Toutes les occurences des trois termes presentes dans les fragments des philosophes presocratiques ainsi que dans les oeuvres de Platon et d'Aristote ont ete examinees par une quinzaine de professeurs et de chercheurs issus des Universites de Liege, de Bruxelles, de Louvain-la-Neuve et de Leuven. Les resultats de l'enquete ont ete presentes et discutes au cours d'un colloque qui s'est tenu a Liege en mars 2001. Dans le volume, chacun des trois corpus donne lieu en outre a un tableau recapitulatif (...) des occurences et a des conclusions propres. Un quatrieme chapitre comprend une etude sur Proclus ainsi que des investigations relatives aux traductions arabes et latines du vocabulaire concerne. Pour finir, Enrico Berti degage les principaux resultats du travail et montre aussi certains enjeux de cette philosophie de la forme inauguree par les penseurs grecs. L'ouvrage comprend une bibliographie de quelque deux cents quarante titres ainsi qu'un index des mots semantiquement apparentes aux trois termes etudies et des autres mots qui apparaissent frequemment dans leur voisinage. (shrink)

This book uses the conceptual tools of philosophy to shed light on digital media and on the way in which they bear upon our existence. At the turn of the century, the rise of digital media significantly changed our world. The digitizing of traditional media has extraordinarily increased the circulation of texts, sound, and images. Digital media have also widened our horizons and altered our relationship with others and with ourselves. Information production and communication are still undoubtedly significant aspects of (...) digital media and life. Recently, however, recording, registration and keeping track have taken the upper hand in both online practices and the imaginaries related to them. The essays in this book therefore focus primarily on the idea that digital media involve a significant overlapping between communication and recording. (shrink)

Molecular interactions are at the origin of life. How molecules get at different locations in the cell and how they locate their partners is a major and partially unresolved question in biology that is paramount to signaling. Spatio‐temporal correlations of fluctuating fluorescently tagged molecules reveal how they move, interact, and bind in the different cellular compartments. Methods based on fluctuations represent a remarkable technical advancement in biological imaging. Here we discuss image analysis methods based on spatial and temporal correlation of (...) fluctuations, raster image correlation spectroscopy, number and brightness, and spatial cross‐correlations that give us information about how individual molecules move in cells and interact with partners at the single molecule level. These methods can be implemented with a standard laser scanning microscope and produce a cellular level spatio‐temporal map of molecular interactions. (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)

This translation and commentary is based on the Critical Text and Indices of Proclus: Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato, Amsterdam 1954, by L. G. Westerink. Index II has been of great help in the translation, and the commentary is much indebted to the critical apparatus. Dr. Westerink has also been kind enough to forward his views on the relatively few problems which the Greek text has presented. A further debt is owed to the review of Dr. Westerink's (...) text by Prof. E. R. Dodds in GNOMON 1955 p. 164-1, chiefly for some references and some emendations to the Greek text. W. R. M. Lamb's Loeb translation of Alcibiades I has helped considerably in construing the lemmata, which Signor Antonio Carlini has found to have been inserted by a later hand from a Plato MSS. of the W family. Evidence for this is their discrepancy with the text as read in the main body of the commentary (d. Studi Classici e Orientali, vol. x, Pisa 1961). On the personal side, the whole work has received the benefit of constant advice from Prof. A. H. Armstrong. It was he who first suggested the undertaking, and he has been kind enough to read through the translation and commentary, making many corrections and helpful suggestions. In particular lowe him the parallels with Plotinus and thanks for a Socratic patience in my more obtuse moments. (shrink)

The commentary on Plato's Republic by Proclus (d. 485 CE), which takes the form of a series of essays, is the only sustained treatment of the dialogue to survive from antiquity. This three-volume edition presents the first complete English translation of Proclus' text, together with a general introduction that argues for the unity of Proclus' Commentary and orients the reader to the use that the Neoplatonists made of Plato's Republic in their educational program. Each volume is completed (...) by a Greek word index and an English-Greek glossary that will help non-specialists to track the occurrence of key terms throughout the translated text. The first volume of the edition presents Proclus' essays on the point and purpose of Plato's dialogue, the arguments against Thrasymachus in Book I, the rules for correct poetic depictions of the divine, a series of problems about the status of poetry across all Plato's works, and finally an essay arguing for the fundamental agreement of Plato's philosophy with the divine wisdom of Homer which is, in Proclus' view, allegorically communicated through his poems. (shrink)

It is remarkable, that though the writings of Proclus are entirely neglected, and even unknown to many who are called scholars, in this country,..

Numenius is an author who straddles the line between Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism. In this contribution, I focus on the differences between the second and the third God, which emerge from analyses of the relevant fragments. Numenius emphasizes, on several occasions, how the second God (i.e., the demiurge) has a dual nature. In this paper, I investigate the role of the demiurge in Numenius and examine in what sense the second and third God are “one.” On the one hand, Numenius (...) seems to be stressing the unity of the second and third levels of reality, but on the other hand, he also appears to be differentiating them. The present analyses concentrate on fragments 19F, 24F, 29T and 30T (respectively 11, 16, 21, and 22 in des Places’ edition). My purpose is to demonstrate that, according to Numenius, the second and the third God are one because they both can be regarded as demiurgic. Thus, Numenius conceives a kind of “double demiurgy,” which preserves the distinction between the second and the third God, who are distinguished from an ontological point of view, but who, at the same time, share a demiurgic function. The second God is then the paradigm, whereas the third God is immanent in matter as a ruling principle of the cosmos, which is similar to the World Soul, as he operates on matter in order to make it rationally ordered. (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)

Pride is a fundamental element in Hume's description of human nature. An important part of the secondary literature on Hume is devoted to this passion. However, no one, as far as I am aware, takes seriously the fact that pride often appears in pairs with vanity. In Book 2 of the Treatise, pride is defined as the passion one feels when society recognizes his connection to a ‘cause’, composed by a ‘subject’ and a (positive) ‘quality’. Conversely, no definition of vanity (...) is provided. Despite Hume's fluctuating vocabulary, I hold that a conceptual difference between pride and vanity exists. To support this claim, I analyse the common features of these two passions, showing that both pride and vanity (a) are indirect passions, (b) are self-regarding passions, and (c) have the same structure. Supported by textual evidence, I then claim that vanity is a desire of reputation, a desire to feel pride, when pride is not (yet) in place, because its cause is only imaginary and not real. Nonetheless, I underscore that, at times, ‘vanity’ means simply pride and call for greater attention on this ongoing oscillation. In conclusion, I explore the implications of this account of vanity for social interactions in Hume's philosophy, which illustrates its intrinsic ambivalence. (shrink)

In questo volume Enrico Fubini si propone di mettere in luce i temi fondamentali, le correnti piú importanti, i problemi chiave dell'estetica musicale contemporanea, iniziando il loro studio dall'illuminismo, in cui tali problemi affondano le loro radici. Il concetto di estetica è inteso nel senso piú largo, comprendendo le meditazioni sulla musica non solo degli studiosi di estetica e dei musicisti stessi, ma anche dei filosofi, degli psicologi, dei fisici e dei matematici.

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)

Moving from a cinematic reinterpretation of Borges’s Library of Babel, I attempt to provide a new answer to the old ontological question: “What kind of being is a film?”. This answer, which takes into account the coming of digital era, is developed through a comparison with Carroll’s philosophy of motion pictures. While discussing, criticizing and trying to complete his theory, I will examine the concept of a film under four different aspects: as a material object, as an ideal object, as (...) a mental object, and as a social object. Finally, our ontology of film will be applied to clarify some traditional theoretical dualisms: i.e. film vs. reality, film vs. narration, film vs. discourse, film vs. art. (shrink)

I rely on Frascolla's interpretation of the Tractatus ontology to develop an account of depiction in which a picture is conceived of as a visual structure constituted by pixels that are conceived of, in their turn, as elementary propositions. Then I argue that such an account is complementary to the considerations about «noticing aspects» in the Philosophical Investigations, to the extent that the visual structure constituted by pixels provides a design allowing the picture’s viewer to notice aspects. Finally I argue (...) that a joint reading of the considerations about pictures in the Tractatus and in the Philosophical Investigations allows us to address some important issues in the contemporary philosophical debate about depiction. (shrink)

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)

The main accounts of the documentary in contemporary analytic aesthetics have difficulties in dealing with the distinction between documentaries and docudramas. On the one hand, the assertion-based accounts proposed by Carroll, Ponech and Plantinga cannot properly differentiate documentaries from docudramas. On the other hand, Currie’s account can do so by relying on the notion of trace but this involves an undesirable side-effect, namely, the exclusion, from the documentary, of those documentaries that do not include traces of their subjects, as for (...) instance documentaries that resort to reenactments. Is there a way to exclude docudramas from the documentary without also excluding other films that we usually treat as documentaries? The paper affirmatively answers to this question by relying on the notion perceptual belief, that is, a belief that one can form by endorsing one's perception. Documentaries are defined as films that mandate us to form perceptual beliefs. Even if a docudrama mandates us to form beliefs, it does not mandate us to form perceptual beliefs, and thus does not count as a documentary. By contrast, a documentary that resorts to reenactments still mandates us to form perceptual beliefs and thus properly satisfies the definition proposed. (shrink)

This article examines how theology and social science can contribute to the specific task of talking about God in management without compromising the integrity of the Triune God. To talk about God in management studies initially requires a discussion on the character of modernity and about whether modernity is absence or transformation of religious forms; to follow is an examination of the governing assumptions operating in social theory from a religious perspective. The conclusion is that without the correct hermeneutics, what (...) management scholars mean by God cannot be more than an idea. (shrink)

This paper considers two different kinds of philosophical interpretations of the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. On the one hand, Eternal Sunshine as a thought experiment that can function as an argument against utilitarianism. On the other hand, Eternal Sunshine as an instance of the genre of the remarriage comedy. I will argue that these two kinds of interpretations are in conflict. More specifically, Eternal Sunshine, understood as a comedy of remarriage, cannot function as an argument against utilitarianism, (...) at least in the sense specified by Grau and Wartenberg. Finally, I will suggest a different way in which Eternal Sunshine, understood as a comedy of remarriage, might function as an argument against utilitarianism. (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)

The current notions of bounded rationality in economics share distinctive features with Simon’s original notion of bounded rationality, which still influences the theoretical and experimental research in the fields of choice, judgment, decision making, problem solving, and social cognition. All these notions of bounded rationality are in fact equally rooted in the information-processing approach to human cognition, expressing the view that reasoning is disembodied and that it can be reduced to the processing of abstract symbolic representations of the environment. This (...) is in contrast with the last three-decade advancements in cognitive psychology, where a new view on human cognition has emerged under the general label of ‘embodied cognition’, demonstrating that cognition and reasoning are grounded in the morphological traits of the human body and the sensory-motor system. In this paper we argue that embodied cognition might reform the current notions of bounded rationality and we propose a number of arguments devoted to outline a novel program of research under the label of ‘embodied rationality’: reasoning is situated as it arises from the ongoing interaction between the subject and the environment; reasoning, not being exclusively a mental phenomenon, constitutively relies on the physical resources provided by the environment; the sensory-motor system provides the building blocks for abstract reasoning, automatic thinking is rooted in the evolutionary coupling between the morphological traits of the human body and the environment. (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)

In the first decades of the twentieth century, many philosophers and philosophical movements attempted to make philosophy scientific by analogy with science. Such attempts vary with respect to the strategies adopted for implementing the analogy. In this article, I single out the specificity of logical empiricism’s strategy, by comparing it to some of its most relevant contemporary scientific philosophies, such as Russell’s method of analysis, Husserl’s phenomenology, neo-Kantianism, and American pragmatism. Logical empiricism sees philosophy as continuous with science, by reducing (...) the problems of philosophy to problems in mathematical logic. The other scientific philosophies postulate a specificity of philosophy, by maintaining a special domain for it and also a specific methodology, while requiring this methodology to be scientific in a manner analogous to the general method of the special sciences. I argue that this distinction helps to revise and possibly to settle some of the debates concerning our understanding of both the genealogy and the development of the movement, such as the conjectural derivation of its scientific philosophy from Russell’s analytic philosophy or from a special brand of Austrian philosophy and the complex relationship with its German and American contemporaries. (shrink)

From within a “systemic approach” to deliberative democracy, political parties can be seen as crucial actors in facilitating deliberation, by playing epistemic, motivational, and justificatory functions that are central to the deliberative ideal. However, we point out that if we assume a purely outcome-oriented conception of the role of parties within a deliberative system, we risk losing sight of a central tenet of deliberative democracy and of its distinctive principle of legitimacy, namely, that citizens must be able to exercise critical (...) reflection on the grounds of democratic decisions. We argue that parties have a special responsibility in making a deliberative system meet this requirement, and that such special role can be fulfilled only if parties’ programs, values, and strategies are shaped through intra-party deliberation. On the grounds of this discussion, we define a model of intra-party deliberation that is based on the principles of mutual acceptability, pluralism, and publicity. (shrink)

Despite numerous publications on the philosophy of technology, little attention has been paid to the relationship between being and value in technology, two aspects which are usually treated separately. This volume addresses this issue by drawing connections between the ontology of technology on the one hand and technology's ethical and aesthetic significance on the other. The book first considers what technology is and what kind of entities it produces. Then it examines the moral implications of technology. Finally, it explores the (...) connections between technology and the arts. Enrico Terrone is Associate Professor at the University of Genoa, Italy. He works on philosophical issues concerning aesthetics, ontology and technology. His main area of research is philosophy of film. His most recent previous book (co-authored with Luca Bandirali) is Concept TV: An Aesthetics of Television Series (2021). Vera Tripodi is Assistant Professor at the University of Milan, Italy. She specializes in feminist philosophy and ethics, bioethics, ethics of technology, and social ontology. She is a Founding Member and Vice President of the SWIP ITALIA (The Society for Women in Philosophy - Italy). (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 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)