Surnames of grandparents were collected from children in the primary schools of the AlbanianItalian and Greek–Italian villages of southern Italy and Sicily. The coefficients of relationships by isonymy show almost no relationship with ethnicity. Ethnolinguistic minorities of southern Italy and Sicily are geographically subdivided into two main clusters: the first cluster comprises the Albanian, Croat and Greek communities of the Adriatic area; and the second cluster comprises the Albanian and Greek communities of the Ionian, Thirrenian and Sicilian areas.

Surnames were obtained for the second half of the 20th century from civil and religious marriage registers on fifteen Provençal-Italian and five Italian villages of Cuneo Province, Italy. To insert in the analysis an outward comparison, surnames from two Italian villages of Turin Province, one parish of Turin, one village of Alessandria Province and one village of Asti Province were also collected. Ethnicity does not seem to be the main factor affecting the present genetic structure of the Provençal-Italians. They are (...) an open community, and evidence the end of the genetic isolation of the alpine populations. (shrink)

The population of Campobasso Province shows a level of inbreeding that is distinct from most Italian rural populations, regardless of their geographic location (Fr=0·0040; Fn=0·0102; Ft=0·0142). The genetic structure of the ItalianGreeks of Reggio Calabria Province is similar to other Italians of Campobasso Province (Fr=0·0041; Fn=0·0127; Ft=0·0168). The Italian–Greeks of Lecce Province show random mating, and their inbreeding is in fact very low (Fr=0·0038; Fn=0·0024; Ft=0·0062).

The Italo-Greek ethnolinguistic minority, living in thirteen villages of southern Italy, marry largely amongst themselves but there are some intermarriages with native Italians. The majority of marriages are within the villages, but there is some marriage movement from one Italo-Greek village to another. Data on marriage and birthplace of parents and grandparents obtained by questionnaires to families of primary school children are analysed, to show the trends in breakdown of isolation over the last two generations.

Мета. Актуалізувати питання про використання біографічного методу і встановлення його взаємозв'язку з іншими науковими методами та методологічними принципами в історико-антропологічних дослідженнях. Теоретичний базис. Розгляд біографічного методу в історико-антропологічних студіях здійснений у річищі загального теоретичного «ренесансу» класичної гуманітаристики, що значною мірою викликаний невизначеністю і багатозначністю теоретичних дискурсів і дискурсивних практик постмодернізму, висуває перед дослідником низку нових завдань, серед яких – «виявлення неявного», тобто не простого описування результатів культурної діяльності людини в безпосередній даності, а розкривання часом неусвідомлених механізмів цієї діяльності, глибинних «пружин» (...) культури, що забезпечують її рух. Наукова новизна. Автори даної розвідки не торкаються соціологічної проблематики біографічних досліджень, які широко репрезентовані в працях сучасних західних дослідників. Предмет нашого повідомлення – біографічний метод, що є генетично висхідним від Ш.-О. Сент-Бева, який вважав, що головним завданням біографа є здійснення аналізу особистості видатної людини. Очевидність того факту, що дослідження в царині гуманітаристики загалом і в цивільній історії зокрема мають враховувати не тільки зміни соціокультурних аспектів буття, але й відповідну трансформацію методологічних підходів до аналізу епіфеноменів «текучої сучасності», привела нас до розуміння необхідності історіософського дослідження питання про рецепцію біографічного методу в історико-антропологічних працях з наступною історичною, філософською, культурологічною репрезентацією біографічного методу. Висновки. Історіософські трансформації останніх десятиліть з їх радикальною зміною концепцій, методів і прийомів повертають дослідника до вдосконалення біографічної методології, яка сьогодні репрезентує антропоцентризм, що наповнює науку гуманістичним змістом. Використання даної методології потребує від науковця дотримання основних методологічних принципів і оволодіння іншими науковими методами, насамперед діалектикою. (shrink)

The author presents and defends three theses: (1) "the first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology." (2) "the second is that the concepts of obligation, And duty... And of what is morally right and wrong, And of the moral sense of 'ought', Ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible...." (3) "the third thesis is that (...) the differences between the well-Known english writers on moral philosophy from sidgwick to the present day are of little importance." (staff). (shrink)

The AGI alignment problem has a bimodal distribution of outcomes with most outcomes clustering around the poles of total success and existential, catastrophic failure. Consequently, attempts to solve AGI alignment should, all else equal, prefer false negatives (ignoring research programs that would have been successful) to false positives (pursuing research programs that will unexpectedly fail). Thus, we propose adopting a policy of responding to points of philosophical and practical uncertainty associated with the alignment problem by limiting and choosing necessary assumptions (...) to reduce the risk of false positives. Herein we explore in detail two relevant points of uncertainty that AGI alignment research hinges on---meta-ethical uncertainty and uncertainty about mental phenomena---and show how to reduce false positives in response to them. (shrink)

The theoretical and practical problems of providing incentives for people's activity in society are becoming increasingly more urgent as the role of the human factor in the development of society grows. In light of modern historical experience, we can see the onesidedness of conceptions according to which the types and directions of activity are mechanically predetermined by conditions external to it, and we can see the necessity of understanding the laws of activity itself in all their complicated dialectical essence. These (...) problems have become particularly important at the present stage of development of Soviet society, when a greater active involvement of the masses and profound changes in social psychology are becoming acutely necessary. (shrink)

(1996). The notion of citizenship in France and its redefinition. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the study of European Ideas, pp. 575-579.

This book offers an introduction to the Sophists of fifth-century Athens and a new overall interpretation of their thought. Since Plato first animadverted on their activities, the Sophists have commonly been presented as little better than intellectual mountebanks - a picture which Professor Kerferd forcefully challenges here. Interpreting the evidence with care, he shows them to have been part of an exciting and historically crucial intellectual movement. At the centre of their teaching was a form of relativism, most famously expressed (...) by Protagoras as 'Man is the measure of all things', and which they developed in a wide range of views - on knowledge and argument, virtue, government, society, and the gods. On all these subjects the Sophists did far more than simply provoke Plato to thought. Their contributions were substantial and serious; they inaugurated the debate on many central philosophical questions and decisively shifted the focus of philosophical attention from the cosmos to man. (shrink)

system reflected in Saussure's linguistic theory, and so influential in the great progress linguistic theory has made in this century. Indeed, Granger sees linguistic theory as expressing a paradigm for scientific theorizing, which research in other social sciences should adopt. But 'structuralism' as a method in science does not, in Granger's view, begin with Saussure and the linguists. It is nothing less than the strategy of all the sciences, both natural and social, since their beginnings. Now, 'structuralism' is a 'trendy' (...) term no less in Anglophone methodology than in Francophone philosophy. But Granger's employment of the term is not to be assimilated to this trend, nor to the fashionable excesses for which this expression has been a watch word (he explicitly separates himself from this movement in the preface to the second edition). The exact nature of what Granger calls 'structuralist' methods is the subject of a large part of this work, and I will not dwell on it much further in this introduction. Suffice it to say that Granger's demand for structuralist description is nothing less than the recognition that the successful pursuit of science requires that its terms and predicates pick out what we may call 'natural kinds'; that is, describe classes of items that bear uniform nomolog ical relations to one another. A science whose descriptive terms do not meet this condition will never produce any laws that reflect such nomological connections. (shrink)