Taking regular walks when living with Parkinson’s disease has beneficial effects on movement and quality of life. Yet, patients usually show reduced physical activity compared to healthy older adults. Using auditory stimulation such as music can facilitate walking but patients vary significantly in their response. An individualized approach adapting musical tempo to patients’ gait cadence, and capitalizing on these individual differences, is likely to provide a rewarding experience, increasing motivation for walk-in PD. We aim to evaluate the observance, safety, tolerance, (...) usability, and enjoyment of a new smartphone application. It was coupled with wearable sensors and delivered individualized musical stimulation for gait auto-rehabilitation at home. Forty-five patients with PD underwent a 1-month, outdoor, uncontrolled gait rehabilitation program, using the BeatWalk application. The music tempo was being aligned in real-time to patients’ gait cadence in a way that could foster an increase up to +10% of their spontaneous cadence. Open-label evaluation was based on BeatWalk use measures, questionnaires, and a six-minute walk test. Patients used the application 78.8% of the prescribed duration and enjoyed it throughout the program. The application was considered “easy to use” by 75% of the patients. Pain, fatigue, and falls did not increase. Fear of falling decreased and quality of life improved. After the program, patients improved their gait parameters in the six-minute walk test without musical stimulation. BeatWalk is an easy to use, safe, and enjoyable musical application for individualized gait rehabilitation in PD. It increases “walk for exercise” duration thanks to high observance.Clinical Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02647242. (shrink)

For several years, the official European method for deciding whether or not shellfish were fit for human consumption was the mouse bioassay, which was eventually replaced by chemical testing. In this paper, we examine the process of this change, looking at how devices of social, technical, and organisational risk management were re-negotiated locally, nationally, and across the continent. We also show how the political decision to replace a precautionary standard with a management-vigilance device was the result of various dynamics. These (...) included unpredictable events, enhanced scientific knowledge, collective mobilisations, and multi-level statutory, commercial, and ethical orders. (shrink)

This article explores the compatibility of posing and authenticity in portraiture. Often understood as a source of inauthenticity, I propose that posing in fact functions as an artistic tool that can support a truthful portrayal. My argument first discusses authenticity in relation to portraiture through the lens of Bernard Williams’s idea of “truthfulness,” which relies on his notions of “accuracy” and “sincerity.” Second, I introduce a phenomenology of posing. I identify two aspects of posing that can be present in the (...) portrait; these are the “posing sitter,” who holds the actual physical pose, but also point out the use of a “posing effect” in the image, which I call the “posed sitter.” Third, I address the worry of posing as a source of inauthenticity and demonstrate how this can be reframed in order to lay bare its capacity for enhancing truthfulness. The pose then need not be regarded with suspicion of artifice that clouds the authenticity of the sitter; instead, it can offer an approach to truthfully portray the sitter. (shrink)

Giordano Bruno's notorious public death in 1600, at the hands of the Inquisition in Rome, marked the transition from Renaissance philosophy to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. In his philosophical works he addressed such delicate issues as the role of Christ as mediator and the distinction, in human beings, between soul and matter. This volume presents new translations of Cause, Principle and Unity, in which he challenges Aristotelian accounts of causality and spells out the implications of Copernicanism (...) for a new theory of an infinite universe, and of two essays on magic, On Magic and A General Account of Bonding, in which he interprets earlier theories about magical events in the light of the unusual powers of natural phenomena. (shrink)

Cet article présente les premiers résultats d’un des volets d’une vaste recherche-action portée par une équipe pluridisciplinaire entre 2018 et 2021 et centrée sur les rapports familles/institutions. L’accueil et l’éducation des enfants dans le monde contemporain est en effet au cœur des problématiques institutionnelles et la famille, tout comme les institutions relevant de l’éducation, de la santé et du social, connaît d’importantes mutations tant structurelles qu’organisationnelles qui ont des conséquences au niveau des sujets, des groupes et des sociétés. Le présent (...) article apportera quelques éléments de compréhension de ce qui organise singulièrement les liens entre les familles et les collèges. L’auteure s’intéresse ici à la nature des liens qui unissent professionnels et parents autour des collégiens et autour des valeurs propres aux établissements ayant participé à la recherche. Elle propose quelques hypothèses pour appréhender ces rapports à nouveaux frais, entre défiance, résistance et créativité, du côté tant des familles que des professionnels et plus globalement des institutions. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory has been an incredibly powerful tool for understanding and improving organisations, and their relationship with other actors in society. That these critical ideas are now accepted within mainstream business is due in no small part to the influence of stakeholder theory. However, improvements to stakeholder engagement through stakeholder theory have tended to help stakeholders who are already somewhat powerful within organisational settings, while those who are less powerful continue to be marginalised and routinely ignored. In this paper, we (...) argue that one possible obstacle preventing less powerful stakeholders from speaking up and/or being heard by organisations is found at the ontological level, where we have identified an ‘essentialist self’ underpinning the stakeholder concept. By deconstructing the stakeholder concept through how it is defined, discussed and debated, and linking this back to the practical consequences of the theory for the least powerful stakeholders, we are able to make three contributions. One, through our deconstruction, it is clear that at an ontological level, stakeholder theory is underpinned by an implicit, and problematic, assumption of the ‘essentialist self’, where the organisation is treated as the ‘natural, universal self’, and anyone not closely resembling this narrow (and unrealistic) view of self is treated as ‘other’. Two, we build on the work of authors such as Wicks et al. (Bus Ethics Q 4(4):475–497, 1994), who highlight the need for consideration of the self within stakeholder theory. We thus take our findings from contribution one and begin to build a more holistic view of the self within the stakeholder concept, where each self is encouraged to recognise common selves outside and inside the corporation. Third, we link the theoretical discussion to the practical by discussing some imperfect ways in which a more holistic, enriched stakeholder concept might begin to help mitigate marginalisation for some stakeholders. (shrink)

English uses the relative Reference Frame which includes the speaker’s viewpoint assigning directions to identify a Located Object and a Reference Object. Projective prepositions express the position of the LO and the RO along the front-back and left-right axes: the speaker’s egocentric axes are either mapped onto the RO under a 180-degree rotation so that the speaker’s right is the listener’s left; or the speaker’s egocentric axes are translated onto the RO without rotation. When the RO is a non-fronted object, (...) English refers to it without rotation along the left-right axis, but it depicts it with rotation along the front-back line. In comparison to this model, this paper explores the way English treats the location of a RO represented by animate and human entities. The use of projective prepositions to consider animate, fronted items used as RO is here examined through spoken corpora collected with English-speaking students, describing the position of such items with or without rotation. (shrink)

On trouve dans les écrits de Mill une légitimation circonstanciée de la révolution. Ce que doivent considérer celles et ceux que tente l’affrontement armé, c’est la nature des circonstances historiques, mais aussi leur propre force et leur degré de maturité politique, de manière à évaluer l’opportunité et la justice de la violence révolutionnaire. Il s’agira ici d’examiner les tensions et les évolutions de la pensée de Mill à l’égard de la « révolution », comme idée politique, comme événement historique, aussi (...) bien que comme processus long de transformation individuelle ou collective. (shrink)

The linguistic path has been explored through several works. The present paper investigates a path underlain by the fictive motion phenomenon: The plateau goes east along the river. This itinerary, here called the ‘localization path’ discloses the FM of an item along a trajectory to highlight its immobility in space. This linguistic path is here inspected through a corpus-based analysis displaying the verbs come and go. If experiencing language is first vocal, this process also implies kinetic, non-verbal modalities. The languaging (...) experience will hence be explored through the interaction between language, space and the speaker’s body through an enactive approach. A prototypical syntactic configuration mirroring the interpretative grid of FM reality will be defined. Recurrent syntactic patterns revealing the way the speaker projects his own world through simplex models will highlight the way the complexity of visual scenari is converted into linguistic sequences. (shrink)

This article explores several issues pertaining to the role of titles in Byzantine literature. Firstly, some methodological questions are raised regarding their authority and authorship as well as the delineation of the research subject. Secondly, a specific case is discussed of how a 9th/10th-century anthology uses titles to identify the writings it quotes from. In a more extensive third and final section, the semantic evolution is retraced of the term ὑπόμνημα, which has been used with quite diverging meanings throughout Greek (...) literature. (shrink)

Mithilfe der Verfahren des Embryo-Splittings werden unter Laborbedingungen aus einem Embryo mehrere, genetisch identische Embryonen gewonnen. Gegenwärtig wird in Fachbeiträgen debattiert, die in der Nutztierzucht etablierten Verfahren auf die humane Reproduktionsmedizin auszuweiten. Eine solche Anwendung wird derzeit flächendeckend als reproduktives Klonen verstanden und ist in allen Staaten per Gesetz oder Richtlinie untersagt. Bei der Prüfung ausgewählter Einwände gegen die prinzipielle Zulässigkeit einer Anwendung des Embryo-Splittings als assistierter Reproduktionstechnologie zeigt sich, dass sich die Einwände gegen das reproduktive Klonen nicht auf den (...) Fall des Splittings übertragen lassen. Insbesondere liegt dem Splitting nicht die ‚narzisstische‘ Replikation des Genoms einer bereits lebenden Person zugrunde. Die Gleichsetzung mit anderen Formen des reproduktiven Klonens verdeckt darüber hinaus eigene regulative Fragen zum Umgang mit gesplitteten Embryonen, die hinsichtlich einer potenziellen klinischen Anwendung adressiert werden müssen. Schließlich wird deutlich, dass die Maßgabe, Embryonen zu schützen, bisher einseitig als ausreichender Grund für eine restriktive Regulierung des Splittings herangezogen wurde. Diese Argumentation erweist sich in einer pluralistischen Gesellschaft jedoch als unzureichend. (shrink)

This article offers an interpretation of the first part – most often neglected by commentators – of « A Few Words on Non-Intervention » by John Stuart Mill. It shows that these pages are not a naive apology of the English foreign policy: on the contrary we have to seriously consider the ideas concerning public opinion and the need for diplomats to reform their language, which are here exposed. Indeed, it is only possible to understand the emancipatory aims of John (...) Stuart Mill in this article, by determining what are for him the nature of public opinion and its role in the foundation of an effective “principle of non-intervention”. The comparison with the texts of his predecessors – Bentham and James Mill – then serve to shed light on the new and decisive function of the “public spirit” in international relations as it appears here. (shrink)

Dans les Principes d’économie politique (1848), puis dans son ouvrage posthume et inachevé Sur le socialisme (1879), John Stuart Mill propose une défense ambiguë du « communisme », théorie qui vise selon lui à réformer radicalement le régime de propriété. Cet article entend analyser le statut de l’expérimentation dans l’évaluation millienne de la collectivisation des moyens de production. Il donne ainsi à voir en quoi l’appel à l’expérience – d’abord à petite échelle – de l’hypothèse communiste, que l’on retrouve d’un (...) texte à l’autre, peut se lire comme une invitation positive à réaliser cette doctrine, mais comporte en même temps des limites et des réserves profondes. (shrink)

Penser les normes, ou l'absence de normes, penser le besoin de normes et la nécessité de s'en défaire à travers l'œuvre de Lacan et la critique de Foucault, tel est le dessein de cet ouvrage qui entend renouveler tant notre connaissance que nos interrogations sur ces questions. À l'heure de l'empowerment des minorités, la norme devient une préoccupation essentielle, et la psychanalyse, praxis radicalement hors normes, vient s'extraire du binaire du normal et du pathologique propre à la médecine et transposé (...) au social. Forte d'une double qualification, à la fois psychanalyste et universitaire, Aurélie Pfauwadel questionne le processus de normalisation sociale, l'inventivité des sujets et la régulation qu'elle permet au prisme des critiques foucaldiennes adressées à l'encontre de la psychanalyse. Voici, pour la première fois avec une telle ampleur et une telle exhaustivité, la confrontation décisive entre les pensées de Michel Foucault et du dernier Jacques Lacan. Donnant naissance à un véritable aggiornamento de la pratique lacanienne, ce livre s'érige aussi contre les préjugés environnant la psychanalyse, qui ont beau jeu de la reléguer à une pratique réactionnaire. Exceptionnel d'intelligence et d'écriture. (shrink)

Anthony Rudd’s Painting and Presence: Why Paintings Matter is a monograph that spans the categories of aesthetics, philosophy of art, and religion. Rudd takes t.

Little is known about how bow mechanical characteristics objectively and quantitatively influence violinists' preferences and performance. Hypothesizing that the bow shape and mass distribution modifications would alter both violinists' appreciations of a bow and objective assessments of their performance, we recruited 10 professional violinists to play their own violin using 18 versions of a single bow, modified by combining three cambers and six mass distributions, in random order. A musical phrase, composed for this study, was played legato and spiccato at (...) three octaves and two tempi. Each violinist scored all 18 bows. Then, experts assessed the recorded performances according to criteria inspired by basic musical analysis. Finally, 12 audio-descriptors were calculated on the same note from each trial, to objectivise potential acoustic differences. Statistical analysis reveals that bow camber impacted the violinists' appreciations, and that heavier bow tips gave lower scores for spiccato playing. The expert evaluations reveal that playing with a lighter bow, or with a bow whose camber's maximum curvature is close to the frog, had a positive impact on some violinists' performance. The “camber-participant” interaction had significant effects on the violinists' appreciations, on the expert's evaluation and on almost all the audio-descriptors. While trends were identified, multiple camber-participant interactions suggest that bow makers should provide a variety of cambers to satisfy different violinists. (shrink)

This study examines activities and processes through which projects of moral regulation are implemented as well as lived, transformed, and resisted by their targeted actors. Our ethnographic study focuses on discourses and practices of civic duty for orderly and hygienic conduct in the rehabilitation of marketplaces in Yaoundé, Cameroon. By drawing on the inhabited institutions approach and the literature on ethics as practice, our analysis extends research on moral work to put forward a perspective on moral regulation as a situated (...) practice. We show how moral work is built on individual reflections but is simultaneously negotiated through actors’ relationships, that is, responsibilities to family, interactions within the community, and personal history. (shrink)

Dévoilant une impressionnante galerie de portraits de femmes de la fin du xixe et du début du xxe siècle, l’ouvrage de Christine Peltre explore la collection de cartes postales acquise par Pierre de Gigord. Collectionneur passionné par les mondes ottomans et turcs, celui-ci assembla un rare éventail de cartes postales datant de l’époque où la « photographie timbrée » connaît son apogée et s’impose peu à peu comme un média de masse. Au fil des pages, où dialoguent texte et image, (...) l’ouvrage tém... (shrink)

Foucault a noué ensemble, dans les années 1970, sa généalogie de la société de normalisation et ses généalogies, multiples, de la psychanalyse. Mais reste souvent méconnu le fait que Lacan lui-même a mis en rapport l’émergence de la psychanalyse avec l’extension croissante de la société de normalisation, comme une réaction à celle-ci, un peu avant la parution de La volonté de savoir (1976). La position de Lacan s’avère diamétralement opposée à celle de Foucault en ce qu’il considère la psychanalyse comme (...) une pratique radicalement hors normes, et non comme un agent de normalisation. La question cruciale dont traite cet article est celle de la pertinence des généalogies foucaldiennes d’une part, et celle qui consiste à lui opposer une histoire de la psychanalyse crédible qui rendrait compte de sa spécificité et de son pouvoir de subversion d’autre part. Les outils d’une histoire de la psychanalyse fournis par Lacan présentent à divers titres un intérêt à ce sujet. Lacan élabore cette histoire depuis le champ de la psychanalyse et conformément à l’épistémologie psychanalytique, et au contraire de Foucault, il cherche à maintenir l’exigence de penser la psychanalyse dans sa spécificité relativement aux autres savoirs et pratiques. (shrink)

Étudier l’essence et les manifestations de l’amour maternel dans la Grèce ancienne permet la mise en évidence de la complexité de la notion de philia. Les mères grecques éprouvent en effet pour leur progéniture des sentiments qui relèvent à la fois d’une nature instinctive et d’une élaboration conditionnelle qui repose sur des attitudes et des gestes. Le corps, le sang, le lait, sont autant d’éléments biologiques, « d’humeurs », qui nourrissent la part naturelle des affects maternels. Si Platon et Aristote (...) se sont avant tout évertués à discuter le caractère inné ou acquis de l’affectation parentale, les poètes tragiques ont projeté sur la scène théâtrale un spectre large de sentiments familiaux, où la haine maternelle côtoie l’amour pourtant infanticide, et où le souci intéressé des hommes qui n’ont pas engendré d’enfant (apais) croise la détresse des pères violemment privés de leurs rejetons. En ce sens, les Grecs ont pensé avec autant de nuances l’existence et la formation des affects maternels et paternels. (shrink)

Étudier l’essence et les manifestations de l’amour maternel dans la Grèce ancienne permet la mise en évidence de la complexité de la notion de philia. Les mères grecques éprouvent en effet pour leur progéniture des sentiments qui relèvent à la fois d’une nature instinctive et d’une élaboration conditionnelle qui repose sur des attitudes et des gestes. Le corps, le sang, le lait, sont autant d’éléments biologiques, « d’humeurs », qui nourrissent la part naturelle des affects maternels. Si Platon et Aristote (...) se sont avant tout évertués à discuter le caractère inné ou acquis de l’affectation parentale, les poètes tragiques ont projeté sur la scène théâtrale un spectre large de sentiments familiaux, où la haine maternelle côtoie l’amour pourtant infanticide, et où le souci intéressé des hommes qui n’ont pas engendré d’enfant croise la détresse des pères violemment privés de leurs rejetons. En ce sens, les Grecs ont pensé avec autant de nuances l’existence et la formation des affects maternels et paternels. (shrink)

Nous présentons une étude originale en cours visant la compréhension des relations entre variations sociolinguistiques et réseau social. Sa démarche empirique repose sur le recueil de données sociales et langagières massives et longitudinales au sein d’une école maternelle. Environ 200 individus (enfants et adultes) sont équipés une semaine par mois pendant 3 ans de capteurs qui enregistrent en continu à la fois leurs interactions verbales et leurs contacts sociaux. Dans cet article, à visée principalement méthodologique, nous exposons les dispositifs mis (...) en place pour le recueil et les procédures mises en œuvre pour la transcription et l’annotation de données orales massives. Enfin, nous présentons les potentialités offertes par ce type de recueil pour affiner, automatiser et systématiser l’analyse variationniste des relations entre réseau social et variations sociolinguistiques. (shrink)

Supporting children to successfully transition from primary to secondary school is of utmost importance for several reasons, including to prevent future emotional and behavioural problems. Level Up is a novel, UK-based intervention consisting of five online group sessions, straddling the summer holidays, and providing at-risk children and their parents/carers with skills to manage their behaviour, emotions, and relationships to support their transition to secondary school. A prior evaluation of Level Up reported a need to better describe the mechanisms of change. (...) This study therefore evaluated the experiences of children and their parents/carers regarding the facilitators and barriers to engagement and change, and the perceived impact. Fourteen children and 17 parents/carers were interviewed. Identified barriers and facilitators were: (1) Having a safe, supportive, and fun space, (2) Learning through connection, (3) A family approach, (4) Problematic group dynamics, and (5) Connecting through video calls. Perceived impact was described as: (1) Empowering children, (2) Supporting children socially, (3) Supporting parents and carers in their parenting role, and (4) Supporting a successful transition to secondary school. Another theme (5) describes some families’ experiences of limited impact. These findings can be used to better understand how to support children in their school transition. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that modelling occupies a curious role in the art making process, and that it constitutes a hybrid art form. Modelling is intriguingly under-research in aesthetics, despite it being a cornerstone of art education and deeply involved in various art practices. It functions both within a supportive role to further the goals of art making, while also retaining the creative agency and performance of the professional model upon which the artist, photographer, or wider crew rely. This (...) ability entails not merely helping to steer a posing session, but experimenting with and adapting to any unexpected issues that arise in the course of the session. To understand the salient performative qualities of modelling, I first focus on expert movement, improvisation, and style. Second, I reflect on how modelling corresponds to creativity and skill. Finally, I propose that the model is a performer, and that, ultimately, modelling should be recognised as a hybrid collaborative art form which incorporates qualities of various performing arts. (shrink)

This book analyses anthropological debates on "relationism" (referring to methodological and theoretical issues) and sets out to reconsider these discussions with regards to the notion of "substance" (generally associated with the body). Reflecting on the philosophical origins and implications of these two concepts, the author aims to bring them to the heart of contemporary anthropological discourse and addresses the erasure (or blurring) of "substance" in favour of "relation." The argument put forward is that the conceptual pairing of "substance-relation" should be (...) substituted for the "nature-culture" dualism that has been dominant in structural anthropology. The chapters engage with the work of scholars such as Philippe Descola, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Wang Mingming as part of a decentring and questioning of the tradition in which anthropology is rooted. The book also considers the role that the anthropology of China plays in the re-evaluation of the relationship between relation and substance. The concept of "submutance" is introduced with Chinese ethnographic material to explore the possibility of moving beyond the relation-substance dualism of Western heritage. This is valuable reading for scholars interested in the theory and history of anthropology. (shrink)

Cet article constitue l'un des éléments d'un dossier comparatif international sur le traitement médiatique de l'attentat survenu à la gare d'Atocha à Madrid en mars 2004. Centré sur la France et basé sur l'étude d'un corpus de quatre quotidiens, il analyse les orientations du discours développé par la presse nationale dans les jours qui ont suivi cet événement. L'analyse souligne que la presse française se veut plus explicative que celle d'autres pays participant à la coalition contre l'Irak. En majorité, la (...) construction politique européenne semble être une solution préconisée par la presse comme rempart au terrorisme.This article is one of a comparative study on the international media coverage of the attack in Atocha train station in Madrid in March 2004. Centered on France and based on the study of a corpus of four dailies, it analyzes the discourse developed by the national press in the days following the event. The analysis emphasizes that the French press wants more explanatory than other countries participating in the coalition against Iraq. The majority of European political construction seems to be a solution advocated by the press as a bulwark against terrorism. (shrink)

Why do some invertebrates store so much carotenoids in their tissues? Storage of carotenoids may not simply be passive and dependent on their environmental availability, as storage variation exists at various taxonomic scales, including among individuals within species. While the strong antioxidant and sometimes immune-stimulating properties of carotenoids may be beneficial enough to cause the evolution of features improving their assimilation and storage, they may also have fitness downsides explaining why massive carotenoid storage is not universal. Here, the functional and (...) ecological implications of carotenoid storage for the evolution of invertebrate innate immune defenses are examined, especially in crustaceans, which massively store carotenoids for unclear reasons. Three testable hypotheses about the role of carotenoid storage in immunological (resistance and tolerance) and life-history strategies (with a focus on aging) are proposed, which may ultimately explain the storage of large amounts of these pigments in a context of host–pathogen interactions. (shrink)

In this paper, we address the question of whether AI should be used for suicide prevention on social media data. We focus on algorithms that can identify persons with suicidal ideation based on their postings on social media platforms and investigate whether private companies like Facebook are justified in using these. To find out if that is the case, we start with providing two examples for AI-based means of suicide prevention in social media. Subsequently, we frame suicide prevention as an (...) issue of beneficence, develop two fictional cases to explore the scope of the principle of beneficence and apply the lessons learned to Facebook’s employment of AI for suicide prevention. We show that Facebook is neither acting under an obligation of beneficence nor acting meritoriously. This insight leads us to the general question of who is entitled to help. We conclude that private companies like Facebook can play an important role in suicide prevention, if they comply with specific rules which we derive from beneficence and autonomy as core principles of biomedical ethics. At the same time, public bodies have an obligation to create appropriate framework conditions for AI-based tools of suicide prevention. As an outlook we depict how cooperation between public and private institutions can make an important contribution to combating suicide and, in this way, put the principle of beneficence into practice. (shrink)

We examine the resource provision role of the board of directors in ensuring substantive corporate sustainability practices. Specifically, we examine two channels of resource provision that can affect a firm’s ethical and environmental behavior. Using greenhouse gas emissions data from FTSE 350 firms, as a measure of environmental performance, we show that the presence of EEDs on the board is associated with lower GHG emissions. Further, firms with better-networked EEDs have better environmental performance. A possible mechanism is that firms with (...) EEDs invest more in environmental technology. These results suggest that, in addition to the traditional role of shareholder value maximization, the board of directors also caters to the interests of wider stakeholders of the firm by facilitating substantive ethical practices. (shrink)

Empirical insights into language processing have a philosophical relevance that extends well beyond philosophical questions about language. This chapter will discuss this wider relevance: We will consider how experimental philosophers can examine language processing in order to address questions in several different areas of philosophy. To do so, we will present the emerging research program of experimental argument analysis (EAA) that examines how automatic language processing shapes verbal reasoning – including philosophical arguments. The evidential strand of experimental philosophy uses mainly (...) questionnaire-based methods to assess the evidentiary value of intuitive judgments that are adduced as evidence for philosophical theories and as premises for philosophical arguments. Extending this prominent strand of experimental philosophy, EAA underpins such assessments, extends the scope of the assessments, and expands the range of the empirical methods employed: EAA examines how automatic inferences that are continually made in language comprehension and production shape verbal reasoning, and draws on findings about comprehension biases that affect the contextualisation of such default inferences, in order to explain and expose fallacies. It deploys findings to assess premises and inferences from premises to conclusions, in philosophical arguments. To do so, it adapts methods from psycholinguistics and recruits methods from computational linguistics. (shrink)

The itinerant Neoplatonic scholar Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), one of the most fascinating figures of the Renaissance, was burned at the stake for heresy by the Inquisition in Rome on Ash Wednesday in 1600. The primary evidence against him was the book Spaccio de la bestia trionfante , a daring indictment of the church that abounded in references to classical Greek mythology, Egyptian religion (especially the worship of Isis), Hermeticism, magic, and astrology. The author of more than sixty works on (...) mathematics, science, ethics, philosophy, metaphysics, the art of memory, and esoteric mysticism, Bruno had a profound impact on Western thought. (shrink)