Precision was not a quality expected from ordinary watches in the eighteenth century, which required specific maintenance to function correctly. The precautions to be taken to ensure the accuracy of pocket chronometers, whose going would influence navigation or the results of scientific activities, were even more vital. However, the remarkable attention that horological studies have devoted to the origins of chronometry has neglected these aspects. It has erroneously assumed that the success of chronometers was guaranteed by their innovative impact and (...) technological advancement. To illustrate the importance to examine the birth of chronometry from the point of view of manipulating technology and the user experience, my paper will discuss the case of the small series of pocket chronometers manufactured between 1782 and 1794 by the London workshop of the Swiss watchmaker Josiah Emery. The article shows that not all the users possessed the necessary technical knowledge nor training to handle and employ chronometers appropriately and that the instructions given by the artisan to his clients played a fundamental role. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of “terminological gaps” and strives to identify suitable methods for dealing with them during translation. The analysis begins with an investigation of the contended notion of gaps in terminology based on empirical examples drawn from a German-Italian terminological database specifically designed for translation purposes. Two macro categories of gaps are identified, conceptual and linguistic level gaps, which only partially correspond to previous observations in the literature. The paper uses examples to explore the advantages of ontological (...) representations for detecting conceptual terminological gaps and identifying appropriate translation strategies. However, limitations are also observed and an attempt is made to resolve these using a frame-based approach. A frame-based analysis reveals that while certain designations may appear to refer to convergent conceptual units with matching distinctive features, differences also emerge due to the way the two language systems build designations. Examples from the corpus make it evident that a frame-based approach is helpful for identifying both kinds of terminological gaps, and then resolving them during translation. An important presupposition for this approach is that larger units of analysis need to be addressed rather than just terms themselves. There is confirmation of the existing idea that methods embracing entire segments or paragraphs as units of investigation are preferable during translation, and this is also seen to apply in terminological studies. (shrink)

In this survey of Roberto Esposito's thought, Bonito Oliva reflects upon the stakes of reading biopolitics in an immunitary key. After sketching the features of a "fundamental crisis in the sense of coexistence," the author, moving from ancient to modern philosophy, emphasizes the centrality of fear in Esposito's understanding of the origins of community. The importance of fear explains in part the intrinsic relation community has to immunity for Esposito, in which immunity is figured primarily as a negative form of (...) community. In the essay's closing pages, the author shows how deeply immunity informs Esposito's understanding of contemporary biopolitics. She goes on to note Esposito's indebtedness to Hegel, especially with regard to the negative, and echoes Esposito's and Deleuze's own calls for the construction of "an immanent norm of life.". (shrink)

Through an analysis of the European Court of Human Rights’ decisions concerning the practice of veiling, this article problematises the semiotics-architectural structure of article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights (Freedom of thought, conscience and religion), questioning which representation of the human and the female subject is recognised and therefore protected by secular/liberal and Human Rights law. It argues that the semiotics-architectural structure of article 9, which is based on the distinction between faith and its manifestation, not only (...) relies on a particular ontological understanding of the religious subject as well as a specific notion of religion, but it also reveals a distinct relationship between the individual and sovereign power through the division between the public and the private spheres. In light of this, the western debate surrounding the women’s veiling overlooks how liberal secularism perceives and defines the religious and legal gendered subject in the modern world, and how this understanding is embedded in and reproduced through the law, which emerges as an instrument for regulating minority religious communities. (shrink)

In this paper, first, we determine the number of sublogics of variable inclusion of an arbitrary finitary logic ⊢ with a composition term. Then, we investigate their position into the lattice of co...

‘Mathematics is the science of the infinite, its goal the symbolic comprehension of the infinite with human, that is finite, means.’ Along this line, in The Open World, Hermann Weyl contrasted the desire to make the infinite accessible through finite processes, which underlies any theoretical investigation of reality, with the intuitive feeling for the infinite ‘peculiar to the Orient,’ which remains ‘indifferent to the concrete manifold of reality.’ But a critical analysis may acknowledge a valuable dialectical opposition. Struggling to spell (...) out the infinity of real numbers mathematicians come to see the active role of emptiness. Pondering over the essence of self-awareness, the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō comes to see the ‘place’ where it abides as absolute nothingness. Thus, the two ways of seeing coalesce into a perspective in which infinity and nothingness mirror each other. (shrink)

This article includes details about Oration 44 of Gregory of Nazianzus, taken from ‘Gregorio di Nazianzo, orazione 44’ a book by Rossella Valastro, published in 2018. This oration was proclaimed during the first Sunday after Easter in 383, in conjunction with the inauguration of the church of St. Mamas of Caesarea. Gregory of Nazianzus, however, reports only a little information to his devotees about this little-known Cappadocian martyr. The oration highlights many themes, especially spiritual renewal that comes to humanity (...) from Christ's death and resurrection. Through many biblical quotes, the bishop exhorts all humanity to a spiritual change, creating an oration with a complex and irregular structure that is probably derived from several orations that Gregory of Nazianzus proclaimed in different times and places and were brought together into a single text. (shrink)

Asymmetric Choquet random walks are defined, in the form of dynamically consistent random walks allowing for asymmetric conditional capacities. By revisiting Kast and Lapied and Kast et al. we show that some findings regarding the effects of ambiguity aversion are preserved in the more general framework, which is of interest in several applications to policy making, risk management, corporate decisions, real option valuation of investment/ disinvestment projects, etc. The effect of ambiguity on the higher moments is investigated, as well, as (...) they have an interpretation in terms of the psychological attitude of a decision-maker towards ambiguity. Finally, some financial applications are provided as an illustration. (shrink)

Ontology is a part of metaphysics; it concerns what there is. Is it possible to consider being and reality not in a traditional metaphysical way—that is, not as a ground, an origin, a cause, but as a movement, a flux, a dynamogenic principle? I will set out from a seminal aphorism by Nietzsche, occurring in Human, all too Human (§2): “A lack of the historical sense is the hereditary fault of all philosophers. But everything has evolved; there are no eternal (...) facts, as there are likewise no absolute truths. Therefore, historical philosophising is henceforth necessary, and with it the virtue of diffidence”. I will then move on to explore Peirce’s late thought, starting from a passage in a letter to W. James, where the author supports a “futurist” interpretation of reality—as he had in the juvenile writings—and speaks of “the reality of the public world of the indefinite future as against our past opinions of what it was to be.” This can be defined as a process of “mellonization,” that operation of logic by which what “is conceived as having been is conceived as extended indefinitely into what always will be”. Similarly, in the Preface to Human, all too Human Nietzsche writes: “Our destiny rules over us, even when we are not yet aware of it; it is the future that makes laws for our today”. I will try to read some Peirce’s statements in a Nietzschean perspective within the context of the plan to develop a dynamic and historical ontology; and I will try to read the “enigma” of Nietzsche’s Eternal recurrence from a Peircean perspective. (shrink)

The logic DAI of demodalised analytic implication has been introduced by J.M. Dunn as a variation on a time-honoured logical system by C.I. Lewis’ student W.T. Parry. The main tenet underlying this logic is that no implication can be valid unless its consequent is “analytically contained” in its antecedent. DAI has been investigated both proof-theoretically and model-theoretically, but no study so far has focussed on DAI from the viewpoint of abstract algebraic logic. We provide several different algebraic semantics for DAI, (...) showing their equivalence with the known semantics by Dunn and Epstein. We also show that DAI is algebraisable and we identify its equivalent quasivariety semantics. This class turns out to be a linguistic and axiomatic expansion of involutive bisemilattices, a subquasivariety of which forms the algebraic counterpart of Paraconsistent Weak Kleene logic. This fact sheds further light on the relationship between containment logics and logics of nonsense. (shrink)

Questo articolo argomenta in favore della tesi di una collaborazione tra sensi e ragione nella gnoseologia di Empedocle. Il primo difensore di questa tesi, Sesto Empirico, distingueva nel pensiero empedocleo due forme di ragione, una umana e l’altra divina. Viene sostenuta qui l’identificazione della ragione divina menzionata da Sesto con il dio protagonista del fr. 134DK, a cui il suo citatore, Ammonio, attribuisce il nome di Apollo. L’analisi proposta cerca di mostrare in particolare 1) che il dio menzionato nel fr. (...) 134 e il sole della comologia empedoclea conosciuto grazie alla testimonianza di Aezio ; 2) che la costituzione fisica di questo dio solare, immagine luminosa proiettata sulla volta dell’etere, ne fa una figura velata della conoscenza, come relazione necessaria di esperienze sensibili e di contenuti intellettivi. La tradizione pitagorica che identificava il sole con Apollo troverebbe un prolungamento nella divinizzazione empedoclea della ragione. (shrink)

Coordination games often have multiple equilibria. The selection of equilibrium raises the question of belief formation: how do players generate beliefs about the behavior of other players? This article takes the view that the answer lies in history, that is, in the outcomes of similar coordination games played in the past, possibly by other players. We analyze a simple model in which a large population plays a game that exhibits strategic complementarities. We assume a dynamic process that faces different populations (...) with such games for randomly selected values of a parameter. We introduce a belief formation process that takes into account the history of similar games played in the past, not necessarily by the same population. We show that when history serves as a coordination device, the limit behavior depends on the way history unfolds, and cannot be determined from a-priori considerations. (shrink)

Paraconsistent Weak Kleene Logic is the 3-valued propositional logic defined on the weak Kleene tables and with two designated values. Most of the existing proof systems for PWK are characterised by the presence of linguistic restrictions on some of their rules. This feature can be seen as a shortcoming. We provide a cut-free calculus for PWK that is devoid of such provisos. Moreover, we introduce a Priest-style tableaux calculus for PWK.

Resumo O presente artigo visa apresentar as peculiaridades da interpretação de Giorgio Colli para o pensamento do eterno retorno, numa interpretação que não lhe imputa traço ético nem estético, e sim metafísico. Para tanto, trata-se de, em primeiro lugar, apresentar Parmênides como precursor do eterno retorno, invocando-se a circularidade do ser e da consciência; num segundo momento, trata-se de tomar o eterno retorno como um contato pré-racional, próprio do tempo que expressa a esfera da imediaticidade; num terceiro momento, evidencia-se a (...) força do eterno retorno em sua carga contraditória e seu caráter agonístico. Ao final tem-se o eterno retorno, para Colli, como uma terceira verdade, com a qual Nietzsche pretendeu contrabalançar a verdade do vir-a-ser a suscitar a dor metafísica.The present article aims to present the peculiarities of Giorgio Colli´s interpretation of the eternal recurrence thought - an interpretation that do not ascribe to it nor an ethical nor an aesthetical feature, but a metaphysical one. For this purpose, first of all it presents Parmenides as a forerunner of the eternal recurrence, invoking circularity of Being and consciouness; secondly, it takes the eternal recurrence as a pre-rational contact, a contact from the order of time expressing the sphere of immediacity; thirdly and lastly, eternal recurrence´s power is emphasized in his contradictory burden and agonistic character. After all, the the eternal recurrence would be, for Colli, a third truth, with which Nietzsche intended to counterbalance the truth of becoming that arouses a metaphysical sorrow. (shrink)

In today’s knowledge economy, knowledge and knowledge sharing are fundamental for organizations to achieve competitiveness and for individuals to strengthen their innovation capabilities. Knowledge sharing is a complex language-based activity; language affects how individuals communicate and relate. The growth in international collaborations and the increasing number of diverse teams affect knowledge sharing because individuals engage in daily knowledge activities in a language they are not native speakers. Understanding the challenges they face, and how they manage the emerging difficulties is the (...) main aim of this manuscript. For this purpose, an explorative case study was conducted in an international university research project, namely the TED project. Both interviews and direct observations were employed to understand the phenomenon better and deliberately triangulate data and improve validity. Results show that non-native language use determines the emergence of different language proficiency, depending on the nature of the knowledge domain–job-related vs. non-job-related. Within non-job-related knowledge domains, the lack of linguistic abilities, summed to the perceived cultural diversities, mainly affects people’s propensity to engage in personal and more intense social relationships. Under such circumstances, tacit knowledge sharing is reduced with negative consequences on the project’s long-term innovative performance. Since the project is still running, detecting language challenges will allow the partners to design and apply effective measures to support cooperation with language and cultural barriers. Among them, code switching, adopted by “bridge” actors, already emerges as tool supporting communication and knowledge exchange. (shrink)

Cet article se propose de mettre en lumière les dynamiques interactionnelles mises en œuvre par la pratique comique de l’onomasti kômôidein, à travers le recours à certaines instruments théoriques fournis par la socio-linguistique (analyse interactionnelle et conversationnelle). En soulignant l’analogie existante entre les injures que les acteurs adressent contre des citoyens réels appelés par leur nom et la calomnie, la diabolè, il propose de nuancer l’opposition, qui domine la critique aristophanienne, entre les interprétations « ritualistes » et les interprétations « (...) politiques » de ce phénomène dramatique. (shrink)

Both Hilbert's axiomatics and Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms have their roots in Leibniz's idea of a 'universal characteristic,' and grow on Hertz's 'principles of mechanics,' and Dedekind's 'foundations of arithmetic'. As Cassirer recalls in the introduction to his Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, it was the discovery of the analysis of infinity that led Leibniz to focus on "the universal problem inherent in the function of symbolism, and to raise his 'universal characteristic' to a truly philosophical plane." In Leibniz's view, (...) the logic of 'things' cannot be separated from the logic of 'signs,' as "the sign is no mere accidental cloak of the idea, but its necessary and essential organ."Every 'law' of .. (shrink)

COVID-19 outbroke in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and promptly became a pandemic worldwide, endangering health and life but also causing mild-to-severe psychological distress to lots of people, including healthcare workers. Several studies have already showed a high prevalence of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic symptoms in HCWs but less is known about the efficacy of psychological interventions for relieving their mental distress. The aims of this study were: to evaluate the psychological adjustment of Italian HCWs during the COVID-19 pandemic; to (...) investigate the efficacy of an expressive writing intervention, based on Pennebaker’s paradigmatic protocol, on their psychological adjustment; to analyze if outcomes of EW vary in function of individual differences. Fifty-five HCWs were randomly assigned to one of two writing conditions: EW or neutral writing. Psychological adjustment was assessed before and after three writing sessions. Participants who received the EW intervention showed higher improvements in ptsd, depression, and global psychopathology symptoms. Improvements in EW group varied in function of age, gender, marital status, and baseline values: young, men, married participants and those who had higher baseline scores showed a higher reduction of psychological distress symptoms while women, single and those who had lower baseline value showed increased social support, and resilience. In conclusion, the EW intervention had positive effects which varied in function of individual differences on HCWs’ psychological health. (shrink)