This paper aims to investigate the equivalent of Epicurus’ πρόληψις, the second criterion of the Epicurean Canonic (DL X 31 = fr. 35 Usener), in Lucretius’ De rerum natura (DRN). Taking stock of the several occurrences of the Latin terms notitia and notities in the six books of the poem, I show that Lucretius’ view about preconception remains faithful to Epicurus’ πρόληψις, and that the poet does not endorse a less empiricist position than his Master because of some influence of (...) the Stoic ἔννοια. To this end, I will also briefly address an important case in which πρόληψις, albeit not clearly mentioned, plays an essential role, namely the prolepsis of the deity (DRN V 1169–1182). Finally, I explain how Lucretius can be of some help in grasping the controversial relationship between the criterion of πρόληψις and that of ἐπιβολὴ τῆς διανοίας (animi inectus/iactus), showing in which way the poet seems to consider the latter as a criterion of truth in its own right. (shrink)

The European refugee crisis is an important topic on media, political, and public agendas. Due to its scope and impact, its continuing prevalence on the media-agenda and the divisiveness of public debate, new research is needed to understand the media’s framing of the issue. This study inductively analyzes framing of the refugee crisis of 2015–2016 by two Dutch newspapers. Portrayal of the refugee crisis consists of ten different frames and counter frames. The frames are communicated on the level of the (...) refugee, on the level of the crisis as an event, and on a societal level. Results show that recent reporting on the refugee crisis is relatively nuanced and portrays the crisis from a variety of perspectives. Framing changes following certain transitory events, but only slight differences were found between popular and quality papers. (shrink)

Spinoza n’a pas élaboré de grande pensée sur le commerce, mais il l’a activement pratiqué. Le présent article mesure l’impact de cette pratique sur sa philosophie politique, en prenant en compte la manière dont l’histoire des idées s’articule à l’histoire de l’auteur, et en suivant comment l’élaboration d’une métaphysique du commerce le conduit à évacuer le négoce de son anthropologie.

Cet article interroge le rapport entre la pensée métaphysique et les propositions politiques de Spinoza. Il soutient, contre une interprétation fondée sur la systématicité de sa pensée, qu’elles ne sont pas dans un rapport de continuité déductive. En étudiant dans le détail l’effort du jeune cartésien, dans ses premiers écrits, pour déduire toute la philosophie naturelle à partir d’une seule idée première, on met en valeur une évolution dans la pensée de Spinoza : à partir de 1664, il semble admettre (...) deux modes distincts de progression – l’un déductif, l’autre historique. On montre alors que ses traités de la maturité s’éloignent progressivement du « déductionnisme » initial pour tenir compte de la variété de divers modes de penser ; cela se reflète dans l’Éthique en une conception divisée entre la « nature de l’esprit », considéré comme rationnel par une nécessité interne, et la « nature de l’homme », considéré comme irrationnel par une nécessité externe. Cette lecture permet de limiter la valeur des prescriptions que les philosophes peuvent émettre en politique. (shrink)

Cet article aborde le problème des « fake news » à partir des interactions qui permettent leur circulation, sans supposer que quiconque adhère aux « fake news » par une « croyance » intellectualisée. À la bêtise, à la crédulité ou à l’ignorance supposée des populations victimes de la malveillance des dirigeants, l’auteur substitue un autre modèle explicatif fondé sur un système complexe de représentations. La difficulté individuelle à maintenir la certitude de sa propre valeur fournit un élément causal décisif. (...) En intégrant à sa réflexion la posture scientifique elle-même, cet article propose un aperçu d’une théorie générale (« interactionnelle ») des échanges discursifs et linguistiques complexes, et une conception de l’intelligence et de la bêtise comme phénomènes émergents. (shrink)

Franciscus Van den Enden is commonly considered as the man who taught Latin to B. de Spinoza. It is unknown if he actually taught him something else, but we do know he used a pedagogy of his own and made the young philosopher aware of the importance of pedagogical issues. The present article helps to document their relationship from a historical and theoretical perspective, by clarifying Van den Enden’s ideas on a most debated subject: the use of honorary titles to (...) distinguish pupils in the classroom. In particular, it shows how the rejection by Van den Enden of titles commonly used in Jesuits schools finds echoes in Spinoza’s philosophy. At the same time, the article argues that through their common participation in theatrical plays, Van den Enden and Spinoza shared a pedagogical experience that helped to overcome the problems linked to the introduction of a hierarchy, not theoretically, but in practice. (shrink)

The paper presents different clustering approaches in legal judgments from the Special Civil Court located at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. The subject is Consumer Law, specifically cases in which consumers claim moral and material compensation from airlines for service failures. To identify patterns from the dataset, we apply four types of clustering algorithms: Hierarchical and Lingo, K-means and Affinity Propagation. We evaluate the results based on the following criteria: entropy and purity; algorithm's ability in providing labels; legal expert’s (...) evaluation; and experimental complexity. The results demonstrate that the most advantageous approach is Hierarchical Clustering, since it has the best entropy and purity numbers, as well as the least difficulty for the expert to analyze the clusters, and the least experimental complexity. The main contribution of the paper is to show the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, especially to identify labels in unstructured and non-indexed legal texts. (shrink)

The project is funded by the Office of Naval Research under a contract entiltled Underwater Robots. The effort is interesting in its own right, and complements projects involving underwater vehicles such as those at the University of New Hampshire and the Naval Ocean Systems Center in San Diego. These other efforts are interesting to us, but we feel they are incomplete. Their current control systems are very simple, typically incorporating quite small programs on one or a few microprocessors and implementing (...) simple dead reckoning navigation or terrain following behavior. (shrink)

This paper examines the enactment of agency in the Mars Exploration Rover mission. We argue that MER functioned as a distributed cognitive system, made up of highly specialized, though complementary, elements. To explain how a sense of shared agency was attained therein, we augment the distributed account with Tollefsen and Gallagher’s Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 47, 95-110, theory of joint agency. It claims joint actions involve a cascade of shared distal, proximal, and motor intentions, each with its own content (...) and timescale, and that narrative processes are crucial for stabilizing shared intentions. We argue MER possessed these three levels of intention, though they fell on different elements of the distributed cognitive system, and their timescales were longer than mundane cases of joint action. Scientists, collaborating with engineers, enacted shared distal and proximal intentions, while rovers enacted the motor intentions. Moreover, we show that we-narratives, including a commitment to consensus-based operations and an epistemic strategy for discovering the geological history of Mars, constrained the formation of distal and proximal intentions such that they could genuinely be attributed to the group. Nonetheless, our distributed account does not fully capture how rovers shaped the sense of embodiment of team members. Scientists and engineers described themselves as ‘becoming the rover,’ which allowed them to have a sense of presence on Mars. We argue this can be explained by the Material Engagement Theory, which complements the distributed cognition theory. (shrink)

This paper aims to critically analyze one of the most impactful events reported from the Indian corporate scenario in recent years, from the premise of its aesthetic underpinnings. Our focus is on the ambitious 2008 all cash cross-border acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover businesses by Tata Motors Limited from Ford Motor Company, US. This move not only added stature to the already reputed brand but was also instrumental in positioning India in the global automotive arena. Using the Natyasastra, an (...) ancient Sanskrit scripture on Indian dramaturgy, as an aesthetic tool, we attempt to unravel the emotional performance depicted by various stakeholders partaking in the theatrics of the Jaguar Land Rover acquisition event. In the backdrop of theatrical performance, we examine the dialogical exchange between three distinct sets of actors, the firm, media, and equity market, to identify and elucidate the emotions they predominantly depict in the Jaguar Land Rover acquisition. This paper’s over-arching goal is to shift the preoccupation with metrics of organizational performance to focus instead on the emotional performance manifested through organizational activities, using an aesthetic and essentially Indian performative perspective. (shrink)

We have previously built a small IKg ([Angle 89] and [Brooks 89]) six legged walking robot named Genghis. It was remarkably successful as a testbed to develop walking and learning algorithms. It encouraged us to build a more fully engineered robot with higher performance. We are building two copies of the robot, both 1.6Kg in mass. Their generic name is Attila. Attila has 24 actuators and over 150 sensors, all connected via a local network (the I2C bus) to 11 onboard (...) computers. (shrink)

The MER created a virtual experience of being on Mars. This book examines how the MER has changed the nature of planetary field science.

Several philosophers of technology have argued that technology mediates human actions. For example, in the branch of post-phenomenology, authors such as Don Ihde and Peter-Paul Verbeek have described the mediating aspects of technology in terms of morality of technology as well as in the sense that technology changes our perception of ourselves and the world. In this article, different existing types of mediation are presented, critiqued, and enriched. The four types are illustrated by referring to military high-tech environments with a (...) focus on visual data and imaging technologies. These technologies can mediate actions by inviting certain behavior, through amplification and reduction, through built-in norms, and through interpretation. The four types of mediation mainly focus on the technology or technological artifact itself. What these approaches fail to grasp, however, is the specific user practices in which most technologies function. In this article, it is argued that to understand the mediating aspects of technology more fully, attention should be paid to the specific user context in which the technology functions. Therefore, an enriched understanding of the four types of mediation of technology is proposed by taking the lens of normative practices and analyzing the different types of mediation through this lens. The Kunduz airstrike incident, which took place in 2009 in Afghanistan, is a case in which a visual data sharing device called Rover played a prominent role. This case is used in this article to illustrate how technology mediates human actions in military practice. (shrink)

It is argued that we cannot build a sophisticated autonomous planetary rover just by implementing sophisticated planning algorithms. Planning must be based on information, and the agent must have the cognitive capability of acquiring new information about its environment. That requires the implementation of a sophisticated epistemology. Epistemological considerations indicate that the rover cannot be assumed to have a complete probability distribution at its disposal. Its planning must be based upon “thin” knowledge of probabilities, and that has important implications for (...) what planning algorithms might be employed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.4 (2002) 542-543 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy Stephen Gaukroger. Francis Bacon and the Transformation of Early-Modern Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xii + 249. Cloth, $59.95. Paper, $21.95. In Stephen Gaukroger's new study, Francis Bacon is lauded all too familiarly as the inaugurator of "the transformation of philosophy into science, (...) and philosophers into scientists" (221). But it's far from the old story: Gaukroger sees Bacon not as progenitor of the Scientific Revolution or revered Father of Modern Science, but as launching "the first systematic, comprehensive attempt to transform the early-modern philosopher from someone whose primary concern is with how to live morally into someone whose primary concern is with the understanding of and reshaping of natural processes" (5).In Gaukroger's account, Bacon had a definite objective: to draw certain knowledge away from its status as esoteric and arcane (held by, say, the trade guilds or the universities), and to bring it into the public realm, an agenda that raised the question not of knowledge per se, but of "the aims of knowledge" (16). Pointing to Bacon's education in statecraft and his almost lifelong immersion in law and politics, Gaukroger argues—here following the work of Julian Martin—that the law was of intellectual interest because "the law was really as close as one got to a model for inquiry and argument" (59); and, moreover, that legal reasoning, like Bacon's conception of natural philosophy, "has a very practical imperative": to discover the truth (60). Although the features of the legal model could be applied to natural philosophy—"the reliability of testimony, what should be concluded from particular testimonies, and how one decided the relevance of particular laws to the case" (61)—Gaukroger wisely registers the caveat that one model cannot simply be mapped onto another, since natural philosophy "needs to be legitimated as an area of activity that it is proper and fruitful to pursue" (67). This project occupies chapter 3. In his famous announcement that he was taking "all knowledge to be my province," Bacon wrote of his need to purge that province "of two sorts of rovers." Gaukroger identifies these as the Scholastic tradition and the "natural magic" practiced by John Dee and Edward Kelley, and plots the genealogy of Bacon's efforts to separate natural philosophy from what he calls "the blind and immoderate zeal of religion." Thus, even though Bacon undertakes "a quite conservative classification" of knowledge in Advancement of Learning and De augmentis, Gaukroger claims that he "incorporates a radical claim for the autonomy of natural philosophy" (94). Chapter 4 moves on to the man himself, "the shaping of the natural philosopher," and includes convincing readings of two under-read but important texts, the polemical Temporis partus masculus (1602) and Redargutio philosophiarum (1608), which between them demonstrate "a novel and powerful doctrine" being advocated by Bacon (110), founded in an appreciation of the historicization of knowledge. Gaukroger also airs an intriguing but too brief speculative comparison between Bacon's famous academic community in "Solomon's House" and an actual educated, motivated elite society of the period—Loyola's Society of Jesus.The final two chapters are more demanding. Chapter 5 interrogates the complex relationship between Bacon's substantive natural philosophy and his method. Gaukroger takes issue with Antonio Pérez-Ramos's influential notion that Bacon tacitly employs a "maker's knowledge conception," where knowing something and being able to make that thing "are effectively the same," arguing instead that "what is at stake" in Bacon "seems quite different." Whereas the maker's knowledge principle is concerned with "the degree of certainty of results in natural philosophy," Bacon is more interested "in making natural philosophy informative and productive" (159). Despite Bacon's call for large-scale communal intellectual endeavour, Gaukroger concludes that Bacon never approached any of the men included on his 1608 wishlist for collaborators (162). Here he is too pessimistic; recent research is showing... (shrink)

Reflectance spectroscopy is a standard tool for studying the mineral composition of rock and soil samples and for remote sensing of terrestrial and extraterrestrial surfaces. We describe research on automated methods of mineral identification from reflectance spectra and give evidence that a simple algorithm, adapted from a well-known search procedure for Bayes nets, identifies the most frequently occurring classes of carbonates with reliability equal to or greater than that of human experts. We compare the reliability of the procedure to the (...) reliability of several other automated methods adapted to the same purpose. Evidence is given that the procedure can be applied to some other mineral classes as well. Since the procedure is fast with low memory requirements, it is suitable for on- board scientific analysis by orbiters or surface rovers. (shrink)

In this article, we extend the research on the public interest to non-audit engagements performed by accounting firms and public accountants. Our thesis is that non-audit engagements, as private goods, require a distinct approach to the public interest than auditing. We suggest that a public value perspective can be used conceptually to provide substantial criteria for designing non-audit engagements conducive to public value creation and greater accountability. We illustrate the applicability and consequences of a public value perspective by analyzing and (...) contrasting the decision of two judicial opinions deciding whether Deloitte and the lead partner of a consulting engagement failed to act in the public interest in engineering the sale of collapsed British carmaker MG Rover. We advocate for a significant change in ethical codes of conduct by defining public interest obligations, not only in terms of professional attributes, but also in terms of outcomes. Our approach also suggests a requirement regarding planning a non-audit engagement, including establishing a public value proposition detailing the planned nature of the engagement, and extent of the assessment of the intended public value creation. We discuss the aspirational function of codes of conduct to provide accountability other than in terms of technical output, and to maintain the legitimacy and purpose of the profession. (shrink)

When water was discovered on Mars, people got very excited. Where there is water, there may be life. Scientists are planning new missions to study the planet up close. NASA’s next Mars rover is scheduled to arrive in 2010. In the decade following, a Mars Sample Return mission might be launched, which would use robotic systems to collect samples of Martian rocks, soils, and atmosphere, and return them to Earth. We could then analyze the sample to see if it contains (...) any traces of life, whether extinct or still active. Such a discovery would be of tremendous scientific significance. What could be more fascinating than discovering life that had evolved entirely independently of life here on Earth? Many people would also find it heartening to learn that we are not entirely alone in this vast cold cosmos. (shrink)

Reflectance spectroscopy is a standard tool for studying the mineral composition of rock and soil samples and for remote sensing of terrestrial and extraterrestrial surfaces. We describe research on automated methods of mineral identification from reflectance spectra and give evidence that a simple algorithm, adapted from a well-known search procedure for Bayes nets, identifies the most frequently occurring classes of carbonates with reliability equal to or greater than that of human experts. We compare the reliability of the procedure to the (...) reliability of several other automated methods adapted to the same purpose. Evidence is given that the procedure can be applied to some other mineral classes as well. Since the procedure is fast with low memory requirements, it is suitable for on-board scientific analysis by orbiters or surface rovers. (shrink)

Research on human–robot interaction has often ignored the human cognitive changes that might occur when humans and robots work together to solve problems. Facilitating human–robot collaboration will require understanding how the collaboration functions system-wide. We present detailed examples drawn from a study of children and an autonomous rover, and examine how children’s beliefs can guide the way they interact with and learn about the robot. Our data suggest that better collaboration might require that robots be designed to maximize their relationship (...) potential with specific users. (shrink)

Of late, two contrasting departures from the analytic mainstream have become fashionable: the displacement of philosophy by the natural sciences, epitomized by the Churchlands' theme of "neurophilosophy," and the displacement of philosophy by the literary, epitomized by Rorty's theme of philosophy as "just a kind of writing," as "carrying on the conversation" of Western culture. Both are disastrous. My purpose here is to articulate a metaphilosophy which, avoiding both scientism and literary dilettantism, allows a more robustly plausible account of the (...) relation of philosophy to the sciences, and of its relation to literature, than either. In this enterprise, my starting point will be the work of C. S. Peirce. This may come as something as a surprise; for Peirce's avowed aspiration "to rescue the good ship Philosophy for the service of Science from the lawless rovers of the sea of literature" (5.449, 1902), not to mention his unkind remarks about "studying in a literary spirit" (1.33, 1869), might suggest that he is as scientistic, and as hostile to literature, as Rorty is dilettantish, and hostile to science. But, as I shall show, far from being a precursor of those "lawless rovers of the sea of science" among our contemporaries, Peirce points the way to just such a... (shrink)

Several philosophers of technology have argued that technology mediates human actions. For example, in the branch of post-phenomenology, authors such as Don Ihde and Peter-Paul Verbeek have described the mediating aspects of technology in terms of morality of technology (more prominent in Verbeek) as well as in the sense that technology changes our perception of ourselves and the world (more prominent in Ihde). In this article, different existing types of mediation are presented, critiqued, and enriched. The four types are illustrated (...) by referring to military high-tech environments with a focus on visual data and imaging technologies. These technologies can mediate actions (1) by inviting certain behavior, (2) through amplification and reduction, (3) through built-in norms, and (4) through interpretation. The four types of mediation mainly focus on the technology or technological artifact itself. What these approaches fail to grasp, however, is the specific user practices in which most technologies function. In this article, it is argued that to understand the mediating aspects of technology more fully, attention should be paid to the specific user context in which the technology functions. Therefore, an enriched understanding of the four types of mediation of technology is proposed by taking the lens of normative practices and analyzing the different types of mediation through this lens. The Kunduz airstrike incident, which took place in 2009 in Afghanistan, is a case in which a visual data sharing device called Rover played a prominent role. This case is used in this article to illustrate how technology mediates human actions in military practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Valla Our Contemporary:Philosophy and PhilologyBrian P. CopenhaverEven before the Italians knew what to call their Renaissance, they knew the names of its heroes, one of whom was Lorenzo Valla. Accordingly, by the time Count Terenzio Mamiani della Rovere published one of the first modern histories of Italian philosophy in 1834, Valla's place in the story of that subject had long been established-for Italians, at least. "He began by ridiculing (...) blind trust in Aristotle's words," wrote Mamiani,and then went on to show how the highest categories and first predicables had been based on false assumptions, proving this by the correct meaning of terms, by the usage of speakers and by arguments from common sense. Valla overthrew the classifications of Porphyry in the same way. He shows how the basic rules of logic are simple and completely self-evident.1 [End Page 507]In tribute to Salvatore Camporeale of the Order of Preachers, I shall preach a sermon about this celebrated Italian philosopher. My text is an article on Valla that Campo published in 1986, and my contention is that Valla was a remarkably original thinker who has been much underrated in the Anglophone world, in part because he has not been read often enough or carefully enough in a contemporary philosophical framework.2The Philosopher's Index is the most important general bibliography for philosophers now writing in English. The on-line version that gives nearly four thousand references in five languages for Descartes, over nine thousand for Aristotle, and nearly ten thousand for Kant turns up only forty-two for Valla; twenty-five of these are in English, but only two are in major Anglophone journals of philosophy.3 I call that underrated and understudied.The first English-language entry for Valla in the Philosopher's Index dates from 1948, The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, a very influential book of readings (still in print) that presents Valla as a moral philosopher and Renaissance philosophy as not terribly important. The next entry, from 1964, refers to an equally influential book, Paul Kristeller's Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance, one of whom is Valla, described by Kristeller not only as a moral philosopher but also, and more importantly, as a philosophical critic of logic and language.4 Around the same time, Hanna Gray, Jerrold Seigel, Charles Trinkaus, and others in this country had begun to study Valla's theory of language in more depth, and a few years later Camporeale's masterful book on Valla appeared in 1972.5Since Camporeale's book was then and is now the best account in any language of a brilliant philosopher, its absence from the Philosopher's Index indicates a kind of oblivion in Anglophone philosophy. In Europe and especially in Italy, by contrast, interest in Valla has been more or less continuous since his death in 1457. Mario Nizolio continued Valla's work in the sixteenth century, and both Valla and Nizolio were well known to Leibniz, who in turn [End Page 508] was the subject of an important book by Bertrand Russell in 1900.6 Russell's most popular work, however, was the History of Western Philosophy that he wrote much later, during the Second World War.7Many people have taken their bearings on the history of philosophy from Russell's exuberant History. Amazon.com still offers five editions by four publishers. And Amazon's rankings of sales of more recent accounts of the Renaissance period, the Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy and the Renaissance Philosophy volume of Oxford's History of Western Philosophy, lag far behind the figures for a single edition of Russell's broader treatment (8,970 Russell; 481,085 Cambridge; 507,316 Oxford).8Despite its great success, Russell's book does not do well by our topic. His treatment of the Renaissance is like Burckhardt directed by Victor Hugo and produced by Macaulay. Cardinals poison each other while free-thinking scholars entertain princes to procure patronage. Humanism meanwhile dozes under the rubble of antiquity, too dazed by the ruins to produce original philosophy. The only philosophical good to come from philology was its odium. Incessant squabbling about which ancient... (shrink)

Geocentric Greek astronomers called seven heavenly bodies visible to the naked eye (sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) πλανητες—wanderers—because unlike all the other αστρα, their relative positions were constantly changing. While the Romans changed the Greek names of the individual planets to those still in use, they retained the generic name, which now occurs in many European languages. In acentric modern astronomy a planet is a satellite of a star. In addition to the five actual planets known to (...) the Greeks, Earth, Uranus, and Neptune also orbit the sun, a smallish star about half the distance from the centre of the Milky Way to its outer reaches. Earth is the only planet on which life is known for certain to exist. The search is on for concrete evidence of existing or formerly existing life on Mars (Dunbar B. et al. Perseverance Mars rover. NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/perseverance. Retrieved 06/16/2021, 2021). Technology for detecting the chemical signature of life in the atmospheres of some planets of other stars may become available in the near future (Fujii Y. et al. Astrobiology 18 (6): 739–778, 2018)—proving a point made by (Lovelock J. Gaia: A new look at life on earth. Oxford University Press, New York, 1979) that life is a whole-planet phenomenon. That is, the Earth does not just harbour or support life; it has a life of its own. The Earth is a living planet in relationship to which individual organisms are as ephemeral cells (Vernadsky VI. Am Sci 33:1–12, 1945). (shrink)

The concept of autonomy is crucial for the theoretical characterization of robots and, more in general, complex technological artifacts. The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual and logical framework in which it is possible to define two concepts of autonomy: autonomy of performance and autonomy of process. The analysis is carried out exploiting the logical resources of the counterfactual semantics-developed by Lewis' and Stalnaker's seminal works-and branching structures of the possible courses of actions. It allows to differentiate (...) the autonomy of a robotic arm from the autonomy of a highly complex machine-like rovers for the explorations of the planets. The clarification of the concept of autonomy is, moreover, an essential precondition for the investigation concerning the ethics of artificial agents. (shrink)

English women's drama was crucially shaped by the city between 1660 and 1705, the period when female actors and playwrights first entered the professional theatre. This article uses selected scenes from the comedies of Elizabeth Polwhele, Aphra Behn and Susanna Centlivre to examine how women coped with the high-risk strategy of participating in commercial theatre and the vast circulation of trade which grew up around the City, a flamboyant sign of high capitalism. On one hand, the city represents movement, a (...) crossroads of possibilities in which to redefine female agency. In plays such as The Rover, The Frolicks and The Gamester, female dramatists script movement across the city in a way that pre-empts De Certeau's model of ‘walking the city’ as a way for female characters and actors to inhabit public spaces of their own. On the other hand, scenes in these plays critically interrogate Raymond Williams’ classic distinction between discursive constructions of the city and the countryside in which the city's blatant expose of social and economic processes is associated with dirt. The contaminating pollution is feminised in the trope of actress, playwright and whore. Actresses and playwrights were ‘playing for all’ in more than one sense, and gambling exemplifies the risks involved for women attempting to manipulate the urban and theatrical locations that attempted to commodify them. (shrink)

The concept of autonomy is crucial for the theoretical characterization of robots and, more in general, complex technological artifacts. The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual and logical framework in which it is possible to define two concepts of autonomy: autonomy of performance and autonomy of process. The analysis is carried out exploiting the logical resources of the counterfactual semantics-developed by Lewis' and Stalnaker's seminal works-and branching structures of the possible courses of actions. It allows to differentiate (...) the autonomy of a robotic arm from the autonomy of a highly complex machine-like rovers for the explorations of the planets. The clarification of the concept of autonomy is, moreover, an essential precondition for the investigation concerning the ethics of artificial agents. (shrink)

Članak analizira temu o sreći građana u Sretnom gradu Frane Petrića, iz koje slijedi slika grada u kojemu statuti doprinose jačanju povjerenja i moralnosti. Ako je utopija po definiciji okrenuta budućnosti, Petrićeva se, naprotiv, čini okrenuta prošlosti, rekonstrukciji sretnog grada patrijarhalnog uzora, kakav je tek rijetko ostvaren u povijesti čovječanstva, kao npr. onaj Sezostrisov u drevnom Egiptu. Zbog spominjanja Verone, uz drevnu Atenu, vjerojatno se u talijanskoj kritici uvriježio »mit o Veneciji«, o gradu s tisuću »korisnih« djelatnosti, na koji je (...) Petrić mogao misliti pri sastavljanju svoga prvijenca posvećenog »Presvijetloj gospodi Vigeriju i Girolamu dalla Rovere«. No, taj se mit uopće ne može nazrijeti u ovom Petrićevu djelu. Antropomorfna shema »traktata« vodi nas do Petrićeve ideje o identifikaciji grada s čovjekom, kao tijela s dušom , ali nas imena u posveti jasno vode do dinastije Della Rovere, koja je upravljala Petriću suvremenom kneževinom Urbino , i koja je od početka Cinquecenta nametnula novi lik ‘vladara’ i osuvremenjenu predodžbu ‘dvorjanina’, te si osigurala međunarodnu slavu zahvaljujući mecenatskom poticanju svake vrste umjetnosti.The paper deals with the happiness of citizens in The Happy Town by Frane Petrić, where a picture of the town in which statutes and regulations contribute to the strengthening of trust and morality is portrayed. If utopia is by definition directed towards the future, Petrić conversely turns his utopia towards the past, towards the reconstruction of a happy town according to the patriarchal pattern, which was only rarely achieved in the history of mankind, like for instance during Sesostris in ancient Egypt. Due to the mention of Verona, alongside ancient Athens, ‘the Venice myth’ became customary in Italian criticism, implying the town with thousand “useful” utilities, to which Petrić might have referred as he compiled his debut work dedicated to “Their Serenities Vigerio and Girolamo dalla Rovere”. However, that myth cannot be noticed in this Petrić’s work. The anthropomorphist scheme of the “tractate” reveals Petrić’s tendency to identify between man and town, soul and body , but the names in the dedication clearly point to Della Rovere dynasty who governed the Principality of Urbino and who imposed, from the beginning of Cinquecento, a new image of the ‘ruler’ and the modernised conception of the ‘courtier’, ensuring thereby their international fame by being patrons to all arts at the time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ALBERTUS MAGNUS AND THE NOTION OF SYLLOGISTIC MIDDLE TERM J. M. HUBBARD College of St. Thomas St. Paul, Minnesota ABERT THE GREAT is recognized as one of the great scientific minds of the Middle A:ges, both for his commentaries on Aristotle's scientific works and for his own contributions to the study of nature. His contributions to the science of logic go largely unnoticed, however. This is probably due to (...) the ascendency of the Summulae tradition in medieval logic a.bout the time of Albert's death, for the Summulae traidition is quite different from the one represented in his commentaries on the logical writings of Aristotle. I should like to remedy this a bit by looking at how he understands the concept of middle term in Aristotle's Prior Analytics. There are two points with which we can begin this study. First, Albert insists that Ar.istotle's remark that second and third figure syllogisms are imperfect when compared to those of the first figure does not mean that they somehow lack the necessity cha.racteristic of syHogisms of the first figure. On the contra;ry, all syllogisms, in whatever figure, conclude necessa,rily. This is what it is to be a syllogism. First figure syllogisms are perfect with respect to us, for in them the necessity of consequence, which is the very na;bure of the syllogism, is manifest to us in a way that it is not in syllogisms of the second and third figures. Hence, the marks perfect and imperfeot refer not to the syllogisms in themselves but to the syUogisms in relation to us.1 1 Albertus Magnus, Oommentares CYn the Prior Analytics, Bk. I, Tr. 1, Ch. 8, pp. 469-71. See also Tr. 1, Ch. 6, p. 467, and Tr. 1, Chs. 5 and 6. Page 115 116 J. M. HUBBARD Seoond, the notion of syllogism is coextensive with the notion of middle term, for the middle term is the root and cause of the necessity that characterizes the syllogism. This is why some other kinds of argument, induction and example for instance, are not syllogisms strictly speaking, but only in a loose and improper sense; they lack a true middle term.2 What is it, then, to be a middle term of a syllogism on Albert's reading of Aristotle? Is the middle term middle in some quantitative sense, then? Although Albert uses the expressions scope, breadth, contain, etc., he is quite explicit that the notions of figure and term are transferred " metaphorically " from quantity to properly logical considerations.8 For logic deails not with quantity and its relations, but with relations that exist between things as conceived by the mind, the most fundamental of which is the relation of predica.bility. To be predicable is to be sayable of many things, and although a predicable can be considered a whole in relation to the things of which it is said (its parts then), such talk is metaphorical and not literal. A predicable (whole) is sayable of many things but is not constituted by them. Dog, for instance, is sayable of Fido and Rover, but being a dog is not being Fido and Rover. A whole in the ordinary sense, on the other hand, is not sayable of its parts and is composed of them. One could not say that a wall is a house, but a house is composed, among other things, of a wall. The notions of figure and term, and therefore of middle term, are taken from the quantitative aspects of things and trans£erred to properly logical things. This being so, the notion of middle term cannot be reduced to something quantatative, spatial organization for example. From these remarks one can anticipate how Albert would respond to the suggestion that the middle term is the one that is middle in universality with respect to the other two. This references will be to Oommentaria in Prioru.m A.nalytiooru.m in Opera Omnia, ed. A. Borgnet (Paris: Vives, 1890), Vol. 1. 2 Bk. II, Tr. 7, Ch. 4, p. 794. a Bk. I, Tr. I, Ch. 2, pp. 460-61. ALBERTUS MAGNUS AND THE MIDDLE TERM 117 would... (shrink)