Poznanski's Mabo' 'al 'ofen ketibat ha-Qara'im 'et dibrey yemehem remains, despite its flaws, the only essay expressly devoted to Karaite historiography. al-Qirqisani's Kitab al-an war wal-maraqib is an historical piece of work viewed, by personal choice or owing to his own cultural development or under the historical circumstances, through theological glasses. al-Qirqisani was writing for the benefit of his own co-religionists in order to strengthen their faith. However limited his historical perspective may appear, it resolves into a public appreciation of (...) the author's party, which is founded on a recovery of the past, and which aimed to strengthen the Selbstverstandnis of a Jewish minority. It would be difficult to describe such an approach otherwise than as an attempt to historicize the past. The Kitab al-anwar appears not only as a document of the literary history of Karaism, but as an original reading of the history of Judaism, the differentiation between secular and religious being only ours. (shrink)

A growing international movement, called educational neuroscience, aims to inform educational research, policy, and practice with neuroscience and cognitive science research. The research brings a powerful capability to directly intervene in children's biological makeup, stirring ethical questions about the very nature of child rearing, and the role of education in this process. This study argues that designing children is ethically unacceptable and presents a few case studies to highlight important ethical issues. This article focuses on a central issue—the distinction between (...) two general types of educational interventions informed by neuroscience, designing children versus raising children. These scenarios envision educational reforms that might follow in the wake of advances in understanding the biological bases of ethical behaviors. It hopes to provoke others to consider emerging ethical issues in mind, brain, and education, and to take preemptive action to protect children's right to participate in their own development. (shrink)

La Cappella Carafa di Santa Severina, nella chiesa di San Domenico Maggiore a Napoli, era uno dei luoghi preferiti della giovinezza di Giordano Bruno. La sua struttura, che ricorda il teatro di Giulio Camillo, e la presenza di trenta simboli astrologici scolpiti sugli archi, la rendono la “stanza della memoria” ideale per l’applicazione dell’innovativa arte della memoria sviluppata dal filosofo Nolano. -/- The ‘memory place’ of Giordano Bruno. The Carafa of Santa Severina Chapel in the church of (...) San Domenico Maggiore, Naples, was one of the favourite places of Giordano Bruno’s youth. Its structure, similar to that of Giulio Camillo’s theatre, and the presence of thirty astrological symbols carved on the arches, make it the ideal ‘memory place’ for the application of the innovative ‘art of memory’ developed by the philosopher. (shrink)

In this book Bruno Latour brings together these different approaches to provide a lively and challenging analysis of science, demonstrating how social context..

Una risposta alla prolusione di Zeller -- Della relazione della Chiesa allo Stato -- Origine e natura della passioni secondo l'Etica di Spinoza -- La dottrina di Socrate secondo Senofonte, Platone ed Aristotele -- Della libertà morale -- Morale e religione -- Del concetto della libertà --Dell'insegnamento della storia -- Lezioni di pedagogia -- I problemi della filosofia della storia -- Del socialismo -- Saggi intorno alla concezione materialistica della storia -- Al comitato per la commemorazione di G. (...) class='Hi'>Bruno in Pisa -- Giordano Bruno -- L'università e la libertà della scienza -- A proposito del libro di Bernstein -- Da un secolo all'altro -- Storia, filosofia della storia, sociologia e materialismo storico. (shrink)

One of the most debated questions in psychology and cognitive science is the nature and the functioning of the mental processes involved in deductive reasoning. However, all existing theories refer to a specific deductive domain, like syllogistic, propositional or relational reasoning.Our goal is to unify the main types of deductive reasoning into a single set of basic procedures. In particular, we bring together the microtheories developed from a mental models perspective in a single theory, for which we provide a formal (...) foundation. We validate the theory through a computational model (UNICORE) which allows fine‐grained predictions of subjects' performance in different reasoning domains.The performance of the model is tested against the performance of experimental subjects—as reported in the relevant literature—in the three areas of syllogistic, relational and propositional reasoning. The computational model proves to be a satisfactory artificial subject, reproducing both correct and erroneous performance of the human subjects. Moreover, we introduce a developmental trend in the program, in order to simulate the performance of subjects of different ages, ranging from children (3–6) to adolescents (8–12) to adults (>21). The simulation model performs similarly to the subjects of different ages.Our conclusion is that the validity of the mental model approach is confirmed for the deductive reasoning domain, and that it is possible to devise a unique mechanism able to deal with the specific subareas. The proposed computational model (UNICORE) represents such a unifying structure. (shrink)

Cantor showed that there are infinite sets that do not have one-to-one correspondences between them. The standard understanding of this result is that it shows that there are different sizes of infinity. This paper challenges this standard understanding, and argues, more generally, that we do not have any reason to think that there are different sizes of infinity. Two arguments are given against the claim that Cantor established that there are different such sizes: one involves an analogy between Cantor’s result (...) and Russell’s paradox, another is more direct. (shrink)

Interoception, the ability to feel the body’s internal sensations, is an essential aspect of emotional experience. There is mounting evidence that interoception is impaired in common mental health disorders and that poor interoceptive awareness is a major contributor to emotional reactivity, calling for clinical interventions to address this deficit. The manuscript presents a comprehensive theoretical review, drawing on multidisciplinary findings to propose a metatheory of reinforcement mechanisms applicable across a wide range of disorders. We present a reconsideration of operant conditioning (...) through the co-emergence model of reinforcement, which is a neurophenomenological account of the interaction between cognition and interoception, and its consequences on behavior. The model suggests that during memory processing, the retrieval of autobiographical memory (including maladaptive cognition) is dependent upon its co-emerging interoceptive cues occurring at the encoding, consolidation and reconsolidation stages. Accordingly, “interoceptive reinforcement” during emotional distress is a common factor to all emotional disorders and a major cause for relapse. We propose that interoceptive desensitization has transdiagnostic benefits, readily achievable through the cultivation of equanimity during mindfulness training and can be integrated in cognitive and behavioral interventions to permit a transdiagnostic applicability. We summarize the contributions of this approach into 10 specific and testable propositions. (shrink)

To think up vocational training devices aims at enabling persons to experiment with different situations, at different moments with in-turn periods of training and actual employment. Persons come to “dialogue” with different situations, at different moments, to make sense out of them, to create links between them and thus to build their own apprenticeship. Can this dialogue, this rhythmic training/experience only be observed in the frame of those vocational training devices? Couldn’t this dialogue or this rhythmic be observed on longer (...) periods, beyond the duration of these devices, on a career’s scale for instance? This article tries to transcribe the processing of comprehensive/biographical interviews of four Heads of Catholic primary schools. The processing is based on methods of analysis that use what has been called “sets of training and experience temporalities” Being part of a thesis which aims at highlighting the professional dynamics of this emergent group of Heads, the analysis of this dialogue, this rhythmic training/experience contributes to typify interviews and takes part in the definition of a socio-professional world and in the definition of an identity proper to the Heads who were interviewed. (shrink)

Interactive adaptive systems increasingly become part of our everyday life. Which factors could shape this development and under which conditions will interactions with technical systems be deemed socially appropriate? The "FActors of Social Appropriateness" (FASA) Model presented in this Open Access-book provides a structured approach to our understanding of social appropriateness in human-technology interaction. The FASA Model serves to inform design choices for sociosensitive and socioactive artificial assistants.

The need for foreknowledge intensifies and a prophetic promise of today’s palm readers causes us wet palms: letting the world speak for itself. Big Data comes with the promise of enabling people to listen to that speaking world and of gaining accurate foreknowledge by Big Data predictions. The uncertainty of our modern, complex world overstrains our present coping capabilities, causing a feeling of slipping off a slippery slope, which in turn causes a need for increasing our own foreknowledge. Part of (...) the Big Data promise is to grant better foreknowledge by overcoming the wrongness of scientific theory or causation assumptions. But thus, people have no other option than to believe in these results and perform their actions in good faith. This makes Big Data based outcomes a matter of faith. This article argues that Big Data based outcomes can be seen as today’s oracle, as prophecies without prophets and reflects on the consequences of that perspective. (shrink)

The discussion about the Raven Paradox is ever-renewing: after nearly 70 years, many authors propose from time to time new solutions, and many authors state that these solutions are unsatisfactory. It is worthy to be carefully noted that though most arguments in favor or against the paradox are based on the notion of “probability” and on the application of Bayes’ law, not one of them makes use of the Kolmogorov axiomatic theory of probability and on the subsequent notion of “random (...) variable”. This seems to be due to a preference for the purely logical interpretation of the notion of “probability” which makes it possible to assign a probability value to propositions expressing natural (universal) laws. This paper aims at presenting an attempt to contribute a solution to the paradox by the proposal of a different way to express universal natural laws and by the use of a language which does not allow one to apply probability to universal statements. (shrink)

Desde los remotos tiempos de la tragedia Ática en Grecia, el teatro es y ha sido siempre movimiento, siendo este una característica esencial de los seres orgánicos, es decir, de los dotados de vida. No obstante, se corre el riesgo de reemplazar su mecánica natural con metafísica, cuando ello no es coherente ni siquiera en hipótesis. Cabe demostrar las disimilitudes del teatro con las doctrinas escolásticas, idealistas, o hinduistas, y su compatibilidad con los átomos, electrones y las leyes de la (...) física, sometiendo sus conceptos al rigor epistemológico. La creación artística nace del psiquismo humano, aun no siendo material en primera instancia, pero ya luego cobra su forma cualitativa definitiva. Para ello atraviesa por varios tipos de censura, tanto física como psicológica, buscando expresarse mediante el lenguaje en que se comunican los distintos géneros dramáticos, dando a conocer su situación de crisis sin retorno, esa que se debate entre crueldad y violencia. Antonin Artaud intrinca al teatro las ideas cabalísticas y no busca contrastarlas con argumentación lógica. La evidencia demuestra que, si es que hay una unidad, esa es la del teatro con lo físico. Lo físico es su verdadero “doble”. Un sucinto pero conciso repaso histórico, bien prodigado de documentación y basado en los preceptos erigidos por el materialismo dialectico, nos dará la certeza de que el teatro pertenece exclusivamente al mundo físico, no solo en la práctica, sino también en esencia, y esta es la materia, siendo solo la metafísica un estadio improbable dentro de ella. (shrink)

L’article inscrit la guerre d’Ukraine dans le cadre d’une politique clausewitzienne de contre-révolution mondiale. Cette guerre interétatique est le résultat du cycle de déploiement des printemps et des soulèvements de la dernière décennie et a des répercussions synchroniques sur un clivage interne qui traverse d’autres pays. L’article se conclut par une vision alternative entre un conflit inter-impérialiste dans lequel l’Europe est menacée par le bloc atlantiste et une dichotomie autocraties/démocraties.

À partir d’auteurs comme Negri, Cocco, Viveiros de Castro et Fanon, cet article discute le devenir-indien comme un concept pour les forces expressives de luttes et de réinvention dans le Sud. À travers de formes concrètes d’intervention, on analyse un mode de résistance à la fois créatif et alternatif, qui prend le contre-pied de l’actuel agenda capitaliste et néo-développementiste.

This essay explores the polemics that took place in France in 2001 on the occasion of an exhibition of photographs of Nazi concentration and extermination camps. The article analyzes hostile responses to this exhibition and to its catalogue, written by art historian Georges Didi-Huberman. Condemned for having transgressed an apparent prohibition of the representation of the Holocaust in France, Didi-Huberman responded with a book that tackles the questions of representation in relation to war and trauma. While recognizing the ethical and (...) intellectual merits of Didi-Huberman's response, the essay nonetheless suggests that the French debate, whether it promotes or demotes images of the Holocaust, seems to perpetuate an apocalyptic, allegorical, and sublime reading of Auschwitz. (shrink)

This paper analyses Giordano Bruno's dialogue De l’infinito universo e mondi (The Infinite Universe and Worlds), written during his stay in England (1583–85), in the context of his philosophical works and, particularly, within the context of scientific and imaginative writings such as Cyrano de Bergerac's Other Worlds (published posthumously in 1662) and Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moone (1638). The article also discusses the contemporary speculations of Galileo and Kepler regarding the existence of a plurality of worlds and (...) the presence of creatures on the moon and their rapport with humans. Besides the imaginative, fantastic and pseudoscientific elements, attention is also given to religious implications and attitudes, especially in the case of Godwin, who, like his countryman John Wilkins—author of The Discovery of the Worlde in the Moone (1638)–was a bishop and therefore wanted to avoid any controversy with the church. (shrink)