The present commentary addresses the Quartz & Sejnowski (Q&S) target article from the point of view of the dynamical learning algorithm for neural networks. These techniques implicitly adopt Q&S's neural constructivist paradigm. Their approach hence receives support from the biological and psychological evidence. Limitations of constructive learning for neural networks are discussed with an emphasis on grammar learning.

The development of artificial agents for social interaction pushes to enrich robots with social skills and knowledge about (local) social norms. One possibility is to distinguish the expressive and the functional orders during a human-robot interaction. The overarching aim of this work is to set a framework to make the artificial agent socially-competent beyond dyadic interaction – interaction in varying multi-party social situations – and beyond individual-based user personalization, thereby enlarging the current conception of “culturally-adaptive”. The core idea is to (...) provide the artificial agent with the capability to handle different kinds of interactional disruptions, and associated recovery strategies, in microsociology. The result is obtained by classifying functional and social disruptions, and by investigating the requirements a robot’s architecture should satisfy to exploit such knowledge. The paper also highlights how this level of competence is achieved by focusing on just three dimensions: (i) social capability, (ii) relational role, and (iii) proximity, leaving aside the further complexity of full-fledged human-human interactions. Without going into technical aspects, End-to-end Data-driven Architectures and Modular Architectures are discussed to evaluate the degree to which they can exploit this new set of social and cultural knowledge. Finally, a list of general requirements for such agents is proposed. (shrink)

Television series seem to be made of images and sounds just like films, but Luca Bandirali and Enrico Terrone suggest an alternate framework for understanding television series: as concepts whereby narratives made of images and sounds can be constructed.

Enrico Berti has had a profound influence on the birth and development of Italian studies in ancient philosophy. His sizable work has shaped a great part of Italian studies on Aristotle and other ancient philosophers. To celebrate him and express their gratitude for his work, some of his disciples, under the impulse of the late Franco Volpi, have brought together a volume in his honour, requesting the participation of some foreign scholars particularly close to him. The volume comprises essays (...) by Pierre Aubenque, Jonathan Barnes, Terence H. Irwin, Tomás Calvo-Martínez, Jaap Mansfeld, Pierre Pellegrin, Gerhard Seel and Alejandro G. Vigo. The main themes are Aristotle's metaphysics and practical philosophy. A Selected Bibliography by E. Berti himself completes the volume."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Rawlsians have largely misunderstood the idea of an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines, thereby failing to delineate in an appropriate way the place of comprehensive doctrines in political liberalism. My argument rests on two core claims. The first claim is that (i) political liberalism is committed to three theses about the overlapping consensus. The first thesis concerns the subject of the overlapping consensus; the second thesis concerns the function of the overlapping consensus; the (...) third thesis explains how the overlapping consensus can serve its function in accordance with political liberalism’s commitment to epistemic neutrality. The second claim on which my argument relies is empirical: (ii) Rawlsians typically deny at least one of the three theses to which political liberalism is committed. Based on (i) and (ii), I conclude that Rawlsians have hitherto provided unconvincing accounts of the place of comprehensive doctrines in political liberalism. (shrink)

The first book of the Aristotelian Physics may be considered as a sort of general introduction to the whole work. In particular, chapters 2 and 3 result very interesting for the foundation of the science of nature according to Aristotle; indeed, in these two chapters, the Stagirite criticizes the position of the Eleates Parmenides and Melissus. These two philosophers are considered as those who claim that change does not exist because the existence of the not-being is impossible to suppose. For (...) this reason, since the Eleates deny that motion and change really exist, the refutation of their thesis results essential for the logical and ontological foundation of the Aristotelian science of nature. This paper wants to make light on the argumentations that Aristotle uses against Parmenides and Melissus. Indeed, since the Stagirite makes often use of his philosophical categories, it seems that his critics sound a little bit anachronistic. In many passages of the text is seems that Aristotle “simply” replace the presupposition of the Eleatic philosophy with the thesis of the evidence of moving and plurality, in general. The aim of this contribution is to reflect on the critics present in Ph. I 2–3 in order to underline the importance of the Eleatic philosophy for the Aristotelian science of nature. (shrink)

The idea of an ?inversion principle?, and the name itself, originated in the work of Paul Lorenzen in the 1950s, as a method to generate new admissible rules within a certain syntactic context. Some fifteen years later, the idea was taken up by Dag Prawitz to devise a strategy of normalization for natural deduction calculi (this being an analogue of Gentzen's cut-elimination theorem for sequent calculi). Later, Prawitz used the inversion principle again, attributing it with a semantic role. Still working (...) in natural deduction calculi, he formulated a general type of schematic introduction rules to be matched ? thanks to the idea supporting the inversion principle ? by a corresponding general schematic Elimination rule. This was an attempt to provide a solution to the problem suggested by the often quoted note of Gentzen. According to Gentzen ?it should be possible to display the elimination rules as unique functions of the corresponding introduction rules on the basis of certain requirements?. Many people have since worked on this topic, which can be appropriately seen as the birthplace of what are now referred to as ?general elimination rules?, recently studied thoroughly by Sara Negri and Jan von Plato. In this study, we retrace the main threads of this chapter of proof-theoretical investigation, using Lorenzen's original framework as a general guide. (shrink)

Works of art are usually meant to elicit psychological effects from their audiences whereas paradigmatic technical artifacts such as hammers or cars are rather meant to produce physical effects when used. This suggests that works of art and technical artifacts are sharply different entities. However, recent developments in the cognitive sciences and the philosophy of technology have individuated special artifacts, namely cognitive and affective artifacts, which also generate psychological effects. In particular, affective artifacts, which have the capacity to alter the (...) affective condition of agents, seem to share crucial features with works of art. Can we subsume works of art under that kind? I will argue that we cannot. Still, comparing art with affective artifacts will help us to clarify the relationship between art and technology, and to introduce a new category, namely the experiential artifact, which can properly encompass works of art. (shrink)

We introduce an epistemic version of validity and completeness of first order logic, based on the notions of ideal agent and fictional model. We then show how the perspective here considered may help to solve an epistemic puzzle arising from Gödel's second incompleteness theorem.

Enrico Müller legt hier die erste philosophische Gesamtdarstellung zur Bedeutung der Griechen für Nietzsches Denken vor. Er zeigt, wie sich in Auseinandersetzung mit dem Griechentum Nietzsches eigene Philosophie entwickelte, und problematisiert deren Abgrenzungen von der Logosphilosophie der griechischen Klassik. Müller kommt dabei zu dem Schluss, dass auch Nietzsches Philosophie letztlich auf die Vorgaben der sokratisch-platonischen Dialektik angewiesen bleibt.

Music, simultaneity and the relationship between the whole and the parts are three themes closely intertwined in Lévi-Strauss's work. To illustrate these themes, as gradually elaborated by Lévi-Strauss, we will follow a path in several stages along his intellectual journey: simultaneity, chess and music are the three figures that will guide us.

Diachronic perceptual atomism is the view that the contents of experience do not involve temporal relations between non-simultaneous events, such as motion, succession, or duration, but only 'snapshots' of the world. Traditionally, atomism has not been a very popular view. Indeed, many philosophers think that it is obviously false and that the main debate about time consciousness takes place between models which reject atomistic commitments. This antiatomistic sentiment can be traced back to William James's slogan that 'a succession of feelings, (...) in and of itself, is not a feeling of succession'. In this paper I argue, first, that the arguments typically launched against atomism in the spirit of James's slogan fail; and second, that the viability of atomism depends on what the conditions for a mental event's being an experience are. In particular, I argue that if a mental event is an experience only if it fulfils certain downstream conditions, which concern the role of the event in the subject's cognitive life, then atomism fails. Otherwise, it is in fact a viable and in many ways attractive view. It follows from my discussion that, contrary to popular belief, atomism is by no means obviously false. Rather, its viability depends on one's further views about the relationship between experience and cognition. (shrink)

This article applies to the social dimension of the Salesian mission. Subject was, chronologically, included in the three points. The article begins with the presentation of the social aspect of the life of the Founder of the Salesians – St. John Bosco. Then it moves to the activity of Bl. Michael Rua and the contribution of other saints, the servants of God and candidates for sainthood from the Salesian Family. The last point indicates a variety of pro-social activities in the (...) above mentioned areas in recent years. This article, of which the author is the Postulator for the Causes of Saints of the Salesian Family, is a contribution to the celebration of 150th anniversary of the Salesian Congregation (1859 – 2009). (shrink)

Although we do not know the philosophical source these scholia derive from , there can hardly be any doubt that we have here a new Pythagorean fragment which communicates basic notions about metempsychosis. Pythagoras is criticized for representing the soul as afflicted by pain and grief when it leaves the body before entering a new one. The reasons given for its distress need not detain us here, but this new Pythagorean fragment clearly offers a conclusive solution to the vexed question (...) of Homer's tears in Ennius, alluded to in Lucretius 1.120ff. (shrink)

Callimachus,ep. 1 Pfeiffer (= LIV Gow-Page =AP7.89) relates an anecdote about Pittacus: when consulted by a stranger from Atarneus who was wondering whether to marry a woman of his own social class or one of a higher status, he suggests the question is answered by the cries of the children playing with tops, τν κατ ｃαντν ἔλα. The chequered history of the transmission and interpretation of the poem is beset by a number of unfavourable or patronizing judgements which, I hope (...) to show, have their origin in a series of misunderstandings. The poem seems to lack the sharp point characteristic of epigrams, and indeed Gow-Page go so far as to pronounce that it ‘has no claim to be called an epigram at all’. We now have a number of valuable parallels for the unusual length of the piece, but grave doubts continue to be expressed about the Callimachean authorship of the poem. While Diogenes Laertius (henceforth referred to as ‘D.L.’), who quotes the poem in his life of Pittacus (1.79ff.), explicitly attributes it to καλλμαχοఁ ν τοῖఁ ’Epsilon;πιγρμμαఁιν, in P and PI there is no ascription at all: there our epigram has been mistakenly consigned to the ’ɛπιτμβια simply becauseAP7.81 (= Antipater XXXIV Gow-Page), on the Seven Sages, is followed by some fifty epigrams on them and other philosophers, all (save three) derived from D.L. In the Palatine ms. there survive traces of the questions raised by this poem, though—surprisingly—both Pfeiffer and Gow-Page fail to report them. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Naharaim Jahrgang: 10 Heft: 2 Seiten: 303-319.

v. 1. Demoniaco e problema del male. Umanesimo e pensiero simbolico. Tempo e temporalità -- v. 2. Ermeneutica e demitizzazione. Storia della filosofia. Filosofia della religione.

In this paper I set out to read Hägerström through his own eyes, adhering to the terminology he uses in his own original work and attempting to make sense of the variance and uniformity alike that one finds in his linguistic usage. The translations we have of Hägerström's works are quite liberal, using the same word in English where the original uses different ones, and, vice versa, using different words in English where the original uses a single one in different (...) contexts. These misleading translations of Hägerström have contributed in some measure to Hägerström's reputation for obscurity. Further, and most importantly, I will take seriously what Hägerström says about his own thought, namely, that it is dependent on that of Kant and independent of the currents of thought contemporary with Hägerström. In Section 1, I will briefly take up the problem of consciousness that Hägerström proceeds from, and will recall something that Bertrand Russell once said, in 1928, in regard to the revolt staged in the early 20th century in Europe against German idealism. In Sections 2 and 4.1, I will instead take up Kant for the purpose of clarifying Hägerström's theory of judgment as treated in Section 3. In Section 4.2, I will illustrate the difference between the notions of nothing, R-reality, and W-reality in Hägerström. In Sections 5 and 6, I will examine the analysis that Hägerström offers of the principle of contradiction, and will summarize the three types of judgment he singled out, including the type he called impossible judgment. In Section 7, I will consider Hägerström views as grounding, in a transcendental way, the presupposition of the primacy of the external spatio-temporal world, a world independent of our representations: I will consider in particular the W-real complexes that are merely represented, as well as the spatio-temporal world as the only W-real complex that is not merely represented. Finally, in Section 8, I will briefly consider some of those who have commented and translated Hägerström, this to conclude that R-reality and W-reality are coextensive but not synonymous. (shrink)

This paper presents and discusses Simon Evnine’s hylomorphic account of fictional characters and proposes some amendments to it with the aim of explaining the functioning of fictional characters. The paper does so by relying on a case study, viz. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story Berenice. The amended hylomorphic account of fictional characters will also be capable of explaining the malfunctioning of fictional characters.