An erudite and witty collection of Umberto Eco's essays on mass culture from the 1960s through the 1980s, including major pieces which have not been translated into English before. The discussion is framed by opposing characterizations of current intellectuals as apocalyptic and opposed to all mass culture, or as integrated intellectuals, so much a part of mass culture as to be unaware of serving it. Organized in four main parts, "Mass Culture: Apocalypse Postponed," "Mass Media and the Limits of (...) Communication," "The Rise and Fall of Counter-Cultures," and "In Search of Italian Genius," Eco looks at a variety of topics and cultural productions, including the world of Charlie Brown, distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow, the future of literacy, Chinese comic strips, whether countercultures exist, Fellini's Ginger and Fred, and the Italian genius industry. (shrink)

Umberto Eco -- Stephen Jay Gould -- Jean-Claude Carrière -- Jean Delumeau.

"... fascinating throughout.... the book is recreative in the highest sense." —Arthur C. Danto, The New Republic "A gem for Holmes fans and armchair detectives with a penchant for logical reflection, and Peirce scholars." —Library Journal.

The notion of feedback has been exploited with considerable success in scientific and technological fields as well as in the sciences of man and society. Its use in philosophical, cultural and educational contexts, however, is still rather meagre, even if some notable attempts can be found in the literature. This paper shows that the feedback concept can help learn and understand some classical philosophical theories. In particular, attention focuses on Fichte’s doctrine of science, usually presented in obscure terms following its (...) inventor’s style, and on the vulgate version of Hegel’s dialectic. Also a classic problem of linguistics concerning the meaning of sentences in partially unknown languages is interpreted with the aid of feedback diagrams. Even if the analysis is only qualitative, it is believed that it may serve as a useful tool for thought for both students and researchers. (shrink)

Essays discuss poetry, communication, television, form, aesthetics, bad taste, and art.

In preference aggregation a set of individuals express preferences over a set of alternatives, and these preferences have to be aggregated into a collective preference. When preferences are represented as orders, aggregation procedures are called social welfare functions. Classical results in social choice theory state that it is impossible to aggregate the preferences of a set of individuals under different natural sets of axiomatic conditions. We define a first-order language for social welfare functions and we give a complete axiomatisation for (...) this class, without having the number of individuals or alternatives specified in the language. We are able to express classical axiomatic requirements in our first-order language, giving formal axioms for three classical theorems of preference aggregation by Arrow, by Sen, and by Kirman and Sondermann. We explore to what extent such theorems can be formally derived from our axiomatisations, obtaining positive results for Sen’s Theorem and the Kirman-Sondermann Theorem. For the case of Arrow’s Theorem, which does not apply in the case of infinite societies, we have to resort to fixing the number of individuals with an additional axiom. In the long run, we hope that our approach to formalisation can serve as the basis for a fully automated proof of classical and new theorems in social choice theory. (shrink)

This is the second of a series of papers that investigate fragments of quasi-Nelson logic (QNL) from an algebraic logic standpoint. QNL, recently introduced as a common generalization of intuitionistic and Nelson’s constructive logic with strong negation, is the axiomatic extension of the substructural logic |$FL_{ew}$| (full Lambek calculus with exchange and weakening) by the Nelson axiom. The algebraic counterpart of QNL (quasi-Nelson algebras) is a class of commutative integral residuated lattices (a.k.a. |$FL_{ew}$|-algebras) that includes both Heyting and Nelson algebras (...) and can be characterized algebraically in several alternative ways. The present paper focuses on the algebraic counterpart (a class we dub quasi-Nelson implication algebras, QNI-algebras) of the implication–negation fragment of QNL, corresponding to the connectives that witness the algebraizability of QNL. We recall the main known results on QNI-algebras and establish a number of new ones. Among these, we show that QNI-algebras form a congruence-distributive variety (Cor. 3.15) that enjoys equationally definable principal congruences and the strong congruence extension property (Prop. 3.16); we also characterize the subdirectly irreducible QNI-algebras in terms of the underlying poset structure (Thm. 4.23). Most of these results are obtained thanks to twist representations for QNI-algebras, which generalize the known ones for Nelson and quasi-Nelson algebras; we further introduce a Hilbert-style calculus that is algebraizable and has the variety of QNI-algebras as its equivalent algebraic semantics. (shrink)

We look at extensions (i.e., stronger logics in the same language) of the Belnap–Dunn four-valued logic. We prove the existence of a countable chain of logics that extend the Belnap–Dunn and do not coincide with any of the known extensions (Kleene’s logics, Priest’s logic of paradox). We characterise the reduced algebraic models of these new logics and prove a completeness result for the first and last element of the chain stating that both logics are determined by a single finite logical (...) matrix. We show that the last logic of the chain is not finitely axiomatisable. (shrink)

"Eco wittily and enchantingly develops themes often touched on in his previous works, but he delves deeper into their complex nature... this collection can be read with pleasure by those unversed in semiotic theory." —Times Literary Supplement.

A recent paper by Jakl, Jung and Pultr succeeded for the first time in establishing a very natural link between bilattice logic and the duality theory of d-frames and bitopological spaces. In this paper we further exploit, extend and investigate this link from an algebraic and a logical point of view. In particular, we introduce classes of algebras that extend bilattices, d-frames and N4-lattices to a setting in which the negation is not necessarily involutive, and we study corresponding logics. We (...) provide product representation theorems for these algebras, as well as completeness, algebraizability results for the corresponding logics. (shrink)

La crisi dello strutturalismo e i confini della semiotica in un volume importante della produzione di Eco. Un libro che trova la sua continuazione ideale in 'Lector in fabula'.

The world’s press may have lost interest in the ongoing enquiry into the deep‐rooted corruption in Italian business. But what exactly was going on, and what can be done to improve matters? The writers of this authoritative study are Faculty members of the prestigious Italian Business School, SDA Bocconi, Via F. Bocconi 8, 8‐20136 Milano, where Umberto Lago lectures in Strategy and Roberto Castoldi in Accounting. They both lecture on the Business Policy course at Bocconi University.

The world’s press may have lost interest in the ongoing enquiry into the deep‐rooted corruption in Italian business. But what exactly was going on, and what can be done to improve matters? The writers of this authoritative study are Faculty members of the prestigious Italian Business School, SDA Bocconi, Via F. Bocconi 8, 8‐20136 Milano, where Umberto Lago lectures in Strategy and Roberto Castoldi in Accounting. They both lecture on the Business Policy course at Bocconi University.

A collection of essays discusses such topics as the nature of perception, the semiotic links between cognition and language, and iconism, with imaginative fables featuring animal heroes to illustrate the main points.

A literary prank leads to deadly danger in this “endlessly diverting” intellectual thriller by the author of The Name of the Rose (Time). Bored with their work, three Milanese book editors cook up an elaborate hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with occult groups across the centuries. Becoming obsessed with their own creation, they produce a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled—a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum. (...) But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real. When occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the Plan, they go so far as to kill one of the editors in their quest to gain control of the earth. Orchestrating these and other diverse characters into his multilayered semiotic adventure, Umberto Eco has created a superb cerebral entertainment. "An intellectual adventure story…sensational, thrilling, and packed with arcana."—The Washington Post Book World. (shrink)

In this book, the Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco presents a learned summary of medieval aesthetic ideas.

La crisi dello strutturalismo e i confini della semiotica in un volume importante della produzione di Eco. Un libro che trova la sua continuazione ideale in 'Lector in fabula'.