The essays in this volume, written by well-known economists and other social scientists from North America, Europe and Australia, share to an unusual degree a common concern with the competitive mechanisms that underlie collective decisions and with the way they are embedded in institutional settings. This gives the book a unitary inspiration whose value is clear from the understanding and insights its chapters provide on important theoretical and practical issues such as the social dimension and impact of trust, the management (...) of information in bureaucratic settings, the role of political parties in constitutional evolution, inter-level rivalry and reassignments of powers in federal and unitary systems of government, the impact of ethnicity and nationalism on federal institutions or arrangements, and the response of governments and overarching institutions of globalization. The essays were written in honour of Albert Breton, a pioneer in this field of investigation. (shrink)

Despite society’s increasing sensitivity toward green production, companies often struggle to find effective communication strategies that induce consumers to buy green products or engage in other environmentally friendly behaviors. To add clarity to this situation, we investigated the effectiveness of negative versus positive message framing in promoting green products, whereby companies highlight the detrimental versus beneficial environmental consequences of choosing less versus more green options, respectively. Across four experiments, we show that negatively framed messages are more effective than positively framed (...) ones in prompting consumers to engage in pro-environmental behaviors. More importantly, we find that anticipated shame is the emotion responsible for this effect. Furthermore, both environmental concern and the type of product promoted serve as moderators; thus, the mediating role of anticipated shame is attenuated when environmental concern is low and the product is a luxury one. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of our work, along with its limitations and some directions for future research. (shrink)

This paper investigates some of the main problems concerning the normativity of aesthetic judgments in Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Kant’s attempt to provide a transcendental foundation to aesthetic judgments clashes with the impossibility to find a determined conceptual rule under which they could be subsumed. This paper aims to discuss and clarify the set of problems derived from this attempt, focusing especially on the artistic perspective. In order to do that, it will be necessary to deal with the following notions: (...) eautonomy, sensus communis aestheticus and genius. From this analysis it will emerge the importance of exemplarity as concept that allow us to highlight some implicit and usually neglected aspects of Kant’s aesthetic theory. (shrink)

If political fake news is a serious concern for democratic politics, no less worrisome is scientific news with patently distorted content. Prima facie, scientific misinformation partially escapes the definition of fake news provided by empirical and philosophical analysis, mainly patterned after political disinformation. Most notably, we aim to show that people are often unaware not only of disseminating, but also of producing false or misleading information. However, by leveraging the philosophical and psychological literature, we advance some reasons for keeping scientific (...) misinformation under the same umbrella, broadening the definition of fake news in order to account for it as well. In concluding, we shall advance some ideas on how to reform scientific communication, which may help to address the issue of scientific misinformation. (shrink)

The focus of the book, which consists in three studies, can be described in the following aspects: Considerations on Aristotle's universals, reconstruction of Aristotle's critics to Plato' s ideas in Aristotle's lost work “On Ideas”, analysis of Aristotle's substance in the works Categories, Metaphysics, On the Soul, Posterior Analytics, Physics. My point of view is that Aristotle refuses every aspect of Plato's ideas in a radical way. I analyze Aristotle's conditions for a synonymy of predication and compare them with the (...) condition for a not-homonymy of predication in the Argument from Relatives of “On Ideas”. My reflections on substance plead for the presence of a plurality of values of substance in the works of Aristotle: substance can be, for instance, the individual biological entity or the essence/nature/form of a biological entity; a coexistence of both values can be noticed in the different works of Aristotle. (shrink)

Uno studio filosofico sull’etica è sempre di grande attualità. E in questo «dappertutto vi circola la passione per la verità e per il bene» (dalla Presentazione di Carmelo Vigna). Mai come oggi si parla di salute e di benessere, probabilmente perché si percepisce la mancanza di entrambi. In Occidente è così. L’etica si affaccia alla riflessione umana rivestita con i panni di un’etica filosofica, prima ancora che ulteriormente aggettivata, essendo una terminologia che rimanda, come è risaputo, ad Aristotele. Con «etica» (...) si intende oggi quel confine oltre cui non si può più andare, discutere, transigere, indagare: per questo – e correttamente – si parla rispettivamente di «confini etici», «indole etica » o non, «bioetica», «decisione etica», «comportamento etico» e così via. In qualche modo con «etica» si intende ciò che si impone ancor più della scienza o della decisione democratica. L’«etica» pone in questione il baluardo sollevato proprio da queste ultime due. Sanando la questione. Il modo, talvolta, sfugge, diventando, così, ambito proprio della filosofia e della sua visione interale. Questa è esattamente l’etica filosofica. Questo libro affronta temi di grande importanza e fascinosi, quali il bene, il male, la bontà, la crudeltà, la ragione, il sentimento, il «senso morale», la coscienza, la responsabilità, la Stato e la nazione. (shrink)

Il volume si presenta come un manuale di riferimento sul pensiero di Umberto Galimberti, una miscellanea di studi cui ha contribuito un alto numero di studiosi di diverse discipline. Questo libro indaga il lungo arco del lavoro galimbertiano: dal pensiero simbolico, dalla fenomenologia alla psichiatria, fino ad approdare alla riflessione sull'età della tecnica e alla consulenza filosofica.

We reconsider the pragmatic interpretation of intuitionistic logic [21] regarded as a logic of assertions and their justi cations and its relations with classical logic. We recall an extension of this approach to a logic dealing with assertions and obligations, related by a notion of causal implication [14, 45]. We focus on the extension to co-intuitionistic logic, seen as a logic of hypotheses [8, 9, 13] and on polarized bi-intuitionistic logic as a logic of assertions and conjectures: looking at the (...) S4 modal translation, we give a de nition of a system AHL of bi-intuitionistic logic that correctly represents the duality between intuitionistic and co-intuitionistic logic, correcting a mistake in previous work [7, 10]. A computational interpretation of cointuitionism as a distributed calculus of coroutines is then used to give an operational interpretation of subtraction.Work on linear co-intuitionism is then recalled, a linear calculus of co-intuitionistic coroutines is de ned and a probabilistic interpretation of linear co-intuitionism is given as in [9]. Also we remark that by extending the language of intuitionistic logic we can express the notion of expectation, an assertion that in all situations the truth of p is possible and that in a logic of expectations the law of double negation holds. Similarly, extending co-intuitionistic logic, we can express the notion of conjecture that p, de ned as a hypothesis that in some situation the truth of p is epistemically necessary. (shrink)

Different phases of the restoration of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescoes are discussed, including the techniques used to remove foreign matter deposited or applied in the course of time. Huge scientific and technical support is used for this project in contrast to the age?old operations of previous restorers and the simplicity of their equipment.

This essay explores the connection between post-truth and fear, arguing that the latter may be used as a tool to control information and thus manipulate public opinion. Furthermore, it discusses the role of law in regulating post-truth (among others, by a better regulation of Information Society providers). Eventually, some solutions are proposed.

In this 2002 book, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti examines the most intractable problems which toleration encounters and argues that what is really at stake is not religious or moral disagreement but the unequal status of different social groups. Liberal theories of toleration fail to grasp this and consequently come up with normative solutions that are inadequate when confronted with controversial cases. Galeotti proposes, as an alternative, toleration as recognition, which addresses the problem of according equal respect to groups as (...) well as equal liberty to individuals. She offers an interpretation that is both a revision and an expansion of liberal theory, in which toleration constitutes an important component not only of a theory of justice, but also of the politics of identity. Her study will appeal to a wide range of readers in political philosophy, political theory, and law. (shrink)

general, abstract situation. On the other side, I know that graduate students and all mathematicians sometimes falter because their intuitive, ..

The chapters in this book deal with different, though related, topics concerning the tense relationship between democracy and diversity. On the one hand, social diversity represents an opportunity, widening the horizon of social options and perspectives of innovation, but, on the other hand, it creates problems for the social cohesion and peaceful coexistence of many groups, be they majority or minority. The chapters depart from the intrinsic connection between democracy and diversity – and the unavoidable challenges that pluralism poses to (...) decision-making procedures – investigating, from different perspectives, how the normative requirement of fully respecting agents’ reflexive agency impacts the revision of democratic decision-making procedures and the way in which institutions react to citizens’ justice-based claims. (shrink)

This article aims to provide a critical map of toleration as it is displayed in contemporary democracy. It does so by presenting three conceptions of toleration to which current practices of toleration can be traced, and, precisely, these are the standard notion, the political conception based on the neutrality principle, and toleration as recognition. The author argues that the latter is the appropriate conception to address the politically relevant issues of toleration arising in pluralistic democracy, while the first is adequate (...) only for social relations. In order to illustrate this argument, she presents a case of a contested and never solved request for a place of worship by the Muslims of Vercelli which represents an example of a very restricted and minimal interpretation of the standard notion, labeled ‘disrespectful tolerance’. The case is meant to show that unacceptable forms of toleration are still practised, and that the standard notion, here interpreted in the most minimal and negative way, is inappropriate for democratic politics. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Networks represents the frontier of research into how and why networks they form, how they influence behavior, how they help govern outcomes in an interactive world, and how they shape collective decision making, opinion formation, and diffusion dynamics. From a methodological perspective, the contributors to this volume devote attention to theory, field experiments, laboratory experiments, and econometrics. Theoretical work in network formation, games played on networks, repeated games, and the interaction between linking and (...) behavior is synthesized. A number of chapters are devoted to studying social process mediated by networks. Topics here include opinion formation, diffusion of information and disease, and learning. There are also chapters devoted to financial contagion and systemic risk, motivated in part by the recent financial crises. Another section discusses communities, with applications including social trust, favor exchange, and social collateral; the importance of communities for migration patterns; and the role that networks and communities play in the labor market. A prominent role of networks, from an economic perspective, is that they mediate trade. Several chapters cover bilateral trade in networks, strategic intermediation, and the role of networks in international trade. Contributions discuss as well the role of networks for organizations. On the one hand, one chapter discusses the role of networks for the performance of organizations, while two other chapters discuss managing networks of consumers and pricing in the presence of network-based spillovers. Finally, the authors discuss the internet as a network with attention to the issue of net neutrality. (shrink)

Self-deception, that is the distortion of reality against the available evidence and according to one's wishes, represents a distinctive component in the wide realm of political deception. It has received relatively little attention but is well worth examining for its explanatory and normative dimensions. In this book Anna Elisabetta Galeotti shows how self-deception can explain political occurrences where public deception intertwines with political failure - from bad decisions based on false beliefs, through the self-serving nature of those beliefs, to (...) the deception of the public as a by-product of a leader's self-deception. Her discussion uses close analysis of three well-known case studies: John F. Kennedy and the Cuba Crisis, Lyndon B. Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and George W. Bush and the weapons of mass destruction. Her book will appeal to a range of readers in political philosophy, political theory, and international relations. (shrink)

We consider a “polarized” version of bi-intuitionistic logic [5, 2, 6, 4] as a logic of assertions and hypotheses and show that it supports a “rich proof theory” and an interesting categorical interpretation, unlike the standard approach of C. Rauszer’s Heyting-Brouwer logic [28, 29], whose categorical models are all partial orders by Crolard’s theorem [8]. We show that P.A. Melliès notion of chirality [21, 22] appears as the right mathematical representation of the mirror symmetry between the intuitionistic and co-intuitionistc sides (...) of polarized bi-intuitionism. Philosophically, we extend Dalla Pozza and Garola’s pragmatic interpretation of intuitionism as a logic of assertions [10] to bi-intuitionism as a logic of assertions and hypotheses. We focus on the logical role of illocutionary forces and justification conditions in order to provide “intended interpretations” of logical systems that classify inferential uses in natural language and remain acceptable from an intuitionistic point of view. Although Dalla Pozza and Garola originally provide a constructive interpretation of intuitionism in a classical setting, we claim that some conceptual refinements suffice to make their “pragmatic interpretation” a bona fide representation of intuitionism. We sketch a meaning-asuse interpretation of co-intuitionism that seems to fulfil the requirements of Dummett and Prawitz’s justificationist approach. We extend the Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov interpretation to bi-intuitionism by regarding co-intuitionistic formulas as types of the evidence for them: if conclusive evidence is needed to justify assertions, only a scintilla of evidence suffices to justify hypotheses. (shrink)