Visiting a museum and seeing an original artwork can be a special experience. We use a survey and a set of hypothetical questions to explore how such experience would be affected by changes in how the artwork is seen. In a first study, participants imagined that they had travelled to see a painting that they particularly like. They discover that it is impossible to directly see the original painting. Three alternatives are offered: seeing an optical reflection (using a mirror), seeing (...) a video screening (a closed-circuit camera) or seeing a reproduction. In all cases it is made clear that the size, brightness, and resolution will match that of the original. In addition, these options could be within the same room as the original, in the room next door, or in a different building. Results show that physical distance did not affect significantly the responses. However, there was an overall preference for seeing a reproduction as opposed to an optical or digital image. Contrary to the idea that the original is always superior to a copy, many people felt that a direct view of a copy is a preferable experience than an indirect view. The second study was focused directly on the comparison between a mirror and a monitor. Here we highlighted the fact that for the mirror light coming from the mirror originated from the painting. Data were collected in Britain and in China. In both cases there was a clear preference for the mirror over the monitor. (shrink)

In the rubber hand illusion one’s hand is hidden, and a fake hand is visible. We explored the situation in which visual information was available indirectly in a mirror. In the mirror condition, compared to the standard condition , we found no reduction of the RHI following synchronised stimulation, as measured by crossmanual pointing and by a questionnaire. We replicated the finding with a smaller mirror that prevented visibility of the face. The RHI was eliminated when a wooden block replaced (...) the fake hand, or when the hand belonged to another person or mannequin. We conclude that awareness of the reflection is the critical variable, despite the distant visual localisation of the hand in a mirror and the third-person perspective. Stimuli seen in a mirror activate the same response as stimuli seen in peripersonal space, through knowledge that they are near one’s body. (shrink)

The limitations of the concept of internalised kinematic geometry have been recognised by Barlow, Hecht, Kubovy & Epstein, and Todorovic. I am in agreement but I still find the perception of curvature in two frames of apparent motion fascinating and I suggest some new directions. [Barlow; Hecht; Kubovy & Epstein; Shepard; Todorovic].

Naive physics beliefs can be systematically mistaken. They provide a useful test-bed because they are common, and also because their existence must rely on some adaptive advantage, within a given context. In the second part of the commentary we also ask questions about when a whole family of misbeliefs should be considered together as a single phenomenon.

Additional evidence is presented concerning the anisotropy between vertical and horizontal encoding, which emerges from studies of human perception and cognition of space in plane mirror reflections. Moreover, it is suggested that the non-metric characteristic of polarization is not limited to the vertical dimension.

Neste artigo, propõe-se uma leitura das categorias no tratado aristotélico homônimo como um primeiro esboço de uma ontologia regional, centrada nas substâncias sensíveis. Tendo por foco substância, quantidade, qualidade, relativo, agir e sofrer, este trabalho busca expor as duas estratégias principais que Aristóteles parece empregar para chegar a uma lista das categorias: (a) características básicas, cuja satisfação ou não satisfação de cada uma determina a natureza categorial de cada item e (b) a propriedade única que caracteriza cada categoria em contraste (...) com todas as outras. São, então, feitas considerações para vincular esse primeiro esboço ontológico a temas discutidos nos livros Lambda e Zeta da Metafísica, de modo a sugerir as direções principais que a sua ontologia nova (e geral) seguirá ao evoluir para uma teoria unificada da substância. (shrink)

This essay will discuss how the Theory of Communicative Action incorporates the systemic complexification process and the Systems and Life World duality. Part of this process will be carried out with the discussion of communicative action, as a space for dialogue between people seeking understanding. The process of new forms of understanding and construction of knowledge is possible through the integrative structure of the lifeworld, such as semantic dimension, social space, and historical time. However, there is the other side, the (...) Systems, where the manifestations of crisis and disturbances, the pathologies of society, which in cultural reproduction appear as a loss of meaning of culture, loss of legitimacy of society and in personality, there is a crisis of belonging. (shrink)

The Oscar Wilde trials (1895) have usually been interpreted either as a historical document which gives insight into the regulation of sexuality in the late nineteenth century, or as literary biography explicating the playwright's life and works. Taking its cue from recent scholarship in ‘law and literature’, and also from Wilde's own conception of the relationship between art and life, this article proposes a reading of the trials which blurs the distinction between legal history and literary criticism by considering them (...) as a form of literature. It argues that the trial transcripts enact and reflect Wilde's vision of what literature is and how it should be read, and as such should be given a place amongst his literary works, alongside such aesthetic manifestos as ‘The Decay of Lying’ and ‘The Critic as Artist’. (shrink)

A spatial logic is a formal language interpreted over any class of structures featuring geometrical entities and relations, broadly construed. In the past decade, spatial logics have attracted much attention in response to developments in such diverse fields as Artificial Intelligence, Database Theory, Physics, and Philosophy. The aim of this handbook is to create, for the first time, a systematic account of the field of spatial logic. The book comprises a general introduction, followed by fourteen chapters by invited authors. Each (...) chapter provides a self-contained overview of its topic, describing the principal results obtained to date, explaining the methods used to obtain them, and listing the most important open problems. Jointly, these contributions constitute a comprehensive survey of this rapidly expanding subject. (shrink)

Debates on the moral status of human embryos have been highly and continuously controversial. For many, these controversies have turned into a fruitless scholastical endeavor. However, recent developments and insights in cellular biology have cast further doubt on one of the core points of dissent: the argument from potentiality. In this article we want to show in a nonscholastical way why this argument cannot possibly survive. Getting once more into the intricacies of status debates is a must in our eyes. (...) Not merely intellectual coherence but the standing and self-understanding of current stem cell research might profit from finally taking leave of the argument from potentiality. (shrink)

Across two studies, one of which was pre-registered, we find that a simple questionnaire that measures intellectual virtue and vice predicts how many fake news articles and conspiracy theories participants accept. This effect holds even when controlling for multiple demographic predictors, including age, household income, sex, education, ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, and news consumption. These results indicate that self-report is an adequate way to measure intellectual virtue and vice, which suggests that they are not fully immune to introspective awareness or (...) “stealthy” in the sense that Cassam (2015) argues. This is an important methodological result and may pave the way for future research on intellectual virtue and vice. (shrink)

This article gives a practice-based overview of the implementation aspects of Corporate Responsibility. After discussing the success factors for implementing Corporate Responsibility, the article describes a model for implementing Corporate Responsibility. Special attention is given to the success factors in the subsequent phases of implementation (sensitivity to the organizational environment, awareness of core values and clear leadership), to ensure that the most optimal results attainable for the organization can be reached. The implementation-model is clarified by looking at experiences in implementing (...) Corporate Responsibility at Chiquita. (shrink)

This article gives a practice-based overview of the implementation aspects of Corporate Responsibility. After discussing the success factors for implementing Corporate Responsibility, the article describes a model for implementing Corporate Responsibility. Special attention is given to the success factors in the subsequent phases of implementation (sensitivity to the organizational environment, awareness of core values and clear leadership), to ensure that the most optimal results attainable for the organization can be reached. The implementation-model is clarified by looking at experiences in implementing (...) Corporate Responsibility at Chiquita. (shrink)

This paper discusses how to define logics as deductive limits of sequences of other logics. The case of da Costa's hierarchy of increasingly weaker paraconsistent calculi, known as $ \mathcal {C}$n, 1 $ \leq$ n $ \leq$ $ \omega$, is carefully studied. The calculus $ \mathcal {C}$$\scriptstyle \omega$, in particular, constitutes no more than a lower deductive bound to this hierarchy and differs considerably from its companions. A long standing problem in the literature (open for more than 35 years) is (...) to define the deductive limit to this hierarchy, that is, its greatest lower deductive bound. The calculus $ \mathcal {C}$min, stronger than $ \mathcal {C}$$\scriptstyle \omega$, is first presented as a step toward this limit. As an alternative to the bivaluation semantics of $ \mathcal {C}$min presented thereupon, possible-translations semantics are then introduced and suggested as the standard technique both to give this calculus a more reasonable semantics and to derive some interesting properties about it. Possible-translations semantics are then used to provide both a semantics and a decision procedure for $ \mathcal {C}$Lim, the real deductive limit of da Costa's hierarchy. Possible-translations semantics also make it possible to characterize a precise sense of duality: as an example, $ \mathcal {D}$min is proposed as the dual to $ \mathcal {C}$min. (shrink)

We prove that the category of Nachbin’s compact ordered spaces and order-preserving continuous maps between them is dually equivalent to a variety of algebras, with operations of at most countable arity. Furthermore, we observe that the countable bound on the arity is the best possible: the category of compact ordered spaces is not dually equivalent to any variety of finitary algebras. Indeed, the following stronger results hold: the category of compact ordered spaces is not dually equivalent to any finitely accessible (...) category, any first-order definable class of structures, and any class of finitary algebras closed under products and subalgebras. An explicit equational axiomatisation of the dual of the category of compact ordered spaces is obtained; in fact, we provide a finite one, meaning that our description uses only finitely many function symbols and finitely many equational axioms. In preparation for the latter result, we establish a generalisation of a celebrated theorem by Mundici: our result—whose proof is independent of Mundici’s theorem—asserts that the category of unital commutative distributive lattice-ordered monoids is equivalent to the category of what we call MV-monoidal algebras.Abstract taken directly from the thesis.E-mail: marco[email protected]: https://air.unimi.it/retrieve/handle/2434/812809/1698986/phd_unimi_R11882.pdf. (shrink)

Heterogeneity of Being goes beyond the standard interpretations of Octavio Paz as a thinker of national identity and proposes a radical rethinking of the relationship between literature and philosophy. Dorfsman analyzes how Paz’s “tradition of rupture” properly displays a continuity between self and other, identity and difference, time and space.

From the early 1840s on, Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian doctrine aroused the joint interest of Marx and Engels, who saw the English philosopher as one of the forerunners of socialism. Later, however, in the various editions (German, French, English) of Book 1 of Capital (1867/90), Bentham would be sarcastically branded by Marx as a “genius of bourgeois stupidity”. In their youth, both Engels and Marx had independently become interested in Bentham’s ideas, admiring some social-ethical themes, seen as heralding interesting developments for (...) the cause of the proletariat. On Engels’s suggestion, Marx included Bentham’s name, alongside those of the major 18th–19th century English and French exponents of protosocialism, in a planned Library of the most outstanding foreign socialist writers (1845), which however remained only a draft. From his first stay in England (1842/44), the young Engels had embraced in particular the famous utilitarian principle of “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” advocated by Bentham. Marx, on the other hand, after initially praising Bentham’s work, which he had read in a French translation during his exile in Paris (1844), harshly criticized the ambiguous implications of this principle. In fact, he believed thatbehind a misleading progressive façade, it constituted the philosophical equivalent of the later economic theory of labour productivity propounded by D. Ricardo in opposition to the theory of its mere quantitative extension put forward by A. Smith. In the London Manuscripts (1861/63) Marx will reveal the affinity betweenBentham’s principle of the happpiness of the greatest number of people, and Ricardo’s assumption of the ineliminable misery of the minority condemned to productive labour. Based on the collection of Marx’s and Engels’s texts (letters, drafts, notebooks, manuscripts, printed works), made available today thanks to the critical edition by MEGA1, this paper sets out to re-examine, im großen und ganzen, the main moments in their critique of Bentham’s Utilitarianism. (shrink)

Interest in _dream_ and _madness_, conceived as the loss of a world shared with others, and the individual’s entry into a private world governed by a personal logic unrelated to the waking state and to common feeling, recurs in at least three of Kant’s works: _Essay on the Diseases of the Head,_ (1764), _Dreams of a Spirit-Seer_ (1766), and _Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View_ (1798). Hegel too, from an early age, showed a strong fascination and a precocious interest (...) in psychopathological matters (states of altered consciousness, prophetic dreams, somnambulism, catalepsy, witchcraft etc.) to which he devoted intriguing reflections in various works from different periods: from the Berne Ms _Philosophy of Subjective Spirit_ (1794/95) to the _Phenomenology _(1807), from the _Philosophical __Propaedeutics_ (1808ff.) to the _Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences_ (1830 3 ). Starting from the remarks of the two philosophers, this paper aims to underline the conceptual links between their thought and that of some renowned psychologists and psychiatrists of the 1800s-1900s (Pinel, Janet, Adler, James, Binswanger, Freud et al.). On the other hand, the paper also seeks to show – within the framework of an idea of _reason_ dating back to Heraclitus (about 544/483 B.C.) – some murky motifs, not always adequately emphasized in the past, found in the figurative and literary works of the late 1700s (e.g. Fuseli’s_ The Nightmare_, Coleridge’s _The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner_, and, in particular, plate Nr. 43 of the _Caprichos _by Goya, _El sueño de la razón produce monstruos_), where there emerges a «dark side» of psychic activity emblematically described as the cryptic relationship between _dream_ and_ madness._. (shrink)

This novel contributed volume advances the current debate on free will by bridging the divide between analytic and historically oriented approaches to the problem. With thirteen chapters by leading academics in the field, the volume is divided into three parts: free will and determinism, free will and indeterminism, and free will and moral responsibility. The contributors aim to initiate a philosophical discourse that profits from a combination of the two approaches. On the one hand, the analytic tools familiar from the (...) debate – arguments, concepts, and distinctions – can be used to sharpen our understanding of classical philosophical positions. On the other hand, the rich philosophical tradition can be reconstructed so as to inspire new solutions. In recent years, the problem of free will has received special attention in the analytic arena. This is the first anthology to combine historical and analytic perspectives, significantly furthering the debate, and providing a crucial resource to academics and advanced students alike. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to show that Kripke’s proposed solution to the problem of negative existentials fails. I try to show that Kripke’s proposal fails because it entails that anybody who has good reasons to believe that there are no propositions has also good reasons to believe that he or she does not exist. However, there were philosophers who had good reasons to believe that there are no propositions even though they didn’t have good reasons to believe that they (...) do not exist. I conclude that Kripke’s proposed solution to the problem of negative existentials fails. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the German morphological tradition made a major contribution to twentieth-century study of form. Several scientists paved the way for this research: paleontologist Adolf Seilacher, entomologist Hermann Weber, and biologist Johann-Gerhard Helmcke together with architect Frei Otto. All of them sought to examine morphogenetic processes to illustrate their inherent structural properties, thus challenging the neo-Darwinian framework of evolutionary theory. I point out that the German theoretical challenge to adaptationist thinking was possible through an exchange and (...) transfer of practices, data, technologies, and knowledge between biologically oriented students of form and architects, designers, and engineers. This exchange of practices and knowledge was facilitated by the establishment of two collaborative research centers at the beginning of the 1970s. Hence, by showing the richness of topics, methods, and technologies discussed in German-speaking morphology between 1950 and the 1970s, this paper paves the way to a much broader comprehension of the shifts that have shaped twentieth-century evolutionary biology. (shrink)

In the substitutional framework, validity is truth under all substitutions of the nonlogical vocabulary. I develop a theory where □ is interpreted as substitutional validity. I show how to prove soundness and completeness for common modal calculi using this definition.

Why are mistaken beliefs about Covid-19 so prevalent? Political identity, education and other demographic variables explain only a part of individual differences in the susceptibility to Covid-19 misinformation. This paper focuses on another explanation: epistemic vice. Epistemic vices are character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. If the basic assumption of vice epistemology is right, then people with epistemic vices such as indifference to the truth or rigidity in their belief structures will tend to be more susceptible (...) to believing Covid-19 misinformation. We carried out an observational study (US sample, n = 998) in which we measured the level of epistemic vice of participants using a novel Epistemic Vice Scale. We also asked participants questions eliciting the extent to which they subscribe to myths and misinformation about Covid-19. We find overwhelming evidence to the effect that epistemic vice is associated with susceptibility to Covid-19 misinformation. In fact, the association turns out to be stronger than with political identity, educational attainment, scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test, personality, dogmatism, and need for closure. We conclude that this offers evidence in favor of the empirical presuppositions of vice epistemology. (shrink)

Abstract. This paper argues that the “Argument from Moral Peer Disagreement” fails to make a case for widespread moral skepticism. The main reason for this is that the argument rests on a too strong assumption about the normative significance of peer disagreement (and higher-order evidence more generally). In order to demonstrate this, I distinguish two competing ways in which one might explain higher-order defeat. According to what I call the “Objective Defeat Explanation” it is the mere possession of higher-order evidence (...) that explains defeat. I argue that this type of explanation is problematic and that it at best collapses into another explanation I call the “Subjective Defeat Explanation”. According to this explanation, it is coming to believe that one’s belief fails to be rational that explains defeat. Then I go on to argue that the Subjective Defeat Explanation is able to provide a straightforward explanation of higher-order defeat but that it entails that peer disagreement (and higher-order evidence more generally) only contingently gives rise to defeat, and importantly, that the condition it is contingent upon is very often not satisfied when it comes to moral peer disagreement specifically. As a result, it appears that moral knowledge is seldom threatened by moral peer disagreement. (shrink)

Between 1909 and 1913, Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde unearthed more than 225 tons of fossils in former German East Africa and transported them to Berlin. Among them were the bones of Brachiosaurus brancai, which would eventually become the biggest mounted dinosaur in the world. By analyzing the social and communicative strategies that made this expedition possible, this paper aims to reveal several aspects of natural history knowledge production at the end of the long nineteenth century. Using rhetoric, the director of (...) the Geological–Paleontological Museum in Berlin, Wilhelm von Branca, conducted a highly successful campaign to market the dinosaurs in Prussia and to convince public opinion and the Prussian central state of the value of paleontology. He fired the Prussian imagination and took advantage of the competitive urge to emulate American paleontology and industry. This work examines how his public relations strategies shaped the German biological “landscape” of the first decades of the twentieth century. It asks: when and under what conditions did paleontology successfully appeal to the public? How does communication dictate, shape, and constrain the development of a specific epistemic agenda? And what kind of power do the public and money have? (shrink)

During his celebrated 1922 debate with Bergson, Einstein famously proclaimed: “the time of the philosopher does not exist, there remains only a psychological time that differs from the physicist’s.” Einstein’s dictum, I maintain, has been metabolized by the natural sciences, which typically presuppose, more or less explicitly, the existence of a single, univocal, temporal substratum, ultimately determined by physics. This reductionistic assumption pervades much biological and biomedical practice. The chronological age allotted to individuals is conceived as an objective quantity, allowing (...) one to straightforwardly assign and compare the biological age of organisms. This essay argues that the standard practice of assessing the age and aging of organisms against the backdrop of a physical conception of time is problematic. This becomes especially evident in light of recent discoveries of various levels of senescence underlying the development of individual organisms—a phenomenon known as ‘age mosaicism.’ The bottom line is that the study of age and aging requires a biological conception of time, as opposed to a physical one. Einstein clearly wasn’t wrong about his operationalization of time in relativity theory. Still time may be less monolithic than he surmised. (shrink)

Humans have engaged in artistic and aesthetic activities since the appearance of our species. Our ancestors have decorated their bodies, tools, and utensils for over 100,000 years. The expression of meaning using color, line, sound, rhythm, or movement, among other means, constitutes a fundamental aspect of our species' biological and cultural heritage. Art and aesthetics, therefore, contribute to our species identity and distinguish it from its living and extinct relatives. Science is faced with the challenge of explaining the natural foundations (...) of such a unique trait, and the way cultural processes nurture it into magnificent expressions, historically and ethnically unique. How do the human mind and brain bring about these sorts of behaviors? What psychological and neural processes underlie the appreciation of painting, music, and dance? How does training modulate these processes? Are humans the only species capable of aesthetic appreciation, or are other species endowed with the rudiments of this capacity? Empirical examinations of such questions have a long and rich history in the discipline of psychology, the genesis of which can be traced back to the publication of Gustav Theodor Fechner's Vorschule der Aesthetik in 1876, making it the second oldest branch in experimental psychology. The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Aesthetics brings together leading experts in psychology, neuroimaging, art history, and philosophy to answer these questions. It provides the most comprehensive coverage of the domain of empirical aesthetics to date. With sections on visual art, dance, music, and many other art forms and aesthetic phenomena, the breadth of this volume's scope reflects the richness and variety of topics and methods currently used today by scientists to understand the way our mind and brain endow us with the faculty to produce and appreciate art and aesthetics. (shrink)

Although ethical decision‐making theory has evolved over the years, within the field of management, research still revolves around James Rest’s (1986) four‐step framework, dominated by a positivist epistemology and a quantitative methodology. Given that currently there is a call for a theoretical, epistemological, and methodological renovation for the enlargement and enrichment of knowledge about how decisions are morally made in organizations, this paper has a double aim. First, by showing the models’ main flaws and limitations, it critically assesses the prominent (...) theoretical models of Rest, Trevino, and Jones. Then, for decision making in organizations, the paper aims to posit a fresh moral theory that addresses the phenomenon from a comprehensive epistemological perspective. To do so, it steps back from those prominent models in order to review John Dewey’s “theory of moral life.” At the core of the proposed comprehensive theoretical framework are Dewey’s concepts of a “moral standard” and “valuation.” Finally, the paper shows how the Dewey‐based framework can both overcome the flaws and limitations that are identified in those prominent models and can enrich empirical research, therefore contributing to developing as a whole the ethical decision‐making field. (shrink)

Why are mistaken beliefs about COVID-19 so prevalent? Political identity, education and other demographic variables explain only part of the differences between people in their susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation. This paper focuses on another explanation: epistemic vice. Epistemic vices are character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. If the basic assumption of vice epistemology is right, then people with epistemic vices such as indifference to the truth or rigidity in their belief structures will tend to be more (...) susceptible to believing COVID-19 misinformation. We carried out an observational study (US adult sample, n = 998) in which we measured the level of epistemic vice of participants using a novel Epistemic Vice Scale that captures features of the current competing analyses of epistemic vice in the literature. We also asked participants questions eliciting the extent to which they subscribe to myths and misinformation about COVID-19. We find overwhelming evidence to the effect that epistemic vice is associated with susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation. In fact, the association turns out to be stronger than with political identity, educational attainment, scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test, personality, dogmatism, and need for closure. We conclude that this offers evidence in favor of the empirical presuppositions of vice epistemology. (shrink)

Recent work has formally linked the traditional axiomatisation of incomplete preferences à la Anscombe-Aumann with the theory of desirability developed in the context of imprecise probability, by showing in particular that they are the very same theory. The equivalence has been established under the constraint that the set of possible prizes is finite. In this paper, we relax such a constraint, thus de facto creating one of the most general theories of rationality and decision making available today. We provide the (...) theory with a sound interpretation and with basic notions, and results, for the separation of beliefs and values, and for the case of complete preferences. Moreover, we discuss the role of conglomerability for the presented theory, arguing that it should be a rationality requirement under very broad conditions. (shrink)