Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This essay examines the French reception of the Carl Schmitt's thought, specifically its Hegelian strand. Beginning with the early readings of Schmitt's thought by Alexandre Kojève and Georges Bataille during the mid-1930s, it attends to the partial adoption of Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction and his theories of sovereignty and neutralization in Kojève and Bataille's Hegelian writings, as well as to their critical responses. The essay then turns to examine the reading of Kojève by the Jesuit Hegelian résistant Gaston Fessard during the (...) war, a reading specifically intended to delegitimate Vichy as a “slave-prince,” resistance to whom would be legitimate. The final section returns to Bataille and his 1948 book The Accursed Share in order to propose that his Maussian understanding of the Marshall Plan suggested an overcoming of the friend/enemy distinction, a suggestion that was later made explicit in a 1957 talk by Kojève at Düsseldorf before Schmitt and a group of his supporters. At stake throughout are both the thoroughly critical reception of Schmitt, the particular political inflection of Hegel carried out by and in Kojève's reading, and certain methodological links between conceptual history and the reception history. (shrink)

Edizione e traduzione italiana della Questio de aqua et terra di Dante Alighieri.

Raccolta di saggi dedicati al Prof. Franco De Capitani.

Raccolta di saggi dedicati al Prof. Franco De Capitani.

The paper explores, on the basis of the analysis of texts drawn from Plato and Foucault, the possibilities for a different relationship between philosophy and science that goes beyond the complementary strategies of scientific expropriation of philosophical themes vs. the philosophical tribunal of scientific results. It argues that the radical separation between philosophy and science advocated especially by Foucault’s later work against the Platonic tradition can only be understood through a simultaneous rejection of the canonical, and canonically Platonic, understanding of (...) literature as the nonphilosophical endeavour par excellence. A truly free reappropriation of science by philosophy (and conversely, of philosophy by science, although the paper does not explore this possibility) along the lines suggested by Foucault requires both a rejection of the traditional philosophical view of literature, and the elaboration of an alternative paradigm. (shrink)

Herbert Simon’s work presents a curious anomaly to the historian and philosopher trying to understand the development of classic Artificial Intelligence (AI). Simon was one of most influential figures in AI since its birth, and yet it is always with some difficulties that his work can be made to fit within the received canon of AI’s development and goals. In fact, he differed from every other figure in early AI on most counts: in terms of the recognized intellectual heritage of (...) AI, of his own background and training, of the goals he set for his own AI work and the assessment criteria he accepted. I will argue that these differences provide important clues toward a reevaluation of the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and Herbert Simon’s work that may change our current understanding of both. On the one hand, classic Artificial Intelligence (or Complex Information Processing, as Simon preferred to call it for a number of years), provided the tool he needed to pursue a much broader research agenda that strove to encompass human beings in their cognitive, emotional, social, and political dimensions. On the other hand, AI’s curious status as the discipline that straggles the boundaries between engineering, science, and philosophy can be recast as the tool that allowed researchers to pursue philosophy’s old goals with an alternative methodology. From this perspective, Simon’s version of Artificial Intelligence becomes a full-fledged form of ”anti-philosophy” as ambitious and broad-ranging as old-fashioned metaphysics and as revolutionary as the latter in the radical refashioning of its methodology. It follows that a philosophical assessment of AI, at in least in its Simonian incarnation, must be more farreaching than it is usually thought. At the methodological level, it must discuss whether AI’s invention of computer simulation as the tool that overcomes the a-priori/a-posteriori distinction by actually producing the behavior it wants to explain is really adequate to the job at hand.. (shrink)

Der bekannte Liturgiewissenschaftler, der nicht nur in der Abtei Grottaferrata, sondern auch als Dozent für Liturgiewissenschaft am Pont. Ateneo «Anselmianum» in Rom tätig und mit dem byzantinischen Ritus und den Handschriften Grottaferratas bestens vertraut ist, hat nun diese schöne Einführung in das Offizium Grottaferratas vorgelegt, die der italienischen Übersetzung vorangestellt wurde.

Believing that the enterprise of constructing "artificial intelligence" transcends the bounds of any one discipline, the editors of Mechanical Bodies, Computational Minds have brought together researchers in AI and scholars in the humanities to reexamine the fundamental assumptions of both areas. The AI community, for example, could benefit from explorations of human intelligence and creativity by philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, literary critics, and others, while analysis of AI's theoretical struggles and technical advances could yield insights into such traditional humanist concerns as (...) the nature of rationality and the mind-body dichotomy.The contributions include a continuation of the famous Hubert Dreyfus-Daniel Dennett debate over Kasparov's defeat by IBM's Deep Blue; Philip Agre's tracing of difficulties in AI research to the inherited tensions of Cartesian dualism; Evelyn Fox Keller's examination of the development of computer technology in relation to biology; Douglas Hofstadter's argument that thinking is more than the theorem-solving activities of AI; and Alison Adam's discussion of the implicitly male universal subject used in AI. (shrink)

In this essay, I challenge the use of Conceptual Metaphor Theory in the premodern Chinese setting. The dominant, implicit assumption in the literature is that conclusions reached by CMT on the ways in which cognition operates can be applied in toto and without qualification onto the makers of classical Chinese texts. I want to challenge this assumption and argue that textual evidence from premodern Chinese points to a different cognitive process. Differences in the use and conceptualization of image-based thinking as (...) well as differences in the understanding of the relationship between words, images, and the world reveal a different cognitive process. However, I do not wish to argue for a total abandonment of the insights of CMT. Rather, I call for the need to properly qualify its findings in light of premodern Chinese use and conceptions of image-based language. (shrink)

Stefano Predelli comes to the defense of the traditional "formal" approach to natural-language semantics, arguing that it has been misrepresented not only by its critics, but also by its foremost defenders. In Contexts he offers a fundamental reappraisal, with particular attention to the treatment of indexicality and other forms of contextual dependence which have been the focus of much recent controversy. In the process, he presents original approaches to a number of important semantic issues, including the relationship between validity (...) and indexicality, the limits of token-reflexive systems, the significance of contextualist arguments, and the interpretation of attitude reports. Contexts will make invigorating reading for all philosophers of language and many linguists. (shrink)

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was a foremost singer of qawwâlî. This Muslim devotional music, which is prominent in South Asia, has been developed since the fourteenth century by the Sufi circles of the Chishti brotherhood in order to preach and communicate the teachings of the saints. Inspired by mystic spirituality, Nusrat's music travelled through the East and the West, absorbing some of the features of the musical cultures with which it came in contact. It also travelled through time, transforming the (...) traditional style of the ancient chanted poetry into new forms of musical expression. Nusrat's life and his artistic vicissitudes show the postmodern destiny of qawwâlî as a religious kind of music that apparently went through a process of desacralization and profanation as a result of multiple interpretations by different audiences. In order to discern the conditions of significance, semiotics reconstructs the relation between text and context of interpretation on the ground of structural pertinences. In this way, semiotics offers an analytical standpoint alternative to the postmodernist approach to postmodern cultural phenomena. By surveying the forms of listening that are structurally provided by the textual discourse, semiotics investigates the destiny of the musical and religious meanings of qawwâlî in relation to the process of intercultural translation. (shrink)

Stefano Predelli explores the relationships between semantic notions of meaning and truth. He develops a 'Theory of Bias' in order to approach notorious semantic problems, offers a solution to Quine's 'Giorgione' puzzle and a new version of the demonstrative theory quotation, and defends a bare-boned approach to demonstratives and demonstrations.

This book explores what it means to exist in virtual worlds. Chiefly drawing on the philosophical traditions of existentialism, it articulates the idea that — by means of our technical equipment and coordinated practices — human beings disclose contexts or worlds in which they can perceive, feel, act, and think. More specifically, this book discusses how virtual worlds allow human beings to take new perspectives on their values and beliefs, and explore previously unexperienced ways of being. Virtual Existentialism will be (...) useful for scholars working in the fields of philosophy, anthropology, media studies, and digital game studies. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 109 Heft: 3 Seiten: 482-486.

In current philosophical discussions on evidence in the medical sciences, epidemiology has been used to exemplify a specific version of evidential pluralism. According to this view, known as the Russo–Williamson Thesis, evidence of both difference-making and mechanisms is produced to make causal claims in the health sciences. In this paper, I present an analysis of data and evidence in epidemiological practice, with a special focus on research on the exposome, and I cast doubt on the extent to which evidential pluralism (...) holds in this case. I start by focusing on the claim that molecular data allows for the production of mechanistic evidence. On the basis of a close look at the ways in which molecular data is used in exposome research, I caution against interpretations in terms of mechanistic evidence. Secondly, I expand my critical remarks on the thesis by addressing the conditions under which data is categorised as evidence in exposome research. I argue that these show that the classification of a dataset as a type of evidence is dependent on the ways in which the data is used. This is in contrast with the approach of evidential pluralism, where evidence is classified in different types on the basis of its intrinsic properties. Finally, I come back to what I consider the core of the thesis and suggest that the epidemiological research analysed in the paper indicates different interpretations of evidential pluralism and its applicability in the health sciences. (shrink)

The five-volume set Kant and Philosophy in a Cosmopolitan Sense contains the proceedings of the Eleventh International Kant Congress, which took place in Pisa in 2010. The proceedings consist of 25 plenary talks and 341 papers selected by a team of international referees from over 700 submissions. The contributions span 14 sections: Kant’s Concept of Philosophy; Theory of Cognition and Logic; Ontology and Metaphysics; Ethics; Law and Justice; Religion and Theology; Aesthetics; Anthropology and Psychology; Politics and History; Science, Mathematics, and (...) the Philosophy of Nature; Kant and the Leibnizian Tradition; Kant and the Philosophical Tradition; Kant and Schopenhauer; and Kant’s Heritage. Thanks to cooperation from the Schopenhauer Gesellschaft, the 2010 conference was the first in the history of the International Kant Congress to include a session on Kant and Schopenhauer. -/- . (shrink)

Nicola Guarino is widely recognized as one of the founders of applied ontology. His deep interest in the subtlest details of theoretical analysis and his vision of ontology as the Rosetta Stone for semantic interoperability guided the development and understanding of this domain. His motivations in research stem from the conviction that all science must be for the benefit of society at large, and his motto has always been that ontologies are not just for making information systems interoperable, but – (...) more importantly – for ensuring that systems’ users understand each other. He was among the first to recognize that applied ontology must be an interdisciplinary enterprise if it is to capture the intended meaning of the terms used by an information system. (shrink)

On the underwater environment and the mechanisms of deterioration of the materials likely to found on a shipwreck, and the theory and practice of conserving the artifacts recovered. Covers on-site storage, transport of artifacts, and requirements for exhibition after conservation treatment. Di Stefano (political science, U. of Washington) offers a new perspective on the dimension of gender in modern political thought in order to elucidate what is specifically masculine in political theory. Attempting to clear some conceptual space for feminist (...) political theory, she provides critical readings of Hobbes, Marx, and J.S. Mill. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Fictional Discourse: A Radical Fictionalist Semantics combines the insight of linguistic and philosophical semantics with the study of fictional language. Its central idea is familiar to anyone exposed to the ways of narrative fiction, namely the notion of a fictional teller. Starting with premises having to do with fictional names such as 'Holmes' or 'Emma', Stefano Predelli develops Radical Fictionalism, a theory that is subsequently applied to central themes in the analysis of fiction. Among other things, he discusses the (...) distinction between storyworlds and narrative peripheries, the relationships between homodiegetic and heterodiegetic narrative, narrative time, unreliability, and closure. The final chapters extend Radical Fictionalism to critical discourse, as Predelli introduces the ideas of critical and biased retelling, and pauses on the relationships between Radical Fictionalism and talk about literary characters. (shrink)

A disaster is an occurrence disrupting a community’s normal functioning and existence. The disruption may render it impossible to comply with principles and to respect, protect, and fulfill rights as it happens in ordinary times; it may induce an overwhelming shortage of resources and make tragic decisions unavoidable. From its very beginning, the COVID-19 pandemic evoked the scenario of disaster medicine, where triage is likely to imply not simply postponing a treatment but letting someone die. However, it is not only (...) the health care system that faces disruption risks. Lockdown measures and other restrictions were imposed to curb the pandemic, impinging upon individual freedom as well as economic activities. The proposal of mandatory vaccination implied a suspension of the principle of autonomy, which is a fundamental pillar of modern medicine. Out of the ordinary balancing efforts may be required, and two questions arise. Do such exceptional circumstances suggest reconsidering the criteria to apply, especially when essential, life-saving treatments are at stake? Who should decide? Science offers the premises to build on, but the last word does not belong to science. It remains the province of ethics and politics. (shrink)

Stefano Predelli defends a semantics of proper names which has simplicity and common sense in its favour: proper names are non-indexical devices of rigid and direct reference. He grounds this view in accounts of the shape and form of names, and of their introduction within language use, and he responds to widespread misconceptions and objections.

Girola, Stefano Review(s) of: In Difesa Di Pio XII: Le Ragioni Della Storia, by G.M. Vian, ed., (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2009), pp.167, 13, ISBN 978-88-317-9767-2.

We study ω-categorical weakly o-minimal expansions of Boolean lattices. We show that a structure [MATHEMATICAL SCRIPT CAPITAL A] = expanding a Boolean lattice by a finite sequence I of ideals of A closed under the usual Heyting algebra operations is weakly o-minimal if and only if it is ω-categorical, and hence if and only if A/I has only finitely many atoms for every I ∈ ℐ. We propose other related examples of weakly o-minimal ω-categorical models in this framework, and we (...) examine the internal structure of these models. (shrink)

This article explores whether and under which circumstances it is ethically viable to include artificial beings worthy of moral consideration in virtual environments. In particular, the article focuses on virtual environments such as those in digital games and training simulations – interactive and persistent digital artifacts designed to fulfill specific purposes, such as entertainment, education, training, or persuasion. The article introduces the criteria for moral consideration that serve as a framework for this analysis. Adopting this framework, the article tackles the (...) question of whether including artificial intelligences that are entitled to moral consideration in virtual environments constitutes an immoral action on the part of human creators. To address this problem, the article draws on three conceptual lenses from the philosophical branch of ethics: the problem of parenthood and procreation, the question concerning the moral status of animals, and the classical problem of evil. Using a thought experiment, the concluding section proposes a contractualist answer to the question posed in this article. The same section also emphasizes the potential need to reframe our understanding of the design of virtual environments and their future stakeholders. (shrink)

. Decision-making under uncertainty is sometimes investigated as a homogeneous problem, independently of the type of decision-maker and the level and nature of the decision itself. However, when the decision-maker is a public authority, there immediately arise problems additional to those that concern any other decision-maker. This is not always clearly recognised in orthodox discussions on decisions under conditions of uncertainty. This article investigates the methodological, strategic and procedural challenges of taking public decisions in such conditions. It focuses mainly on (...) decisions involving urban contexts, such as planning decisions regarding land use and building transformations, by trying to develop some pioneering research studies in this field. (shrink)

When discussing the distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions, Keith Donnellan also mentions cases such as ‘Smith’s murderer is insane’, uttered in a scenario in which Smith committed suicide. In this essay, I defend a two-fold thesis: (i) the alleged intuition that utterances of ‘Smith’s murderer is insane’ are true in the scenario in question is independent from the phenomenon of referential uses of definite description, and, most importantly, (ii) even if such intuition is granted semantic relevance, (...) the evidence it presents is compatible with a Russellian treatment of definite descriptions. I thus present a Russellian analysis of ‘Smith’s murderer is insane’ which, when coupled with certain independently plausible hypotheses, explains the presumed intuition that certain utterances of this sentence are indeed true, at least as long as the intended individual is insane. (shrink)

The contextualistic account for the semantic behaviour of the term “know” - a position labelled as “epistemic contextualism” - combined with the widely accepted idea that “know” is a factive verb seems to lead to a very unpleasant conclusion: epistemic contextualism is inconsistent. In section 1 we first examine some aspects of the epistemological meaning of the contextualist semantics of “know”, then in section 2 we sketch the problem which leads to the supposed inconsistency of epistemic contextualism and in section (...) 3 we analyse some solutions that have been proposed to solve the problem which are, in our view, unsatisfactory. In section 4 we present our attempt of solution. (shrink)

L'articolo si domanda, con riferimento al tardo Medioevo, se e in quale misura si possa osservare uno spostamento verso un approccio più laico alla questione specifica della legittimità della resistenza al tiranno. Nel secolo circa che separa Giovanni di Salisbury e Tommaso d'Aquino si passa da una analisi di carattere essenzialmente etico teologico del problema a una considerazione più simile a quella che oggi si potrebbe definire laica. Nelle pagine del De Regno, Tommaso discute anche dal punto di vista teologico (...) la questione della legittima resistenza a un governo tirannico e, tuttavia, in questo stesso contesto esamina attentamente i meccanismi costituzionali grazie ai quali una comunità politica può minimizzare il rischio di cadere sotto una forma tirannica di potere.With reference to the late Middle Ages, this paper discusses whether and to which extent we can see a shift towards an approach more secular concerning a specific issue: whether the resistance to tyrant is lawful or not. In the century, more or less, between John of Salisbury and Thomas Aquinas it goes from an essentially ethical-theological consideration of the problem to a consideration more close to that which today one would define secular. In the pages of De regno, Thomas discusses also from the theological point of view the question of lawful resistance in front of a tyrannical government and, however, in the same context he carefully examines the constitutional devices by which a political community can minimize the risk of coming under a tyrannical form of power. (shrink)

La importancia de la aportación de Agustín de Hipona acerca del estudio del fin de la historia y de la escatología es indiscutible. En este artículo se pretende reconstruir la evolución del pensamiento agustiniano desde una posición favorable a una plenitud intrahistórica de carácter eclesial —contenida particularmente en los «Sermones»— y el desarrollo de la «Ciudad de Dios» así como las razones de dicha evolución. El cambio de esta perspectiva se produce a través de una nueva exegesis del cap. XX (...) del Apocalipsis donde Agustín parece negar dicha posibilidad. (shrink)

In this paper we deepen Mundici's analysis on reducibility of the decision problem from infinite-valued ukasiewicz logic to a suitable m-valued ukasiewicz logic m , where m only depends on the length of the formulas to be proved. Using geometrical arguments we find a better upper bound for the least integer m such that a formula is valid in if and only if it is also valid in m. We also reduce the notion of logical consequence in to the same (...) notion in a suitable finite set of finite-valued ukasiewicz logics. Finally, we define an analytic and internal sequent calculus for infinite-valued ukasiewicz logic. (shrink)

What role do imaginary games have in story-telling? Why do fiction authors outline the rules of a game that the reader will never watch or play? Combining perspectives from philosophy, literature and game studies, this book provides the first in-depth investigation into the significance of games in fictional worlds. With examples from contemporary cinema and literature, from The Hunger Games to the science fiction of Iain M. Banks, Stefano Gualeni and Riccardo Fassone introduce four key functions that different types (...) of imaginary games have in worldbuilding. First, fictional games can emphasize the dominant values and ideologies of the fictional society they belong to. Second, some games function as critical, utopian tools, inspiring shifts in the thinking and political orientation of the fictional characters. Third, imaginary games, especially those with a magical component, are conducive to the transcendence of a particular form of being, such as the overcoming of human corporeality. And fourth, fictional games can deceptively blur the boundaries between the contingency of play and the irrevocable seriousness of "real life", either camouflaging life as a game or disguising a game as something with more permanent consequences. With illustrations in every chapter, bringing the imaginary games to life, Gualeni and Fassone creatively inspire us to consider fictional games anew: not as moments of playful reprieve in a storyline, but as significant and multi-layered rhetorical devices. (shrink)

Recently, it has been argued that the use of Big Data transforms the sciences, making data-driven research possible and studying causality redundant. In this paper, I focus on the claim on causal knowledge by examining the Big Data project EXPOsOMICS, whose research is funded by the European Commission and considered capable of improving our understanding of the relation between exposure and disease. While EXPOsOMICS may seem the perfect exemplification of the data-driven view, I show how causal knowledge is necessary for (...) the project, both as a source for handling complexity and as an output for meeting the project’s goals. Consequently, I argue that data-driven claims about causality are fundamentally flawed and causal knowledge should be considered a necessary aspect of Big Data science. In addition, I present the consequences of this result on other data-driven claims, concerning the role of theoretical considerations. I argue that the importance of causal knowledge and other kinds of theoretical engagement in EXPOsOMICS undermine theory-free accounts and suggest alternative ways of framing science based on Big Data. (shrink)