1. Introduzione Perché, tra tutto ciò “che è”, scegliere di studiare proprio il denaro? Essenzialmente per due motivi. Anzitutto, col denaro abbiamo a che fare tutti i giorni, si tratta quindi di un ente che ha un ruolo rilevante nella vita dell’uomo contemporaneo, di più, direi che oggi esso abbia un ruolo centrale negli interessi degli uomini, pensiamo solo a quanti lo usano come criterio di scelta nella propria vita. Tuttavia, e qui arriviamo al secondo motivo, il denaro nella sua (...) struttur... (shrink)

This is a comprehensive analysis of the idea of libertas and its conflicting uses in the political struggles of the late Roman Republic. By reconstructing Roman political thinking about liberty against the background of Classical and Hellenistic thought, it excavates two distinct intellectual traditions on the means allowing for the preservation and the loss of libertas. Considering the interplay of these traditions in the political debates of the first century BC, Dr Arena offers a significant reinterpretation of the political struggles (...) of the time as well as a radical reappraisal of the role played by the idea of liberty in the practice of politics. She argues that, as a result of its uses in rhetorical debates, libertas underwent a form of conceptual change at the end of the Republic and came to legitimise a new course of politics, which led progressively to the transformation of the whole political system. (shrink)

Ontologies represent the standard way to model the knowledge about specific domains. This holds also for the legal domain where several ontologies have been put forward to model specific kinds of legal knowledge. Both for standard users and for law scholars, it is often difficult to have an overall view on the existing alternatives, their main features and their interlinking with the other ontologies. To answer this need, in this paper, we address an analysis of the state-of-the-art in legal ontologies (...) and we characterise them along with some distinctive features. This paper aims to guide generic users and law experts in selecting the legal ontology that better fits their needs and in understanding its specificity so that proper extensions to the selected model could be investigated. (shrink)

Ontologies represent the standard way to model the knowledge about specific domains. This holds also for the legal domain where several ontologies have been put forward to model specific kinds of legal knowledge. Both for standard users and for law scholars, it is often difficult to have an overall view on the existing alternatives, their main features and their interlinking with the other ontologies. To answer this need, in this paper, we address an analysis of the state-of-the-art in legal ontologies (...) and we characterise them along with some distinctive features. This paper aims to guide generic users and law experts in selecting the legal ontology that better fits their needs and in understanding its specificity so that proper extensions to the selected model could be investigated. (shrink)

Ontologies represent the standard way to model the knowledge about specific domains. This holds also for the legal domain where several ontologies have been put forward to model specific kinds of legal knowledge. Both for standard users and for law scholars, it is often difficult to have an overall view on the existing alternatives, their main features and their interlinking with the other ontologies. To answer this need, in this paper, we address an analysis of the state-of-the-art in legal ontologies (...) and we characterise them along with some distinctive features. This paper aims to guide generic users and law experts in selecting the legal ontology that better fits their needs and in understanding its specificity so that proper extensions to the selected model could be investigated. (shrink)

Jean Hamburger is considered the founder of the concept of medical intensive care and the first to propose the name Nephrology for the branch of medicine dealing with kidney diseases. One of the first kidney grafts in the world, in 1953, and the first dialysis session in France, in 1955, were performed under his guidance. His achievements as a writer were at least comparable: Hamburger was awarded several important literary prizes, including prix Femina, prix Balzac and the Cino del Duca (...) prize, awarded, among others, to Jorge Luis Borges and Konrad Lorenz.Here we would like to offer a selected reading of a “golden” book, “Conseils aux étudiants en medicine de mon service”, the first book dedicated to patient-physician relationship in Nephrology, written when dialysis and transplantation were becoming clinical options. The themes include: the central role of the patient, who should be known by name, profession, life style, and not by disease; the importance of the setting of the care; the need for truth-telling and for leaving hope; the role of research not only in the progression of science, but also in the daily clinical practice. (shrink)

Jean Hamburger (1909--1992) is considered the founder of the concept of medical intensive care (reanimation medicale) and the first to propose the name Nephrology for the branch of medicine dealing with kidney diseases. One of the first kidney grafts in the world (with short-term success), in 1953, and the first dialysis session in France, in 1955, were performed under his guidance. His achievements as a writer were at least comparable: Hamburger was awarded several important literary prizes, including prix Femina, prix (...) Balzac and the Cino del Duca prize (1979), awarded, among others, to Jorge Luis Borges and Konrad Lorenz.Here we would like to offer a selected reading of a "golden" book, "Conseils aux etudiants en medicine de mon service" ("Advice to the Medical Students in my Service"), the first book dedicated to patient-physician relationship in Nephrology, written when dialysis and transplantation were becoming clinical options (1963). The themes include: the central role of the patient, who should be known by name, profession, life style, and not by disease; the importance of the setting of the care; the need for truth-telling and for leaving hope; the role of research not only in the progression of science, but also in the daily clinical practice. (shrink)

We examine whether a taxpayer’s decision to choose a taxpayer-favorable characterization of income is associated with contextual and individual dimensions of that decision. Using a 2 × 2 factorial experimental design, we manipulate the prevailing social norm on whether there is a general belief that a specific form of income should be characterized as a capital gain or as ordinary income, and the group affiliation on whether the individual is making a tax characterization decision as a sole proprietor or as (...) a member of a group practice. Moreover, we measure participants’ fairness perception of characterizing the income as capital gains versus ordinary. We study the decisions of 180 graduate business and accounting students from two US business schools to explore these dimensions using a tax-ambiguous income situation. Results indicate that both contextual and individual dimensions impact taxpayer decisions. Specifically, the social norm and fairness perception of characterizing income as capital gains affects the likelihood of choosing such a characterization. Being a sole proprietor or a member of a group practice does not have any significant main effect. However, relative to all other conditions, taxpayers are most likely to characterize income as capital gains when both the social norms are for capital gains characterization and when the taxpayer is a member of a group practice. Results remain largely robust to a variety of alternative explanations. We conclude the paper with a discussion of our findings and their implications for tax policy, enforcement, and research. (shrink)

Bortolotti argues that we cannot distinguish delusions from other irrational beliefs in virtue of their epistemic features alone. Although her arguments are convincing, her analysis leaves an important question unanswered: What makes delusions pathological? In this paper I set out to answer this question by arguing that the pathological character of delusions arises from an executive dysfunction in a subject’s ability to detect relevance in the environment. I further suggest that this dysfunction derives from an underlying emotional imbalance—one that leads (...) delusional subjects to regard some contextual elements as deeply puzzling or highly significant. (shrink)

The paper addresses the problem of imaginative resistance in science, that is, why and under what circumstances imagination sometimes resists certain scenarios. In the first part, the paper presents and discusses two accounts concerning the problem and relevant for the main thesis of this study. The first position is that of Gendler, The Architecture of the Imagination: New essays on pretence, possibility and fiction, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006a), The routledge companion to philosophy of literature, Routledge, New York, 2016), (...) according to which imaginative resistance mainly concerns evaluative scenarios, presenting deviant moral attitudes. The second account examined is that of Kim et al. Advances in experimental philosophy of aesthetics, Bloomsbury, London, 2018), who insisted on the link between imaginative resistance on the one hand and counterfactual and counterdescriptive scenarios on the other. In the light of both theories, this paper discusses the importance of addressing the problem of imaginative resistance in the scientific enterprise in the light of some mechanisms of embodied simulation, based on the activity of mirror neurons and investigated within the framework of the Embodied Simulation Theory. (shrink)

(2014). Transition to Crisis-Free Development: A Myth or Reality? World Futures: Vol. 70, No. 2, pp. 93-119.

A substantial body of experimental evidence has demonstrated that labels have an impact on infant categorization processes. Yet little is known regarding the nature of the mechanisms by which this effect is achieved. We distinguish between two competing accounts: supervised name‐based categorization and unsupervised feature‐based categorization. We describe a neurocomputational model of infant visual categorization, based on self‐organizing maps, that implements the unsupervised feature‐based approach. The model successfully reproduces experiments demonstrating the impact of labeling on infant visual categorization reported in (...) Plunkett, Hu, and Cohen (2008). It mimics infant behavior in both the familiarization and testing phases of the procedure, using a training regime that involves only single presentations of each stimulus and using just 24 participant networks per experiment. The model predicts that the observed behavior in infants is due to a transient form of learning that might lead to the emergence of hierarchically organized categorical structure and that the impact of labels on categorization is influenced by the perceived similarity and the sequence in which the objects are presented. The results suggest that early in development, say before 12 months old, labels need not act as invitations to form categories nor highlight the commonalities between objects, but they may play a more mundane but nevertheless powerful role as additional features that are processed in the same fashion as other features that characterize objects and object categories. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a tripartite metaphysics of intentional mental states, according to which mental states are divided into subject, content, and attitude, against recent attempts at eliminating the attitude component (e.g., Montague, Oxford studies in philosophy of mind, 2022, 2, Oxford University Press). I suggest that a metaphysics composed of only subject and content cannot account for (a) multisensory perceptual experiences and (b) phenomenological differences between episodes of perception and imagination. Finally, I suggest that some of the motivations (...) behind the rejection of the attitude component can be accommodated within the tripartite framework. (shrink)

In spatial sequence synaesthesia ordinal stimuli are perceived as arranged in peripersonal space. Using fMRI, we examined the neural bases of SSS and colour synaesthesia for spoken words in a late-blind synaesthete, JF. He reported days of the week and months of the year as both coloured and spatially ordered in peripersonal space; parts of the days and festivities of the year were spatially ordered but uncoloured. Words that denote time-units and triggered no concurrents were used in a control condition. (...) Both conditions inducing SSS activated the occipito-parietal, infero-frontal and insular cortex. The colour area hOC4v was engaged when the synaesthetic experience included colour. These results confirm the continued recruitment of visual colour cortex in this late-blind synaesthetes. Synaesthesia also involved activation in inferior frontal cortex, which may be related to spatial memory and detection, and in the insula, which might contribute to audiovisual integration related to the processing of inducers and concurrents. (shrink)

Several theories propose that one of the core functions of inner speech (IS) is to support subjects in the completion of cognitively effortful tasks, especially those involving executive functions (EF). In this paper we focus on two populations who notoriously encounter difficulties in performing EF tasks, namely, people diagnosed with schizophrenia who experience auditory verbal hallucinations (Sz-AVH) and people within the Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). We focus on these two populations because they represent two different ways in which IS can (...) fail to help in EF tasks, which can be illustrative for other mental conditions. First, we review the main components of EF (Section 1). Then we explain the functions that IS is taken to perform in the domain of EF (Section 2) and review the evidence concerning problems about EF in the two populations of our study: Sz-AVH (Section 3) and ASC (Section 4). After this we further detail our account about what a properly functioning IS can do for both populations and how different IS profiles may impact EF performance: in the case of Sz-AVH, the uncontrolled and intrusive character of IS negatively affects EF performance, whereas in ASC, EF is not sufficiently supported by IS, given the tendency in this population to present a diminished use of IS (Section 5). We finally briefly discuss Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Developmental Language Disorders (DLD). (shrink)

Regulatory schema has shifted from government to governance-based systems. One particular form that has emerged at the international level is the multi-stakeholder voluntary code of conduct (MSVC). We argue that such codes are not only simply mechanisms by which various stakeholders attempt to govern the action of the corporation but also systems by which each stakeholder attempts to gain or retain some legitimacy goal. Each stakeholder is motivated by strategic legitimacy goal to join the code, and once a member, is (...) also required to assist in maintaining the institutional legitimacy of the code, resulting in “networked legitimacy.” We begin our analysis of these systems by first exploring the growth and structure of such MSVCs, and then building an analytical framework using strategic and institutional legitimacy as they apply to such MSVCs. We contribute to the codes of conduct literature by developing the construct of networked legitimacy from strategic and institutional legitimacy. We then apply our framework to the United Nations Global Compact, one of the predominant MSVCs today. In doing so, we: (1) demonstrate how different stakeholders are pursuing different types of legitimacy through their participation in the code, (2) examine the specific opportunities and risks in terms of what we have called “networked legitimacy” posed by the institutional design of actual MSVCs, and (3) create an argument for three pillars supporting the legitimacy of MSVCs. (shrink)

v. 1. Commentaria in Aristotelem Armeniaca-Davidis Opera.

With every new recursive relation R on a recursive model , we consider the images of R under all isomorphisms from to other recursive models. We call the set of Turing degrees of these images the degree spectrum of R on , and say that R is intrinsically r.e. if all the images are r.e. C. Ash and A. Nerode introduce an extra decidability condition on , expressed in terms of R. Assuming this decidability condition, they prove that R is (...) intrinsically r.e. if and only if a natural recursive-syntactic condition is satisfied. We show that, while a recursive non-intrinsically r.e. relation may have a two element degree spectrum, a non-intrinsically r.e. relation which satisfies the Ash–Nerode decidability condition has an infinite degree spectrum. We also study several related decidability conditions and their effects on the degree spectra, including some conditions which are sufficient to obtain every r.e. degree in a spectrum. (shrink)

Computability theory is the mathematical theory of algorithms, which explores the power and limitations of computation. Classical computability theory formalized the intuitive notion of an algorithm and provided a theoretical basis for digital computers. It also demonstrated the limitations of algorithms and showed that most sets of natural numbers and the problems they encode are not decidable (Turing computable). Important results of modern computability theory include the classification of the computational difficulty of sets and problems. Arithmetical and hyperarithmetical hierarchies and (...) the Turing degrees provide important measures of the level of such difficulty. There are uncountably many Turing degrees and they are partially ordered. These classifications are used in contemporary research to investigate the complexity of problems in modern computable mathematics, for example, regarding structures and their properties. (shrink)

This book presents a collection of chapters on the nature, flexibility and acquisition of lexical categories. These long-debated issues are looked at anew by exploring the hypothesis of lexical polycategoriality –according to which lexical forms are not fully, or univocally, specified for lexical category– in a wide number of unrelated languages, and within different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Twenty languages are thoroughly analyzed. Apart from French, Arabic and Hebrew, the volume includes mostly understudied languages, spoken in New Guinea, Australia, New (...) Caledonia, Amazonia, Meso- and North America. Resulting from a long-standing collaboration between leading international experts, this book brings under one cover new data analyses and results on word categories from the linguistic and acquisitional point of view. It will be of the utmost interest to researchers, teachers and graduate students in different fields of linguistics (morpho-syntax, semantics, typology), language acquisition, as well as psycholinguistics, cognition and anthropology. (shrink)