Franco Eugeni remembers Bruno Rizzi: in this brief introduction, I would like to remember an afternoon spent in “ Roma Tre ” with Bruno, since we were both Ordinary Professors at that University. We passed it doing a dense program of work for the next three years. At 6.00 pm, I left for “Roseto degli Abruzzi”. At six o'clock a.m. of the next morning, I still have the voice in my ears. A phone call from the Headmaster Ciro (...) d'Aniello, who told me " The Professor is dead" In that afternoon, Emilio Ambrisi and I went to Rome; we were stunned and desperate. Not many days later, a conference was held at the University of Teramo; it was the conference that we had prepared for Bruno, to celebrate his 60th birthday, but it was his memory. In the opening conference, Prof. Antonino Giambo, also fraternal friend of Bruno, burst into a tearful cry, which expressed in a moment, the senses of friendship and love that we all had for the missing friend! Starting from this work with Fabrizio Maturo, the study of some problems left open by the works of Eugeni and Rizzi will be investigated. Sunto Ricordo di Franco Eugeni su Bruno Rizzi: in questa brevissima introduzione vorrei ricordare un pomeriggio passato a Roma Tre con Bruno, visto che allora eravamo entrambi Professori Ordinari in quella Università. Lo passammo a fare un denso programma di lavoro per i successivi tre anni. Alle 18.00 ripartii per Roseto degli Abruzzi. Alle sei del mattino successivo, ho ancora la voce nelle orecchie, una telefonata del Preside Ciro d’Aniello, che mi diceva “ Il Professore è morto” Nel pomeriggio Emilio Ambrisi ed io ci recammo a Roma, eravamo attoniti e disperati. Non molti giorni dopo si tenne presso l’Università di Teramo un Convegno, era il Convegno che avevamo preparato per Bruno, per festeggiare i suoi 60 anni, fu invece il ricordo. Nella conferenza di apertura il prof. Antonino Giambò, anche lui, come noi, fraterno amico di Bruno, scoppiò in un pianto dirotto, che espresse in un attimo, i sensi dell’amicizia e dell’amore, che tutti noi avevamo per l’amico scomparso! A partire da questo lavoro con Fabrizio Maturo verrà approfondito lo studio di alcune problematiche rimaste aperte dai lavori di Eugeni e Rizzi. (shrink)

Our goal is to prove that the golden section, however important, is not the only key to understand a mathematical-formalizing approach to the idea of beauty. Having developed, from this point of view, reading keys linked to the post-modern, it is necessary to link together the multiple rivulets of knowledge that gather in this direction. Moreover the canons of the approaches presented up to now are very indicative for the understanding of many aspects of beauty, which however depends on the (...) historical moment and the cultures created in the various civilizations. Therefore we can affirm that there is no effective definition of "beauty" that can be codified through fixed canons, but that the concept is expressed by a series of stratifications and interpretations that tend to link several major variations, expressing the various answers given by man to the question: what is the beauty? (shrink)

Our goal is to prove that the golden section, however important, is not the only key to understand a mathematical-formalizing approach to the idea of beauty. Having developed, from this point of view, reading keys linked to the post-modern, it is necessary to link together the multiple rivulets of knowledge that gather in this direction. Moreover the canons of the approaches presented up to now are very indicative for the understanding of many aspects of beauty, which however depends on the (...) historical moment and the cultures created in the various civilizations. Therefore we can affirm that there is no effective definition of "beauty" that can be codified through fixed canons, but that the concept is expressed by a series of stratifications and interpretations that tend to link several major variations, expressing the various answers given by man to the question: what is the beauty? (shrink)

Our goal is to prove that the golden section, however important, is not the only key to understand a mathematical-formalizing approach to the idea of beauty. Having developed, from this point of view, reading keys linked to the post-modern, it is necessary to link together the multiple rivulets of knowledge that gather in this direction. Moreover the canons of the approaches presented up to now are very indicative for the understanding of many aspects of beauty, which however depends on the (...) historical moment and the cultures created in the various civilizations. Therefore we can affirm that there is no effective definition of "beauty" that can be codified through fixed canons, but that the concept is expressed by a series of stratifications and interpretations that tend to link several major variations, expressing the various answers given by man to the question: what is the beauty? (shrink)

BackgroundIn Parkinson's disease, the side of motor symptoms onset may influence disease progression, with a faster motor symptom progression in patients with left side lateralization. Moreover, worse neuropsychological outcomes after subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation have been described in patients with predominantly left-sided motor symptoms. The objective of this study was to evaluate if the body side of motor symptoms onset may predict motor outcome of bilateral STN-DBS.MethodsThis retrospective study included all consecutive PD patients treated with bilateral STN-DBS at Grenoble (...) University Hospital from 1993 to 2015. Demographic, clinical and neuroimaging data were collected before and 1 year after surgery. The predictive factors of motor outcome at one-year follow-up, measured by the percentage change in the MDS-UPDRS-III score, were evaluated through univariate and multivariate linear regression analysis.ResultsA total of 233 patients were included with one-year follow-up after surgery [143 males ; 121 right body onset; 112 left body onset; mean age at surgery, 55.31 ± 8.44 years; mean disease duration, 11.61 ± 3.87]. Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that the left side of motor symptoms onset did not predict motor outcome.ConclusionsIn this retrospective study, the body side of motor symptoms onset did not significantly influence the one-year motor outcome in a large cohort of PD patients treated with bilateral STN-DBS. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that questions about which mathematical ideas mathematicians are exposed to and choose to pay attention to are epistemologically relevant and entangled with power dynamics and social justice concerns. There is a considerable body of literature that discusses the dissemination and uptake of ideas as social justice issues. We argue that these insights are also relevant for the epistemology of mathematics. We make this visible by a journalistic exploration of relevant cases and embed our insights into (...) the larger question how mathematical ideas are taken up in mathematical practices. We argue that epistemologies of mathematics ought to account for questions of exposure to and choice of attention to mathematical ideas, and remark on the political relevance of such epistemologies. (shrink)

In _Life-Destroying Diagrams_, Eugenie Brinkema brings the insights of her radical formalism to bear on supremely risky terrain: the ethical extremes of horror and love. Through close readings of works of film, literature, and philosophy, she explores how diagrams, grids, charts, lists, abecedaria, toroids, tempos, patterns, colors, negative space, lengths, increments, and thresholds attest to formal logics of torture and cruelty, violence and finitude, friendship and eros, debt and care. Beginning with a wholesale rethinking of the affect of horror, orienting (...) it away from entrenched models of feeling toward impersonal schemes and structures, Brinkema moves outward to consider the relation between objects and affects, humiliation and metaphysics, genre and the general, bodily destruction and aesthetic generation, geometry and scenography, hatred and value, love and measurement, and, ultimately, the tensions, hazards, and speculative promise of formalism itself. Replete with etymological meditations, performative typography, and lyrical digressions, _Life-Destroying Diagrams_ is at once a model of reading without guarantee and a series of generative experiments in the writing of aesthetic theory. (shrink)

La réflexion sur l’éthique et la déontologie des médias en Afrique de l’Ouest suscite diverses questions. Il convient d’abord de clarifier les concepts pour alimenter le débat qui a ses moments forts, notamment pendant les périodes électorales.D’un côté, les professionnels de l’information, les acteurs des médias mettent l’accent sur la nécessaire liberté de la presse et peuvent être en porte-à-faux dans leur pratique avec la philosophie et les règles de la profession. D’un autre côté, différentes institutions, que ce soit les (...) institutions gouvernementales, la société civile ou de « simples » citoyens, s’appuient sur les médias, mais les interpellent au sujet d’une liberté qui ne saurait être sans responsabilité.Il s’agira donc de contextualiser l’environnement d’intervention des médias et d’examiner les réponses données aux problèmes posés y compris par les citoyens dans leurs rapports aux médias. La mise en place d’une législation et de structures institutionnelles – que ce soit les organes de régulation, dans leur diversité, ou de manière plus problématique, les organes d’autorégulation ou le tribunal des pairs – montre qu’il existe une dynamique à prendre en compte dans le dévelop­pement des médias en Afrique de l’Ouest.Enfin, nous nous attaquerons à quelques défis, qu’il s’agisse de la formation des professionnels, de la pratique des médias en période de conflit ou des technologies de l’information et de la communication, pour montrer que l’éthique et la déontologie sont au cœur du développement démocratique en Afrique de l’Ouest et en sont un élément constitutif. (shrink)

(2009). To cut, to split, to touch, to eat, as of a body or a text. Angelaki: Vol. 14, shadows of cruelty sadism, masochism and the philosophical muse – part one, pp. 131-145.

1. La filosofia antica-India, Cina, Grecia -- 2. La filosofia tardo-antica e medioevale: ebraismo, cristianesimo, islamismo -- 3.1. La filosofia moderna: umanesimo, Riforma, rivoluzione scientifica (1350-1715) -- 3.2. La filosofia moderna: illuminismo, criticismo, idealismo (1715-1815) -- 4.1. La filosofia contemporanea: scientismi, sroticismi, irrazionalismi -- 4.2. La filosofia contemporanea: filosofie analitiche e continentali.

This article explores the role of disgust in Kant’s aesthetic philosophy, Derrida’s deconstruction of Kant’s third Critique in his article 'Economimesis,' and the figure of vomit in two films by David Lynch in order to argue for the ethical possibilities of not giving ground relative to one’s disgust—what I term an ethics of the worse than the worst.

Volume 10, Issue 3, September 2019, Page 457-461.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.1 (2004) 87-94 [Access article in PDF] Talk and the Nature of Delusions:Defending Sociocultural Perspectives on Mental Illness Eugenie Georgaca Keywords discourse, social constructionism, delusions, psychosis, mental illness, context It is very pleasing to see writers from philosophy, psychiatry and psychology, the three disciplines represented by this journal, debating the issue of delusions. The majority of the papers in this volume set out to determine (...) the underlying mechanisms responsible for delusions. As such, they offer themselves as discussions of the etiological factors of the formation and maintenance of delusions. My paper analyzes the interactional presentation and negotiation of statements that would be considered as delusional. This led some commentators (Ghaemi 2004; Sass 2004) to argue that the analysis of talk about delusions is useful, but cannot be extended to claims about the nature of delusions. In the following section, I discuss the ways in which analyzing interactions can be useful in clinical research and practice. Subsequently, I identify and critically discuss the assumptions about the nature of delusions that underlie these criticisms and the majority of the papers in this volume. The Usefulness of the Study of Interaction My paper can be seen as part of a growing body of studies that attempt to elucidate the role of interactional and discursive processes in the identification and management of disorders (Barrett 1988; Coulter 1975; Hak 1989; Pollner 1975; Smith 1978; Soyland 1994). Microsociological and ethnographic studies look at the properties of client-professional interaction with the aim of clarifying the tacit skills and knowledges used in such encounters. Palmer (2000), for example, argues that the recognition of disorder is a social and interactional issue both in the sense that the judgment of disorder is based on social criteria and in the sense that diagnosis is an interpersonal process with its own inherent social order. The aim, therefore, of analyzing professional-client interactions would be to articulate the properties of this implicit social order. Other researchers argue that diagnosis is not a process of identification or recognition of disorder, but rather a process of active construction of disorder and of transforming the person to a mental patient. Barrett's (1988) analysis of the transformation of a [End Page 87] person to a "person suffering from schizophrenia" and subsequently a "schizophrenic" through interviewing and report writing is an excellent example of this kind of work.The application of this approach to the field of delusions would attempt to address the issue of how delusions are diagnosed and managed through the interactions between the delusional patient and the clinician. In this paper and in previous work (Georgaca 1996, 2000) I showed that statements that have been diagnosed as delusional are presented and argued through using appropriate conversational strategies, drawing on socially meaningful systems of knowledge and applying appropriate rules of evidence. Moreover, I argued that there was no way in which these disagreements over competing versions of reality could be definitely settled conversationally, and that instances of breakdown in communication were due not to the delusional version being proven wrong, but to lack of explanatory frameworks within which the competing versions could be negotiated. At least in the exchanges analyzed, the criteria of implausibility, conviction, and incorrigibility were shown not to apply.Clinicians do not customarily investigate the truth of patient claims against empirical data (Maher 1992), which means that they have to judge claims on the basis of the patient's presentation in the diagnostic interview. Because there are no technical guidelines for the assessment of truth and falsity, plausibility and implausibility, rationality and irrationality, clinicians have to rely on personal judgment. The question then is on what grounds the clinician's personal judgment is granted the status of determining the truth of someone else's claim and in what capacity clinicians are called to make such decisions. I will not pursue this argument any further here. The point I want to make is that the analysis of professional-client interactions foregrounds the active role of professionals in clinical decisions and questions the criteria upon which decisions are... (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses the discourses produced on their websites by the two organisations that conducted the official ‘leave’ and ‘remain’ campaigns in the Brexit referendum. The analysis, whi...

According to social constructionism factuality, the establishment of accounts as corresponding to an objective external reality, is an interactional accomplishment ordinarily achieved in everyday conversations. In cases of disagreement regarding the interpretation and nature of events, however, not only the plausibility of the account, but also the rationality, integrity, and accountability of the participants is at stake. Delusions present extreme cases of such disagreement. This paper analyzes extracts from an interview with an individual diagnosed as delusional focusing on the factualization (...) devices used in the negotiation of accounts. The question of whether the observation of conversational rules documented in the interview is sufficient to establish the plausibility of an account and the rationality of its teller leads to arguments around the necessity of shifting the focus from the grounded micro-analysis of talk to wider social and institutional processes. (shrink)

All logic instruments and tools in possession of, and used by researchers are generally considered as the results of bivalent logic. A common error to people interested in science is that, usually, they don’t known with certainty which things are true and which are false. But they are sure that things are true or false. No ways in the middle. The fuzzy principle asserts that this is completely a question of measure. Fuzziness is the opposite concept to bivalency, while fuzzy (...) quality means polyvalency. Fuzzy logic is able to manage uncertain knowledge and, more precisely, to manage those rules difficult to formalize. In many cases, such rules haven’t got, or cannot have, the necessary precision, required for a whole formalization. (shrink)

Volume 16, Issue 4, September 2019, Page 381-388.

An examination of new forms of alienation in our never-off, plugged-in culture—and a clarion call for a “conspiracy of estranged people.” We can reach every point in the world but, more importantly, we can be reached from any point in the world. Privacy and its possibilities are abolished. Attention is under siege everywhere. Not silence but uninterrupted noise, not the red desert, but a cognitive space overcharged with nervous incentives to act: this is the alienation of our times... —from The (...) Soul at Work Capital has managed to overcome the dualism of body and soul by establishing a workforce in which everything we mean by the Soul—language, creativity, affects—is mobilized for its own benefit. Industrial production put to work bodies, muscles, and arms. Now, in the sphere of digital technology and cyberculture, exploitation involves the mind, language, and emotions in order to generate value—while our bodies disappear in front of our computer screens. In this, his newest book, Franco “Bifo” Berardi—key member of the Italian Autonomist movement and a close associate of Félix Guattari—addresses these new forms of estrangement. In the philosophical landscape of the 1960s and 1970s, the Hegelian concept of alienation was used to define the harnessing of subjectivity. The estrangement of workers from their labor, the feeling of alienation they experienced, and their refusal to submit to it became the bases for a human community that remained autonomous from capital. But today a new condition of alienation has taken root in which workers commonly and voluntarily work overtime, the population is tethered to cell phones and Blackberries, debt has become a postmodern form of slavery, and antidepressants are commonly used to meet the unending pressure of production. As a result, the conditions for community have run aground and new philosophical categories are needed. The Soul at Work is a clarion call for a new collective effort to reclaim happiness. The Soul at Work is Bifo's long overdue introduction to English-speaking readers. This Semiotext edition is also the book's first appearance in any language. (shrink)

This paper provides a historical reevaluation of the originality and implications of Avempace's critique of Aristotle's causal explanation of the motion of projectiles. It also offers a serious revision of the place which has usually been assigned to Avempace in the history of science. The views regarding projectiles defended in Avempace's Arabic commentary are in sharp opposition to the anti-Aristotelian Avempace that was known in the Medieval West through Averroes. Avempace's commentary reveals only a moderate critic of Aristotle, a critic (...) who did not, in any case, break with the master, and who, therefore, did not even go as far as Philoponus in creating a new and more profound theory of projectile motion. (shrink)