IntroductionAnorexia nervosa promotes psychological distress in caregivers who adopt different coping strategies. Dysfunctional caregiving styles exacerbate further distress in the patient promoting the maintenance of the illness. We aimed to assess the possible contribution of personality traits of caregivers to the adoption of different coping strategies to deal with the affected relative.MethodsAbout 87 adolescents with AN were recruited. Their parents completed the Family Coping Questionnaire for Eating Disorders and the Temperament and Character Inventory-Revised. Differences between mothers and fathers were assessed (...) through the independent sample t-test. Multivariate regression analyses were run to assess if personality traits, the occurrence of psychiatry conditions in the parents, the marital status, and the duration of the illness predicted parental coping strategies.ResultsThe group of mothers showed higher levels of avoidance and seeking for information coping strategies than the sample of fathers. Lower illness duration predicted higher collusion with the illness in both parents. Harm avoidance, cooperativeness, and self-directedness positively predicted parental coercion, collusion, and seeking for information strategies with some differences between mothers and fathers.DiscussionIllness duration and personality traits of parents affect the type of parental coping strategies developed to face AN in adolescents. These variables should be considered in the assessment of families of adolescents with AN and may be addressed to promote more fine-tuned clinical interventions for caregivers. (shrink)

Over the past decade, research has revealed biomolecular condensates' relevance in diverse cellular functions. Through a phase separation process, they concentrate macromolecules in subcompartments shaping the cellular organization and physiology. In the nucleus, biomolecular condensates assemble relevant biomolecules that orchestrate gene expression. We here hypothesize that chromatin condensates can also modulate the nongenetic functions of the genome, including the nuclear mechanical properties. The importance of chromatin condensates is supported by the genetic evidence indicating that mutations in their members are causative (...) of a group of rare Mendelian diseases named chromatinopathies (CPs). Despite a broad spectrum of clinical features and the perturbations of the epigenetic machinery characterizing the CPs, recent findings highlighted negligible changes in gene expression. These data argue in favor of possible noncanonical functions of chromatin condensates in regulating the genome's spatial organization and, consequently, the nuclear mechanics. In this review, we discuss how condensates may impact nuclear mechanical properties, thus affecting the cellular response to mechanical cues and, eventually, cell fate and identity.Chromatin condensates organize macromolecules in the nucleus orchestrating the transcription regulation and mutations in their members are responsible for rare diseases named chromatinopathies. We argue that chromatin condensates, in concert with the nuclear lamina, may also govern the nuclear mechanical properties affecting the cellular response to external cues. (shrink)

El hombre posmoderno es un Narciso en busca de su identidad. La evaporación del Padre ha camiado las dinámicas en relación con el Otro y la capacidad de construir una propia identidad tiene que recurrir a los objetos de consumo. En este estudio se propone un camino que va desde la teoría clásica del Psicoanálisis hasta una nueva perspectiva que entra en el campo del Márketing y del estudio de objeto de consumo.

Théophile De Donder, a Belgian mathematician born in Brussels, elaborated two important ideas that created a bridge between thermodynamics and chemical kinetics. He invented the concept of the degree of advancement of a reaction, and, in 1922, he provided a precise mathematical form to the already known chemical affinity by translating Clausius’s uncompensated heat into formal language. These concepts merge in an important inequality that was the starting point for the formalization of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. The present article aims to reconstruct (...) how De Donder elaborated his ideas and developed them by exploring his teaching activity and its connection with his scientific production. Furthermore, it emphasizes the role played by the discussions with his disciples who became his collaborators. The paper analyzes De Donder’s efforts in participating in the second Solvay Chemistry Council in 1925 to call the attention of chemists to his mathematical approach. We explain why his work did not receive much attention at the time, and how, despite this, his formalization of chemical affinity became the basis for the birth of the so-called Brussels school of thermodynamics. (shrink)

The relationship between traumatic life events and increased suicide risk has been well reported in literature. However, the complex nature of suicidality phenomena still hinders our ability to comprehend the mediation mechanism underlying this association. In this study, we examined the mediating role of adult attachment and reflective functioning in the relationship between traumatic life events and suicidal ideation. Nine hundred and fifty Italian adults completed an online survey evaluating traumatic life events, adult attachment, reflective functioning and suicidal ideation. The (...) path analysis showed that the positive relationship between traumatic life events and suicidal ideation was partially mediated by attachment anxiety and reflective functioning. From a clinical point of view, these results support the relevance of evaluating and improving patients’ ability to mentalize as a part of psychotherapeutic intervention aimed at reducing suicidality in people with a history of traumatic experiences and attachment anxiety. (shrink)

ORCA.IT, a new online test of online research and comprehension was developed for the Italian population. A group of 183 students attending various types of upper secondary schools in Northern Italy were tested with the new tool and underwent further cognitive and neuropsychological assessment. The different school types involved in the study are representative of the school population in the Italian system, but can also be easily compared with the educational systems of other countries. The new test turned out to (...) have good psychometric properties after accurate item construction and final selection. In particular, Version 1 showed better characteristics than Version 2. Subsequently, comparison with one-way ANOVAs were performed to test whether differences exist between different school types, between groups with and without reading difficulties, and between males and females. Such differences are sometimes reported in the literature, but many remain controversial. Further, Pearson’s bivariate correlations were calculated to analyze associations between scores on the ORCA.IT and cognitive/neuropsychological variables. Finally, a stepwise regression analysis was performed on aggregated scores to identify the predictors of performance on each of the two versions, The test, especially in the most complete version (Version 1), appears to accurately and reliably capture students’ web searching abilities and online reading comprehension. The tool could highlight differences in online search and comprehension ability between students with and without reading difficulties, not penalizing overall performance but allowing very specific weaknesses to be pointed out. Further, it seems to be able to capture differences due to both educational pathways (different school types) and social attitudes (differences between males and females). Most interesting, it shows to be clearly resting on specific cognitive and neuropsychological abilities, including language, memory and attentional skills, which explain a large portion of the total variance. Offline text reading comprehension is a crucial predictor of online reading performance, while decoding ability is not. Prior knowledge also influences the results, as expected. The new tool turns out to be rather independent from previous internet experience and to measure more cognitively grounded processes related to information gathering, processing and communicating. (shrink)

This article analyses the intellectual and political trajectory of the Pasado y Presente group in Argentina, focusing on its main representative, José María Aricó (1931–91). Although usually described as ‘the Argentine Gramscians’, the ‘Gramscianism’ of the Pasado y Presente group was actually little more than a theoretical cover for its erratic political behaviour, which led them from Stalinism to Guevarism, from Guevarism to Maoism, from Maoism to Montoneros’s branch of Peronism, and from Peronism to Alfonsín’s Radicalism. Politically, their weakest point (...) was that they distanced themselves from Stalinism empirically, because of the popularity of foquism, without undertaking a thorough critique of Stalinism. This made them vulnerable to the ubsequent crisis of Stalinism, which they identified with a ‘crisis of Marxism’ sans phrase. What made them historically significant was that they articulated the radicalisation of a whole social layer in Latin America under the impact of the Cuban Revolution, as well as its subsequent deradicalisation and adaptation to bourgeois parliamentary democracy. The article closes with an analysis of Aricó’s intellectual legacy, particularly his well-known book Marx y América Latina (1980). (shrink)

We investigate an extension of the formalism of interpreted systems by Halpern and colleagues to model the correct behaviour of agents. The semantical model allows for the representation and reasoning about states of correct and incorrect functioning behaviour of the agents, and of the system as a whole. We axiomatise this semantic class by mapping it into a suitable class of Kripke models. The resulting logic, KD45ni-j, is a stronger version of KD, the system often referred to as Standard Deontic (...) Logic. We extend this formal framework to include the standard epistemic notions defined on interpreted systems, and introduce a new doubly-indexed operator representing the knowledge that an agent would have if it operates under the assumption that a group of agents is functioning correctly. We discuss these issues both theoretically and in terms of applications, and present further directions of work. (shrink)

Sleep and dreaming are important daily phenomena that are receiving growing attention from both the scientific and the philosophical communities. The increasingly popular predictive brain framework within cognitive science aims to give a full account of all aspects of cognition. The aim of this paper is to critically assess the theoretical advantages of Predictive Processing (PP, as proposed by Clark 2013, Clark 2016; and Hohwy 2013) in defining sleep and dreaming. After a brief introduction, we overview the state of the (...) art at the intersection between dream research and PP (with particular reference to Hobson and Friston 2012; Hobson et al. 2014). In the following sections we focus on two theoretically promising aspects of the research program. First, we consider the explanations of phenomenal consciousness during sleep (i.e. dreaming) and how it arises from the neural work of the brain. PP provides a good picture of the peculiarity of dreaming but it can’t fully address the problem of how consciousness comes to be in the first place. We propose that Integrated Information Theory (IIT) (Oizumi et al. 2014; Tononi et al. 2016) is a good candidate for this role and we will show its advantages and points of contact with PP. After introducing IIT, we deal with the evolutionary function of sleeping and dreaming. We illustrate that PP fits with contemporary researches on the important adaptive function of sleep and we discuss why IIT can account for sleep mentation (i.e. dreaming) in evolutionary terms (Albantakis et al. 2014). In the final section, we discuss two future avenues for dream research that can fruitfully adopt the perspective offered by PP: (a) the role of bodily predictions in the constitution of the sleeping brain activity and the dreaming experience, and (b) the precise role of the difference stages of sleep (REM (Rapid eye movement), NREM (Non-rapid eye movement) in the constitution and refinement of the predictive machinery. (shrink)

In an effort to produce new and more sustainable technologies, designers have turned to nature in search of inspiration and innovation. Biomimetic design (from the Greek bios, life, mimesis, imitation) is the conscious imitation of biological models to solve today's technical and ecological challenges. Nowadays numerous different approaches exist that take inspiration from nature as a model for design, such as biomimicry, biomimetics, bionics, permaculture, ecological engineering, etc. This variety of practices comes in turn with a wide range of different (...) promises, including sustainability, increased resilience, multi-functionality, and a lower degree of risk. How are we to make sense of this heterogeneous amalgam of existing practices and technologies, and of the numerous promises attached to them? We suggest that a typology of biomimetic approaches would provide a useful hermeneutic framework to understand the different tensions that pull this variegated landscape in different directions. This is achieved through a critical analysis of the literature in different fields of biomimetic design and the philosophy of biomimicry, in order to derive conceptual and normative assumptions concerning the meaning and value of the imitation of nature. These two dimensions are then intersected to derive an analytical grid composed of six different biomimetic types, which enable the classification of existing and possible biomimetic approaches, practices, and technologies according to their specific conceptual assumptions and guiding norms. (shrink)

This paper assesses Michael Brady’s claim that the ‘capture and consumption of attention’ in an emotion facilitates evaluative understanding. It argues that emotional attention is epistemically deleterious on its own, even though it can be beneficial in conjunction with the right epistemic skills and motivations. The paper considers Sartre’s and Solomon’s claim that emotions have purposes, respectively, to circumvent difficulty or maximize self-esteem. While this appeal to purposes is problematic, it suggests a promising alternative conception of how emotions can be (...) teleological. The fact that emotional attention manifests dispositions, which have been habituated by repeated association with pleasure or relief, explains how the emotion can acquire the function of producing pleasure or relief. Hence, the emotion can have ‘non-cognitive function,’ in which its patterns of attention reliably produce beliefs that disregard or distort the truth. Not only is non-cognitive function the default condition of emotion prior to any training, but even those who have successfully trained their emotions often revert back to non-cognitive function when faced with trauma or stress. (shrink)

Razón, poesía, historia.--La cuestión del estoicismo español.--El querer.

Social research, from economics to demography and epidemiology, makes extensive use of statistical models in order to establish causal relations. The question arises as to what guarantees the causal interpretation of such models. In this paper we focus on econometrics and advance the view that causal models are ‘augmented’ statistical models that incorporate important causal information which contributes to their causal interpretation. The primary objective of this paper is to argue that causal claims are established on the basis of a (...) plurality of evidence. We discuss the consequences of ‘evidential pluralism’ in the context of econometric modelling. (shrink)

Many have thought that exercises of skill are intentional. The argument of the paper is that this thesis fails to account for important types of mistakes and errors. In what psychologists and linguists call “verbal slips with semantic bias”, a speaker mistakenly switches, reverses, or blends certain conceptual contents. Nevertheless, the speaker has successfully exercised an intellectual skill, insofar as her slip uses concepts in conformity to semantic and logical rules. To flesh out how one might successfully exercise skills without (...) doing so intentionally, the paper appeals to the idea of habit. Verbal slips thus show how human skillfulness has a considerably wider scope than is often supposed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Three Poems on MemoryAlessio ZanelliMICROCHIMERISMI feel them,the way I feel the stardust seeping through my skin.I feel them in the light and in the dark,in absolute silence and in deafening noise,in peaceful days and in gloomy days,while awake and while asleep.They whisper to me who I am,where I came from and where I'm headed.They uphold mewhen my body falters or my mind breaks down.I feel them loud and cleareven (...) though turmoil surrounds me,and I wonder whether she can feel them in turn,wherever she is now.And if our swapped cells don't do the job,I'm sure we'll join anewas waves afloat in spacetime,liminal ripples invisibly entwinedthat eternally propagate within the whole,within the cosmic womb astir with zillions more. [End Page 465]TIMEHanging on in quiet desperation—Roger Waters1They were right. We would get to know the hoax.They had ridden the carousel before.The swallows have always been returning,only fewer with every passing year,though they have never really gone away.Now they speak to me in dreams, one by one.The time has come. To regret time. And all.We are drops off the stalactites of time,settling the concretions of memory.And the sun burns on. Up and down around. [End Page 466]WHIFFSLight has no edge, darkness has no center, both have shape.They visit with me briefly, quick life whiffs,between a misty trip into nowhere and the next.They speak a few words, terse phrases,neat like scratches of diamond over limestone,in a forgotten lively voice,from a time long before they left.I gather nothing, mostly, no real sense.I retrieve a very distant memory, every so often,as if arising from yesterday.They hardly show themselves while speaking,and when they do I can but have a fleeting glance.Their face shines upon an invisible body,illuminates the whole ambience,belongs in an older past,not the last I have known with them.It is a face from youth,one I am allowed to recall only when they appear.Why do they come if they cannot stay?How is it they take the long way around?What do they mean?Maybe youth is the message.Maybe they just want me to thinkI have been young, we all have, together.There could be more I miss, I must still realize.I may do one day, or never, but it is already enough.A few words and a face.A darting glow.Whiffs.Edge has light, center has darkness, both have no shape.Cremona, ItalyAlessio ZanelliCremona, ItalyFootnotes1. Pink Floyd, "Time," by Roger Waters, on The Dark Side of the Moon, Abbey Road Studios, originally released 1973.Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Whereas geometrical oppositions (logical squares and hexagons) have been so far investigated in many fields of modal logic (both abstract and applied), the oppositional geometrical side of “deontic logic” (the logic of “obligatory”, “forbidden”, “permitted”, . . .) has rather been neglected. Besides the classical “deontic square” (the deontic counterpart of Aristotle’s “logical square”), some interesting attempts have nevertheless been made to deepen the geometrical investigation of the deontic oppositions: Kalinowski (La logique des normes, PUF, Paris, 1972) has proposed a (...) “deontic hexagon” as being the geometrical representation of standard deontic logic, whereas Joerden (jointly with Hruschka, in Archiv für Rechtsund Sozialphilosophie 73:1, 1987), McNamara (Mind 105:419, 1996) and Wessels (Die gute Samariterin. Zur Struktur der Supererogation, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 2002) have proposed some new “deontic polygons” for dealing with conservative extensions of standard deontic logic internalising the concept of “supererogation”. Since 2004 a new formal science of the geometrical oppositions inside logic has appeared, that is “ n -opposition theory”, or “NOT”, which relies on the notion of “logical bi-simplex of dimension m ” ( m = n − 1). This theory has received a complete mathematical foundation in 2008, and since then several extensions. In this paper, by using it, we show that in standard deontic logic there are in fact many more oppositional deontic figures than Kalinowski’s unique “hexagon of norms” (more ones, and more complex ones, geometrically speaking: “deontic squares”, “deontic hexagons”, “deontic cubes”, . . ., “deontic tetraicosahedra”, . . .): the real geometry of the oppositions between deontic modalities is composed by the aforementioned structures (squares, hexagons, cubes, . . ., tetraicosahedra and hyper-tetraicosahedra), whose complete mathematical closure happens in fact to be a “deontic 5-dimensional hyper-tetraicosahedron” (an oppositional very regular solid). (shrink)

According to an influential line of thought, from the assumption that indeterminism makes future contingents neither true nor false, one can conclude that assertions of future contingents are never permissible. This conclusion, however, fails to recognize that we ordinarily assert future contingents even when we take the future to be unsettled. Several attempts have been made to solve this puzzle, either by arguing that, albeit truth-valueless, future contingents can be correctly assertable, or by rejecting the claim that future contingents are (...) truth-valueless. The paper examines three of most representative accounts in line with the first attempt, and concludes that none of them succeed in providing a persuasive answer as to why we felicitously assert future contingents. (shrink)

The logical hexagon (or hexagon of opposition) is a strange, yet beautiful, highly symmetrical mathematical figure, mysteriously intertwining fundamental logical and geometrical features. It was discovered more or less at the same time (i.e. around 1950), independently, by a few scholars. It is the successor of an equally strange (but mathematically less impressive) structure, the “logical square” (or “square of opposition”), of which it is a much more general and powerful “relative”. The discovery of the former did not raise interest, (...) neither among logicians, nor among philosophers of logic, whereas the latter played a very important theoretical role (both for logic and philosophy) for nearly two thousand years, before falling in disgrace in the first half of the twentieth century: it was, so to say, “sentenced to death” by the so-called analytical philosophers and logicians. Contrary to this, since 2004 a new, unexpected promising branch of mathematics (dealing with “oppositions”) has appeared, “oppositional geometry” (also called “n-opposition theory”, “NOT”), inside which the logical hexagon (as well as its predecessor, the logical square) is only one term of an infinite series of “logical bi-simplexes of dimension m”, itself just one term of the more general infinite series (of series) of the “logical poly-simplexes of dimension m”. In this paper we recall the main historical and the main theoretical elements of these neglected recent discoveries. After proposing some new results, among which the notion of “hybrid logical hexagon”, we show which strong reasons, inside oppositional geometry, make understand that the logical hexagon is in fact a very important and profound mathematical structure, destined to many future fruitful developments and probably bearer of a major epistemological paradigm change. (shrink)

According to an influential line of thought, from the assumption that indeterminism makes future contingents neither true nor false, one can conclude that assertions of future contingents are never permissible. This conclusion, however, fails to recognize that we ordinarily assert future contingents even when we take the future to be unsettled. Several attempts have been made to solve this puzzle, either by arguing that, albeit truth-valueless, future contingents can be correctly assertable, or by rejecting the claim that future contingents are (...) truth-valueless. The paper examines three of most representative accounts in line with the first attempt, and concludes that none of them succeed in providing a persuasive answer as to why we felicitously assert future contingents. (shrink)

In his tightly argued, thought-provoking volume Interpretation without Truth, Pierluigi Chiassoni offers a groundbreaking, reductionist account of judicial fictions.1 Under Chiassoni’s view, judici...

This paper portrays the later Wittgenstein’s conception of contradictions and his therapeutic approach to them. I will focus on and give relevance to the Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, plus the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. First, I will explain why Wittgenstein’s attitude towards contradictions is rooted in: a rejection of the debate about realism and anti-realism in mathematics; and Wittgenstein’s endorsement of logical pluralism. Then, I will explain Wittgenstein’s therapeutic approach towards contradictions, and why it means that (...) a contradiction is not a problem for logic and mathematics. Rather, contradictions are problematic when we do not know what to infer from them. Once a meaning is established through a new rule of inference, the contradiction becomes a usable expression like many others in our inferential apparatus. Thus, the apparent problem is dissolved. Finally, I will take three examples of dissolved contradictions from Wittgenstein to clarify further his notion. I will conclude considering why his position on contradictions led him to clash with Alan Turing, and whether the latter was convinced by the Wittgensteinian proposal. (shrink)

Dibujar el pensamiento de Seneca es dibujar su figura viva, trazar el esquema de su persona. Seneca es un mediador que para alzarse sobre nosotros necesita de nuestra necesidad, pues solo apoyado en nuestra indigencia tiene sentido. Maria Zambrano lleva a cabo un lucido estudio de la figura y significacion del pensador cordobes y presenta una seleccion de sus escritos.

Based on a gambling formulation of quantum mechanics, we derive a Gleason-type theorem that holds for any dimension n of a quantum system, and in particular for \. The theorem states that the only logically consistent probability assignments are exactly the ones that are definable as the trace of the product of a projector and a density matrix operator. In addition, we detail the reason why dispersion-free probabilities are actually not valid, or rational, probabilities for quantum mechanics, and hence should (...) be excluded from consideration. (shrink)

Technology clearly plays a central role in Black Panther. Black Panther tries to make us think about the benefits and risks of employing vibranium – and by extension any advanced technology – to different ends. Through the blend of traditional cultures and technology, the Black Panther movie works as a powerfully imaginative thought experiment that explores the technological and cultural ramifications of an enlightened technologically advanced Afrofuturistic civilization. Wakanda's depiction as an independent African technological utopia where people live in harmony (...) with nature and among themselves offers a celebration both of the fruits of technology and of traditional African cultures. By imagining what an African techno‐utopia might look like, the movie tries to reimagine the relations between technology and culture. Vibranium has a cultural and spiritual role that is more prominent than its strictly technological properties. (shrink)

John Dewey conceived democracy as a cooperative problem-solving practice in which actors try out provisional solutions by means of social communication. His notion of experimental democracy as a specific form of life and an ethical enterprise rather than simply a form of government implies the constitution of a polity as a practical and complex process of exchanging and sharing experiences. The aim of this paper is to test the feasibility of using a Deweyan theoretical basis for democracy to assess the (...) potential for a European process of political integration. The historical-conceptual presuppositions of the European Union’s institutional project preclude both a narrow local perspective and an illusory globalist scheme. To redirect Europe’s democratic vocation, a process of political and institutional communication must be developed that transcends the existing national paradigm. (shrink)

This paper addresses a fundamental line of research in neuroscience: the identification of a putative neural processing core of the cerebral cortex, often claimed to be “canonical”. This “canonical” core would be shared by the entire cortex, and would explain why it is so powerful and diversified in tasks and functions, yet so uniform in architecture. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the search for canonical explanations over the past 40 years, discussing the theoretical frameworks informing this research. (...) It will highlight a bias that, in my opinion, has limited the success of this research project, that of overlooking the dimension of cortical development. The earliest explanation of the cerebral cortex as canonical was attempted by David Marr, deriving putative cortical circuits from general mathematical laws, loosely following a deductive-nomological account. Although Marr’s theory turned out to be incorrect, one of its merits was to have put the issue of cortical circuit development at the top of his agenda. This aspect has been largely neglected in much of the research on canonical models that has followed. Models proposed in the 1980s were conceived as mechanistic. They identified a small number of components that interacted as a basic circuit, with each component defined as a function. More recent models have been presented as idealized canonical computations, distinct from mechanistic explanations, due to the lack of identifiable cortical components. Currently, the entire enterprise of coming up with a single canonical explanation has been criticized as being misguided, and the premise of the uniformity of the cortex has been strongly challenged. This debate is analyzed here. The legacy of the canonical circuit concept is reflected in both positive and negative ways in recent large-scale brain projects, such as the Human Brain Project. One positive aspect is that these projects might achieve the aim of producing detailed simulations of cortical electrical activity, a negative one regards whether they will be able to find ways of simulating how circuits actually develop. (shrink)

Some Carrollian posthumous manuscripts reveal, in addition to his famous ‘logical diagrams’, two mysterious ‘logical charts’. The first chart, a strange network making out of fourteen logical sentences a large 2D ‘triangle’ containing three smaller ones, has been shown equivalent—modulo the rediscovery of a fourth smaller triangle implicit in Carroll's global picture—to a 3D tetrahedron, the four triangular faces of which are the 3+1 Carrollian complex triangles. As it happens, such an until now very mysterious 3D logical shape—slightly deformed—has been (...) rediscovered, independently from Carroll and much later, by a logician , a mathematician and a linguist studying the geometry of the ‘opposition relations’, that is, the mathematical generalisations of the ‘logical square’. We show that inside what is called equivalently ‘n-opposition theory’, ‘oppositional geometry’ or ‘logical geometry’, Carroll's first chart corresponds exactly, duly reshap.. (shrink)

We investigate an extension of the formalism of interpreted systems by Halpern and colleagues to model the correct behaviour of agents. The semantical model allows for the representation and reasoning about states of correct and incorrect functioning behaviour of the agents, and of the system as a whole. We axiomatise this semantic class by mapping it into a suitable class of Kripke models. The resulting logic, KD45n i-j, is a stronger version of KD, the system often referred to as Standard (...) Deontic Logic. We extend this formal framework to include the standard epistemic notions defined on interpreted systems, and introduce a new doubly-indexed operator representing the knowledge that an agent would have if it operates under the assumption that a group of agents is functioning correctly. We discuss these issues both theoretically and in terms of applications, and present further directions of work. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the rapid and unexpected rise of deep learning within Artificial Intelligence and its applications. It tackles the possible reasons for this remarkable success, providing candidate paths towards a satisfactory explanation of why it works so well, at least in some domains. A historical account is given for the ups and downs, which have characterized neural networks research and its evolution from “shallow” to “deep” learning architectures. A precise account of “success” is given, in order to sieve out (...) aspects pertaining to marketing or sociology of research, and the remaining aspects seem to certify a genuine value of deep learning, calling for explanation. The alleged two main propelling factors for deep learning, namely computing hardware performance and neuroscience findings, are scrutinized, and evaluated as relevant but insufficient for a comprehensive explanation. We review various attempts that have been made to provide mathematical foundations able to justify the efficiency of deep learning, and we deem this is the most promising road to follow, even if the current achievements are too scattered and relevant for very limited classes of deep neural models. The authors’ take is that most of what can explain the very nature of why deep learning works at all and even very well across so many domains of application is still to be understood and further research, which addresses the theoretical foundation of artificial learning, is still very much needed. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss the importance of measurement in quantum mechanics and the so-called measurement problem. Any quantum system can be described as a linear combination of eigenstates of an operator representing a physical quantity; this means that the system can be in a superposition of states that corresponds to different eigenvalues, i.e., different physical outcomes, each one incompatible with the others. The measurement process converts a state of superposition in a well-defined state. We show that, if we describe (...) the measurement by the standard laws of quantum mechanics, the system would preserve its state of superposition even on a macroscopic scale. Since this is not the case, we assume that a measurement does not obey to standard quantum mechanics, but to a new set of laws that form a “quantum measurement theory”. (shrink)

In a passage of the Life of Nero concerning the emperor’s indecision over what to do after the revolt of the provincial armies, it can clearly be seen that there is an influence from an argumentative structure particular to a certain type of deliberative oratory, the suasoria triplex. This influence may be due simply to Suetonius’ familiarity with the declamatory exercises in vogue at the rhetorical schools, but some hints allow us to suppose the existence of a suasoria theme that (...) took as its subject this very episode in the life of the emperor. (shrink)

Persae et Magi omnes qui Persicae regionis incolunt fines ignem praeferunt et omnibus elementis ignem putant debere praeponi. The Persians and all the Magi who dwell in the confines of the Persian land give their preference to fire and think it ought to be ranked above all the other elements.Iulius Firmicus Maternus was a Latin writer who lived in the fourth centurya.d. In the 340s, following his conversion to Christianity, he wrote theDe errore profanarum religionum, which has been preserved only (...) in the tenth-century manuscript Vaticanus Palatinus Latinus 165. In this work he argues against the pagan cults, calling for the emperors to suppress them. The first sections are dedicated to the pagan worship of the natural elements: objects of a cult are water among the Egyptians, earth among the Phrygians, air among the Assyrians. The chapter we are dealing with, the fifth, is dedicated to fire, a central element of the Zoroastrian religion. Greek and Roman writers, pagans and Christians alike, were aware of this, and references to some sort of fire-cult among Persians are numerous in literature and are found as early as Herodotus. Just like Firmicus Maternus, some authors also state that the Magi worship fire as a god or divine element and that they conduct fire-related rituals. In Greek and Latin authors there is a view that the Magi, these specialists of the rituals of the Persian religion, were originally a Median tribe. As shown by the passages of Ammianus and Basil, such knowledge was also available to Firmicus Maternus’ contemporaries, and there do not appear to be particular differences in the way in which Greek and Latin authors viewed the Magi in Achaemenid and Sassanid times. Regrettably, one cannot know for certain which of these sources Firmicus Maternus knew. (shrink)

In this paper we defend structural representations, more specifically neural structural representation. We are not alone in this, many are currently engaged in this endeavor. The direction we take, however, diverges from the main road, a road paved by the mathematical theory of measure that, in the 1970s, established homomorphism as the way to map empirical domains of things in the world to the codomain of numbers. By adopting the mind as codomain, this mapping became a boon for all those (...) convinced that a representation system should bear similarities with what was being represented, but struggled to find a precise account of what such similarities mean. The euforia was brief, however, and soon homomorphism revealed itself to be affected by serious weaknesses, the primary one being that it included systems embarrassingly alien to representations. We find that the defense attempts that have followed, adopt strategies that share a common format: valid structural representations come as “homomorphism plus X”, with various “X”, provided in descriptive format only. Our alternative direction stems from the observation of the overlooked departure from homomorphism as used in the theory of measure and its later use in mental representations. In the former case, the codomain or the realm of numbers, is the most suited for developing theorems detailing the existence and uniqueness of homomorphism for a wide range of empirical domains. In the latter case, the codomain is the realm of the mind, possibly more vague and more ill-defined than the empirical domain itself. The time is ripe for articulating the mapping between represented domains and the mind in formal terms, by exploiting what is currently known about coding mechanisms in the brain. We provide a sketch of a possible development in this direction, one that adopts the theory of neural population coding as codomain. We will show that our framework is not only not in disagreement with the “plus X” proposals, but can lead to natural derivation of several of the “X”. (shrink)

From epileptic seizures to depressive symptoms, predictive neurotechnologies are used for a large range of applications. In this article we focus on advisory devices; namely, predictive neurotechnology programmed to detect specific neural events (e.g., epileptic seizure) and advise users to take necessary steps to reduce or avoid the impact of the forecasted neuroevent. Receiving advise from a predictive device is not without ethical concerns. The problem with predictive neural devices, in particular advisory ones, is the risk of seeing one’s autonomous (...) choice supplanted by the predictions instead of being supplemented by it. For users, there is a potential shift from being assisted by the system to being over-dependent on the technology. In other terms, it introduces ethical issues associated with epistemic dependency. In this article, we examine the notion of epistemic authority in relation to predictive neurotechnologies. Section 1 of our article explores and defines the concept of epistemic authority. In section 2, we illustrate how predictive devices are best conceived of as epistemic authorities and we explore the subject-device epistemic relationship. In section 3, we spell out the risk of harms interconnected with epistemic deferral. We conclude by stressing a set of preliminary measures to prepare users for the authoritative nature of predictive devices. (shrink)

Recently there has been a spate of interest in Max Scheler’s social phenomenology (Schloßberger, 2016; Szanto & Moran, 2016; Cusinato, 2018). In this paper I aim to show that his philosophical contribution on Europe and Europeanism has its focal point on the concepts of rebuilding (Wiederaufbau) and rebirth (Wiedergeburt). My idea is that, for Scheler, the essential condition of any attitude towards socio-cultural change (Umkehr) have its center in the idea of the formation and the development of the personal singularity (...) (Personbildung) (Scheler, 2009a; Scheler, 2010a; Scheler, 2013). And this means the growth and the expression, in a solidaristic perspective, of one’s own ethical singularity (An-sich-Gutes für mich) and of one’s own vocations. The idea of solidarity declined in terms of Bildung is therefore strictly interdependent on the testimony coming from Otherness-exemplar (Vorbild) (Scheler, 2009f). (shrink)