The essay analyses utopia as a key concept to investigate modern politics. It argues that looking at the works of Machiavelli and More in order to retrace the utopia-realism nexus permits to develop a valuable analytical tool to interpret the outset of political modernity.

This paper introduces the logics of super-strict implications, where a super-strict implication is a strengthening of C.I. Lewis' strict implication that avoids not only the paradoxes of material implication but also those of strict implication. The semantics of super-strict implications is obtained by strengthening the (normal) relational semantics for strict implication. We consider all logics of super-strict implications that are based on relational frames for modal logics in the modal cube. it is shown that all logics of super-strict implications are (...) connexive logics in that they validate Aristotle's Theses and (weak) Boethius's Theses. A proof-theoretic characterisation of logics of super-strict implications is given by means of G3-style labelled calculi, and it is proved that the structural rules of inference are admissible in these calculi. It is also shown that validity in the S5-based logic of super-strict implications is equivalent to validity in G. Priest's negation-as-cancellation-based logic. Hence, we also give a cut-free calculus for Priest's logic. (shrink)

The article presents the first results we have obtained studying natural reasoning from a proof-theoretic perspective. In particular we focus our attention on monotonic reasoning. Our system consists of two parts: (i) A Formal Grammar – a multimodal version of classical Categorial Grammar – which while syntactically analysing linguistic expressions given as input, computes semantic information (In particular information about the monotonicity properties of the components of the input string are displayed.); (ii) A simple Natural Logic which derives (monotonicity) inferences (...) using as vehicle the parsed output. The monotonicity markers assigned in the lexicon are propagated through the proofs via a combination of the structural and the logical rules for the unary operators of Multimodal Categorial Grammar (MMCG) [Moo97]. We have chosen to work with an expressive ‘grammar logic’, in order to avoid the use of extra-logical marking devices and extra-logical structural reasoning. Having MMCG as parser, our system is able to make the derivations simply within the logic. This new approach makes the implementation of the theory an easier task. We have implemented the theoretical results, so far obtained, using Grail, a theorem prover for Categorial Grammar Logics [Moo98]. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe quality of medicines is generally adequately assured by manufacturers and regulatory authorities for well-resourced settings, while the implementation of existing quality standards is challenged in many low- and middle-income countries. This situation of multiple pharmaceutical standards raises the question whether it could ever be ethically justified to compromise on the quality assurance of medicines depending on what individuals, communities, or societies can afford. In this paper, we contend that ethically, any unjustified exceptions to medicines’ quality assurance represents a violation (...) of the principles of beneficence and non-maleficence. Exceptions are only acceptable in exceptional and temporary circumstances, if based on a meaningful quality risk assessment, guided by a rigorous ethical framework built on the principles of independence, technical competence, transparency, and accountability. We also discuss how such exceptional and temporary circumstances should be defined/justified.... (shrink)

This paper studies proof systems for the logics of super-strict implication ST2–ST5, which correspond to C.I. Lewis’ systems S2–S5 freed of paradoxes of strict implication. First, Hilbert-style axiomatic systems are introduced and shown to be sound and complete by simulating STn in Sn and backsimulating Sn in STn, respectively(for n=2,...,5). Next, G3-style labelled sequent calculi are investigated. It is shown that these calculi have the good structural properties that are distinctive of G3-style calculi, that they are sound and complete, and (...) it is shown that the proof search for G3. ST2 is terminating and therefore the logic is decidable. (shrink)

1 Recognition Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2 Classical Categorial Grammar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3 Classical (...) Categorial Grammar. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4 Logic Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 5 Lambek calculus. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6 Lambek calculus. Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 7 Lambek calculus. Advantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 8 Derivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 9 Residuated and Galois Connected Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 10 Interpretation of the Constants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 11 Nonveridical Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 12 Dutch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 13 Classification of NPIs in Dutch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 14 Antilicensing Relation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.. (shrink)

The meaning of matter is determined by our interpretations. Even food has its own frequencies, which can be aligned with the specific notes of a musical scale. When presented with a dish we might ask not only “how does it taste?” but also “how does it sound?.” Gastrofonia is defined not as the musical accompaniment to a cooking demonstration, but the actual sound of it: music is made by food. Built upon an experiment initiated by John Cage to try to (...) make music with objects, gastrofonia examines sound as a possible connection among the visual and material arts. Combining music with taste, musician Roy Paci identified a biosonic perception of food. This chapter aims to analyze the case of gastrofonia in light of the increased scientific and artistic interest in food characterizing our contemporary society, that is, an orthorexic society where food has become a specific form of language, a communicative vehicle through which we express our identity, interests, social-ethical choices, and new concepts of art. From a sociosemiotic perspective, the gastrofonic dish is an example of a textual polyphonic discourse combining different languages, related to the five senses in a performance that becomes a form of shared communication. (shrink)

A partire dal corpus degli Scritti sulla donna, l'articolo intende mostrare come nel pensiero di Edith Stein vi sia il ricorrere di alcuni nuclei tematici soggetti a un sempre maggiore lavoro di scavo e di approfondimento, nella consapevolezza - maturata alla scuola di Husserl -della inesauribilitÀ della realtÀ. In particolare, dopo aver ricordato la funzione ontologica della filosofia nell'indagine sull'essere umano, che consente di parlare di specie e di individualitÀ, vengono qui toccate le questioni del rapporto fra specie e tipo, (...) della mutabilitÀ o meno della specie, della peculiaritÀ dell'anima femminile, e viene evidenziato come esse o siano il risultato di ricerche condotte in precedenza o contengano in nuce elementi di una riflessione portata avanti dalla filosofa tedesca in tempi e opere successivi. (shrink)

The emerging field of responsible management (RM) studies the integration of sustainability, responsibility, and ethics in managerial practices. Therefore, turning to practice theories for the study of RM appears to hold great promise of conceptual and methodological contribution. We propose a posthumanist practice approach for studying RM-as-practice. Managerial practices are conceived as the agencement of heterogeneous elements (humans, nonhumans, more-than-humans, materials, and discourses) that achieve agency in their being interconnected. Thus, RM is understood as processual, relational, emergent, and sociomaterial. We (...) contribute a framework for the empirical study of RM-as-practice on the basis of three sensitizing concepts: situatedness, sociomateriality, and textures_._ We further discuss the implications of understanding responsibility as response-ability, an engaged practice for relating to the other and the RM researcher’s role as internal to the practice agencement under study, thus, opening the debate on our own response-ability. (shrink)

We determine the computational complexity of the Hahn-Banach Extension Theorem. To do so, we investigate some basic connections between reverse mathematics and computable analysis. In particular, we use Weak König's Lemma within the framework of computable analysis to classify incomputable functions of low complexity. By defining the multivalued function Sep and a natural notion of reducibility for multivalued functions, we obtain a computational counterpart of the subsystem of second-order arithmetic WKL0. We study analogies and differences between WKL0 and the class (...) of Sep-computable multivalued functions. Extending work of Brattka, we show that a natural multivalued function associated with the Hahn-Banach Extension Theorem is Sep-complete. (shrink)

Research represents an essential component of the response to infectious disease outbreaks and to other public health emergencies, whether they are localised, of international concern, or global. Research conducted in such contexts also comes with particular ethics challenges, the awareness of which has significantly grown following the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the Zika outbreak in Latin America and the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenges include the need for implementing meaningful community engagement with the researched communities, not just to build unidirectional (...) trust towards the research team, but to achieve a genuine and mutually respectful partnership before, during and after the research. Here, we describe the real-life experience of 10 well-established research clinics in Nairobi, where a successful experience of community engagement linking prevention and care to research was interrupted during the COVID19 pandemic. We contrast this experience with the concept and processes of community engagement as described in selected scientific manuscripts and guidelines, to formulate some conclusions and recommendations. We contend that more action is needed, from research ethics committees and other key-research stakeholders, to align policies and practices with ethics guidance and with evidence-based recommendations from the academic literature, to achieve meaningful community engagement during emergency research, irrespective of the scale and location of an outbreak or public health crisis. Failure to do so, will aggravate the (postcolonial) asymmetries of power in global health and local systems. (shrink)

This paper studies proof systems for the logics of super-strict implication \(\textsf{ST2}\) – \(\textsf{ST5}\), which correspond to C.I. Lewis’ systems \(\textsf{S2}\) – \(\textsf{S5}\) freed of paradoxes of strict implication. First, Hilbert-style axiomatic systems are introduced and shown to be sound and complete by simulating \(\textsf{STn}\) in \(\textsf{Sn}\) and backsimulating \(\textsf{Sn}\) in \(\textsf{STn}\), respectively (for \({\textsf{n}} =2, \ldots, 5\) ). Next, \(\textsf{G3}\) -style labelled sequent calculi are investigated. It is shown that these calculi have the good structural properties that are distinctive (...) of \(\textsf{G3}\) -style calculi, that they are sound and complete, and it is shown that the proof search for \(\mathsf {G3.ST2}\) is terminating and therefore the logic is decidable. (shrink)

This article focuses on the assessment of mechanistic relations with specific attention to medicine, where mechanistic models are widely employed. I first survey recent contributions in the philosophical literature on mechanistic causation, and then take issue with Federica Russo and Jon Williamson’s thesis that two types of evidence, probabilistic and mechanistic, are at stake in the health sciences. I argue instead that a distinction should be drawn between previously acquired knowledge of mechanisms and yet-to-be-discovered knowledge of mechanisms and that both (...) probabilistic evidence and manipulation are essential with respect to newly discovered mechanisms. (shrink)

We prove a generalization of Maehara’s lemma to show that the extensions of classical and intuitionistic first-order logic with a special type of geometric axioms, called singular geometric axioms, have Craig’s interpolation property. As a corollary, we obtain a direct proof of interpolation for (classical and intuitionistic) first-order logic with identity, as well as interpolation for several mathematical theories, including the theory of equivalence relations, (strict) partial and linear orders, and various intuitionistic order theories such as apartness and positive partial (...) and linear orders. (shrink)

This contribution claims that the two fundamental notions of causation at work in the health sciences are manipulative and mechanistic, and investigates what kinds of evidence matter for the assessment of causal relations. This article is a development of our 2007 article, ‘Plurality of Causality’, where we argue for a pluralistic account of causation with an eye to econometrics and a single medical example. The present contribution has a wider focus, and considers the notion of evidence within a whole range (...) of disciplines belonging to the health sciences. Section 1 addresses the relations between kinds of evidence and causal accounts, and it is shown how different notions of causation can be employed in various medical cases. Section 2 calls attention to issues crucial for any adequate epistemological theory of causation, such as the distinctions between types and tokens, observational and experimental regimes, explanation and prediction. Lastly, the notion of context is articulated, highlighted in its role in the assessment of causal links. All these issues are tackled in the framework of what we label a ‘bottom–up’ epistemology. (shrink)

Current research on choice overload has been mainly conducted with choice options not associated with specific brands. This study investigates whether the presence of brand names in the choice set affects the occurrence of choice overload. Across four studies, we find that when choosing among an overabundance of alternatives, participants express more positive feelings (i.e., higher satisfaction/confidence, lower regret and difficulty) when all the options of the choice set are associated with familiar brands, rather than unfamiliar brands or no brand (...) at all. We also find that choice overload only appears in the absence of brand names, but disappears when all options contain brand names—either familiar or unfamiliar. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

We investigate Turing's contributions to computability theory for real numbers and real functions presented in [22, 24, 26]. In particular, it is shown how two fundamental approaches to computable analysis, the so-called ‘Type-2 Theory of Effectivity' (TTE) and the ‘realRAM machine' model, have their foundations in Turing's work, in spite of the two incompatible notions of computability they involve. It is also shown, by contrast, how the modern conceptual tools provided by these two paradigms allow a systematic interpretation of Turing's (...) pioneering work in the subject. (shrink)

Raffaella De Rosa discusses the theory of sensory perception, especially color perception, offered by Ren Descartes. She offers a detailed overview of the recent literature on the topic and provides a new reading of Descartes' theory; she also raises questions of great interest in the contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

i. M is positive in M . ii. M is positive (negative) in P Q iff M is positive (negative) in P . iii. M is positive (negative) in P Q iff M is positive (negative) in Q, and P denotes..

Polarity Items are linguistic expressions known for being a ‘lexically controlled’ phenomenon. In this paper we show how their behavior can be implemented in a deductive system. Further- more, we point out some possible directions to recast the deductive solution into a Tree Ad- joining Grammar system. In particular, we suggest to compare the proof system developed for Multimodal Categorial Grammar (Moot & Puite, 1999) with the Partial Proof Trees proposed in (Joshi & Kulick, 1997).