Summary This article presents three hitherto unpublished letters by Frank Plumpton Ramsey on the foundations of mathematics with commentary. One of the letters was sent to Abraham Fraenkel and the other two letters to Heinrich Behmann. The transcription of the letters is preceded by an account that details the extent of Ramsey's known contacts with mathematical logicians on the Continent.

The enactive approach provides a perspective on human bodies in their organic, sensorimotor, social, and linguistic dimensions, but many fundamental issues still remain unaddressed. A crucial desideratum for a theory of human bodies is that it be able to account for concrete human becoming. In this article I show that enactive theory possesses resources to achieve this goal. Being an existential structure, human becoming is best approached by a series of progressive formal indications. I discuss three standpoints on human becoming (...) as open, indeterminate, and therefore historical using the voices of Pico della Mirandola, Gordon W. Allport, and Paulo Freire. Drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation we move from an existential to an ontological register in looking at modes of embodied becoming. His scheme of interpretation of the relation between modes of individuation allows us to understand human becoming in terms of a tendency to neotenization. I compare this ontology with an enactive theoretical account of the dimensions of embodiment, finding several compatibilities and complementarities. Various forms of bodily unfinishedness in enaction fit the Simondonian ontology and the existential analysis, where transindividuality corresponds to participatory sense-making and Freire’s joint becoming of individuals and communities correlates with the open tensions in linguistic bodies between incorporation and incarnation of linguistic acts. I test some of this ideas by considering the plausibility of artificial bodies and personal becoming from an enactive perspective, using the case of replicants in the film Blade Runner. The conclusion is that any kind of personhood, replicants included, requires living through an actual history of concrete becoming. (shrink)

Resumen:La filosofía ofrece múltiples ópticas para considerar el curso de la historia de la humanidad, perspectivas que van desde lo epistemológico hasta lo metafísico. Entre aquellas posibilidades interpretativas se encuentra el juego, específicamente la concepción antropológica del ser humano en tanto homo ludens –tema ya trabajado por Holzapfel en una obra previa–. A partir de dicha concepción lúdica del ser humano es posible analizar la dialéctica de los diversos tipos de juegos en el desarrollo histórico. La presente obra constituye una (...) invitación a recorrer el despliegue del homo ludens hasta las repercusiones de su desregulación agonal (juego de competencia) en nuestros días, proponiendo una solución lúdica a la crisis actual. (shrink)

The mnemonic arts and the idea of a universal language that would capture the essence of all things were originally associated with cryptology, mysticism, and other occult practices. And it is commonly held that these enigmatic efforts were abandoned with the development of formal logic in the seventeenth century and the beginning of the modern era. In his distinguished book, Logic and the Art of Memory Italian philosopher and historian Paolo Rossi argues that this view is belied by an (...) examination of the history of the idea of a universal language. Based on comprehensive analyses of original texts, Rossi traces the development of this idea from late medieval thinkers such as Ramon Lull through Bruno, Bacon, Descartes, and finally Leibniz in the seventeenth century. The search for a symbolic mode of communication that would be intelligible to everyone was not a mere vestige of magical thinking and occult sciences, but a fundamental component of Renaissance and Enlightenment thought. Seen from this perspective, modern science and combinatorial logic represent not a break from the past but rather its full maturity. Available for the first time in English, this book (originally titled Clavis Universalis ) remains one of the most important contributions to the history of ideas ever written. In addition to his eagerly anticipated translation, Steven Clucas offers a substantial introduction that places this book in the context of other recent works on this fascinating subject. A rich history and valuable sourcebook, Logic and the Art of Memory documents an essential chapter in the development of human reason. (shrink)

Social factors have so far been neglected in embodied theories of perception despite the wealth of phenomenological insights and empirical evidence indicating their importance. I examine evidence from developmental psychology and neuroscience and attempt an initial classification according to whether social factors play a contextual, enabling, or constitutive role in the ability to perceive objects in a detached manner, i.e. beyond their immediate instrumental use. While evidence of cross-cultural variations in perceptual styles and the influence of social cues on visual (...) attention could not be said to play more than a contextual role, other factors such as the intricate developmental links between dyadic and triadic interactions in infancy, as well as episodes of peer-learning in children, play enabling roles. A common element in these factors is the presence and resolution of interpersonal conflict. Detached object perception could not develop without these social factors. I argue, in addition, that social skills such as managing partial social acts which are addressed to and completed by others, linguistic mediation, makebelieve play, and the ability to control perspectival switches are constitutive -- i.e. are of the essence -- of the ability to see objects as present with a detached attitude. I discuss the prospects of incorporating such social elements into dynamical interpretations of the sensorimotor approach through the enactive notion of participatory sense-making. (shrink)

A differenza dell'età moderna e contemporanea, nell'antichità e nel Medioevo, moltissimi sono stati i commenti che hanno avuto il valore di testi filosofici fondamentali, vere e proprie pietre miliari nella storia del pensiero. E questo è il caso di Alessandro di Afrodisia e del commento che qui si presenta, per la prima volta tradotto in italiano, al De Anima di Aristotele. L'opera di Alessandro ebbe un'enorme influenza sul pensiero del Medioevo e del Rinascimento e per questo motivo, oltre ad essere (...) un passaggio obbligato per la conoscenza della filosofia antica e tardoantica, essa può interessare anche studiosi e studenti della filosofia di queste due età più recenti. (shrink)

Pierre de Fermat is known as the inventor of modern number theory. He invented–improved many methods useful in this discipline. Fermat often claimed to have proved his most difficult theorems thanks to a method of his own invention: the infinite descent. He wrote of numerous applications of this procedure. Unfortunately, he left only one almost complete demonstration and an outline of another demonstration. The outline concerns the theorem that every prime number of the form 4n + 1 is the sum (...) of two squares. In this paper, we analyse a recent proof of this theorem. It is interesting because: it follows all the elements of which Fermat wrote in his outline; it represents a good introduction to all logical nuances and mathematical variants concerning this method of which Fermat spoke. The assertions by Fermat will also be framed inside their historical context. Therefore, the aims of this paper are related to the history of mathematics and to the logic of proof-methods. (shrink)

The temporality of intentions and actions in situations of social interaction can sometimes be paradoxical. I argue that in these situations it may sometimes be possible to conceive of individual acts that can, in a strong sense, be intended retroactively. This could happen when the relational patterns in social interaction literally alter the virtual structure of a participant's past corporeal intentions resulting in an odd experience of having intended something all along without knowing it. I propose that this possibility should (...) be interpreted as more than just a narrowly epistemic phenomenon. Examining this claim involves clarifying the enactive perspective on intentionality, which I do here. The enactive approach rejects the model of a causal relation between intention and action for one of an intrinsic qualitative relation between the two as facets of sense-making. I develop this idea and compare it with Merleau-Ponty's Fundierung model of the mutual relation between corporeal and reflexive intentionality to show that co-regulated moves/affections during social interaction may modulate both arcs of this relation, creating the possibility of a re-signification that alters not the actuality but the virtual tendencies that preceded the social act. (shrink)

Paolo Silvestri interviews Deirdre Nansen McCloskey on the occasion of her latest book, Bettering Humanomics: A New, and Old, Approach to Economic Science. The interview covers her personal and intellectual life, the main turning points of her journey and her contributions. More specifically, the conversation focuses on McCloskey’s writings on the methodology and rhetoric of economics, her interdisciplinary ventures into the humanities, the Bourgeois Era trilogy with its history of the ‘Great Enrichment’, her liberal political commitments, and the value (...) and meaning of liberty, equality, and solidarity. Finally, the conversation returns to McCloskey’s ‘humanomics’ approach: an economics with the humans left in. (shrink)

I offer in this paper a contextual analysis of Frege's Grundlagen, section 64. It is surprising that with so much ink spilled on that section, the sources of Frege's discussion of definitions by abstraction have remained elusive. I hope to have filled this gap by providing textual evidence coming from, among other sources, Grassmann, Schlömilch, and the tradition of textbooks in geometry for secondary schools . In addition, I put Frege's considerations in the context of a widespread debate in Germany (...) on ‘directions’ as a central notion in the theory of parallels. (shrink)

Suppose that you're certain that a certain sentence, e.g. "Frida is tall", lacks a determinate truth value. What cognitive attitude should you take towards it—reject it, suspend judgment, or what else? We show that, by adopting a seemingly plausible principle connecting credence in A and Determinately A, we can prove a very implausible answer to this question: i.e., all indeterminate claims should be assigned credence zero. The result is striking similar to so-called triviality results in the literature on modals and (...) conditionals. (shrink)

The development of the curriculum for engineering education (course requirements as well as extra-curricular activities like study abroad and internships) should be based on a comprehensive understanding of engineers’ responsibilities. The responsibilities that are constitutive of being an engineer include striving to fulfill the standards of excellence set by technical codes; to improve the idealized models that engineers use to predict, for example, the behavior of alternative designs; and to achieve the internal goods such as safety and sustainability as they (...) are reflected in the design codes. Globalization has implications for these responsibilities and, in turn, for engineering education, by, for example, modifying the collection of possible solutions recognized for existing problems. In addition, international internships can play an important role in fostering the requisite moral imagination of engineering students. (shrink)

How accurate is the picture of the human mind that has emerged from studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science? Anybody with an interest in how minds work - how we learn about the world and how we remember people and events - may feel dissatisfied with the answers contemporary science has to offer. Sensorimotor Life draws on current theoretical developments in the enactive approach to life and mind. It examines and expands the premises of the sciences of the human (...) mind, while developing an alternative picture closer to people's daily experiences. Enactive ideas are applied and extended, providing a theoretically rich, naturalistic account of meaning and agency. The book includes a dynamical systems description of different types of sensorimotor regularities or sensorimotor contingencies; a dynamical interpretation of Piaget's theory of equilibration to ground the concept of sensorimotor mastery; and a theory of agency as organized networks of sensorimotor schemes, as well as its implications for embodied subjectivity. Written for students and researchers of cognitive science, the authors offer a fuller view of the mind, a view better attuned to the experiences of people who live, work, love, struggle, and age, thrown into a world of meaningful relations they help create. Additionally, the book is of interest to neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and philosophers of science. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the status of argumentative discourse. We argue that argumentation can contribute to instances of different discourse genres, regardless of whether it is functional to their purposes. By analyzing examples from the daily press in the light of an approach to discourse analysis inspired by pragmatics, we show that also texts that are not expected to be argumentative have underlying argumentative structures and that a text’s being argumentative is a matter of degree: the (...) understanding of underlying argumentative structures contributes to a varying extent to the understanding of what a text as a whole means and of its point in the speech situation. This role of argumentative structures in text understanding suggests considering argumentation as a cognitively-based dimension of discourse, connected to human rationality. (shrink)

The intent we propose will be to retrace a few fundamental passages of the philosophical and metaphysical though of the Spanish philosopher, considering two conceptual pairs that refer to the quest...

The study of the neuroscience and genomics of mental illness are increasingly intertwined. This is mostly due to the translation of medical technologies into psychiatry and to technological convergence. This article focuses on psychosis. I argue that the convergence of neuroscience and genomics in the context of psychosis is morally problematic, and that ethics scholarship should go beyond the identification of a number of ethical, legal, and social issues. My argument is composed of two strands. First, I argue that we (...) should respond to technological convergence by developing an integrated, patient-centred approach focused on the assessment of individual vulnerabilities. Responding to technological convergence requires that we integrate insights from several areas of ethics, translate bioethical principles into the mental health context, and proactively try to anticipate future ethical concerns. Second, I argue that a nuanced understanding of the concept of vulnerability might help us to accomplish this task. I borrow Florencia Luna’s notion of ‘layers of vulnerability’ to show how potential harms or wrongs to individuals who experience psychosis can be conceptualised as stemming from different sources, or layers, of vulnerability. I argue that a layered notion of vulnerability might serve as a common ground to achieve the ethical integration needed to ensure that biomedical innovation can truly benefit, and not harm, individuals who suffer from psychosis. (shrink)

RESUMO O artigo propõe uma releitura cruzada dos conceitos de acidente, desenvolvido por Landowski no âmbito de sua teoria sociossemiótica da interação, e explosão, elaborado por Lotman em seus últimos escritos de semiótica da cultura. Longe de ser um fim em si mesmo, este confronto almeja esboçar uma síntese teórico-epistemológica que possa contribuir à análise dos processos comunicacionais-discursivos que regem o devir dos sistemas socioculturais, bem como ao seu enquadramento conceitual. A minha hipótese é que a cifra desta articulação resida (...) no vínculo entre a indeterminação destacada por ambos os autores e a carga estésica, isto é, o núcleo de tensões sensíveis que, conforme vislumbra Landowski, os acontecimentos acidentais/explosivos são capazes de mobilizar. Para procurar demonstrar sua pertinência e relevância, partirei de um caso concreto: as jornadas de junho de 2013 e seu impacto no processo que levou, em 2016, ao impeachment de Dilma Rousseff e, em 2018, à eleição de Jair Bolsonaro. ABSTRACT The article proposes a comparison between the concepts of accident, developed by Landowski in his sociosemiotic theory of interaction, and explosion, elaborated by Lotman in his last writings on the semiotics of culture. Far from being an end in itself, this confrontation aims to sketch a theoretical-epistemological synthesis that can contribute to the analysis of the communicational-discursive processes that trigger the historical flow of sociocultural systems, as well as to their conceptual categorisation. My hypothesis is that the basis of this articulation lies in the link between the indeterminacy highlighted by both authors, and the aesthesic value, that is, the core of sensible tensions that, as shown by Landowski, the accidental/explosive events could mobilise. In order to demonstrate its pertinence and relevance, I will focus on a specific case study: the 2013 protests in Brazil and their impact on the process that led to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. (shrink)

Data produced by humans and machines is more and more heterogeneous, visual, and location based. This availability inspired in the last years a number of reactions from researchers, designers, and artists that, using different visual manipulations techniques, have attempted at repurposing this material to add meaning and design new perspectives with specific intentions. Three different approaches are described here: the design of interfaces for exploring satellite footage in novel ways, the analysis of urban esthetics through the visual manipulation of collections (...) of user-generated contents, and the enrichment of geo-based datasets with the selection and rearrangement of web imagery. (shrink)

The author argues that one of the “circles” that constitute Hegel’s philosophical system, as it is displayed in the Encyclopedia, is the circle between the I and the spirit. Specifically, the author focuses on the emergence of spirit as a self and an I, and on the encounter of the I with nature. The author also argues that absolute spirit maintains fundamental intersubjective and perspectival features that are proper to the I, and that grasping the circular movement between the I (...) and the spirit in the context of Hegel’s discussion of absolute Geist is also relevant to appreciating how normative categories of social thought can be challenged and altered through Geist’s ability to achieve critical distance by overcoming subject/object distinctions. (shrink)

Automne 1876: Nietzsche, jeune professeur de philologie à Bâle, brillant élève de Ritschl, part pour Sorrente, invité par son amie Malwida von Meysenbug. C'est son premier voyage dans le Sud : une découverte qui va changer sa vie et le cours de sa philosophie. C'en est fini des tentatives de renouveler la culture allemande au nom de la cause wagnérienne ; l'auteur de La Naissance de la tragédie (1872) commence sa mue. Paolo D'Iorio dresse la carte de cette métamorphose (...) : lectures et discussions, promenades, explorations des environs avec son ami Paul Rée et l'étudiant Albert Brenner ; il fait revivre cette sociabilité joyeuse et confiante qui fertilise l'élan créateur de Nietzsche. C'est à Sorrente que Nietzsche entreprend la rédaction de Choses humaines, trop humaines, dédié à Voltaire. Cette oeuvre, la première sous forme d'aphorismes, inaugure sa philosophie de la maturité. La rupture avec Wagner qu'il verra alors pour la dernière fois, est intellectuellement consommée bien qu'encore cachée. A la suite de ce voyage, Nietzsche abandonnera sa chaire bâloise et entamera une existence de philosophe sous le signe du Midi entre la Suisse, la France et l'Italie. (shrink)

In a Socratic spirit of coming to a better understanding of man who finds himself in the midst of a "crisis about knowledge," this dissertation proposes to examine the human subject as a cognitive animal by turning to the long and rich tradition of Aristotelian philosophy, largely ignored today, to focus on and gain inspiration from one of its principal currents of reflection: nous inasmuch as this refers to the human intellectual operation intuiting the substantial level of reality, which can (...) then anchor scientific knowledge of it. ;The examination of nous is based on the text Posterior Analytics II.19, in which Aristotle briefly presents the "habit of nous" as the culmination of a non-rational-discursive process by which the principles of demonstration are acquired. By looking at each of the stages mentioned in the text, there is offered the opportunity to study in detail the different human cognitive capacities and the cognition they provide. This also allows for a comparison and contrast of the capacities and the relationships that can be established between them, which is helpful in understanding man as a cognitive animal, in general, and in determining, in particular, the place and role of intuition in human cognition. ;Starting with Aristotle's views on logic and science, it is established that the rational-discursive operations of the intellect presuppose other non-rational-discursive operations of the intellect, which opens the door to another intellectual operation that can complement the first-mentioned. This other intellectual operation is seen to be closely related to sense cognition and its powers, the means through which the intellect makes contact with external reality. The most important of the different levels of cognition provided by the senses is its highest level, experience; and since human experience involves the activity of the intellect, induction of the principles of science is seen to be an act of the intellect starting from the intelligibility of sense experience. It is concluded, finally, that this act of the intellect is essentially intuitive, consisting mainly in an intellectual grasp of a substance, an insight into its essence. (shrink)

Unilateral neglect stems from a relatively selective impairment of exogenous, or stimulus-related, orienting of attention. This neuropsychological evidence parallels “change blindness” experiments, in which normal individuals lack awareness of salient details in the visual scene as a consequence of their attention being exogenously attracted by a competing event, suggesting that visual consciousness requires the integrity of exogenous orienting of attention.

The homeopathic principle of similitude is not based on the principle of vaccination but on the more general principle of inversion of effects, a widespread medical phenomenon. Based on the systemic networks which play an important role in response to stress, this principle concerns the reorganization of regulation systems, through a coherent response to the medicine. This model is backed by a large number of published studies from our laboratory and others, by toxicological evidence such as the emerging fields of (...) ‘hormesis’, of neuropharmacology, and of systems biology. The immune system is just one example of the possible application of this law of similitude, which constitutes the true ‘heart’ of the homeopathic idea, and again ethically justifies the attempt to apply it to experimental pharmacology. (shrink)

The paper examines Posterior Analytics II 11, 94a20-36 and makes three points. (1) The confusing formula ‘given what things, is it necessary for this to be’ [τίνων ὄντων ἀνάγκη τοῦτ᾿ εἶναι] at a21-22 introduces material cause, not syllogistic necessity. (2) When biological material necessitation is the only causal factor, Aristotle is reluctant to formalize it in syllogistic terms, and this helps to explain why, in II 11, he turns to geometry in order to illustrate a kind of material cause that (...) can be expressed as the middle term of an explanatory syllogism. (3) If geometrical proof is viewed as a complex construction built on simpler constructions, it can in effect be described as a case of purely material constitution. (shrink)

A bibliography of the writings on Pietro Piovani . A continuation of the Bibliografia degli scritti su Pietro Piovani , Liguori, Napoli, 2000, edited by the same author, which numbered 337 entries.