Why has power in the West assumed the form of an "economy," that is, of a government of men and things? If power is essentially government, why does it need glory, that is, the ceremonial and liturgical apparatus that has always accompanied it? In the early centuries of the Church, in order to reconcile monotheism with God's threefold nature, the doctrine of Trinity was introduced in the guise of an economy of divine life. It was as if the Trinity amounted (...) to nothing more than a problem of managing and governing the heavenly house and the world. Agamben shows that, when combined with the idea of providence, this theological-economic paradigm unexpectedly lies at the origin of many of the most important categories of modern politics, from the democratic theory of the division of powers to the strategic doctrine of collateral damage, from the invisible hand of Smith's liberalism to ideas of order and security. But the greatest novelty to emerge from _The Kingdom and the Glory _ is that modern power is not only government but also glory, and that the ceremonial, liturgical, and acclamatory aspects that we have regarded as vestiges of the past actually constitute the basis of Western power. Through a fascinating analysis of liturgical acclamations and ceremonial symbols of power—the throne, the crown, purple cloth, the Fasces, and more—Agamben develops an original genealogy that illuminates the startling function of consent and of the media in modern democracies. With this book, the work begun with _Homo Sacer_ reaches a decisive point, profoundly challenging and renewing our vision of politics. (shrink)

Robots are increasingly envisaged as our future cohabitants. However, while considerable progress has been made in recent years in terms of their technological realization, the ability of robots to inter-act with humans in an intuitive and social way is still quite limited. An important challenge for social robotics is to determine how to design robots that can perceive the user’s needs, feelings, and intentions, and adapt to users over a broad range of cognitive abilities. It is conceivable that if robots (...) were able to adequately demonstrate this, humans would eventually accept them as social companions. We argue that the best way to achieve this is using a systematic experimental approach based on behavioral and physiological neuroscience methods such as motion/eye tracking, electroencephalography (EEG), or functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) embedded in interactive human-robot paradigms. This approach requires understanding how humans interact with each other, how they perform tasks together and how they develop feelings of social connection over time, and using these insights to formulate design principles that make social robots attuned to the workings of the human brain. In this review, we put forward the argument that the likelihood of artificial agents being perceived as social companions can be increased by designing them in a way that they are perceived as intentional agents that activate areas in the human brain involved in social-cognitive processing. We first review literature related to social-cognitive mechanisms involved in human-human interactions, and high-light the importance of perceiving others as intentional agents to activate these brain areas. We then discuss how attribution of intentionality can positively affect human-robot interaction by (a) fostering feelings of social connection, empathy and prosociality, and by (b) enhancing performance on joint human-robot tasks. Lastly, we describe circumstances under which attribution of intentionality to robot agents might be disadvantageous, and discuss challenges associated with designing social robots that are inspired by neuroscientific principles. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the rapid and unexpected rise of deep learning within Artificial Intelligence and its applications. It tackles the possible reasons for this remarkable success, providing candidate paths towards a satisfactory explanation of why it works so well, at least in some domains. A historical account is given for the ups and downs, which have characterized neural networks research and its evolution from “shallow” to “deep” learning architectures. A precise account of “success” is given, in order to sieve out (...) aspects pertaining to marketing or sociology of research, and the remaining aspects seem to certify a genuine value of deep learning, calling for explanation. The alleged two main propelling factors for deep learning, namely computing hardware performance and neuroscience findings, are scrutinized, and evaluated as relevant but insufficient for a comprehensive explanation. We review various attempts that have been made to provide mathematical foundations able to justify the efficiency of deep learning, and we deem this is the most promising road to follow, even if the current achievements are too scattered and relevant for very limited classes of deep neural models. The authors’ take is that most of what can explain the very nature of why deep learning works at all and even very well across so many domains of application is still to be understood and further research, which addresses the theoretical foundation of artificial learning, is still very much needed. (shrink)

We provide a list of open problems in the research area of generalised Baire spaces, compiled with the help of the participants of two workshops held in Amsterdam (2014) and Hamburg (2015).

This article outlines a semantic approach to the logics of unknown truths, and the logic of false beliefs, using neighborhood structures, giving results on soundness, completeness, and expressivity. Relational semantics for the logics of unknown truths are also addressed, specically the conditions under which sound axiomatizations of these logics might be obtained from their normal counterparts, and the relationship between refexive insensitive logics and logics containing the provability operator as the primary modal operator.

In this paper I will address some theories of Roman Ingarden and Walter Benjamin in the light of the new reproductive technologies for streaming music. As to Ingarden's theory I argue that, in the case I am bringing into investigation, streaming music experience can bring new light on the problem of the identity of the musical work by creating a continuum in a sequence of performances, and such continuum may account for a sort of ‘fluid’ cross-identity of the music piece (...) variously performed. I also argue that the lack of ‘aura’, in this case, does not devalue the music piece and nevertheless allows for a notable aesthetic fruition. (shrink)

This article describes key paradigms employed to assess deception and reviews the main neuroscience-based technologies that have been employed to investigate the neural correlates of deception: electroencephalography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and transcranial direct current stimulation. Any potential use of neuroscience-based methods to detect deception in real-life situations requires successful classification in single subjects. It describes findings on the single subject performance of these methods and addresses the effects of two factors that are problematic for all deception detection methods, the (...) potential use of countermeasures, strategies used by subjects to defeat the deception detection tests, and the potential role of false memories and of incidental encoding. It briefly outlines some of the ethical issues associated with these technologies to detect deceptive behavior. (shrink)

Global development, diffusion and implementation of the human-centredness paradigm can be performed at best when supported by a study of our mental activity. By analysing our mental operations, we can understand how human needs, interests, values and creativity take form, what each consists of, how it is possible to expand, modify and generate them. The proposed model of mental activity is based on attentional movement. The new opportunities, both ethical and social, offered by such a study are presented.

As prototypical incentive with biological meaning, food illustrates the distinction between money as tool and money as drug. However, consistent neuroscience results challenge this view of food as intrinsic value and opposite to drugs of abuse. The scarce availability over evolutionary time of both food and money may explain their similar drug-like non-satiability, suggesting an integrated mechanism for generalized reinforcers. (Published Online April 5 2006).

My goal is to emphasize the way we generally use the word ‘logic’ and the sort of problems related to the definition of logic and the sort of problems related to the definition of logic. I also wish to underline the differences between human intelligence and artificial intelligence.

ABSTRACTIn a recent book, Thomas Ward advances an original interpretation of Duns Scotus’s hylomorphism, which stresses the ability of the parts of certain kinds of composites to exist independently from each other and from the composite to which they belong. Ward argues that the notion of essential order plays a key role in accounting for the unity of those parts in a composite. In another book, Richard Cross gives a comprehensive treatment of Duns Scotus’s theory of cognition, which proposes an (...) interesting but controversial interpretation of Duns Scotus as introducing a distinction between object and content and defending the view that the contents of intellectual cognitive acts are determined only by their internal structure. (shrink)