v. 1. Presentazione de Biagia Catanzaro Gligora -- v. 2. Logica, totalità-reale e realtà -- v. 3. Anima e coscienza.

Cognitive penetration of perception, broadly understood, is the influence that the cognitive system has on a perceptual system. The paper shows a form of cognitive penetration in the visual system which I call ‘architectural’. Architectural cognitive penetration is the process whereby the behaviour or the structure of the perceptual system is influenced by the cognitive system, which consequently may have an impact on the content of the perceptual experience. I scrutinize a study in perceptual learning that provides empirical evidence that (...) cognitive influences in the visual system produce neural reorganization in the primary visual cortex. The type of cognitive penetration can be synchronic and diachronic. (shrink)

The article aims at showing how far the technologies of audiovisual registration affect not only the ontology of images but also our sense of realism in politics and history. As argue Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, historical events have become “tele-events” after the birth of these technologies. Our handling with images has changed accordingly. As argues Pietro Montani, we no longer consider them as “copies” of real objects but rather as “occasions” for initiating processes of “validation” of history. Hannah Arendt’s (...) opposition between the ancient concept of history being based on praxis and the modern concept of history as “fabrication” (poiesis) of the humankind must be therefore reconsidered. History is rather the negotiation between these two attitudes (praxis and poiesis): cinema might be one of the exemplary sources of this negotiation, as epitomized by the documentary work in the audiovisual archives conducted by Esfir Shub (1927) and Harun Farocki (1992). Representation (Louis Martin) becomes thus a dynamical power of imagination dealing with historical and political reality; consequently, the “ideal spectator”, just as the “ideal reader” for novels (Umberto Eco), is charged with a new task of actualizing the sense of images with regard to their historical and political references. (shrink)

La Critique de la faculté de juger ne relève pas seulement d’une théorie esthétique, pour originelle qu’elle puisse être. Elle met surtout en œuvre un nouveau discours philosophique. La critique de la métaphysique y est reconsidérée d’une manière positive, comme une réflexion sur la donation de sens à la croisée entre principes généraux et expériences contingentes. Le philosophe italien Emilio Garroni a développé ce nouveau point de vue sur le troisième Critique, en soutenant que, dans cette Critique, Kant a formulé (...) une nouvelle forme de « libre schématisme », et en même temps la primauté de ce schématisme par rapport au « schématisme objectif » de la Critique de la raison pure. De manière générale, il partage l’idée que le schématisme représente le lieu théorique où Kant développe implicitement sa théorie sémantique. Lisant, comme Garroni, Kant après Wittgenstein, nous posons alors la question : qu’est-ce qu’une forme de vie après le langage? (shrink)

Fino a una quindicina di anni fa, l’idea di una connessione forte tra l’estetica da una parte e l’intermedialità e l’interattività dall’altra non sarebbe stata probabilmente pensata nei termini in cui essa emerge nei contributi qui presentati. Di interattività si sarebbe presumibilmente parlato a partire dagli esperimenti di arte interattiva e di incontro tra arte e video: una forma di interazione tutta compresa all’interno di un discorso sulle pratiche artistiche, poco o nulla aperto al conf...

The essay reconsiders Wolfgang Iser’s phenomenology of reading, taken as a possible non reductionist answer to the neuroscientific theories of literature. By emphasizing the aesthetic nature of reading, thanks also to Hans Robert Jauss’ contribution, the idea of a ‘reader’s imagination’ emerges here, as a specific and unique power which allows not only the access to the world of the literary text, but opens also new spheres for the understanding and exploration of the real world. In shorts, it is concerned (...) with the constitution of a special cognitive-emotional pattern, which depends on the building of what Iser considers as the reader’s «artificial habitats», through the interaction with the text. (shrink)

John Dewey puts aesthetic experience at the center of his reflection on art and beauty, reconsidering it dynamically. Nowadays, this view opened the path to somaesthetics, a term coined by Richard Shusterman, and aesthetic anthropology. Here, it is argued that the contribution of pragmatist aesthetics could be further developed by exploring its analogies with techno-aesthetics, a paradigm proposed by French philosopher Gilbert Simondon in the early 1980s. Art occupies accordingly a special place within the different forms of aesthetic experience, being (...) considered as a way of experimenting the impact of new technologies in the human experience. It is a process by which technologies create ‘devices’ for experimenting perception and reflection: namely, ways of reconstructing the nature of the human mind in-between body and technology, and by means of their interaction. Cinema reconsidered after Dewey’s fellow George H. Mead, offers an exemplary case as both artistic and technological devices. (shrink)

Ante el panorama político doctrinario del siglo XIX caracterizado por dos filosofías opuestas y predominantes, como eran el liberalismo y el socialismo, en el presente artículo se sistematiza, por medio de una reconstrucción histórica y filosófica, la evolución del movimiento político de la Democracia Cristiana en Europa, en particular en Francia y Alemania, a través de las obras y acciones políticas de sus pioneros. Esta corriente ideológica se presenta como una �vía intermedia o alternativa� para un proyecto político fundado sobre (...) una visión cristiana de la vida y del hombre, equidistante de las posiciones del liberalismo y del socialismo radicales. (shrink)

Researching for the sources of the Ars geomantiae – the oldest divinatory handbook of Western geomancy, translated from Arabic into Latin by Hugo of Santalla in 12th-century northern Spain – led to a double outcome: on the one hand, it showed the nature of Hugo’s cultural competence, imbued with the texts and scientific knowledge of his time; on the other hand, it revealed a series of historico-philosophical and philological data relating to the appearance of his version. In particular, the analysis (...) of the three explicit sources of the Sayings attributed to Socrates, of the Centiloquium of pseudo-Ptolemy and of the Isagoge ad Techne Galieni of Iohannitius has allowed not only to give a direct insight into the fundamental contribution of Arabic culture in the 12th-century translation of scientific studies, but also to carry out a more certain clarification on the dating of the Ars geomantiae and its placement within the translating activity of the master of Santalla. Finally, the question of the hermeticity of the text, raised by the reference to Enoch, one of the three Hermes of Abu- Ma’šar’s legend, has specified to what extent the Ars geomantiae belongs to the Hermetic tradition. (shrink)

According to Thagard and Stewart :1–33, 2011), creativity results from the combination of neural representations, and combination results from convolution, an operation on vectors defined in the holographic reduced representation framework. They use these ideas to understand creativity as it occurs in many domains, and in particular in science. We argue that, because of its algebraic properties, convolution alone is ill-suited to the role proposed by Thagard and Stewart. The semantic pointer concept allows us to see how we can apply (...) the full range of HRR operations while keeping the modal representations so central to Thagard and Stewart’s theory. By adding another combination operation and using semantic pointers as the combinatorial basis, this modified version overcomes the limitations of the original theory and perhaps helps us explain aspects of creativity not covered by the original theory. While a priori reasons cast doubts on the use of HRR operations with modal representations :5039–5054, 1987) such as semantic pointers, recent models point in the other direction, allowing us to be optimistic about the success of the revised version. (shrink)

Previous studies consistently showed age-related differences in temporal judgment and temporal memory. Importantly, emotional valence plays a crucial role in older adults’ information processing. In this study, we examined the effects of emotions at the intersection between time and memory, analysing age-related differences in a temporal source memory task. Twenty-five younger adults (age range 18–35), 25 old adults (age range 65–74), and 25 old–old adults (age range 75–84) saw a series of emotional pictures in three sessions separated by a one-day (...) rest period. In the fourth session, participants were asked to indicate in which session (1, 2, or 3) they saw each picture. Results showed that old–old adults tended to collocate negative pictures distant in time, while positive stimuli were remembered as more recent than real, compared to neutral pictures. To a lower extent, people over 65 showed the same pattern of results. In contrast, emotional valence did not affect younger adults’ temporal positioning of stimuli. Current findings fit well with the Socio-Emotional Selectivity Theory’s assumptions and extended the literature on the positivity effect to temporal source memory. (shrink)

The article considers the nature of series as a narrative, focusing especially on its chronotope, i.e. its spatiotemporal coordinates. The concept of chronotope can be applied at at least two different levels of the interpretation of a narrative: the real world of reception and the expressive form of narration. The impact of series entails both aspects. It is for this reason that series, once on television then on the internet, represented a revolutionary turn in the modern experience of storytelling. Series (...) are therefore bound to the progressive spread of a new form of sociality known as a digital “total mobilisation”. Since the era of TV series up to the emergence of web series, seriality has been able to regulate the increase of interaction in the use of visual devices. Series play the role of a dietetical regulator, which designs the spectators’ attention. An artistic, i.e. experimental, exploitation of this new form of storytelling is possible when one considers the emergence of a new narrative genre, which we propose to call the “short form”. (shrink)

In the U.S., ‘employee wellness’ programs are increasingly attached to employer-provided health insurance. These programs attempt to nudge employees, sometimes quite forcefully, into healthy behaviors such as smoking cessation and exercise routines. Despite being widely promoted as saving on healthcare costs, numerous studies undermine this rationale. After documenting the programs’ failure to deliver a positive return on investment, we analyze them as instead providing an opportunity for employers to exercise increasing control over their employees. Based on human capital theory and (...) neoliberal models of subjectivity that emphasize personal control and responsibility, these programs treat wellness as a lifestyle that employees must be cajoled into adopting, extending the workplace not just into the home but into the bodies of workers, and entrenching the view that one belongs to one’s workplace. At the same time, their selective endorsement of health programs (many scientifically unsupported) produce a social truth of wellness framed as fitness for work. We conclude by arguing that the public health initiatives occluded by the private sector’s promotion of wellness programs would be a much better investment of resources. (shrink)

While many sociocultural, contextual, biological, behavioral, and psychological variables may contribute to the widespread under-representation of girls and women in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics field, this study focused on STEM-gender stereotypes, school experiences, and adolescence as critical factors in driving students' interest and motivation in STEM. Based on this, the study investigated differences by gender and national context in adolescents' STEM-gender stereotypes, school empowerment, and school engagement in a preliminary step, and simultaneously examined how adolescents' STEM-gender stereotypes were (...) related to school empowerment and school engagement as well as to socioeconomic status. These latter relations were considered within the context of the potential moderating role of gender and national context. Participants included 213 Italian adolescents and 214 Nigerian adolescents, who completed measures of school empowerment and engagement, STEM-gender stereotypes, and SES. A multivariate analysis of covariance showed that Nigerian girls and boys reported significantly higher levels of school empowerment, school engagement, and STEM-gender stereotypes than their Italian peers. Moreover, regardless of the national context, boys scored significantly higher on school empowerment and STEM-gender stereotypes than girls. Furthermore, a multiple-group path analysis revealed how higher school empowerment was related to lower STEM-gender stereotypes in both Italian and Nigerian girls' groups, while higher school engagement was associated with lower STEM-gender stereotypes only in the Nigerian groups. Regardless of gender and nationality, higher SES was linked to lower STEM-gender stereotypes. These findings particularly suggest that school empowerment and school engagement can be relevant dimensions to be studied and to develop strategies to counteract STEM-gender stereotypes in adolescence. Nonetheless, gender and national context are key factors to be considered. Limitations, strengths, future research, and educational implications are discussed. (shrink)

On the basis of an analysis of the relevant parts of Tractatus logico-philosophicus, a definition of the property of saying something, and of the obviously correlated property of saying nothing, is given. By applying that definition, both tautologies and contradictions are sanctioned as saying nothing, as lacking sense, in full agreement with Wittgenstein's explicit statements. On the other hand, a recent systematic attempt by A. Negro to extract from the Tractatus a criterion for sense containment and a criterion for saying (...) more, that is, for comparing the amount of sense of propositions, leads to the conclusion that the sense of any proposition is contained in the sense of a contradiction and that contradictions say more than any other propositions. The problem faced in this paper is that of restoring consistency between Negro's criteria, which on the whole give a correct interpretation of the text of the Tractatus, and Wittgenstein's thesis that, not only tautologies, but also contradictions say nothing. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's role was vital in establishing mathematics as one of this century's principal areas of philosophic inquiry. In this book, the three phases of Wittgenstein's reflections on mathematics are viewed as a progressive whole, rather than as separate entities. Frascolla builds up a systematic construction of Wittgenstein's representation of the role of arithmetic in the theory of logical operations. He also presents a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations - the `community view of internal relations'.

This article compares two philosophers who have a different theoretical origin: respectively, Arthur C. Danto and Jean-François Lyotard. Both of them are interested in the revolutionary character of Andy Warhol’s art. Danto as well as Lyotard argues that Warhol conceives the work of art as a machine: according to the former, it is a philosophical machine; according to the latter, it is a consumerist machine. Nonetheless, the two hypotheses converge on judging Warhol’s art as a turn in the history of (...) art and its relationship to the world. According to Danto, who follows Hegel here, Warhol at the same time interprets and transcends the 1960s and their Zeitgeist. But paradoxically, Warhol’s historical gesture, epitomized by his work Brillo Box, initiates the age of the “end of art”. According to Lyotard, on the contrary, Warhol represents the end of the critical power of modern art, to which the sublime alone can remediate. The two perspectives converge in the idea that the investigation of repetition is the very center of Warhol’s art. Art has now become the pivot of the Western capitalism and consumerist society. Warhol actually explores the different forms and modes of repetition (commodities, icons, symbols) and, in this way, anticipates the confrontation of contemporary art with the “finite infinite” represented by the media world. (shrink)