Lewis et al. (2011) attempted to restore the reputation of Samuel George Morton, a 19th century physician who reported on the skull sizes of different folk-races. Whereas Gould (1978) claimed that Morton’s conclusions were invalid because they reflected unconscious bias, Lewis et al. alleged that Morton’s findings were, in fact, supported, and Gould’s analysis biased. We take strong exception to Lewis et al.’s thesis that Morton was “right.” We maintain that Gould was right to reject Morton’s analysis as inappropriate and (...) misleading, but wrong to believe that a more appropriate analysis was available. Lewis et al. fail to recognize that there is, given the dataset available, no appropriate way to answer any of the plausibly interesting questions about the “populations” in question (which in many cases are not populations in any biologically meaningful sense). We challenge the premise shared by both Gould and Lewis et al. that Morton’s confused data can be used to draw any meaningful conclusions. This, we argue, reveals the importance of properly focusing on the questions asked, rather than more narrowly on the data gathered. (shrink)

Volume 11, Issue 1, March 2020, Page 92-100.

Lewis et al. (2011) attempted to restore the reputation of Samuel George Morton, a 19th century physician who reported on the skull sizes of different folk-races. Whereas Gould (1978) claimed that Morton's conclusions were invalid because they reflected unconscious bias, Lewis et al. alleged that Morton's findings were, in fact, supported, and Gould's analysis biased. We take strong exception to Lewis et al.’s thesis that Morton was “right.” We maintain that Gould was right to reject Morton's analysis as inappropriate and (...) misleading, but wrong to believe that a more appropriate analysis was available. Lewis et al. fail to recognize that there is, given the dataset available, no appropriate way to answer any of the plausibly interesting questions about the “populations” in question (which in many cases are not populations in any biologically meaningful sense). We challenge the premise shared by both Gould and Lewis et al. that Morton's confused data can be used to draw any meaningful conclusions. This, we argue, reveals the importance of properly focusing on the questions asked, rather than more narrowly on the data gathered. (shrink)

Giovanni Jervis was a prominent figure in the Italian intellectual landscape of the last fifty years. A student of the philosopher-ethnologist Ernesto De Martino, the main focus of his research was on social psychiatry and psychology, the foundations of psychology, and the psychological aspects of social and political problems. This article explores his rethinking of the psychoanalytic criticism of the subject. I shall try to show that Jervis has given shape to the premises of a philosophical anthropology that originally aims (...) to fit aspects of de Martino’s phenomenological psychology of identity and the psychodynamic theme of defense mechanisms into the ontological framework of the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

We prove ExpTime-membership of the satisfiability problem for loosely ∀-guarded first-order formulas with a bounded number of variables and an unbounded number of constants. Guarded fragments with constants are interesting by themselves and because of their connection to hybrid logic.

This book provides a detailed discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of the change driven by ICTs. Such a change is often much more profound than an emphasis on information technology and society can capture, for not only does it bring about ethical and policy vacuums that call for a new understanding of ethics, politics and law, but it also "re-ontologizes reality", as propounded by Luciano Floridi's philosophy and ethics of information. The informational turn is transforming our understanding of (...) reality by challenging the conventional ways we have of thinking about our world and our identities in terms of stable and enduring structures and beliefs. The information age we inhabit brings to completion our self-understanding as informational systems that produce, process, and exchange information with other informational systems, in an environment that is itself made up of information. The present volume provides us with a better understanding of the normative nature and role of information, helping us to grasp the sense and extent to which informational resources serve as "constraining affordances" guiding our behaviours. It does so by delineating the background against which we build our beliefs about reality, make decisions, and behave, through our interactions with a multi-agent system that is increasingly dependent on ICTs. The book will be of interest to a vast audience, ranging from information technologists, ethicists, policy makers, social and legal scholars, and all those willing to embrace the following three tenets: we construct our world and ourselves informationally; by constructing our world and ourselves we thereby become aware of our limits; it is precisely these limits that make us become human beings. (shrink)

Si analizza lo stretto rapporto tra il diritto (in particolare, il linguaggio giuridico) e la comunicazione fin dall'antichità, segnatamente in relazione al concetto di legittimazione della sovranità; si esaminano alcuni aspetti metodologici comunicativi (in special modo informativi) e giuridici alla luce delle loro prospettive storiche ed economiche. Si presentano ed analizzano alcuni differenti orizzonti comunicativi, quali quelli propri delle scienze economiche e, nelle scienze giuridiche, quelli connessi alla struttura proposizionale e argomentativa del discorso giuridico, con particolare riferimento alle teorie dell'argomentazione (...) di R. Alexy e J. Habermas ed alla possibilità di delineare una procedura regolamentare per assicurarne il controllo di razionalità. La questione centrale affrontata è l'esigenza di conciliare le metodologie comunicative e i caratteri propri del diritto, senza snaturarne le rispettive funzioni. Uno dei nodi fondamentali è costituito dalle condizioni di accessibilità e partecipazione alla comunicazione e all’informazione giuridica, elementi socialmente critici, connessi all'attuazione del principio di eguaglianza in ogni ordinamento giuridico. La distanza tra l'esoterica sfera del linguaggio giuridico e la dimensione concreta dei suoi destinatari, in massima parte soggetti ai quali spesso non ne risulta comprensibile tanto la forma quanto il contenuto (ma non per questo meno coinvolti negli effetti provocati dall'applicazione del diritto), richiede la ricerca di soluzioni complesse ed articolate, non esauribili nella mera applicazione delle pur elaborate e raffinate metodologie comunicative, spesso attuabili senza particolari adattamenti in molti casi di interazione con altre discipline. Infine, si esaminano le ulteriori opportunità offerte dallo sviluppo di nuove tecnologie e dalla loro applicazione al diritto, riscontrandovi la medesima esigenza di appropriate valutazioni e variazioni per il loro adattamento alle particolarità della comunicazione giuridica. (shrink)

The paper addresses two issues that have been recently debated in the literature on free will, moral responsibility, and the theory of punishment. The first issue concerns the descriptive project, the second both the substantive and the prescriptive project. On theoretical, historical and empirical grounds, we claim that there is no rationale for fearing that the spread of neurocognitive findings will undermine the ordinary practice of responsibility attributions. We hypothetically advocate two opposite views: that such findings would cause the collapse (...) of all punitive practices; that, on the contrary, such findings would open the way to more humane forms of punishment, which would be justified on purely utilitarian grounds. We argue that these views are both wrong, since whereas a sound punitive system can be justified without any reference to moral responsibility, it will certainly not improve the humaneness of punishment. (shrink)

This paper is about the development of a face-to-face collaborative technology to support shifting attitudes of participants in conflict via a narration task. The work is based on two cultural elements: conflict resolution theory and the design of a collaboration enforcing interface designed specifically for the task. The general claim is that participants may achieve a greater understanding of and appreciation for the other’s viewpoint under conditions that support partaking in a tangible joint task and creating a shared narration. Specifically, (...) a co-located interface for producing a joint narration as a tool for favoring reconciliation is presented and discussed. The process based on this technology implicitly includes classical steps in conflict resolution approaches, such as escalation and de-escalation. Our goal is to show that this interface is effective and constitutes an alternative to a typical face-to-face moderated discussion. (shrink)

This paper is about the development of a face-to-face collaborative technology to support shifting attitudes of participants in conflict via a narration task. The work is based on two cultural elements: conflict resolution theory and the design of a collaboration enforcing interface designed specifically for the task. The general claim is that participants may achieve a greater understanding of and appreciation for the other’s viewpoint under conditions that support partaking in a tangible joint task and creating a shared narration. Specifically, (...) a co-located interface for producing a joint narration as a tool for favoring reconciliation is presented and discussed. The process based on this technology implicitly includes classical steps in conflict resolution approaches, such as escalation and de-escalation. Our goal is to show that this interface is effective and constitutes an alternative to a typical face-to-face moderated discussion. (shrink)

Una specie di favola, ispirata al Dialogus di Abelardo, per riflettere sul ruolo del cristianesimo nello sviluppo del pensiero filsofico medievale. La filosofia medievale è complessa e articolata come quella di ogni altro periodo storico e spesso, anziché porsi al servizio della teologia, si appoggia sui contenuti della fede per dare stabilità alle proprie ricerche. A sort of tale, inspired by the Abaelard's Dialogus, to consider the role of christianity in the development of the medieval philosophical thought. The medieval philosophy (...) is complex and articulated as that of any other historical period and often, instead of being at the service of theology, is founded on the contents of faith to give stability to its own research. (shrink)

Borges pronuncia giudizi molto severi su Agostino, considerato soprattutto come il pensatore della grazia e della predestinazione. Il pensiero agostiniano viene irrigidito in formule che ne fanno il campione di un preteso realismo medievale. Ma Borges è più vicino di quanto non creda ad Agostino che in realtà sa perfettamente che un senso alla vita dell’uomo viene non dalla impossibile conquista della felicità, ma dalla sua incessante ricerca.

L'apertura alla dimensione religiosa nel "Kant" di Martinetti e il percorso teorico di Dal Pra fra trascendenza e immanenza. Un ipotetico punto di incontro sul terreno della prassi e della scelta etica.

A critical re-examination of the history of the concepts of space (including spacetime of general relativity and relativistic quantum field theory) reveals a basic ontological elusiveness of spatial extension, while, at the same time, highlighting the fact that its epistemic primacy seems to be unavoidably imposed on us (as stated by A.Einstein “giving up the extensional continuum … is like to breathe in airless space”). On the other hand, Planck’s discovery of the atomization of action leads to the fundamental recognition (...) of an ontology of non-spatial, abstract entities (Quine) for the quantum level of reality (QT), as distinguished from the necessarily spatio-temporal, experimental revelations (measurements). The elementary quantum act (measured by Planck’s constant) has neither duration nor extension, and any genuinely quantum process literally does not belong in the Raum and time of our experience. As Heisenberg stresses: “Während also die klassische Physik ein objectives Geschehen in Raum and Zeit zum Gegenstand hat, für dessen Existenz seine Beobachtung völlig irrelevant war, behandelt die Quantentheorie Vorgänge, die sozusagen nur in den Momenten der Beobachtung als raumzeitliche Phänomene aufleuchten, und über die in der zwischenzeit anschaulische physikalische Aussagen sinloss sind”. An admittedly speculative, hazardous conjecture is then advanced concerning the relation of such quantum ontology with the role of the pre-phenomenal continuum (Husserl) in the perception of macroscopically distinguishable objects in the Raum and time of our experience. Although rather venturesome, it brings together important philosophical issues. Coherently with recent general results in works on the foundations of QT, it is assumed that the linearity of quantum dynamical evolution does not apply to the central nervous system of living beings at a certain level of the evolutionary ramification and at the pre-conscious stage of subjectivity. Accordingly, corresponding to the onset of a non-linear dynamic evolution, a ‘primary spatial’ reduction is ‘continually’ taking place, thereby constituting the neural precondition for the experience of distinguishable macroscopic objects in the continuous spatial extension. While preventing the theoretically possible quantum superpositions of macroscopic objects from being perceivable by living beings, the ‘primary reduction’ has no effect on the standard processes concerning quantum level entities involved in laboratory man-made experiments. In this connection, an experimental check which might falsify the conjecture is briefly discussed. The approach suggested here, if sound, leads to a naturalization of that part of Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetics than can survive the Euclidean catastrophe. According to such naturalized transcendentalism, “space can well be transcendental without the axioms being so”, in agreement with a well-known statement by Boltzman. Finally, as far as QT is concerned, the conjecture entails that a scheme for quantum measurement of the von Neumann type cannot even ‘leave the ground’, vindicating Bohr’s viewpoint. A quantum theory of measurement, in a proper sense, turns out to be unnecessary and in fact impossible. (shrink)

The purpose of the present article is to show that the key to understanding the philosophical meaning of the Two Modes of Scepticism is directly linked to the metaepistemic function performed by the criterion of truth (kriterion tes aletheias) in the Hellenistic theories of knowledge. Since the criterion can also be regarded as an epistemic instrument through which it is possible to immediately identify the foundational elements upon which our knowledge of the world is based, the Two Modes show the (...) problems that arise when we try to incontrovertibly identify a set of special and foundational elements that have no need of further justification. (shrink)

Today, the field of Parmenidean studies is still divided over the fundamental question of the correct exegesis of the verb 'to be' in the poem On Nature. The two principal interpretative lines supported by scholars are, on the one hand, the traditional view that understands the verb ‘to be’ in its existential sense and, on the other, the one that arose in the 20th century that focuses on its predicative sense. This paper examines the latest and most ambitious attempt to (...) interpret the thought of Parmenides and the profound influence that he had on pluralist philosophers, starting from a purely predicative approach. It is an epistemological interpretation of the Eleaticism proposed by Patricia Curd, centred on the notion of ‘predicational monism’, which has the unquestionable merit to place Parmenides within the pre-Socratic naturalistic debate but that, after a careful analysis, fails to convince. In fact, this interpretation, which certainly appears to be one of the most articulate and intelligent proposals of recent years, raises a series of exegetical and argumentative problems that do not seem possible to resolve without exiting the predicative horizon. (shrink)