In On Nature and Language Noam Chomsky develops his thinking on the relation between language, mind and brain, integrating current research in linguistics into the burgeoning field of neuroscience. This 2002 volume begins with a lucid introduction by the editors Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi. This is followed by some of Chomsky's writings on these themes, together with a penetrating interview in which Chomsky provides the clearest and most elegant introduction to current theory available. It should make his Minimalist (...) Program accessible to all. The volume concludes with an essay on the role of intellectuals in society and government. Nature and Language is a significant landmark in the development of linguistic theory. It will be welcomed by students and researchers in theoretical linguistics, neurolinguistics, cognitive science and politics, as well as anyone interested in the development of Chomsky's thought. (shrink)

From the Proceedings of the meeting Mind and Life XII, 'What is matter, what is life?', held in Dharamsala, India, in 2002, in the presence of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama.

In this paper we investigate ignorance in relation to our capacity to justify our beliefs. To achieve this aim we specifically address scientific misconceptions, i.e. beliefs that are considered to be false in light of accepted scientific knowledge. The hypothesis we put forward is that misconceptions are not isolated false beliefs, but rather form part of a system of inferences—an explanation—which does not match current scientific theory. We further argue that, because misconceptions are embedded in a system, they cannot be (...) rectified simply by replacing false beliefs with true ones. To address our misconceptions, we must rather act on the system of beliefs that supports them. In the first step of our analysis, we distinguish between misconceptions that are easy to dispel because they represent simple errors that occur against the background of a correct explanatory apparatus and misconceptions that are, on the contrary, very difficult to dispel because they are the product of pseudo explanations. We show that, in the latter case, misconceptions constitute an integral part of an incorrect explanation and the reasons that support such misconceptions are deeply misleading. In the second step, we discuss various approaches that have been adopted to address the problem of misconceptions. Challenging the notion that directly addressing and criticizing specific misconceptions is an effective approach, we propose that critical thinking is the most fruitful means to deal with misconceptions. We define the core competences and knowledge relevant for the practice of critical thinking and discuss how they help us avoid misconceptions that arise from accepting beliefs that form part of a mistaken explanation. (shrink)

Il concetto di "libertà" descrive uno dei valori fondamentali della società occidentale contemporanea. Tuttavia, sebbene tutti concordino circa la necessità di difendere la libertà, persone che incarnano convinzioni politiche, morali e sociali diverse interpretano la libertà in maniere differenti, se non perfino contrapposte. Nonostante queste evidenti divergenze, è opinione diffusa che questo concetto si caratterizzi alla sua base per una sorta di denominatore comune, a proposito del quale sussiste un’unanimità pervasiva e che delinea l’orizzonte di una comune battaglia. Questo studio (...) investiga questa opinione da un punto di vista cognitivo allo scopo di determinare come sia costituito e di quale informazione si componga il concetto astratto di “libertà”. La ricerca – che si rifà in parte alla teoria di G. Lakoff – identifica un nucleo cognitivo comune concreto del concetto e chiarisce come questo si contamini ideologicamente nel corso del suo sviluppo da concetto concreto a concetto astratto. Le conclusioni di questo studio evidenziano tuttavia come il nucleo universale del concetto sia eccessivamente indeterminato per costituire un denominatore comune politicamente rilevante che fornisca una base di accordo a proposito di un valore condiviso ed evidenzia alcuni limiti dell'impostazione data da Lakoff al problema, avanzando delle ipotesi per futuri sviluppi della ricerca su questi temi. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in investigating science communication. Some studies that address this issue attempt to develop a model to determine the level of confidence that an author or a scientific community has at a given time towards a theory or a group of theories. A well-established approach suggests that, in order to determine the level of certainty authors have with regard to the statements they make, one can identify specific lexical and morphosyntactical markers which indicate (...) their epistemic attitudes. This method is considered particularly appealing because it permits the development of an algorithmic model based on the quantitative analysis of the occurrence of these markers to assess automatically and objectively the opinion of an author or the predominant opinion of a scientific community on a topic at a given time. In this contribution we show that this line of research presents many kinds of problems especially when it is applied to research articles. To this aim, we propose two main lines of reasoning. The first one relies generally on the argumentative structure of scientific articles and shows that certainty/uncertainty markers are used differently in different argument forms and that therefore their number/frequency of use does not offer reliable indications for determining whether the topic at issue is considered by the authors to be more or less factual/speculative. The second one is based on the analysis of a sample of psychiatric research articles on homosexuality written over a long time span and taken from The British Journal of Psychiatry. Since the psychiatric perspective on homosexuality changed radically during the decades in which these articles were published, they offer an inventory of various kinds of argumentative strategies directed both at defending and confuting dominant as well as marginal positions. We focus especially on uncertainty markers and show that frequently the positions stated using expressions indicating uncertainty are actually not considered as conjectural or speculative by their authors, but that the use of uncertainty markers is motivated by a number of different and often incongruent rhetorical strategies. (shrink)

The novel pandemic called “Coronavirus Disease 2019”, as a global public health emergency and global threat, has affected many countries in unpredictable ways and impacted on physical activity behaviors to various extents. Specific populations including refugees, asylum seekers, and prisoners, are vulnerable groups with multiple complex health needs and worse health outcomes with respect to the general population worldwide and at high risk of death from the “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-related Coronavirus type 2”. Governments around the world have been implementing (...) preventive healthcare policies, including physical and social distancing, isolation, and confinement, to mitigate against the burden imposed by the COVID-19 outbreak. This pandemic period is characterized by reduced or lack of movement. During this period of lockdown, PA can represent an immunotherapy and a preventative approach to avoid the harmful effects of inactivity due to the pandemic. Moreover, PA could be prescribed to improve the immune system of specific populations, which particularly experience the condition of being confined. The present narrative review discusses the potential impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on these specific populations’ health status and the importance of performing PA/exercise to reduce the deleterious effects of COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we aim to provide useful recommendations on PA/exercise for these specific populations to maintain their level of independence, physical, and mental health as well as their wellbeing. (shrink)

In this paper we document the developmental trajectory of the complementizer system (CP-system) in Italian by looking at the earliest spontaneous production of eleven young children, whose transcriptions are available on CHILDES. We conducted a novel corpus analysis, tracking down a number of constructions in which the clausal left-periphery is activated. First, we considered the appearance of the different complementizer particles in the CP-system, which overtly realize the three distinct functional projections ForceP, IntP, and FinP. The analysis revealed that children (...) acquiring Italian correctly use these complementizer particles already in the third year of life. Second, we looked for the simultaneous activation of different functional projections within the CP-system. We went through our corpus searching for complex sentences in which more than one constituent was moved to the left periphery. This option is allowed by the adult grammar of Italian and, as our search revealed, it is also attested in the grammar of young children. Soon after their second birthday, sequences in which a left-dislocated Topic and a Wh- element co-occur are attested, directly supporting the existence of a (high) Topic position above FocusP. Moreover, movement in general conforms to the constraints of the adult grammar, with no attested violation of obligatory inversion (a consequence of the Q-Criterion). Importantly, “why-questions” did not require inversion, much as in the adult grammar of Italian. Taken together, children's use of complementizer particles and their activation of multiple landing sites for movement show that 2-year-olds already possess a richly articulated functional structure of the CP-system, aligned to the layered adult structure. In concluding the paper, we also discuss some temporal differences between constructions activating high and low portions of the CP-system. In particular, we detect a temporal precedence for wh-questions over why-questions. Since the former activate a lower projection, this is consistent with the recently proposedGrowing Treeshypothesis, according to which the development of the CP-system proceeds stepwise. (shrink)

This contribution will be organized in three parts conceptually linked to each other. The first one will concern the ancient question “what is life?” seen according to a modern systemic view, the second with evolution based on Darwinian natural selection, the third with the notion of “being human” in relation to our genome.

The main aim of the paper is to reinforce the notion that emergence is a basic characteristic of the molecular sciences in general and chemistry in particular. Although this point is well accepted, even in the primary reference on emergence, the keyword emergence is rarely utilized by chemists and molecular biologists and chemistry textbooks for undergraduates. The possible reasons for this situation are discussed. The paper first re-introduces the concept of emergence based on very simple geometrical forms; and considers some (...) simple chemical examples among low and high molecular weight compounds. On the basis of these chemical examples, a few interesting philosophical issues inherent to the field of emergence are discussed – again making the point that such examples, given their clarity and simplicity, permit one to better understand the complex philosophical issues. Thus, the question of predictability is discussed, namely whether and to what extent can emergent properties be predicted on the basis of the component’s properties; or the question of the explicability (a top down process). The relation between reductionism and emergentism is also discussed as well as the notion of downward causality and double causality (macrodeterminism); namely the question whether and to what extent the emergent properties of the higher hierarchic level affect the properties of the lower level components. Finally, the question is analyzed, whether life can be considered as an emergent property. More generally, the final point is made, that the re-introduction of the notion of emergence in chemistry, and in particular in the teaching, may bring about a deeper understanding of the meaning of chemical complexity and may bring chemistry closer to the humanistic areas of philosophy and epistemology. (shrink)

1. Critica de capire e altri scritti. 2. Scritti kantiani. 3. L'analitica trascendentale. 4. Il problema della scienza e il giudizio storico.

Following the murder of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter-movement (BLM) took to the streets to protest against institutional racism. In these protests, one could often hear the slogan “No Justice, No Peace”. Drawing on legal theory, speech act theory and phenomenology, this article investigates what kind of justice and peace are called upon and how the slogan functions as a claim addressed to the legal order. First, the article shows that the rule of law provides a comprehensive normative framework (...) to evaluate what went wrong during the arrest of George Floyd. Second, the article maintains that the slogan should be understood as a passionate utterance in the sense of Stanley Cavell. Finally, drawing on a responsive phenomenology of legal order inspired by the work of Bernhard Waldenfels, the article concludes that the slogan is an extraordinary claim questioning the legal order, showing its contingent origins. (shrink)

Following the murder of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter-movement (BLM) took to the streets to protest against institutional racism. In these protests, one could often hear the slogan “No Justice, No Peace”. Drawing on legal theory, speech act theory and phenomenology, this article investigates what kind of justice and peace are called upon and how the slogan functions as a claim addressed to the legal order. First, the article shows that the rule of law provides a comprehensive normative framework (...) to evaluate what went wrong during the arrest of George Floyd. Second, the article maintains that the slogan should be understood as a passionate utterance in the sense of Stanley Cavell. Finally, drawing on a responsive phenomenology of legal order inspired by the work of Bernhard Waldenfels, the article concludes that the slogan is an extraordinary claim questioning the legal order, showing its contingent origins. (shrink)

The essay has as its main theme proposition 6.5 of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus and, in particular, its second paragraph "The riddle does not exist". In the first section, the notion of riddle is compared with that of problem, emphasising, among other things, the great relevance that, for Wittgenstein, the distinction between problems of philosophy and problems of natural science has; in the second, an attempt is made to clarify the meaning that Wittgenstein assigns to the word “riddle”: a riddle would (...) be a question “in the void”, without any “direction”, that is, so to speak, a question that does not know what it is asking. This means that, even if it presents itself as a question, the riddle is a non-question. The third section highlights how the denial that there is the enigma is complementary to the denial, so characteristic of the Tractatus, that there are a priori true thoughts or propositions. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Sellars’s conceptualist reading of Kant, though less radical than more contemporary approaches (e. g., Brandom, McDowell), relies on a controversial account of the relations between the givenness of intuitions, the productive imagination and the power of judgment. I will discuss: 1) how Sellars reconsidered Kant’s account of intuition; and 2) the kind of conceptualism he argues for. I will raise two main claims. First, Sellars’s conceptualist reading of intuition overlooks the role of space and (...) time as givenness conditions. Second, Sellars’s account of the productive imagination disregards the complementary significance of the power of judgment in a priori synthesis, the role of which is to grant synthetic unity. My aim is to reconstruct a consistent dialogue between Sellars and Kant by discussing Sellars’s reading of a priori synthesis and comparing his views to Kant’s original aims. (shrink)

_Abstract_: In this paper, I will examine the Goldstein-Cassirer approach to neuropathology to determine its current potential for yielding valuable insights. To this end, I will reconstruct the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of such a standpoint in the first four sections. What will emerge is that it entails a definition of pathology as the loss of balance in the adaption of human beings to the environment, leading to a lack of proclivity to categorical behaviour and symbolic performances. Furthermore, we will (...) see that there are behavioural alterations which are not related to the locus of lesions. In the fifth section, I will compare and contrast the holistic stances with current research in neuropsychology. The sixth section is dedicated to conclusive remarks. _Keywords_: Psychopathology; Neuropathology; Ernst Cassirer; Kurt Goldstein; Holism _ La mente ordinatrice. La concezione di Goldstein e Cassirer della neuropatologia e la sua rilevanza oggi _ _Riassunto_: In questo articolo intendo analizzare l’approccio Goldstein-Cassirer alla neuropatologia per comprendere se esso può rivelarsi ancora utile alla luce delle ricerche attuali. A tal fine, ne ricostruirò le basi filosofiche e teoriche nei primi tre paragrafi. Scopriremo che esso implica una definizione di patologia come perdita di equilibrio nell’adattamento degli esseri umani all’ambiente, a seguito della quale viene a mancare la naturale tendenza verso il “comportamento categoriale” e le prestazioni simboliche. Vedremo, inoltre, che vi sono alterazioni del comportamento non collegabili al sito delle lesioni. Nel quinto paragrafo, metterò a confronto le istanze olistiche con le ricerche contemporanee nel campo della neuropsicologia. Il sesto paragrafo contiene le considerazioni conclusive. _Parole chiave_: Psicopatologia; Neuropatologia; Ernst Cassirer; Kurt Goldstein; Olismo. (shrink)

In some sections of On Certainty, Wittgenstein uses the term “persuasion,” pitting it, on the one hand, against “giving reasons”, and comparing it, on the other, to conversion, while, finally, defining it as “giving someone one's own picture of the world.” In this essay, I analyse these sections, in an effort to fit them into the broader context of On Certainty, and to clarify the meaning and the limits of the comparison between persuasion and conversion. My aim is to show (...) that persuasion as Wittgenstein understands it here is quite similar to what we could call “re-education.”. (shrink)

Game-based approaches are emerging in many fields, such as education, social sciences, marketing and government. Most studies debate its role in consolidating learning, guided by both internal and external rewards. These approaches are also being applied in rehabilitation, where patients must undergo a re-learning process of motor gestures after an injury to a body structure. In physiotherapy, much importance is given to analytical-functional movement aspects, but less to the recovery of the complete experience, including motivation, perception, and emotional experience of (...) the patient during the process. The aim of this narrative review is to investigate the role of subjective experience in the application of gamification in physiotherapy, considering the added value it provides to recovery by involving neural structures, not just motor functions. By analyzing the most investigated aspects in using gamification in rehabilitation, we will outline the primary methods of investigation into the engagement and emotions involved in the process. Through a selection of scientific articles found on main databases, we identified articles investigating the patient’s experience. The analysis of these articles was based on aspects related to the recovery of movement, the technology used, as well as the methods of investigation and collection of qualitative data regarding the emotions and perceptions of patients during the gamification experience. The results are divided into two primary topics. Overall, this review supports the idea that gamification could represent a rehabilitation approach integrating physiotherapy, more suitable for the final stages of recovery, such as returning to work or sports. (shrink)

Il seguente articolo si prefigge di analizzare il fenomeno delle alleanze di brand e il loro sviluppo nell’attuale contesto economico. Con l’ampliarsi del lavoro di rete, e la creazione di valore che ne deriva, i legami di partnership tra le imprese evidenziano un salto prestazionale. Ciò avviene anche attraverso la creazione di un’identità condivisa, che ne rafforza la competitività. Dopo la definizione di co-branding, e l’esposizione dei benefici e dei rischi, vengono considerate le opportunità di crescita che ne derivano. Queste (...) alleanze consentono alle reti tra imprese di riposizionarsi nel proprio contesto di appartenenza, migliorando la governance e le strategie di mercato. Anche la relazione con l’attuale crisi economica evidenzia la capacità del co-branding di fronteggiare con maggiore efficacia i momenti di emergenza. Come evidenziato in numerose ricerche, la gestione della crisi trova nelle alleanze di brand uno strumento strategico essenziale per crescere anche se l’instabilità e l’incertezza dell’economia sono elevate. Attraverso l’esame di alcuni case-histories, viene elaborato un modello di co-branding. Si tratta di un prisma dove sono evidenziati sei asset strategici: velocità, personalizzazione, flessibilità, facilità, dialogo e convergenza. Sono questi i fattori che hanno determinato una performance di successo durante la crisi. I risvolti positivi che ne derivano avranno un impatto evidente anche dopo il periodo di emergenza. (shrink)

This paper argues that: (a) the transmitted text of Pind. Nem. 3.35–6 ποντίαν Θέτιν κατέμαρψεν | ἐγκονητί (‘[Peleus] caught the sea-nymph Thetis quickly’) is not the original text of Pindar; (b) ἐγκονητί does not fit the context, is not an attested Greek word and should be eliminated from dictionaries of ancient Greek; (c) Byzantine etymological works, followed by many modern scholars, base their explanations on the late antique form ἀκονητί, which should be eliminated from classical, Hellenistic and imperial texts; (d) (...) the tradition of the Etymologicum Magnum knows the variant ἐγκονιτί (conjectured for Pindar by Bergk) ‘with dust’ (‘with effort’), which seems presupposed by the scholia on Pindar; (e) the form ἐγκονιτί (created on the pattern of ἀκονιτί) is to be preferred in Pindar for reasons of language and content and should be added to the dictionaries of ancient Greek. (shrink)

Kant’s criticism of democracy has been traditionally defused with the consideration that Kant’s aversion is not to democracy per se, but to direct democracy. However, what Kant says – ‘to prevent the republican constitution from being confused with the democratic one, as commonly happens’ (ZeF, 8: 351) – appears to count not only against direct democracy, but also against conceptions of democracy closer to the ones we are accustomed to. By offering a new account of what Kant sees as the (...) real problem of democracy (direct or not), the article unpacks a lesson about the limits of democracy that has gone largely unnoticed among political theorists and Kant specialists. (shrink)

The interest in Andronikos Kallistos, a leading personality among the Greek émigrés who participated in Italian Humanism, arose at the end of the nineteenth century within the frame of the studies on Byzantine scholars of the Renaissance. Researchers have only glimpsed the depth of Kallistos' erudite personality. To date, nearly 130 manuscripts have been found bearing evidence of his work as a copyist and philologist. However, research into both his scribal and scholarly activity remains fragmented into many isolated contributions, mainly (...) concerning specific chapters of the manuscript tradition of classical Greek authors. Adopting a synergistic approach to historical, philological, codicological, and paleographic data within this framework, this monograph study aims to fulfil the following tasks: outlining an updated biography; defining Kallistos' scribal activity better by means of a thorough examination of all surviving manuscript sources; attempting to reconstruct the development of his book collection; acknowledging Kallistos' scholarly activity both as a teacher and philologist; making an inventory of all the manuscripts which bear traces of his writing; and, finally, publishing Kallistos' works. (shrink)

Our analysis starts with a definition of emotions and how they work. We illustrate our discussion with examples, primarily related to anger. We devote special attention to the feelings that characterize our emotional experience, relying on ‘alexithymia’, a clinical condition, to argue for a perceptual theory of emotion in which emotional feelings are the means by which we identify and recognize our emotions. Finally, we consider the role of valence in the mechanism of the emotions, i.e. the way in which (...) emotions are generated, lead to the motivation to end/modify a situation that is perceived as negative or to prolong/reiterate a situation that is perceived as positive, and produce behaviours congruent with this motivation. Here we show that because emotions have multiple and ambiguous valences, one cannot rely on valence to determine, in abstraction, what motivation and behaviour a given emotion will trigger. (shrink)

This chapter argues that Wittgenstein wasn’t a mere pretext for Paolozzi and that it is impossible to fully understand the artist’s work without considering his relationship to the Austrian philosopher. Furthermore, Paolozzi—as an artist—recognized various aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought and let them come to light in a period when they were still concealed to the majority of interpreters with a philosophical background. In this sense, Perissinotto demonstrates that Paolozzi’s work fully belongs to the general story of Wittgenstein’s critical reception. In (...) order to do so, the chapter attempts a reconstruction of the cultural environment where Paolozzi met Wittgenstein, meant both as the general philosophical reception of Wittgenstein in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as Paolozzi’s direct testimony on his encounter with the Austrian philosopher. Eventually, Perissinotto systematically analyses several “wittgensteinian” works of Paolozzi to understand how much of these works is borrowed from Wittgenstein, but also what of Wittgenstein and which Wittgenstein lives and acts in them. (shrink)

Simple assumptions represent a decisive reason to prefer one theory to another in everyday scientific praxis. But this praxis has little philosophical justification, since there exist many notions of simplicity, and those that can be defined precisely strongly depend on the language in which the theory is formulated. The language dependence is a natural feature—to some extent—but it is also believed to be a fatal problem, because, according to a common general argument, the simplicity of a theory is always trivial (...) in a suitably chosen language. But, this trivialization argument is typically either applied to toy-models of scientific theories or applied with little regard for the empirical content of the theory. This paper shows that the trivialization argument fails, when one considers realistic theories and requires their empirical content to be preserved. In fact, the concepts that enable a very simple formulation, are not necessarily measurable, in general. Moreover, the inspection of a theory describing a chaotic billiard shows that precisely those concepts that naturally make the theory extremely simple are provably not measurable. This suggests that—whenever a theory possesses sufficiently complex consequences—the constraint of measurability prevents too simple formulations in any language. This explains why the scientists often regard their assessments of simplicity as largely unambiguous. In order to reveal a cultural bias in the scientists’ assessment, one should explicitly identify different characterizations of simplicity of the assumptions that lead to different theory selections. General arguments are not sufficient. (shrink)