This book tells the curious story of an unexpected finding that sheds light on a crucial moment in the development of physics: the discovery of artificial radioactivity induced by neutrons. The finding in question is a notebook, clearly written in Fermi's handwriting, which records the frenzied days and nights that Fermi spent experimenting alone, driven by his theoretical ideas on beta decay. The notebook was found by the authors while browsing through documents left by Oscar D'Agostino, the chemist (...) among Fermi's group. From Fermi's notes, they reconstruct with skill and expertise the detailed timeline of the critical days leading up to his vital discovery. While much is already known about the road that led Fermi to his important result, this is the first time that it has been possible to reconstruct precisely when and how the initial evidence of neutron-induced decay was obtained. In relating this fascinating story, the book will be of great interest not only to those with a passion for the history of science but also to a wider audience. (shrink)

This is a book about food, philosophy, and intellectual property rights. Taken separately, these are three well-known subjects; but it is uncommon to consider them together. Delivering a rich field of disputes, the book is comprised of 50 case studies, organized around eight themes: images; genericity and descriptiveness; language traps; procedures; menus, recipes, and creativity; boundaries; biotech; and empowerment. The introductory chapter frames the selection of cases and encourages readers to look beyond them, envisaging new lenses to look at food (...) vis-à-vis intellectual property. The terrain encompassed is wide-ranging and reaches out to fine-grained aspects of food products, recipes, and cooking. Conceived for a wide scope of readers, the volume ultimately interrogates the links between food and cultural identity, bringing to the fore the ethical, political, aesthetic worth of culinary arts and gastronomic experiences. This accessible book will be of value to scholars, students, practitioners and others with interests in the areas of intellectual property, food law and food studies. (shrink)

A rigorous ab initio derivation of the (square of) Dirac’s equation for a particle with spin is presented. The Lagrangian of the classical relativistic spherical top is modified so to render it invariant with respect conformal changes of the metric of the top configuration space. The conformal invariance is achieved by replacing the particle mass in the Lagrangian with the conformal Weyl scalar curvature. The Hamilton-Jacobi equation for the particle is found to be linearized, exactly and in closed form, by (...) an ansatz solution that can be straightforwardly interpreted as the “quantum wave function” of the 4-spinor solution of Dirac’s equation. All quantum features arise from the subtle interplay between the conformal curvature acting on the particle as a potential and the particle motion which affects the geometric “pre-potential” associated to the conformal curvature itself. The theory, carried out here by assuming a Minkowski metric, can be easily extended to arbitrary space-time Riemann metric, e.g. the one adopted in the context of General Relativity. This novel theoretical scenario appears to be of general application and is expected to open a promising perspective in the modern endeavor aimed at the unification of the natural forces with gravitation. (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)

L’esame di un passo della Vita di Platone laerziana (III 2) – e di luoghi paralleli riferibili alla medesima tradizione – permette di mettere a fuoco un motivo mitico cruciale nei racconti sulla concorrenza tra essere umano e divinità nel gamos con una mortale: il divieto, che il nume impone al ‘rivale’ di inferiore natura, di congiungersi con la donna che reca in grembo il suo seme, finché l’eroina non abbia portato a termine la gravidanza. Le storie di personaggi femminili (...) colpevoli di duplice gamos – prima con il dio e poi, a breve distanza di tempo, con il mortale – si focalizzano sulle conseguenze nefaste del secondo contaminante connubio: uno per tutti il caso di Coronide madre di Asclepio (e forse il motivo era associato anche ad altre note madri mitiche, come Arianna, Semele e Alcmena). In questi esempi, tuttavia, in genere non è esplicitato il tema della proibizione divina, come invece accade nel bios di Diogene Laerzio. Qui infatti Apollo, dopo aver concepito Platone con Perictione, appare ad Aristone per vietargli il rapporto sessuale con la parthenos. (shrink)

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 paper develops Richard Wollheim’s claim that the proper appreciation of a picture involves not only enjoying a seeing-in experience but also abiding by a standard of correctness. While scholars have so far focused on what fixes the standard, thereby discussing the alternative between intentions and causal mechanisms, the paper focuses on what the standard does, that is, establishing which kinds, individuals, features and standpoints are relevant to the understanding of pictures. It is argued that, while standards concerning kinds, individuals (...) and features can be relevant also to ordinary perception, standards concerning standpoints are specific to pictorial experience. Drawing on all this, the paper proposes an ontology of depiction according to which a picture is constituted by both its visual appearance and its standard of correctness. (shrink)

This paper considers two issues raised by the claim that fictional characters are abstract artifacts. First, given that artifacts normally have functions, what is the function of a fictional character? Second, given that, in experiencing works of fictions, we usually treat fictional characters as concrete individuals, how can such a phenomenology fit with an ontology according to which fictional characters are abstract artifacts? I will indirectly address the second issue by directly addressing the first one. For this purpose, I will (...) rely on the notion of a mental file. I will argue that the function of fictional characters is the generation of mental files of a special kind. I will show that our experience of fictional characters as concrete individuals depends on the kind of mental files that are generated by fictional characters as abstract artifacts. I will conclude that an appreciator of a work of fiction can open two files about a certain fictional character; one about the character as an individual in the fictional world, and the other about the character as an abstract artifact in the actual world. In this sense, our relation to a fictional character is characterized by a duality of files or ‘twofileness’. (shrink)

Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with Stacie Friend’s claim that fiction is a genre, her notion of genre can be fruitfully applied to a paradigmatic genre such as science fiction. This article deploys Friend’s notion of genre in order to improve the influential characterization of science fiction proposed by Darko Suvin and to defend it from a criticism recently raised by Simon Evnine. According to Suvin, a work of science fiction must concern “a fictional ‘novum’ validated by cognitive (...) logic.” While Suvin conceives of his characterization as a necessary and sufficient condition for membership in the genre, I propose to cast the notions of “fictional novum” and “cognitive validation” as standard features of the genre, which works of science fiction should have but might lack. I argue that this amended version of Suvin’s characterization can better account for two basic properties of science fiction as a genre, namely its historicity and its relevance to appreciation. Lastly, I show that the amended version can shed some light on the affinity between works of science fiction and philosophical thought experiments. (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)

In section 1 we argue that the adoption of a tenseless notion of truth entails a realistic view of propositions and provability. This view, in turn, opens the way to the intelligibility of theclassical meaning of the logical constants, and consequently is incompatible with the antirealism of orthodox intuitionism. In section 2 we show how what we call the potential intuitionistic meaning of the logical constants can be defined, on the one hand, by means of the notion of atemporal provability (...) and, on the other, by means of the operator K of epistemic logic. Intuitionistic logic, as reconstructed within this perspective, turns out to be a part of epistemic logic, so that it loses its traditional foundational role, antithetic to that of classical logic. In section 3 we uphold the view that certain consequences of the adoption of atemporal notion of truth, despite their apparent oddity, are quite acceptable from an antirealist point of view. (shrink)

This paper reflects my address as IAAIL president at ICAIL 2021. It is aimed to give my vision of the status of the AI and Law discipline, and possible future perspectives. In this respect, I go through different seasons of AI research : from the Winter of AI, namely a period of mistrust in AI, to the Summer of AI, namely the current period of great interest in the discipline with lots of expectations. One of the results of the first (...) decades of AI research is that “intelligence requires knowledge”. Since its inception the Web proved to be an extraordinary vehicle for knowledge creation and sharing, therefore it’s not a surprise if the evolution of AI has followed the evolution of the Web. I argue that a bottom-up approach, in terms of machine/deep learning and NLP to extract knowledge from raw data, combined with a top-down approach, in terms of legal knowledge representation and models for legal reasoning and argumentation, may represent a promotion for the development of the Semantic Web, as well as of AI systems. Finally, I provide my insight in the potential of AI development, which takes into account technological opportunities and theoretical limits. (shrink)

Medical discoveries have led to an unprecedented level of competence in the field, but it is as if the patient is finding it increasingly difficult to get the right holistic care. Medicine must be put on a path towards being humanised.

Conceiving of fictional characters as types allows us to reconcile intuitions of sameness and difference about characters such as Batman that appear in different fictional worlds. Sameness occurs at the type level while difference occurs at the token level. Yet, the claim that fictional characters are types raises three main issues. Firstly, types seem to be eternal forms whereas fictional characters seem to be the outcome of a process of creation. Secondly, the tokens of a type are concrete particulars in (...) the actual world whereas the alleged tokens of a fictional character are concrete particulars in a fictional world. Thirdly, many fictional characters, unlike Batman, only appear in one work of fiction, and therefore one can wonder whether it does make sense to treat them as types. The main aim of this paper is to address these issues in order to defend a creationist account of fictional characters as types. (shrink)

Conceptualism is the thesis that, for any perceptual experience E, (i) E has a Fregean proposition as its content and (ii) a subject of E must possess a concept for each item represented by E. We advance a framework within which conceptualism may be defended against its most serious objections (e.g., Richard Heck's argument from nonveridical experience). The framework is of independent interest for the philosophy of mind and epistemology given its implications for debates regarding transparency, relationalism and representationalism, demonstrative (...) thought, phenomenal character, and the speckled hen objection to modest foundationalism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Italian historiographers of the second half of the seventeenth century often establish parallels between early modern republics, comparing Genoa and Venice with the United Provinces, considered as similar political entities despite their evident political differences. The article, taking into account four different sources, investigates the meaning of those comparisons, published when the absolutist model was taking root all around Europe. In the twilight of the republican state, when the power and reputation of the Italian republics was maybe at its (...) weakest, those comparisons served both as a way to boost a supranational republican identity, and to question the strength of the classical republican constitution. This survey explores how these authors claim that, in order to survive in the Europe of absolute monarchies, those republics have to undergo a radical political change. Only by avoiding splitting the sovereignty among too many subjects, and reinforcing the monarchical element in their constitution, these republican states, no more based on the principle of equality, could compete in the new seventeenth-century political scenario. For this reason, Italian authors looked with great interest, and often celebrated the Dutch republic, considered a stronger government than that of Venice, even if it was regarded as an imperfect republic. (shrink)

In Categories 12 (14b11–22), Aristotle famously claims that [1] true sentences and reality stand in a mutually implicative relationship, and that [2] reality causes the truth of sentences but not vice versa. In this paper, I first argue that Boethius’ reading of the above passage led medieval logicians to assess [1] and [2] within the framework of a theory of consequence. Then, I consider two important questions raised by Boethius and later logicians in relation to [1] and [2], and, namely, (...) whether the implication described in [1] really satisfies the requirement for consequence, and whether the truthmaking relation posited in [2] can be boiled down to the relation of consequence. Boethius himself, I argue, answered affirmatively to both questions and thus (much like some contemporary truthmaker theorists) committed himself to an account of truthmaking as entailment. I then consider criticisms to Boethius’ account found in the writings of William of Champeaux, two anonymous authors connected to the school of Jocelyn of Soissons, Peter Abelard, and the author of the Ars Meliduna. Here, I argue that the emergence of a concern for relevance drives the need for abandoning Boethius’ account as well as his conception of truthmaking as entailment. (shrink)

Both perception and imagination seem to play a crucial role in our engagement with fiction films but whether they really do so, and which role they possibly play, is controversial. On the one hand, a fiction film, as film, is a depiction that invites us to perceive the events portrayed. On the other hand, as fiction, it invites us to imagine the story told. Thus, after watching the film Alien, one might say that one saw Ripley fighting the monster but (...) one might also say that one imagined Ripley fighting the monster. Are these two reports compatible? If they are, how can we combine them so to make sense of them? If, instead, they are not, which of them should we give up? (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the theory of mental files can provide a unitary cognitive account of how names and singular terms work in fiction. I will suggest that the crucial notion we need is not the one of regular file, i.e., a file whose function is to accumulate information that we take to be about a single object of the outside world, but the notion of indexed file, i.e., a file that stands, in the subject’s mind, for another (...) subject’s file about an object. When we read a novel containing the name of an individual, we acquire (fictional) information about that individual and we store those pieces of information into an indexed file. If the name also refers to a real individual outside the context of fiction, the indexed file is linked with the pre-existing regular file that we have about such individual. Otherwise, the indexed file is linked to a regular file referring to an abstract object, namely the fictional entity itself. (shrink)

The World Health Organization has published a global priority list of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to guide research and development of new antibiotics. Every pathogen on this list requires R&D activity, but some are more attractive for private sector investments, as evidenced by the current antibacterial pipeline. A “pipeline coordinator” is a governmental/non-profit organization that closely tracks the antibacterial pipeline and actively supports R&D across all priority pathogens employing new financing tools.

Ensuring the trustworthiness of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence is an important interdisciplinary endeavour. In this position paper, we argue that this endeavour will benefit from technical advancements in capturing various forms of responsibility, and we present a comprehensive research agenda to achieve this. In particular, we argue that ensuring the reliability of autonomous system can take advantage of technical approaches for quantifying degrees of responsibility and for coordinating tasks based on that. Moreover, we deem that, in certifying the legality (...) of an AI system, formal and computationally implementable notions of _responsibility_, _blame_, _accountability_, and _liability_ are applicable for addressing potential responsibility gaps (i.e. situations in which a group is responsible, but individuals’ responsibility may be unclear). This is a call to enable AI systems themselves, as well as those involved in the design, monitoring, and governance of AI systems, to represent and reason about who can be seen as responsible in prospect (e.g. for completing a task in future) and who can be seen as responsible retrospectively (e.g. for a failure that has already occurred). To that end, in this work, we show that across all stages of the design, development, and deployment of trustworthy autonomous systems (TAS), responsibility reasoning should play a key role. This position paper is the first step towards establishing a road map and research agenda on how the notion of responsibility can provide novel solution concepts for ensuring the _reliability_ and _legality_ of TAS and, as a result, enables an effective embedding of AI technologies into society. (shrink)

This paper discusses a conception of truth and propositional meaning that was developed in the second half of the twelfth century by the followers of Gilbert of Poitiers, the Porretani. I begin by outlining some basic metaphysical principles that underlie the propositional semantics of the Porretani. I then go on to consider the Porretanean account of truth and of the truth-predicate, and argue that the Porretani subscribe to a form of deflationism about truth. Then, I turn to the Porretanean view (...) of propositional meanings or ‘assertables’ (enuntiabilia), as they call them. After elucidating the crucial claim that an assertable is a composition or a division, I go on to address the question of the ontological status of assertables. I argue that the Porretani endorse a form of deflationism about propositional meaning. For they maintain that assertables, although indispensable to logical inquiry, are not real entities. I conclude by presenting a discussion on assertables contained in an unedited tract dating probably from the beginning of the thirteenth century. Like the Porretani, the author of the tract identifies assertables with compositions and divisions. However, he interestingly takes the theory in a new direction by introducing the concept of negative relation. (shrink)

This paper presents an approach for legal compliance checking in the Semantic Web which can be effectively applied for applications in the Linked Open Data environment. It is based on modeling deontic norms in terms of ontology classes and ontology property restrictions. It is also shown how this approach can handle norm defeasibility. Such methodology is implemented by decidable fragments of OWL 2, while legal reasoning is carried out by available decidable reasoners. The approach is generalised by presenting patterns for (...) modeling deontic norms and norms compliance checking. (shrink)

Exploring the metaphysics of deep disagreements, Ranalli identifies several essential features shared by all such disputes. These very features constitute a set of adequacy conditions that any satisfactory theory of deep disagreements must meet. The paper explains how Coliva’s Wittgensteinian hinge theory can satisfy Ranalli’s persistence desideratum. According to this condition, any appropriate theory must explain why deep disagreements tend to be persistent and thus unresolved without presupposing that they are rationally irresolvable. First, the work critically discusses how Coliva utilizes (...) her proposed view to account for this desideratum. Second, the paper points out that Coliva’s response is partly problematic because of Ranalli’s definition of deep disagreements for Wittgensteinian hinge theories, which over-generates instances of genuine deep disagreements. Third, the work argues that Coliva’s theory can satisfy Ranalli’s persistence desideratum by resolving a deep disagreement between an anti-vaccination advocate and a proponent of vaccination using an expanded version of Pritchard’s side-on approach. Finally, the paper critically engages with Coliva on the solvability of deep disagreements. (shrink)