Recently the complexity of discursive practices has been widely acknowledged by the humanities and social sciences. In fact, to know anything is to know in terms of one or more discourse. The "discursive turn" in psychology may be considered as a new paradigm oriented to a correct study of (wo)man only if it is able to grasp the semiotical ground of psychic experience both as an "effort after meaning" and as a "struggle over meaning." In this sense the notion of (...) "diatext" has been proposed as a contribution in working out a psychosemiotical approach to understand how the discursive practices assign subject-positions to the agents of each interlocution scenario. (shrink)

Giuseppe Gallis konsequentes Streben nach einer angemessenen Berücksichtigung beider Pole, des Subjektpols ebenso wie des Objektpols, sowohl in der Forschung als auch in allen Bereichen des menschlichen Lebens kommt im vorliegenden Sammelband in allen Arbeiten zum Tragen. Galli eröffnet damit auch neue Felder f8r die gestalttheoretische Forschungs- und Anwendungspraxis. Er erschließt Themen, die nicht zuletzt auch f8r die medizinischen, philosophischen, psychologischen und psychotherapeutischen Aufgabenstellungen zentral sind. Er plädiert nicht nur allgemein für einen dialogischen Ansatz in der zwischenmenschlichen Begegnung, er (...) führt in einer Reihe von Aufsätzen in diesem Sammelband auch sehr konkret die Fruchtbarkeit eines solchen Dialogs mit der Gedankenwelt eines Norbert Elias, Szvetan Todorovic und Paul Ricoeur für eine Bereicherung und Weiterentwicklung der Gestalttheorie vor Augen. (shrink)

CHAPTER Structure and function In physical systems made by a large number of basic constituents one can observe collective properties which find their ...

The constructive reformulation of the semantic theory suggests two basic principles to be assumed: first, the distinction between proper knowledge, expressed in judgemental form, and the assertion conditions for such knowledge; second, ...

This paper proposes a critical analysis of that interpretation of the Nāgārjunian doctrine of the two truths as summarized—by both Mark Siderits and Jay L. Garfield—in the formula: “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth”. This ‘semantic reading’ of Nāgārjuna’s theory, despite its importance as a criticism of the ‘metaphysical interpretations’, would in itself be defective and improbable. Indeed, firstly, semantic interpretation presents a formal defect: it fails to clearly and explicitly express that which it contains logically; (...) the previously mentioned formula must necessarily be completed by: “the conventional truth is that nothing is conventional truth”. Secondly, after having recognized what Siderits’ and Garfield’s analyses contain implicitly, other logical and philological defects in their position emerge: the existence of the ‘conventional’ would appear—despite the efforts of semantic interpreters to demonstrate quite the contrary—definitively inconceivable without the presupposition of something ‘real’; moreover, the number of verses in Nāgārjuna that are in opposition to the semantic interpretation (even if we grant semantic interpreters that these verses do not justify a metaphysical reconstruction of Nagarjuna’s doctrine) would seem too great and significant to be ignored. (shrink)

Giuseppe Fornari’s groundbreaking inquiry shows that Friedrich Nietzsche’s neglected importance as a religious thinker and his “untimeliness” place him at the forefront of modern thought. Capable of exploiting his own failures as a cognitive tool to discover what other philosophers never wanted to see, Nietzsche ultimately drove himself to mental collapse. Fornari analyzes the tragic reports of Nietzsche’s madness and seeks out the cause of this self-destructive destiny, which, he argues, began earlier than his rivalry with the composer and (...) polemicist Richard Wagner, dating back to the premature loss of Nietzsche’s father. Dramatic experience enabled Nietzsche to detect a more general tendency of European culture, leading to his archaeological and prophetic discovery of the death of God, which he understood as a primordial assassination from which all humankind took its origin. Fornari concludes that Nietzsche’s fatal rebellion against a Christian awareness, which he identified as the greatest threat to his plan, led him to become one and the same not only with Dionysus but also with the crucified Christ. His effort, Fornari argues, was a dramatic way to recognize the silent, inner meaning of Christ’s figure, and perhaps to be forgiven. (shrink)

The recent in vitro derivation of gamete‐like cells from mouse embryonic stem (mES) cells is a major breakthrough and lays down several challenges, both for the further scientific investigation and for the bioethical and biolegal discourse. We refer here to these cells as gamete‐like (sperm‐like or oocyte‐like, respectively), because at present there is still no evidence that these cells behave fully like bona fide sperm or oocytes, lacking the fundamental proof, i.e. combination with a normally derived gamete of the opposite (...) sex to yield a normal individual. However, the results published so far do show that these cells share some defining features of gametes. We discuss these results in the light of the bioethical and legal questions that are likely to arise would the same process become possible with human embryonic stem (hES) cells. (shrink)

So-called Locke's thesis is the view that no two things of the same kind may coincide, that is, may be completely in the same place at the same time. A number of counter-examples to this view have been proposed. In this paper, some new and arguably more convincing counter-examples to Locke's thesis are presented. In these counter-examples, a particular entity (a string, a rope, a net, or similar) is interwoven to obtain what appears to be a distinct, thicker entity of (...) the same kind. It is argued that anyone who subscribes to certain standard metaphysical arguments, which are generally taken for granted in the debate about Locke's thesis, is virtually compelled to accept the counter-examples. (shrink)

This paper introduces a multi-modal polymorphic type theory to model epistemic processes characterized by trust, defined as a second-order relation affecting the communication process between sources and a receiver. In this language, a set of senders is expressed by a modal prioritized context, whereas the receiver is formulated in terms of a contextually derived modal judgement. Introduction and elimination rules for modalities are based on the polymorphism of terms in the language. This leads to a multi-modal non-homogeneous version of a (...) type theory, in which we show the embedding of the modal operators into standard group knowledge operators. (shrink)

We provide a full characterization of computational error states for information systems. The class of errors considered is general enough to include human rational processes, logical reasoning, scientific progress and data processing in some functional programming languages. The aim is to reach a full taxonomy of error states by analysing the recovery and processing of data. We conclude by presenting machine-readable checking and resolve algorithms.

This paper presents a systematic discussion, mainly for non-economists, on economic approaches to the concept of sustainable development. As a first step, the concept of sustainability is extensively discussed. As a second step, the argument that it is not possible to consider sustainability only from an economic or ecological point of view is defended; issues such as economic-ecological integration, inter-generational and intra-generational equity are considered of fundamental importance. Two different economic approaches to environmental issues, i.e. neo-classical environmental economics and ecological (...) economics, are compared. Some key differences such as weak versus strong sustainability, commensurability versus incommensurability and ethical neutrality versus different values acceptance are pointed out. (shrink)

La Redazione di Nóema ha invitato a una riflessione tre matematici contemporanei molto noti – non solo in ambito specialistico – che sono da sempre particolarmente attenti al dialogo con la filosofia. In queste pagine Giuseppe Longo (ENS, Parigi), Alessandro Sarti (EHESS, Parigi) e Fernando Zalamea (Università di Bogotà) rispondono ad alcune domande poste dai membri della rivista, interloquendo uno con l’altro e chiarendo come è da considerare, a loro modo di vedere, una ricerca che getti luce sulla genesi (...) del senso matematico tenendo conto delle suggestioni che vengono da alcuni filosofi e delle operazioni condotte con uno sguardo sintetico, piuttosto che analitico e obiettivista. Nel primo contributo, Giuseppe Longo, rispondendo a domande sulla matematica e sul suo senso, accenna a come questa ridisegna il mondo a sua guisa, in effetti in guise differenti, seguendo storie diverse. L’invenzione di concetti e strutture ne è al cuore: l’audacia, ad esempio, di proporre “contorni”, “bordi” del mondo che non esistono, ma che lo ritagliano e qualificano con grande efficacia e stabilità concettuale. In fisica, nelle nostre culture, la matematica ha proposto un solidissimo impianto di tipo teologico ancor oggi attuale, ma certo inadeguato per parlare del vivente. Longo accennerà ad alcuni tentativi di superare tali schemi metafisici e cambiar di prospettiva. Nel secondo contributo, Alessandro Sarti chiarisce come la matematica non si limiti a stabilire regole e invarianti, ma apra anche nuovi campi di indagine e nuove possibilità. È possibile concepire un divenire differenziale eterogeneo nello spazio e nel tempo, dove causalità e composizione non siano in contraddizione? Si tratta di quelle dinamiche che Deleuze e Guattari hanno definito eterogenesi, in cui gli spazi di possibilità non sono invarianti ma parte del processo. Sarti propone un viaggio attraverso le dinamiche differenziali che spaziano dalla fisica allo strutturalismo dinamico fino all’eterogenesi, intesa come materialismo immaginativo. Queste “_mathématiques de la pensée_” sono strettamente intrecciate con la “_pensée des mathématiques_” di Longo e Zalamea. Nel terzo contributo, Fernando Zalamea illustra come la matematica sia una scienza complessa, che integra 1) immaginazione (abduzione nei termini di Peirce), 2) ragione (deduzione), 3) adeguazione (induzione). Il matematico ridisegna il mondo nel costante oscillare tra l’1-2-3 peirceano, applicato alle strutture matematiche. Una matematica rigida, che cerca solo i propri fondamenti, ha un senso molto ristretto, prezioso per studiare con estrema attenzione frammenti della logica classica, della teoria degli insiemi e dei numeri elementari, ma inutile per osservare la vera matematica in azione (teoria avanzata dei numeri, algebra astratta, topologia, variabile complessa, geometria algebrica, geometria differenziale, analisi funzionale). Per questo sono fondamentali altre prospettive, come le logiche non classiche, la teoria delle categorie, la teoria dei fasci, che servono da base per visioni filosofiche non restrittive e non analitiche. (shrink)

This paper proposes an interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of the two truths that considers saṃvṛti and paramārtha-satya two visions of reality on which the Buddhas, for soteriological and pedagogical reasons, build teachings of two types: respectively in agreement with (for example, the teaching of the Four Noble Truths) or in contrast to (for example, the teaching of emptiness) the category of svabhāva. The early sections of the article show to what extent the various current interpretations of the Nāgārjunian doctrine of (...) the dve satye—despite their sometimes even macroscopic differences—have a common tendency to consider the notion of śūnyatā as a teaching not based on, but equivalent to supreme truth. This equivalence—philologically questionable—leads to interpretative paths that prove inevitably aporetic: indeed, according to whether the interpretation of śūnyatā is ‘metaphysical’ or ‘anti-metaphysical’, it gives rise to readings of Nāgārjuna’s thought incompatible, respectively, with anti-metaphysical and realistic types of verses traceable in the works of the author of the Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā (MMK). On the contrary, by giving more emphasis to the expression samupāśritya (“based on”), which recurs in MMK.24.8, and therefore, by epistemologically separating the notion of śūnyatā from the notion of paramārtha-satya (and of some of its conceptual equivalents such as nirvāṇa, tattva and dharmatā), we may obtain an interpretation—at once realistic and anti-metaphysical—of the theory of the two truths compatible with the vast majority (or even totality) of Nāgārjuna’s verses. (shrink)

Giuseppe Bronzini draws up the balance sheet of fifteen months of fully public work by the Convention that brought together the European countries for the drafting of a political constitution. Even though the debates have not clearly decided between an as-yet-to-be defined federalism able to give new impetus to the European social model and a functional, strongly liberal interstate cooperation, still we see all the signs of the decline of sovereignist positions, along with the subversive potential of some of (...) the constitutional texts. (shrink)

In this paper Giuseppe Bianco analyzes the ideological and epistemological coordinates and the space of possibilities proper to the cluster of philosophy students of which Tournier was part between 1943 and 1948; to do so he reconstructs their evolution in a context dominated by the currents of Neo-Scholasticism, Personalism, phenomenology, Marxism, and Existentialism. Finally, he focuses on the importance of Jean-Paul Sartre for these young people, underlining their particular interpretation of his work.

In one of his last writings, Life: Experience and Science, Michel Foucault argued that twentieth-century French philosophy could be read as dividing itself into two divergent lines: on the one hand, we have a philosophical stream which takes individual experience as its point of departure, conceiving it as irreducible to science. On the other hand, we have an analysis of knowledge which takes into account the concrete productions of the mind, as are found in science and human practices. In order (...) to account for this division, Foucault opposed epistemologists such as Cavaillès and Canguilhem to phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty and Sartre but, also, and more particularly, he opposed Poincaré to Bergson. The latter was presented by Foucault as being the key-figure of the?philosophy of experience? at the beginning of the twentieth century. Fifteen years later, in his Deleuze and in the Logics of Worlds, Alain Badiou again uses this dual structure in his interpretation of the past hundred years of French thought. He employs a series of oppositional couples: himself and Deleuze, Lautmann and Sartre, and, finally, Brunschvicg and Bergson. On the one hand a?mathematical Platonism? and on the other a?philosophy of vital interiority.? This Manichean reading of philosophy, and the strategic use of the figure of Bergson has, itself, a long tradition. It was also proposed by Althusser who, following Bachelard, opposed his standpoint to any form of?empiricism.? Althusser developed his thought from a tradition of Marxist thinkers and ideologists, which included Politzer's and Nizan's critique of bourgeois philosophy and, even before that, neo-Kantians such as the philosophers of the Revue de métaphysique et de morale. The aim of this essay is to deconstruct and to put into its precise context of production this series of genealogies which entails the mobilization of Bergsonism and of the name?Bergson.? By doing so, I hope to weight the importance of Bergsonism in twentieth-century French philosophy, in both its?positive? and its?negative? aspect. The essay will proceed regressively, taking into account figures such as Althusser, Badiou, Deleuze, Foucault, Canguilhem, Cavaillès, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, but also Polizer, Brunschvicg and Alain. The conclusion of the essay is an attempt at reading the?Bergson renaissance? in the light of new discoveries in genetics and the cognitive sciences and to tie it to the renewal of studies in the history of French philosophy. (shrink)

The Editors’ vision for this volume is that it should be a selection of essays, contributed by the academics who have worked, studied, collaborated and disagreed with Göran Sundholm; engaging in debated issues and exploring untouched areas maybe only suggested or hinted at in Sundholm’s own work. "Acts of Knowledge" characterizes the papers contained in this volume as bringing something scientifically valuable in their respective fields: all the papers present cutting-edge research in their own style, contributing to very lively debates (...) occurring in the literature in logic, philosophical logic and history of logic. But it also hints at Göran’s constructivist background, which has been an influence or a challenge for many of the contributors. "History, Philosophy and Logic" refers directly to Göran's broad interests into the various aspects of the Philosophy of Logic, Mathematics, and Language, their origins and development, especially with the focus on the Modern History of Logic and the philosophical implications thereof. The readers will find scattered all along this volume pieces of -- and reflections on -- all these themes. (shrink)

Various conceptual approaches to the notion of information can currently be traced in the literature in logic and formal epistemology. A main issue of disagreement is the attribution of truthfulness to informational data, the so called Veridicality Thesis (Floridi 2005). The notion of Epistemic Constructive Information (Primiero 2007) is one of those rejecting VT. The present paper develops a formal framework for ECI. It extends on the basic approach of Artemov’s logic of proofs (Artemov 1994), representing an epistemic logic based (...) on dependent justifications, where the definition of information relies on a strict distinction from factual truth. The definition obtained by comparison with a Normal Modal Logic translates a constructive logic for “becoming informed”: its distinction from the logic of “being informed”—which internalizes truthfulness—is essential to a general evaluation of information with respect to truth. The formal disentanglement of these two logics, and the description of the modal version of the former as a weaker embedding into the latter, allows for a proper understanding of the Veridicality Thesis with respect to epistemic states defined in terms of information. (shrink)

Certaines critiques décoloniales des concepts d’hybridation, de pensée-frontière et de métissage mènent parfois sur le terrain des surenchères identitaires. Certaines analyses affirment que le capitalisme néolibéral ferait son miel des concepts contestataires d’anthropophagie politique qui ont animé la pensée décoloniale brésilienne, d’Oswald de Andrade à Suely Rolnik. Mais, dit Giuseppe Cocco, « le capitalisme contemporain n’est pas anthropophage, il est parasitaire » : s’il aime le métissage, ce n’est pas pour l’assimilation de l’autre, mais pour son extraction sans partage (...) ; il n’est pas une anthropophagie (manger l’autre, et se laisser changer par lui), mais une anthropoémie (le vomir). Ce pourquoi il reste d’actualité de cannibaliser le décolonial. (shrink)

This is a Polish translation of a fragment of Institutiones Philosophicae ad usum studiosorum Academiae Polocensis by Giuseppe Angiolini S.J. It corresponds to an article, entitled On Being, its Essence and Existence. The original Latin text is also included in the article.

"El método seguido puede llamarse con una sola palabra comparativo. He tratado, en efecto, de que las ideas y los hechos procedan a la par, ayudándome también a veces del estudio de los vocablos, con los cuales las unas y los otros han sido expresados; he hecho que caminasen de frente los varios pueblos que concurrieron más eficazmente al desenvolvimiento de las instituciones jurídicas y sociales, así como también a los diferentes sistemas escogidos por los autores, y he procurado, por (...) fin, poner de relieve la correlación constante entre la vida económica, jurídica y moral en los distintos períodos de la historia y el concierto admirable que siempre se manifiesta entre las varias partes del organismo social. Presento este ensayo tal como ha llegado a ser después de varios años de trabajo y estudio, debiendo limitarme a hacer observar que, por razón de la lógica que lo rige, las varias partes de que consta se suponen recíprocamente por modo tal, que los primeros capítulos son la preparación indispensable para la inteligencia de los siguientes, y los últimos sirven de ilustración y complemento a los primeros. Por mi parte habré alcanzado el objeto que me proponía si logro infundir en alguno de mis lectores la profunda convicción que tengo de que el estudio del mundo social y humano ofrece tantos goces y no menores maravillas al sociólogo, como al físico y al naturalista el estudio del mundo material y orgánico, y que las investigaciones libros y sin prejuicios acerca de las instituciones primitivas de la sociedad, lejos de conmover las eternas convicciones del género huma-no, logran al fin confirmarlas científicamente". Giuseppe Carle. (shrink)