This paper describes intellectual property legislation in the European Union, the US and the Draft Treaty on the legal protection of unoriginal databases, usually available in the Internet. I argue that this type of legislation, if enforced upon developing countries and countries in transition through international ‘agreements’, could in effect deprive them of their own information commons, their own public domain. With examples from China, India, Africa and Iceland, I argue that this deprivation in the case of developing countries is, (...) morally, equal to a virtual war against them by the West, wholly unjustified and dangerous-an example of virtual imperialism. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the debate on Composition as Identity—the thesis that any composite object is identical to its parts—is deadlocked because both the defenders and the detractors of the claim have so far failed to take its philosophical core at face value and have, as a result, defended and criticized respectively something that is not Composition as Identity. After establishing how Composition as Identity should properly be understood and proposing for it a new interpretation centered around the (...) novel notion of metaphysical information, I set forth a strategy to defend it that crucially rests on the indefinite extensibility of the domain of quantification. I eventually suggest that “Composition as Analysis” is a name that better reflects the content and theoretical proposal of the thesis that Composition as Identity is supposed to be. (shrink)

Benjamin does not see or does not want to see the new “aura” that makes the art of cinema “art” which stays as the central feature of the totally renewed statute of artistic activity in the age of mechanical reproduction. In his essay of 1936, Benjamin acquires the arguments of all those authors who, between the first and second decades of the Twentieth century, had described this art and his new aura: Paul Valéry, George Duhamel, Léon Pierre-Quint, Luigi Pirandello, Bertolt (...) Brecht, Rudolph Arnheim. It is an art for the mass that has a positive but also negative side in individual perception. Benjamin considers the new man – be it mass-man (the audience) or man-tool – recruitable for a coming revolution, but at the end of the essay he raises a question concerning the whole of contemporary art from the Dada movement to the present time: how could this completely renovated art possibly escape exploitation by those who produce it and drive it since then? (shrink)

Benjamin does not see or does not want to see the new “aura” that makes the art of cinema “art” which stays as the central feature of the totally renewed statute of artistic activity in the age of mechanical reproduction. In his essay of 1936, Benjamin acquires the arguments of all those authors who, between the first and second decades of the Twentieth century, had described this art and his new aura: Paul Valéry, George Duhamel, Léon Pierre-Quint, Luigi Pirandello, Bertolt (...) Brecht, Rudolph Arnheim. It is an art for the mass that has a positive but also negative side in individual perception. Benjamin considers the new man – be it mass-man (the audience) or man-tool – recruitable for a coming revolution, but at the end of the essay he raises a question concerning the whole of contemporary art from the Dada movement to the present time: how could this completely renovated art possibly escape exploitation by those who produce it and drive it since then? (shrink)

The present article reviews the state of public debate and legal provisions concerning end‐of‐life decision‐making in Italy and offers an evaluation of the moral and legal issues involved. The article further examines the content of a recent law concerning informed consent and advance treatment directives, the main court pronouncements that formed the basis for the law, and developments in the public debate and important jurisprudential acts subsequent to its approval. The moral and legal grounds for a positive evaluation of this (...) law, which attests that the patient may withhold or withdraw from life‐prolonging treatment, will be offered with reference to liberal approaches and particularly to the frameworks of care and virtue ethics; but reasons will also be offered in order to consider not only the latter but also broader range of end‐of‐life treatment decisions as morally apt options. In this light, we argue in favour of a further development of the Italian legislation to encompass forms of assisted suicide and active euthanasia. (shrink)

This article sheds light on John Rawls’s views on John Dewey’s philosophical temperament by investigating unpublished papers and lectures that Rawls wrote and delivered across the late 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s, and the early 1970s. Moreover, the article shows that Rawls’s rejection of Kant’s dualisms predates by at least three decades the “Dewey Lectures” (1980) and that Dewey’s notion of deliberation as “dramatic rehearsal in imagination” might have had an impact on Rawls’s development of the notion of “reflective equilibrium” (...) as a state of affairs that we strive to reach in ethical reflection. (shrink)

Psychology doesn’t seem to be really interested in the theme of gift; in the last decades it focus on the central role of recognition in the psyche building up. The authors underline Chiara Lubich’s original intuition linking profoundly the them of gift and recognition.

This article discusses women's positions in higher education in Europe and compares these with a case study analysis of senior women at one `new' UK university. The study comprises interview data from 22 senior women in both academic schools and departments and in functional departments. The main findings include substantial differences between younger and older women in their career progression. While for both groups having children was a major in uence, the older women, especially the academics, had to weave their (...) career developments around those of their husbands and caring for their children. Nevertheless, they displayed strong entrepreneurial tendencies, becoming highly skilled at spotting and seizing opportunities. The younger women were more selfconfident in a `postfeminist' period where young women often assume equality has been achieved and material support systems such as childcare is well established. In contrast with the older women, they fitted their family lives around their careers. Balancing their gender had become central to both their private and their work lives. The older women were sensitive to the subtle homosocial culture, attitudes and norms in the university, while the younger women relied more on a meritocratic approach to their careers, and were seemingly less aware of the institutional gendered power relations. Neither group showed signs of collective working or networking in the interests of themselves or women generally in the university. These characteristics imply that while the proportion of senior women may continue to increase, the strongly gendered culture is less likely to be challenged. (shrink)

We propose a formal framework to examine the relationship between models and observations. To make our analysis precise,models are reduced to first-order theories that represent both terminological knowledge – e.g., the laws that are supposed to regulate the domain under analysis and that allow for explanations, predictions, and simulations – and assertional knowledge – e.g., information about specific entities in the domain of interest. Observations are introduced into the domain of quantification of a distinct first-order theory that describes their nature (...) and their organization and takes track of the way they are experimentally acquired or intentionally elaborated. A model mainly represents the theoretical knowledge or hypotheses on a domain, while the theory of observations mainly represents the empirical knowledge and the given experimental practices. We propose a precise identity criterion for observations and we explore different links between models and observations by assuming a degree of independence between them. By exploiting some techniques developed in the field of social choice theory and judgment aggregation, we sketch some strategies to solve inconsistencies between a given set of observations and the assumed theoretical hypotheses. The solutions of these inconsistencies can impact both the observations – e.g., the theoretical knowledge and the analysis of the way observations are collected or produced may highlight some unreliable sources – and the models – e.g. empirical evidences may invalidate some theoretical laws. (shrink)

La presse italienne a suivi de très près l'agonie et la mort du pape Jean-Paul II. Il s'agit certainement de l'événement le plus médiatisé depuis les attentats terroristes du 11 septembre 2001. Les quatre titres italiens, malgré leur positionnement politique différent, analysent l'événement avec le même degré de dramatisation et d'intensité. Ils proposent un récit fortement sentimental à travers le recours à un langage émotionnel, à des images touchantes ou, encore, à une mise en page spécifique. Les thèmes qui reviennent (...) le plus souvent font appel au caractère et au charisme de Jean-Paul II, à son recours aux médias dans le but de véhiculer le message chrétien. Son rapport avec les jeunes est également un des sujets privilégiés par la presse italienne, pour cela son Pontificat est qualifié de révolutionnaire. Si les quatre quotidiens italiens étudiés proposent une analyse similaire, à travers leur récit d'un « événement d'émotion planétaire », des différences persistent. S'adressant à un public spécifique, chaque titre emploie son propre langage, il renvoie à des références précises et touche des sensibilités diverses. Malgré une uniformisation substantielle, le clivage droite-gauche semble persister.The Italian press has closely followed the agony and death of Pope John Paul II. It is certainly the most publicized event since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The four Italian titles, despite their different political positions, analyze the event with the same degree of intensity and drama. They offer a highly sentimental story through the use of emotional language, images or touching, even to a specific layout. The themes that recur most often involve the character and charisma of John Paul II, in his use of the media in order to convey the Christian message. His relationship with young people is also one of the subjects favored by the Italian press for his pontificate that is called revolutionary. If the four studied Italian newspapers offer a similar analysis, through their narrative of a "global event emotion", differences persist. Addressing a specific audience, each title uses its own language, it refers to specific references and touches different sensibilities. Despite a substantial uniformity, the left-right divide seems to persist. (shrink)

La sociologie classique a utilisé la notion d’ambivalence sociale pour désigner la combinaison, nécessaire, mais chargée de conflit, entre l’obéissance aux normes et la volonté d’affirmer sa liberté. Il faut distinguer cette notion de celle d’ambivalence culturelle, qui désigne la nécessité de suivre à la fois des exigences culturelles opposées, en particulier dans un rapport majorité/minorité. La figure de l’étranger dessinée par Georg Simmel est l’exemple type de cette ambivalence, source de frustrations, mais qui néanmoins représente la moins mauvaise solution (...) possible. Après des siècles de raisonnements fondés sur la notion « ou... ou », nous ressentons la nécessité de nous placer en situation d’ambivalence.The notion of sociological ambivalence has been widely used to refer to the conflict-permeated combination of compliance with norms and search for individual autonomy. We must draw a distinction between this kind of ambivalence and a cultural ambivalence relating to the coexistence of two cultures to be inevitably found in a majority/minority relationship. The figure of the stranger designed by Georg Simmel is a classical example of this ambivalence, which induces frustrations, but represents the most acceptable solution possible. After centuries of dialectical thinking of the « either-or » type, we feel the urge to put ourselves in a situation of ambivalence. (shrink)

The present work aims to underline the role played by cultural variables on the development of social processes, both at micro and macro-social level. Specifically, I want to focus on the role played by the philosophical current of Confucianism in the process of medernization of Japan, which shows how the cultural aspects, both in terms of intenalized values, both in the form of cultural norms and models approved by the group have influence on the development of social processes. Japanese society (...) has succeeded in renconciling the fundamental elements of the confucian tradition with the modernization, elements that represent a variable that has turned out to be of significant importance in the process of development of Japan. (shrink)

For the first time in print, this article reports passages from John Rawls’s graduate papers and annotations on books and manuscripts from his personal library. The analysis of this material shows the historical inaccuracy of the widespread assumption that Rawls’s philosophy owes very little to American pragmatism. Peirce’s notion of truth, as well as the holistic critique of pragmatism thatMortonWhite began in the late 1940s, prove significant at the very beginning of Rawls’s philosophical enterprise. In the light of this material, (...) it might be argued that Rawls’s elaboration of ‘reflective equilibrium’ started at least in part as an attempt to overcome the pending problems of pragmatism. (shrink)

Detecting sensitive information considering privacy is a relevant issue on Online Social Networks (OSNs). It is often difficult for users to manage the privacy associated with their posts on social networks taking into account all the possible consequences. The aim of this work is to provide information about the sensitivity of the content of a publication when a user is going to share it in OSN. For this purpose, we developed a privacy-assistant agent that detects sensitive information. Based on this (...) information, the agent provides a message through a nudge mechanism warning about the possible risks of sharing the message. To avoid being annoying, the agent also considers the user’s previous behaviour (e.g. if he previously ignored certain nudges) and adapts the messages it sends to give more relevance to those categories that are more important to the user from the point of view of the privacy risk. This agent was integrated into the social network Pesedia. We analysed the performance of different models to detect a set of sensitive categories (i.e. location, medical, drug/alcohol, emotion, personal attacks, stereotyping, family and association details, personal details and personally identifiable information) in a dataset of tweets in Spanish. The model that obtained the best results (i.e. F1 and accuracy) and that was finally integrated into the privacy-assistant agent was transformer-based. (shrink)

An Ax-Kochen-Ershov principle for intermediate structures between valued groups and valued fields. We will consider structures that we call valued B-groups and which are of the form $\langle G, B, *, v\rangle$ where - G is an abelian group, - B is an ordered group, - v is a valuation defined on G taking its values in B, - * is an action of B on G satisfying: ∀ x ∈ G ∀ b ∈ B v(x * b) = v(x) (...) · b. The analysis of Kaplanski for valued fields can be adapted to our context and allows us to formulate an Ax-Kochen-Ershov principle for valued B-groups: we axiomatise those which are in some sense existentially closed and also obtain many of their model-theoretical properties. Let us mention some applications: 1. Assume that v(x) = v(nx) for every integer n ≠ 0 and x ∈ G, B is solvable and acts on G in such a way that, for the induced action, $\mathbb{Z}[B] \setminus \{0\}$ embeds in the automorphism group of G. Then $\langle G, B, *, v\rangle$ is decidable if and only if B is decidable as an ordered group. 2. Given a field k and an ordered group B, we consider the generalised power series field k((B)) endowed with its canonical valuation. We consider also the following structure: $\mathbf{M} = \langle k((B))_+, S, v, \times \upharpoonright_{k((B))\times S}\rangle,$ where k((B)) + is the additive group of k((B)), S is a unary predicate interpreting ${T^b| b \in B}$ , and $\times \upharpoonright_{k((B))\times S}$ is the multiplication restricted to k((B))× S, structure which is a reduct of the valued field k((B)) with its canonical cross section. Then our result implies that if B is solvable and decidable as an ordered group, then M is decidable. 3. A valued B-group has a residual group and our Ax-Kochen-Ershov principle remains valid in the context of expansions of residual group and value group. In particular, by adding a residual order we obtain new examples of solvable ordered groups having a decidable theory. (shrink)

The age of digital technology has introduced new complications into the issues of fair and private use of copyrighted material. In fact, the question of private use of another's work has been transformed from a side issue in intellectual property jurisprudence into the very center of intellectual property discussions about rights and privileges in a networked world. This paper will explore the nuanced difference between fair and private use as articulated in the US and the European Copyright Laws. Part One (...) will explain the legal use and meaning of fair use and its justifications. We maintain that it is almost impossible to resolve the issue of the fair/private use's legal nature, if one has not previously resolved copyright's legal nature. Legal resolution of such conflicts, as we shall demonstrate, follows different rules, and the messages sent to users and authors vary greatly depending on the jurisdiction. Part Two will examine the issue of Private Use as Fair Use by Design. We will look at the impact of Digital Rights Management on fair use and explore if the nature of private use as fair use has changed because we are dealing with the protection of digital content. We will show that protecting digital works by code, via various digital rights management schemes is shrinking the public domain of information and restricting private use as fair use. (shrink)

1. Filosofia in età antica -- 2. Filosofia in età medievale e rinascimentale -- 3. Filosofia in età moderna -- 4. Filosofia in età contemporanea.

Daniele Botti argues that John Rawls’s philosophy is importantly connected with classical American pragmatism and that Rawls’s intellectual trajectory did not take a “pragmatic turn” in the 1980s but possibly an “un-pragmatic” one. Both claims go against conventional wisdom, and Botti corroborates them with archival research.