We edited and translated a so far unpublished manuscript ("Sur la generation des insectes et d'autres petits animaux") drafted by Leibniz in 1714. The text is written on the same paper of the first draft of the "Monadology" and, as we show, there is a connection between these two texts of the late Leibniz, as far as in the "Monadology" , the rejection of the traditional theory of the spontaneous generation of small animals (like insects) is considered by Leibniz as (...) a posteriori confirmation of his preformist theory. In addition to that, this piece shows that Leibniz was deeply influenced by the experimental results in biology and natural sciences, and, especially, by the works of Italian scientits of the Galilean tradition, like Francesco Redi and Antonio Vallisneri. (shrink)

Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents:IntroductionAntónio ZILHÃO: Folk-Psychology, Rationality and Human ActionJoão BRANQUINHO: The Problem of Cognitive DynamicsJ.P. MONTEIRO: Hume, Induction and Single ExperimentsMarco RUFFINO: The Primacy of Concepts and the Priority of Judgments in Frege's LogicJoão Vergílio Gallerani CUTER: Die unanwendbare Arithmetik des TractatusSílvio PINTO: Wittgenstein's Anti-PlatonismFernando FERREIRA: A Substitutional Framework for Arithmetical ValidityJ.R. CROCA & R.N. MOREIRA: Indeterminism Versus CausalismLuíz MONIZ PEREIRA: The Logical Impingement of Artifical Intelligence.

INCONTINENCE, HONOURING SUNK COSTS AND RATIONALITY According to a basic principle of rationality, the decision to engage in a course of action should be determined solely by the analysis of its consequences. Thus, considerations associated with previous use of resources should have no bearing on an agent’s decision-making process. Frequently, however, agents persist carrying on an activity they themselves judge to be nonoptimal under the circumstances because they have already allocated resources to that activity. When this is the case, agents (...) are said to be honouring sunk costs. Honouring sunk costs is thus typically viewed as irrational economic behaviour. Two striking findings of the psychological literature on the sunk cost effect are that it is, in general, not lessened by having taken previously courses in economics, and that agents who did take such courses and that do honour sunk costs seem to be frequently aware of a cognitive dissonance in their behaviour. Davidson’s account of the possibility conditions of incontinent action renders continent action materially unfeasible. The very idea of incontinent action becomes thus a hollow one. I’ll present an alternative description of these possibility conditions that renders continent action materially feasible, and both, continent and incontinent action, cognitively plausible. In a nutshell, my proposal rests upon the drawing of an essential cognitive contrast between explicit processes of deliberative reasoning and lower level heuristic procedures. I conclude the paper arguing that my redescription of incontinent action accounts for the above mentioned cognitive dissonance effect better than the alternatives and that viewing at least an important subset of behaviours of honouring sunk costs as incontinent actions will enable us to consider them as peculiar manifestations of a more general and meaningful pattern in human behaviour. (shrink)

Antonio Negri wrote the two essays that comprise Time for Revolution while serving a prison sentence for alleged involvement with radical left-wing groups. Although the essays were written two decades apart, their concerns are the same: is there a place for resistance in a society utterly subsumed by capitalism? In the wake of the global crisis of capitalism heralded by the 2008 crash, the question has never been more relevant and Negri remains an insightful and passionate guide to any (...) attempt to answer it. (shrink)

The article deals with present day challenges related to the employ of technology in order to reduce the exposition of the human being to the risks and vulnerability of his or her existential condition. According to certain transhumanist and posthumanist thinkers, as well as some supporters of human enhancement, essential features of the human being, such as vulnerability and mortality, ought to be thoroughly overcome. The aim of this article is twofold: on the one hand, we wish to carry out (...) an enquiry into the ontological and ethical thinking of Hans Jonas, who was among the first to address these very issues with great critical insight; on the other hand, we endeavour to highlight the relevance of Jonas’ reflections to current challenges related to bioscience and biotechnological progress. In this regard, we believe that the transcendent and metaphysical relevance of the «image of man» introduced by Jonas is of paramount importance to understand his criticism against those attempts to ameliorate the human being by endangering his or her essence. (shrink)

In recent years a certain emphasis has been put by some scholars on Leibniz’s concern about empirical sciences and the relations between such concern and the development of his mature metaphysical system. In this paper I focus on Leibniz’s interest for the microscope and the astonishing discoveries that such instrument made possible in the field of the life sciences during the last part of the Seventeenth century. The observation of physical bodies carried out by the “magnifying glasses” revealed a matter (...) swarming everywhere with life and activity, contrary to the cartesian and atomistic view of matter as something sterile and passive. Moreover, the discovery of uncountable complete “animalcula” living in the smallest drop of water provided evidence for the idea of the preformation of every organism. During his lifetime, Leibniz was extremely watchful about the new microscopical discoveries and came into contact with some of the major “observers” of his time, such as Hooke, Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam and Malpighi. Relying both on some passages in Leibniz’s texts and on recent critical studies, I will argue that important aspects of his metaphysics have been strongly affected by the empirical observation of the “invisible world” which the microscope made possible. In the last part of the paper I show how the concept of “preformation”, originally drawn from the context of the life sciences, comes to play in Leibnizʼs philosophy a very general role, going far beyond the scope of biology and shaping important aspects of his overall philosophical system. (shrink)

v. 1. Introducción a la teología moral. La conciencia moral -- v. 2. La violencia, el amor y la sexualidad -- v. 3. Etica y religión.

Caro leitor! Em busca de sempre mais apresentar reflexões consistentes e relevantes para o pensar teológico, em conexão com o mundo e às urgências da Igreja, a presente edição trás importantes temas que ajudam refletir a realidade humana à luz do mistério de Deus. Por isso, os artigos oferecidos nas mais variadas áreas, a saber: bíblico-teológica, dogmática, moral, pastoral, antropologia teológica, filosofia e eclesiologia, dão suporte científico e metodológico para a reflexão teológica. Antes de conferir as novidades desta edição, gostaria (...) de comunicar que esta Revista Eletrônica conquistou um espaço ainda maior de publicação, ao tornar-se indexada na base de dados do Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). (shrink)

El presente aporte trata de reconstruir el largo recorrido intelectual de Hans Jonas que parte de la gnosis tardía, pasa por la filosofía de la biología, la ética y llega a la bioética. Este trabajo se propone como objetivo evidenciar la posición de Jonas confrontándola con aquellas de las cuales ha partido. En pocas palabras, intenta ser apenas una introducción de este fascinante filósofo de nuestro tiempo.

This handbook provides a systematic overview of the legal concept and the meaning of human dignity for each European state and the European Union. For each of these 43 countries and the EU, it scrutinizes three main aspects: the constitution, legislation, and application of law. The book addresses and presents answers to important questions relating to the concept of human dignity. These questions include the following: What is the meaning of human dignity? What is the legal status of the respective (...) human dignity norms? Are human dignity norms of a programmatic nature, or do they establish an individual right which can be invoked before court? Is human dignity inviolable? The volume answers these questions from the perspectives of all European countries. As a reaction to the barbaric events during World War II, human dignity found its way into international law. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “[a]ll human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” The starting point for developing the concept on a national level was the codification of human dignity in article 1, paragraph 1 of the German Grundgesetz. Consequently, the concept of human dignity spread throughout Europe and, in the context of human rights, became a fundamental legal concept. (shrink)

In Italien erlangte Hans Jonas, ähnlich wie in andersen Ländern, öffentliche Anerkennung dank seines Werks Das Prinzip Verantwortung, das 1990 ins Italienische übersetzt wurde. Die Übersetzung weckte das Interesse einer breiten Öffentlichkeit sowohl an seinem bioethischen Ansatz als auch an seinen früheren philosophisch-biologischen Schriften. Die Besonderheit des italienischen Kontexts besteht jedoch darin, dass der Philosoph in der akademischen Welt bereits lange vor seiner eingangs erwähnten allgemeinen Anerkennung und ›Entdeckung‹ in der Öffentlichkeit durch seine Arbeiten über die spätantike Gnosis gut bekannt (...) war. (shrink)

In this paper the author tries to approach the subject of death from a law and ethics perspective. The idea is that modern works in law and ethics that have studied two of the main topics of bio-ethics (euthanasia and organ transplants) still leave unresolved two main problems. The first problem is with the idea many authors have of defending the possibility of active euthanasia and consider it an obvious matter that doctors have to practice this type of euthanasia. But (...) we have good reasons to consider that doctors are the ones that have to abstain from this practice. The second is- sue is with the defense of the possibility of post mortem transplants and how this practice is also considered obvious due to the fact that the person from whom these organs are withdrawn is dead. Here we also have good reasons according to the author for considering that the person from whom these organs are withdrawn is not dead. The author finally tries to establish a link between these two unresolved problems.Resumen:En las siguientes páginas el autor intenta un acercamiento a la cuestión de la muerte desde una perspectiva ética y jurídica. La idea fundamental que guía este trabajo es que la ética y el derecho modernos que se han ocupado de los dos temas bioéticos cruciales relativos al fin de la vida (la eutanasia y el trasplante de órganos) hace que surjan dos problemas de fondo que comúnmente se consideran resueltos y que, de acuerdo con el autor, no lo están. El primero es que algunos estudiosos sostienen la licitud de la eutanasia activa y consideran del todo obvio que sea el médico quien la lleve a cabo. Sin embargo, existen buenas razones para considerar que es precisamente el médico quien debería abstenerse de practicar- la. El segundo es que hay otros que sostienen la licitud de los trasplantes post mortem y consideran también obvio que el sujeto del cual se toman los órganos sea ya un cadáver. En cambio existen buenas razones para considerar que actualmente cuando toman dichos órganos aún no están muertos. El autor sostiene que si así fuera, el tema de los tras- plantes presentaría un insospechado punto de contacto con el de la eutanasia. El desarrollo del trabajo, en primer lugar se detiene en el problema de la eutanasia, posteriormente en el del trasplante de órganos donde se busca finalmente evidenciar el punto de contacto entre las dos problemáticas. (shrink)

To demonstrate that courage is tempered by reason and has no need of anger, that denounces weakness of mind, Plutarch (coh. ira 458E) cites the custom of the Spartans to arouse thymos before the fight with the sound of flutes and at the same time to sacrifice to the Muses, so that in the soul of the fighters remains the reason to regulate the judgments. If this is the sense of the passage, confirmed by the comparison with the loci similes, (...) it is necessary to emend the text transmitted by the Mss. (άφαιροῠσι τὸν θυμὸν…> έπαίρουσι τὸν θυμὸν …). (shrink)

This article aims to propose some connections between the conceptions of poetry of the Mexican poet Octavio Paz and the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Both see in poetry the element of recognition of the original condition of the human being, not as an interpretation, but as a perception and affectation of the existential reality of human beings. So that the event of the "poetic saying" is configured as a call to the possibility of glimpsing the being of each entity, inhabiting (...) oneself and, thus, learning to be with others, establishing the poetic field as the clearing of perception and of existential affectation. Poetic speech goes beyond the limits of language, creating and establishing meanings and representations to the affectations that poetry provides. Thus, through poetry man recognizes himself in his worldliness, in search of his own being and in his relationship with other beings. (shrink)

A comparison between the thinking of Hans Jonas and Joseph Ratzinger on Darwinism and Intelligent Design.

Columbia University Press's multivolume _Prison Notebooks_ is the only complete critical edition of Antonio Gramsci's seminal writings in English. Based on the authoritative Italian edition of Gramsci's work, _Quaderni del Carcere_, this comprehensive translation presents the intellectual as he ought to be read and understood, with critical notes that clarify Gramsci's history, culture, and sources; an index of names; and a contextualization of the thinker's ideas against his earlier writings and letters. This set includes notebooks 1 through 8 with (...) all attendant notes and materials and is an indispensible resource for scholars in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

Book Description (Blurb): Cognitive Design for Artificial Minds explains the crucial role that human cognition research plays in the design and realization of artificial intelligence systems, illustrating the steps necessary for the design of artificial models of cognition. It bridges the gap between the theoretical, experimental and technological issues addressed in the context of AI of cognitive inspiration and computational cognitive science. -/- Beginning with an overview of the historical, methodological and technical issues in the field of Cognitively-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, (...) Lieto illustrates how the cognitive design approach has an important role to play in the development of intelligent AI technologies and plausible computational models of cognition. Introducing a unique perspective that draws upon Cybernetics and early AI principles, Lieto emphasizes the need for an equivalence between cognitive processes and implemented AI procedures, in order to realise biologically and cognitively inspired artificial minds. He also introduces the Minimal Cognitive Grid, a pragmatic method to rank the different degrees of biologically and cognitive accuracy of artificial systems in order project and predict their explanatory power with respect to the natural systems taken as source of inspiration. -/- Providing a comprehensive overview of cognitive design principles in constructing artificial minds, this text will be essential reading for students and researchers of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. (shrink)

An enquiry into the relevance of Hans Jonas' thinking to present-day debates, including transhumanism, posthumanism, and human enhancement.

According to Hans Jonas (1903–1993), the modern technological progress endowed humanity with wondrous power, which in the long run risks altering the nature of human action. This is especially true for the realm of collective action, the effects of which evidence an unpredicted issue: the ecological crisis, which is the “critical vulnerability” of nature to technological intervention. This discovery brings to light that the whole biosphere of the planet has been added to that which human beings must be responsible for (...) because of their power over it. There is, however, a further dimension of vulnerability (and responsibility) to be considered, namely the one which characterizes organic life as such. Indeed, the essence of all living organisms–human beings included–is characterized by vulnerability, given their precarious and unstable condition of “needful freedom” towards the environment. Nevertheless, terrestrial life fl ourished through a multifaceted and unplanned (thus, again, vulnerable) evolution of living forms, ranging from bacteria to human beings – these evidencing a unique degree of freedom, which Jonas refers to as a “metaphysical gap” towards other living beings. The problem is that the present-day technology provides the possibility to manipulate the very essence of life and human nature. Is this process to be accepted and accomplished? And what about the related risks? Indeed, according to Jonas, issues such as genetic manipulation, euthanasia, organ transplantation, assisted reproduction, exploitation of other living beings etc., raise ethical dilemmas which can be addressed thanks to the idea of vulnerability. (shrink)

In this paper we identify and characterize an analysis of two problematic aspects affecting the representational level of cognitive architectures (CAs), namely: the limited size and the homogeneous typology of the encoded and processed knowledge. We argue that such aspects may constitute not only a technological problem that, in our opinion, should be addressed in order to build arti cial agents able to exhibit intelligent behaviours in general scenarios, but also an epistemological one, since they limit the plausibility of the (...) comparison of the CAs' knowledge representation and processing mechanisms with those executed by humans in their everyday activities. In the fi nal part of the paper further directions of research will be explored, trying to address current limitations and future challenges. (shrink)

In actuarial parlance, the price of an insurance policy is considered fair if customers bearing the same risk are charged the same price. The estimate of this fair amount hinges on the expected value obtained by weighting the different claims by their probability. We argue that, historically, this concept of actuarial fairness originates in an Aristotelian principle of justice in exchange (equality in risk). We will examine how this principle was formalized in the 16th century and shaped in life insurance (...) during the following two hundred years, in two different interpretations. The Domatian account of actuarial fairness relied on subjective uncertainty: An agreement on risk was fair if both parties were equally ignorant about the chances of an uncertain event. The objectivist version grounded any agreement on an objective risk estimate drawn from a mortality table. We will show how the objectivist approach collapsed in the market for life annuities during the 18th century, leaving open the question of why we still speak of actuarial fairness as if it were an objective expected value. (shrink)

This paper provides a detailed analysis of how, according to Kant, the moral badness of some third parties’ actions can be established with certainty (by anyone, not only by the agent’s own conscience or by God). This account helps clarify why Kant affirms that some forms of wrongdoing (of which there are a “multitude of woeful examples”) can be demonstrated to be immoral, while excluding the possibility of proving the moral goodness of any action. The paper concludes by arguing that (...) the possible certainty of judgements imputing immorality to actions of others is not rational but rather moral. (shrink)

In this article we present an advanced version of Dual-PECCS, a cognitively-inspired knowledge representation and reasoning system aimed at extending the capabilities of artificial systems in conceptual categorization tasks. It combines different sorts of common-sense categorization (prototypical and exemplars-based categorization) with standard monotonic categorization procedures. These different types of inferential procedures are reconciled according to the tenets coming from the dual process theory of reasoning. On the other hand, from a representational perspective, the system relies on the hypothesis of conceptual (...) structures represented as heterogeneous proxytypes. Dual-PECCS has been experimentally assessed in a task of conceptual categorization where a target concept illustrated by a simple common-sense linguistic description had to be identified by resorting to a mix of categorization strategies, and its output has been compared to human responses. The obtained results suggest that our approach can be beneficial to improve the representational and reasoning conceptual capabilities of standard cognitive artificial systems, and –in addition– that it may be plausibly applied to different general computational models of cognition. The current version of the system, in fact, extends our previous work, in that Dual-PECCS is now integrated and tested into two cognitive architectures, ACT-R and CLARION, implementing different assumptions on the underlying invariant structures governing human cognition. Such integration allowed us to extend our previous evaluation. (shrink)

The literatures on bounded and ecological rationality are built on adaptationism—and its associated modular, cognitivist and computational paradigm—that does not address or explain the evolutionary origins of rationality. We argue that the adaptive mechanisms of evolution are not sufficient for explaining human rationality, and we posit that human rationality presents exaptive origins, where exaptations are traits evolved for other functions or no function at all, and later co-opted for new uses. We propose an embodied reconceptualization of rationality—embodied rationality—based on the (...) reuse of the perception-action system, where many neural processes involved in the control of the sensory-motor system, salient in ancestral environments have been later co-opted to create—by tinkering—high-level reasoning processes, employed in civilized niches. (shrink)

No presente artigo tenho o intento de demonstrar o motivo de Schopenhauer ser um crítico ferrenho da doutrina do direito de Kant, e para tal empreendimento, além das investigações na Metafísica dos costumes, obra capital onde se encontram os conteúdos sobre a doutrina do direito de Kant, restrinjo minhas explicações em relação aos textos de Schopenhauer, principalmente em Sobre o fundamento da moral (para nesse caso, expor a crítica da ética na forma legislativa-imperativa), ao § 62 do primeiro tomo de (...) O mundo como vontade e representação, como também ao Apêndice deste mesmo livro, intitulado de Crítica à filosofia kantiana, (para nesse caso expor a concessão feita por Schopenhauer para compreender o direito como positivo tendo em vista o direito de coação) e por fim, também em Sobre a liberdade da vontade, para expor os conceitos de liberdade física e moral, essenciais para compreender à crítica de Schopenhauer à doutrina do direito kantiana. (shrink)

We propose a nonmonotonic Description Logic of typicality able to account for the phenomenon of the combination of prototypical concepts. The proposed logic relies on the logic of typicality ALC + TR, whose semantics is based on the notion of rational closure, as well as on the distributed semantics of probabilistic Description Logics, and is equipped with a cognitive heuristic used by humans for concept composition. We first extend the logic of typicality ALC + TR by typicality inclusions of the (...) form p :: T(C) v D, whose intuitive meaning is that “we believe with degree p about the fact that typical Cs are Ds”. As in the distributed semantics, we define different scenarios containing only some typicality inclusions, each one having a suitable probability. We then exploit such scenarios in order to ascribe typical properties to a concept C obtained as the combination of two prototypical concepts. We also show that reasoning in the proposed Description Logic is EXPTIME-complete as for the underlying standard Description Logic ALC. (shrink)

El artículo pone en escena la propuesta del Derecho Comunitario en el ámbito de los países de América Latina. Para el autor, el proceso de integración entre las naciones latinoamericanas plantea el reto de su estructuración y viabilidad, por lo que resulta imperioso encontrar fórmulas de conciliación entre un Derecho de integración y un cierto tipo de nacionalismo económico no ortodoxo, así como la redefinición del concepto clásico de soberanía absoluta en el sentido de su operacionalidad flexible y plural dentro (...) de una soberanía compartida. No obstante las dificultades, los esfuerzos en defensa del comunitarismo latinoamericano, pasan también por la democratización radical de las instituciones estatales nacionales y por la consolidación de un nuevo concepto de ciudadanía (ciudadanía comunitaria). (shrink)

The study of sleep and wakefulness can inform debates about the nature of consciousness. We argue that sleep and wakefulness fall along a multidimensional continuum and that inconsistencies and paradoxes with the accounts put forth by Merker et al. and Tononi can be understood in terms of a pervasive false dichotomy between these two states.

This paper analyzes the specific shift in the meaning of “civilization” that took place in texts and documents of early American philosophical naturalism. Particularly, it will focus on the specific role that naturalization plays in the edification of a newly secularized, science-oriented, and democratic society, as well as of a naturalized conception of culture and civilization. Indeed, as the work of many philosophers and intellectuals of the Forties highlights, naturalism represents not only the banner of a new idea of civilization, (...) but at the same time becomes the symbol of a powerful postwar ideology. (shrink)

The ‘bat and ball’ is one of the problems most frequently employed as a testbed for research on the dual-system hypothesis of reasoning. Frederick (J Econ Perspect 19:25–42, 2005) is the first to envisage the possibility that different numerical arrangements of the ‘bat and ball’ problem could lead to different dynamics of activation of the dual-system, and so to different performances of subjects in task accomplishment. This possibility has triggered a strand of research oriented to accomplish ‘sensitivity analyses’ of the (...) ‘bat and ball’ problem. The scope of this paper is to test experimentally the specific hypothesis that numerals are responsible for the selective activation of the two systems of reasoning in this task. In particular, we argue that their role goes beyond and cannot be reduced to that of numbers conceived as magnitudes. To test our hypothesis, we devise an experimental setting in which the role of numbers (as magnitudes) is rendered irrelevant. We find experimental results consistent with our hypothesis. We further provide a link between the literature on mathematical problem-solving and that on mathematical cognition research, in particular that branch labeled embodied mathematical cognition. (shrink)