Welcome to the Post-Truth era-- a time in which the art of the lie is shaking the very foundations of democracy and the world as we know it. The Brexit vote; Donald Trump's victory; the rejection of climate change science; the vilification of immigrants; all have been based on the power to evoke feelings and not facts. So what does it all mean and how can we champion truth in in a time of lies and 'alternative facts'? In this eye-opening (...) and timely book, Post-Truth is distinguished from a long tradition of political lies, exaggeration and spin. What is new is not the mendacity of politicians but the public's response to it and the ability of new technologies and social media to manipulate, polarise and entrench opinion. Where trust has evaporated, conspiracy theories thrive, the authority of the media wilt and emotions matter more than facts. Now, one of the UK's most respected political journalists, Matthew d'Ancona investigates how we got here, why quiet resignation is not an option and how we can and must fight back. (shrink)

En dépit de ce que le titre semble en première lecture suggérer, le livre d’Aurélien Robert (= A. R.), Épicure aux Enfers, est moins la reconstruction d’une damnation, que l’histoire d’un dédoublement : le constat initial procède de la scission entre la dimension historique d’Épicure, sa pensée -essentiellement eudémonique- et l’image injustifiée d’athée et hédoniste qui a connu un large succès au Moyen Âge et a, pendant longtemps, effacé son profil historique pour se substituer à lui. Le liv...

Quest'opera fa parte di un più vasto lavoro di ricerca sul neo-idealismo italiano in rapporto alla politica. Il titolo - filosofia e politica - è di per sé significativo: sta a indicare chiaramente la direzione e il tipo dell'indagine, che non è empirica ma trascendentale, non riguarda cioè la dottrina politica e le scelte pratiche di Croce, staccate dall'organismo del pensiero in cui s'incorporano e analizzate alla luce di alcune categorie, magari psicologiche e sociologiche; ma riguarda i presupposti teoretici che (...) stanno a fondamento di quella dottrina e di quelle scelte. Scartato, perché fuorviante, il metodo di quelle due «false scienze» che sono la psicologia e la sociologia, l'Autore ha tentato un discorso schiettamente filosofico, che è poi discorso di fondazione e di deduzione. Per questo è stato necessario procedere a una lettura integrale di Croce, avendo in una mano l'esperienza dei «testi» e nell'altra quella categoria della «totalità», che è più facile da invocare che da impiegare. Ma è stato necessario anche dare al lavoro un «taglio» particolare, in modo da evitare le semplificazioni eccessive e le sintesi sommarie, per andare direttamente al cuore dei problemi. L'impostazione metodologica ha richiesto da una parte l'adesione all'universo spirituale dell'autore studiato, e dall'altra l'obiettivo distaccato scientifico: due condizioni fondamentali, queste, che solo in apparenza si escludono, perché in realtà si conciliano riassumendosi nel concetto di «critica interna». DAL TESTO - "A ragione Croce afferma che il liberalismo è grandemente debitore all'estetica e alla filosofia dell'economia che hanno asserito la spiritualità del corpo, l'interiorità dell'oggetto nel soggetto, sì che il suo destino è legato a quelle due scienze che unificando Dio e mondo, idea e fatto, garantiscono, contro ogni disposizione autoritaria, la spontaneità e i contrasti delle forze spirituali; e a ragione afferma che l'autoritarismo politico e morale si congiunge a tutte quelle concezioni che hanno un riferimento trascendente e oltremondano. (da Archiviostorico.info). Ristampa del libro edito da Bulzoni, nel 1976. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the work of Paolo Prodi (1932–2016), which is characterised by a constant reflection on secularisation. As a democratic Catholic, he explored the relationship between the Roman Church and the modern world starting from the Council of Trent and from the dual figure of the pope as a temporal ruler and spiritual guide. His original contribution concerned the conflict between law and conscience: a problem that led him to design a triptych of books on the foundations of the (...) western world. He was influenced not only by Verfassungsgeschichte (German constitutional history), but also by Harold Berman. If for Weber the modern world was born from the Reformation, for Berman it was the ‘Gregorian revolution’ that changed the fate of Latin Europe. For Prodi, too, the medieval conflict between canon and civil law introduced a peculiar structure in Europe that would last until the triumph of the nation states and the so-called ‘political religions’. In his three books (the first dedicated to the oath, the second to justice, the last to economics), Prodi placed at the centre of his analysis the notion of forum; the history of moral theology and casuistry and the relationship between penitence and justice. (shrink)

In his late years, Thomas Kuhn became interested in the process of scientific specialization, which does not seem to possess the destructive element that is characteristic of scientific revolutions. It therefore makes sense to investigate whether and how Kuhn’s insights about specialization are consistent with, and actually fit, his model of scientific progress through revolutions. In this paper, I argue that the transition toward a new specialty corresponds to a revolutionary change for the group of scientists involved in such a (...) transition. I will clarify the role of the scientific community in revolutionary changes and characterize the incommensurability across specialties as possessing both semantic and methodological aspects. The discussion of the discovery of the structure of DNA will serve both as an illustration of my main argument and as reply to one criticism raised against Kuhn—namely, that his model cannot capture cases of revolutionary yet non-disruptive episodes of scientific progress. Revisiting Kuhn’s ideas on specialization will shed new light on some often overlooked features of scientific change. (shrink)

The paper lists several editions of Euclid’s Elements in the Early Modern Age, giving for each of them the axioms and postulates employed to ground elementary mathematics.

In his mature writings, Kuhn describes the process of specialisation as driven by a form of incommensurability, defined as a conceptual/linguistic barrier which promotes and guarantees the insularity of specialties. In this paper, we reject the idea that the incommensurability among scientific specialties is a linguistic barrier. We argue that the problem with Kuhn’s characterisation of the incommensurability among specialties is that he presupposes a rather abstract theory of semantic incommensurability, which he then tries to apply to his description of (...) the process of specialisation. By contrast, this paper follows a different strategy: after criticising Kuhn’s view, it takes a further look at how new scientific specialties emerge. As a result, a different way of understanding incommensurability among specialties will be proposed. (shrink)

We prove that the unification type of Łukasiewicz logic and of its equivalent algebraic semantics, the variety of MV-algebras, is nullary. The proof rests upon Ghilardiʼs algebraic characterisation of unification types in terms of projective objects, recent progress by Cabrer and Mundici in the investigation of projective MV-algebras, the categorical duality between finitely presented MV-algebras and rational polyhedra, and, finally, a homotopy-theoretic argument that exploits lifts of continuous maps to the universal covering space of the circle. We discuss the background (...) to such diverse tools. In particular, we offer a detailed proof of the duality theorem for finitely presented MV-algebras and rational polyhedra—a fundamental result that, albeit known to specialists, seems to appear in print here for the first time. (shrink)

Splicing is an efficient and precise mechanism that removes noncoding regions from a single primary RNA transcript. Cutting and rejoining of the segments occurs on nascent RNA. Trans-splicing between small specialized RNAs and a primary transcript has been known in some organisms but recent papers show that trans-splicing between two RNA molecules containing different coding regions is the normal mode in a Drosophila gene.1-3 The mod(mdg4) gene produces 26 different mRNAs encoding as many protein isoforms. The differences lie in alternative (...) 3′ exons encoded by different transcriptional units and spliced to the 5′ common region by a surprising trans-splicing mechanism. BioEssays 24:988–991, 2002. © 2002 Wiley-Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

We offer a proof of the duality theorem for finitely presented MV-algebras and rational polyhedra, a folklore and yet fundamental result. Our approach develops first a general dual adjunction between MV-algebras and subspaces of Tychonoff cubes, endowed with the transformations that are definable in the language of MV-algebras. We then show that this dual adjunction restricts to a duality between semisimple MV-algebras and closed subspaces of Tychonoff cubes. The duality theorem for finitely presented objects is obtained by a further specialisation. (...) Our treatment is aimed at showing exactly which parts of the basic theory of MV-algebras are needed in order to establish these results, with an eye towards future generalisations. (shrink)

The use of Drosophila chromosomal rearrangements and transposon constructs involving the white gene reveals the existence of repressive chromatin domains that can spread over considerable genomic distances. One such type of domain is found in heterochromatin and is responsible for classical position‐effect variegation. Another type of repressive domain is established, beginning at specific sequences, by complexes of Polycomb Group proteins. Such complexes, which normally regulate the expression of many genes, including the homeotic loci, are responsible for silencing, white gene variegation, (...) pairing‐dependent effects and insertional targeting. (shrink)

: Embryonic stem cells, which have the potential to save many lives, must be recovered from aborted fetuses or live embryos. Although tissue from aborted fetuses can be used without moral complicity in the underlying abortion, obtaining stem cells from embryos necessarily kills them, thus raising difficult questions about the use of embryonic human material to save others. This article draws on previous controversies over embryo research and distinctions between intrinsic and symbolic moral status to analyze these issues. It argues (...) that stem cell research with spare embryos produced during infertility treatment, or even embryos created specifically for research or therapeutic purposes, is ethically acceptable and should receive federal funding. (shrink)

This paper outlines an account of conditionals, the evidential account, which rests on the idea that a conditional is true just in case its antecedent supports its consequent. As we will show, the evidential account exhibits some distinctive logical features that deserve careful consideration. On the one hand, it departs from the material reading of ‘if then’ exactly in the way we would like it to depart from that reading. On the other, it significantly differs from the non-material accounts which (...) hinge on the Ramsey Test, advocated by Adams, Stalnaker, Lewis, and others. (shrink)

Al nominalista non manca proprio nulla? La dispensabilità dell’insieme vuoto in mereologia - Quine’s commitment to nominalism has always required set theory to be replaced by an ontologically less dubious tool for the analysis of predication, one that is usually ABSTRACT Rivista di storia della filosofia, n. 1, 2009 mereological in nature, akin to the Calculus of Individuals he and Goodman developed in a seminal paper on nominalism. The problem Quine himself always acknowledged as central in any such replacement arises (...) with the mereological "translation" of numbers. I show here that Quine’s proposed translation strategy, even when successful, raises even more serious issues since it requires mereology to supply a substitute for the empty set. After proving the indispensability, given Quine’s translation, of such an entity, I demonstrate that an exact mereological replica of the empty set cannot be admitted without engendering contradictions. I conclude by discussing some paraphrases of the usual mereological axioms that prima facie might seem to be compatible with the null object and assessing their implausibility. (shrink)

In his mature works, Kuhn abandons the concept of a paradigm and becomes more interested in the analysis of the conceptual structure of scientific theories. These changes are interpreted as resulting from a ‘linguistic turn’ that Kuhn underwent sometimes around the 1980s. Much of the philosophical discussions about Kuhn’s post-‘linguistic turn’ philosophy revolves around his views on taxonomic concepts. Apart from taxonomy, however, the mature Kuhn introduces other concepts, such as conceptual networks and lexicons. This article distinguishes these three concepts (...) and shows that adopting each one of them has different impacts on Kuhn’s model of science. After distinguishing and assessing the concepts of taxonomy, network, and lexicon, it will be argued that the latter not only fits the Kuhnian model of science better, but it also helps capture the wide sense of Kuhn’s early concept of a paradigm. (shrink)

The problem of artificial precision is a major objection to any theory of vagueness based on real numbers as degrees of truth. Suppose you are willing to admit that, under sufficiently specified circumstances, a predication of “is red” receives a unique, exact number from the real unit interval [0, 1]. You should then be committed to explain what is it that determines that value, settling for instance that my coat is red to degree 0.322 rather than 0.321. In this note (...) I revisit the problem in the important case of Łukasiewicz infinite-valued propositional logic that brings to the foreground the rôle of maximally consistent theories. I argue that the problem of artificial precision, as commonly conceived of in the literature, actually conflates two distinct problems of a very different nature. (shrink)

This book discusses a range of crimes of the powerless as well as crimes of the powerful. Against conventional analysis of criminal behaviour as a result of social disadvantage, unemployment, or lack of resources, the author argues that abundance of opportunities and resources may lead to specific forms of criminality. The originality of this book lies in its joint analysis of `crimes in the street' and `crimes of the elite'.

This book examines the origin, philosophy and achievements of abolitionism and reviews the literature on penal abolitionism from the 1960s to the 1980s.

The three languages employed by the scientist, the artist, and the objective observer are interpreted in terms of each other using the latest developments in neuroscience and psychoanalysis in an attempt to create a meta-language with sufficient depth to comprehend the nature of the human mind.

This article aims at sketching a philosophical theory of sound based on the perspective of sound designers: unique agents blurring the boundaries between engineering, music, acoustics and sound-based art. After having introduced the general framing in Section 1, focusing on a short history of the theory and practice of sound design, in Section 2 we propose a reading of sound as monad. We derive such intuition from the technology of digital sampling of audio signals, based on the decomposition of complex (...) sound waves in a number of elementary sinusoidal waves. Thus, in Section 3, we attempt at grounding the resulting “sound-atom” on Leibniz’s notion of monad, intended both as a “simple substance without parts” and as a “nucleus of forces in statu possibilitatis.” The insight is resumed and further discussed in Section 4, where we draw our conclusions by demonstrating the fitness of such framing with regards to the standpoint of sound design, while accounting for the work of sound artists Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda. (shrink)

Designing a pension system is both a complex endeavor and a long lasting legacy. Complexity stems from the many trade-offs that conceiving a pension system entail and from how these initial decisions affect the social and economic behavioral responses of workers and retirees. Policy-makers planning a pension system have to evaluate its internal economic consistency, but also these feedbacks. Economic and demographic models that allow a quantitative evaluation of these costs and benefits are required. More than ever at the initial (...) stage of design, since pension systems are persistent. Yet, pension systems are not monolith, but living entities that change over time. Some of these modifications are produced by individuals’ reactions to incentives built in the system, and need to be foreseen during the initial planning. Other changes are induced by reform measures and constitute the policy responses to unpredicted exogenous shocks – such as population aging. Re-designing the pension system to cope with new demands, while being limited by existing constraints, is a difficult task. Recent reforms of the Italian pension system are discussed in detail to highlight the policy trade-offs and the economic motivations behind the decision of the reform policies. (shrink)

Researchers agree on ascribing the De incarnatione Christi contra Apollinarium and the De salutari epiphania contra Apollinarium to two different authors, who probably shared the same theological education. The latter not only uses a mature theological style but shows a better knowledge of Apollinarius of Laodicea and his disciples’ writings. Even though the two authors try to demonstrate the presence of a perfect humanity in Christ, against Apollinarian thought, we can find some important differences in their works concerning the topic (...) of the impeccabilitas of Christ and the relationship between sin and freedom. They explain in a different way the theory of salvation according to Apollinarius: while according to the author of De incarnatione Christi contra Apollinarium the man can save himself through the imitation of Christ, for the other writer salvation has been accomplished only because Christ is devoid of any trace of sin. (shrink)