We prove that the theory IΔ0, extended by a weak version of the Δ0-Pigeonhole Principle, proves that every integer is the sum of four squares (Lagrange's theorem). Since the required weak version is derivable from the theory IΔ0 + ∀x (xlog(x) exists), our results give a positive answer to a question of Macintyre (1986). In the rest of the paper we consider the number-theoretical consequences of a new combinatorial principle, the ‘Δ0-Equipartition Principle’ (Δ0EQ). In particular we give a new proof, (...) which can be formalized in IΔ0 + Δ0EQ, of the fact that every prime of the form 4n + 1 is the sum of two squares. (shrink)

Humans possess the ability to extract highly organized perceptual structures from sequences of temporal stimuli. For instance, we can organize specific rhythmical patterns into hierarchical, or metrical, systems. Despite the evidence of a fundamental influence of the motor system in achieving this skill, few studies have attempted to investigate the organization of our motor representation of rhythm. To this aim, we studied—in musicians and non-musicians—the ability to perceive and reproduce different rhythms. In a first experiment participants performed a temporal order-judgment (...) task, for rhythmical sequences presented via auditory or tactile modality. In a second experiment, they were asked to reproduce the same rhythmic sequences, while their tapping force and timing were recorded. We demonstrate that tapping force encodes the metrical aspect of the rhythm, and the strength of the coding correlates with the individual’s perceptual accuracy. We suggest that the similarity between perception and tapping-force organization indicates a common representation of rhythm, shared between the perceptual and motor systems. (shrink)

Offers a comprehensive historical overview of the field of aesthetics. Eighteen specially commissioned essays introduce and explore the contributions of those philosophers who have shaped the subject, from its origins in the work of the ancient Greeks to contemporary developments in the 21st Century. -/- The book reconstructs the history of aesthetics, clearly illustrating the most important attempts to address such crucial issues as the nature of aesthetic judgment, the status of art, and the place of the arts within society. (...) Ideal for undergraduate students, the book lays the necessary foundations for a complete and thorough understanding of this fascinating subject. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction \ 1. Plato, Robert Stecker \ 2. Aristotle, Angela Curran \ 3. Medieval Aesthetics, Gian Carlo Garfagnini \ 4. David Hume, Alan Goldman \ 5. Immanuel Kant, Elisabeth Schellekens \ 6. G.W.F. Hegel, Richard Eldridge \ 7. Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, Scott Jenkins \ 8. Benedetto Croce and Robin Collingwood, Gary Kemp \ 9. Roger Fry and Clive Bell, Susan Feagin \ 10. John Dewey, Thomas Leddy \ 11. Martin Heidegger, Joseph Shieber \ 12. Walter Benjamin and T.W. Adorno, Gerhard Richter \ 13. Monroe Beardsley, Noël Carroll \14. Nelson Goodman, Alessandro Giovannelli \ 15. Richard A.Wollheim, Malcolm Budd \ 16. Arthur C. Danto, Sondra Bacharach \ 17. Kendall L. Walton, David Davies \ Some Contemporary Developments, Alessandro Giovannelli . (shrink)

1. Scelta di lettere curata dall'autore 1914-1935 -- 2. Lettere ad Alessandro Casati, 1907-1952.

Within the author’s long-term project of updating John Rawls’s paradigm of “political liberalism” to a historical context different from the original one, this paper focuses on how political liberalism can help us understand populism and help liberal democracy survive the populist upsurge. In the first section, political liberalism is argued to be of help in directing our attention to three constitutive aspects of all sorts of populism: the conflation of “the people” with the electorate and the electorate with the nation, (...) the attribution of constituent power to the electorate, and a penchant for so-called “justified intolerance.” In the second section, enfeebled democracies and postliberal democracies are discussed as two distinctly dangerous outcomes of populist contagion. Finally, in the third section the containment of populism is argued to require targeting the socioeconomic factors undergirding the populist upsurge and the jettisoni... (shrink)

An influential theory has it that metaphysical indeterminacy occurs just when reality can be made completely precise in multiple ways. That characterization is formulated by employing the modal apparatus of ersatz possible worlds. As quantum physics taught us, reality cannot be made completely precise. I meet the challenge by providing an alternative theory which preserves the use of ersatz worlds but rejects the precisificational view of metaphysical indeterminacy. The upshot of the proposed theory is that it is metaphysically indeterminate whether (...) p just in case it is neither true nor false that p, and no terms in ‘p’ are semantically defective. In other words, metaphysical indeterminacy arises when the world cannot be adequately described by a complete set of sentences defined in a semantically nondefective language. Moreover, the present theory provides a reductive analysis of metaphysical indeterminacy, unlike its influential predecessor. Finally, I argue that any adequate logic of a language with an indeterminate subject matter is neither compositional nor bivalent. (shrink)

This study on the contemporary relevance of Rousseau’s ethical and social thought, the “ethic of authenticity,” responds to the tensions of modern morality and rivals the answers generated by the more mainstream tradition of the “ethic of autonomy.”.

The paper discusses the relation between philosophy and politics in the thought of Antonio Gramsci. It argues that the relation is adumbrated in Gramsci's concept of hegemony, which is simultaneously the politicization and the historicization of thought and knowledge. The concept of hegemony describes a reciprocal relation between the kaleidoscopic movement of historical reality (that is, relations of power) and the formulation and dissemination of moral and intellectual structures of thought (that is, modes of thinking and feeling).

Translated from the 1989 Italian edition, Ferrara (sociology, U. of Rome) intertwines an exploration of the ethical and social thought of 17th-century French philosopher Rousseau, with an analysis of contemporary culture through those ...

This text is an integrated and comprehensive account of theories of justice and judgement in contemporary political and moral philosophy. It offers a critical examination of judgement and normative validity in the recent works of Rawls, Habermas, Ackerman, Michaleman, and Dworkin. Ferrara demonstrates how the understanding of justice and normative validity, since the linguistic turn in philosophy, is defined in terms of reflective judgement. This demonstration comprises of an historical overview of the judgement model in contemporary political philosophy that focuses (...) on Rawls on ` justice as fairness' and Habermas on the discourse theory of law and the public sphere. The discussion then examines situated judgement; the work of Ackerman on the function of the constitution; and Michaelman on deliberative democracy. Justice and Judgement concludes with an exhaustive and exacting discussion of universalism and contemporary liberalism; and the judgement view of justice. The key themes of this examination are the good; equal respect; and reflexive judgement. (shrink)

Language, vernacular and philosophy -- Sperone Speroni between language and logic -- Benedetto Varchi and the idea of a vernacular logic (1540) -- Antonio Tridapale and the first vernacular logic (1547) -- Nicolo Massa's logic for natural philosophy (1549) -- Alessandro Piccolomini's instrument of philosophy (1551).

The secretory system of plant cells sorts a large number of soluble proteins that either are secreted or accumulate in vacuoles. Secretion is a bulk‐flow process that requires no information beyond the presence of a signal peptide necessary to enter the endoplasmic reticulum. Many vacuolar proteins are glycoproteins and the glycans are often modified as the proteins pass through the Golgi complex. Vacuolar targeting information is not contained in glycans as it is in animal cells; rather, targeting information is in (...) polypeptide domains as it is in yeast cells. Several such domains have now been identified, but these show little or no amino acid sequence homology. We discuss the possibilities that targeting of protein to plant vacuoles may involve receptors as well as aggregation of protein at low pH. (shrink)

"Philosophie et non-philosophie du poétique" indique une double attitude de la philosophie française contemporaine : pour maîtriser la pensée, elle revient sur soi, mais elle peut aussi ne pas participer à ce mouvement. Le "poétique", objet de l'attitude, implique alors le "poétique" et le "non-poétique", deux usages des expériences fondamentales du langage. La première expérience est la surdétermination du langage qui se rapporte à la pensée de la maîtrise. La deuxième est l'expérience de l'immanence du langage à soi sans retour (...) possible de la pensée. En passant par le poétique, la première attitude vise à la maîtrise de l'immanence. En passant par le non-poétique, la deuxième attitude remet en discussion la maîtrise de l'immanence par la notion d'une naïveté radicale et par la théorie du poétique. Nous parvenons ainsi à la distinction entre la pensée qui met l'immanence en discussion – la philosophie – et la pensée qui part de l'impossibilité de cette mise en discussion – la non-philosophie. (shrink)

This volume addresses the intriguing issue of indirect reports from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributors include philosophers, theoretical linguists, socio-pragmaticians, and cognitive scientists. The book is divided into four sections following the provenance of the authors. Combining the voices from leading and emerging authors in the field, it offers a detailed picture of indirect reports in the world’s languages and their significance for theoretical linguistics. Building on the previous book on indirect reports in this series, this volume adds an empirical (...) and cross-linguistic approach that covers an impressive range of languages, such as Cantonese, Japanese, Hebrew, Persian, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, Armenian, Italian, English, Hungarian, German, Rumanian, and Basque. (shrink)

Say that metaphysical indeterminacy occurs just when there is a fact such that neither it nor its negation obtains. The aim of this work is to shed light on the issue of whether orthodox quantum mechanics provides any evidence of metaphysical indeterminacy by discussing the logical, semantic, and broadly methodological presuppositions of the debate. I argue that the dispute amounts to a verbal disagreement between classical and quantum logicians, given Eli Hirsch’s account of substantivity; but that it need not be (...) so if Ted Sider’s naturalness-based account of substantivity is adopted instead. Given the latter approach, can anything be said in order to tip the balance of the dispute either way? Some prima facie reasonable constraints on naturalness entail that the classicist is right, and the quantum world is therefore determinate. Nevertheless, there are reasons for weakening those constraints, to the effect that the dispute remains very much open. Finally, I discuss alternative accounts of metaphysical indeterminacy, and argue that they are unsuitable for framing the quantum indeterminacy debate. (shrink)

I articulate a Global Best-System Account (GBSA) of laws of nature along broadly Mill–Ramsey–Lewis lines. The guiding idea is that the job of laws is to capture real patterns across time—where a pattern is real if it allows to compress information about matters of particular fact. The GBSA’s key ingredient is a definition of ‘best system’ in terms of a ranking method that meets a number of desiderata: it is rigorously defined; it outputs the ranking based on the candidate systems’ (...) epistemic virtues; it is objective, in that the output does not depend on one’s choice of basic concepts; it avoids two trivialization results (by Lewis, and Arrow-Okasha); and it does not appeal to naturalness, or other metaphysical notions in that vicinity. Although the GBSA is independent of the controversial thesis of Humean Supervenience, it satisfies the weaker thesis that laws of nature supervene on the total physical state of the world. Moreover, the resulting notion of lawhood is hyperintensional, unlike the neighboring notion of nomological necessity. Finally, GBSA-laws do not track naturalness, contra the Lewisian orthodoxy. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

In this paper, I critically examine Berys Gaut’s proposals regarding ethical criticism, that is, regarding the question of whether, and if so how, an ethical evaluation of a work of art can be considered amongst the determinants of the work’s value as art. I critically examine Gaut’s proposed taxonomy on the possible positions on the ethical criticism question as well as his own influential answer to such question: ethicism. My critique focuses on one missing element, I argue, in Gaut’s overall (...) approach and in ethicism as he formulates and defends it: reference to artistic categorization and to the aims and commitments artworks have in virtue of the artistic categories they belong to. I show how reference to artistic categorization facilitates the generation of a more fine-grained taxonomy of positions than the one Gaut proposes. Such taxonomy makes it possible to distinguish between two very different types of positions within what Gaut dubs ‘contextualism’: what I call limited or restricted ethicism and particularism. As an application of this more fine-grained taxonomy, I show how Noël Carroll’s ‘moderate moralism’, which Gaut convincingly claims to be incomplete, need not reduce to either ethicism or contextualism as Gaut claims: the view can also be completed in the direction of a limited or restricted ethicism. As for Gaut’s own proposal, surprisingly it itself proves to have leanings towards particularism, in so far as it delegates the question of the artistic (or aesthetic) relevance of ethical features to case-by-case decisions. Again, reference to artistic categorization would offer Gaut grounds to be less sceptical on the possibility of finding general philosophical principles governing the relevance of ethical features to artistic worth. Further, lack of reference to artistic categorization can be shown to affect Gaut’s claims within all three the arguments he puts forward in defence of ethicism—the moral beauty, the cognitive, and the merited-response argument. I show such claims to be ill founded when not implausible. (shrink)

Recent literature on emotional participation in narratives witnesses a contrast between those who emphasize the role of readers and spectators of narratives as participants and those who emphasize their role as mere onlookers. The former refer to notions like identification, empathy, and what Richard Wollheim calls «central imagining». The latter criticize the idea of identification, and use notions like sympathy and Wollheim’s «acentral imagining». I claim this debate to be vitiated by simplistic accounts of identification and empathy, a lack of (...) attention for the relationships between self- and other-oriented emotions, a misinterpretation of Wollheim’s central/acentral distinction in relation to another distinction suggested by him, that between «iconic» and «non-iconic» imagining. I defend an understanding – different from Wollheim’s correctly interpreted one – of these two distinctions and maintain the importance of iconic and central imaginings to the interpretation and appreciation of narratives. (shrink)

The present paper presents a philosofical analysis of the concept of control based on a specific characterization of the structure of control systems. The paper is subdivided into four section: in the first and the second sections the control dynamics is described and interpreted, while the last two sections briefly copy with the relationships between control, teleonomy, teleology and freedom.

Résumé La critique éthique considère que la valeur éthique d’une œuvre d’art affecte sa valeur artistique. Elle s’intéresse ordinairement à la valeur éthique du point de vue que l’œuvre adopte, ou à celui des effets qu’elles produisent, mais ne considère guère celle du processus de production de l’œuvre. Or celui-ci peut intéresser l’éthique comme lorsqu’une toile est réalisée en laissant des poissons rouges enduits de peinture agoniser et s’agiter sur une toile. C’est précisément de la valeur éthique des procédés utilisés (...) dont il est ici question. L’auteur défend un moralisme des moyens, selon lequel le jugement éthique des procédés a une place légitime dans l’évaluation artistique, et formule deux versions compatibles de cette position : la thèse esthétique et la thèse artistique. (shrink)

A new open science culture is emerging within the current system of the life sciences. This culture mixes an ethic of sharing with features such as anti-bureaucracy rebellion, hedonism, search for profit. It is a recombination of an old culture, the Mertonian ethos of modern open science, and a new one: the hacker ethic. This new culture has an important role in the evolving relationship between science and society. And it maintains a political ambivalence. Biohackers are rebel scientists and open (...) access advocates who challenge today’s Big Bio’s concentration of power. But at the same time they live in a new territory of accumulation that never excludes entrepreneurship and profit. (shrink)

Seit den Anfängen der Philosophie in der Antike bis heute währt das Fragen um das Nichts. Dabei steht es in unterschiedlichen Kontexten: Theologie, Ontologie, Ethik, Erkenntnistheorie, Logik und Ästhetik. Trotz einer unleugbaren Kontinuität zur antiken und mittelalterlichen Beschäftigung mit dem Nichts bildet die europäische Moderne eine originäre und innovative Erkenntnis und Erfahrung des Nichts aus, die nicht zuletzt das Aufkommen des Nihilismus bescheinigt. Dieser Band versucht einen umfassenden Blick auf das Themenfeld «Nichts - Negation - Nihilismus» zu werfen und insbesondere (...) zu erörtern, worin die Kontinuität und Diskontinuität der europäischen Moderne zu Antike und Mittelalter bestehen. (shrink)

Starting from the assumption that the ability to see patterns and thus abstract from actual events and properties of specific objects is universal, the article reviews different conceptualizations of and attitudes toward the terms ‘theory’ and ‘model’, identifying two co-existing and opposing tendencies: the love for details and the attraction to generalizations that can cover a wide range of phenomena. Using as a backdrop seven theses here reproduced in the Appendix, the article also examines the implications of taking the notion (...) of interaction as primary in the analysis of language and culture. Such implications involve the need to identify useful units of analysis and evaluative measures for competing theories and models. (shrink)

Lewis proposed to test the validity of a modal thesis by checking whether its possible-world translation is a theorem of counterpart theory. However, that criterion fails to validate many standard modal laws, thus raising doubts about the logical adequacy of the Lewisian framework. The present paper considers systems of counterpart theory of increasing strength and shows how each can be motivated by exhibiting a suitable intended model. In particular, perfect counterpart theory validates all the desired modal laws and therefore provides (...) a way out of the logical objection. Finally, a weakening of perfect counterpart theory is put forward as a response to some metaphysical objections. (shrink)

The present paper proposes to establish the data that can be drawn securely from a controversial testimonium on an oration of Cato contained in a late antique panegyric.13.3), and to illustrate some of its textual and exegetical problems. Further, in the light of a hitherto overlooked comparison with a gloss of Festus, proposals are made: for a new constitutio and interpretation of the text of the panegyric; and for the identification of a textual citation from the orations of Cato the (...) Censor, and the identification with Cato of the anonymous antiqui to whom Festus attributes the use of the rare substantive oliueta in feminine singular with the sense of ‘gathering of olives’. Finally some considerations are offered on the possible sources used by Festus and by the panegyrist. (shrink)