiero. Nel campo della politica, dell’etica e della morale, i nuovi mezzi di comunicazione della prima metà del XX secolo, in primis la radio seguita dalla stampa, ed i potenti che li controllavano, sono riusciti nella inaudita impresa di far credere a larghissimi strati della popolazione che gli esponenti di una etnia non fossero esseri umani, e che li si potesse soggiogare e sottoporre alle più criminali angherie, o addirittura cancellarli dalla faccia della Terra con una mai prima concepita soluzione finale. Il disgregarsi del realismo ha improntato anche le arti, e bisognava aspettarsi che le scienze non fossero da meno con la deriva relativistica da una parte e probabilistica indeterministica dall’altra nei fondamenti della scienza. Prevalse il “Shut up and calculate” (zitto e calcola) ovvero il disinteresse per le vere cause dei fenomeni come veste tipica del fisico professionista. Il XX secolo non è quindi stato il secolo breve, ma al contrario il secolo lungo, che si spinge anche nel nostro con i suoi effetti culturali negativi. Un cambiamento di rotta nelle Scienze della Terra potrebbe innescare un effetto domino per il rinnovamento delle altre discipline e porre fine al secolo lungo. (shrink)

For over a decade now, a community of researchers has contributed to the development of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) - aimed at providing foundations for all major conceptual modeling constructs. This ontology has led to the development of an Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling language dubbed OntoUML, reflecting the ontological micro-theories comprising UFO. Over the years, UFO and OntoUML have been successfully employed in a number of academic, industrial and governmental settings to create conceptual models in a variety of different domains. (...) These experiences have pointed out to opportunities of improvement not only to the language itself but also to its underlying theory. In this paper, we take the first step in that direction by revising the theory of types in UFO in response to empirical evidence. The new version of this theory shows that many of the meta-types present in OntoUML (differentiating Kinds, Roles, Phases, Mixins, etc.) should be considered not as restricted to Substantial types but instead should be applied to model Endurant Types in general, including Relator types, Quality types and Mode types. We also contribute a formal characterization of this fragment of the theory, which is then used to advance a metamodel for OntoUML 2.0. Finally, we propose a computational support tool implementing this updated metamodel. (shrink)