The way we represent the world in thought and language is shot through with indeterminacy: we speak of red apples and yellow apples without thereby committing to any sharp cutoff between the application of the predicate ‘red’ and of the predicate ‘yellow’. But can reality itself be indeterminate? In other words, can indeterminacy originate in the mind-independent world, and not only in our representations? If so, can the phenomenon also arise at the microscopic scale of fundamental physics? Section 1 of (...) this Element provides a brief overview of the question of indeterminacy. Section 2 discusses the thesis that the world is comprised of indeterminate objects, whereas Section 3 focuses on the thesis that there are indeterminate states of affairs. Finally, Section 4 is devoted to the case study of indeterminacy in quantum physics. (shrink)

The paper offers a systematic reconstruction of the relations that, in Husserl’s work, bind together our shared social world (“the spiritual world”) with shared intentionality. It is claimed that, by sharing experiences, persons create social reasons and that these reasons impose a normative structure on the social world. Because there are two ways in which persons can share experiences (depending on whether these experiences rest on mutual communication or on group’s identity), social normativity comes in two kinds. It is either (...) directed (it has an addressee) or it is collective or absolute (it applies to all group members). Social normativity should be distinguished from axiological normativity: The first is grounded in shared intentionality, the second in values. (shrink)

Nel 1913 Adolf Reinach pubblica I Fondamenti A Priori del Diritto Civile, opera che rappresenta senza dubbio il capolavoro del giovane fenomenologo tedesco. Il saggio si staglia sul denso sfondo di questioni semantiche, ontologiche e psicologico-descrittive dibattute a cavallo tra Otto e Novecento nei circoli fenomenologici di Monaco e Gottinga. Tali questioni, che rappresentano il vero e proprio terreno fertile dell’opera, nei Fondamenti non diventano però tema esplicito dell’indagine. Quest...

Im Aufsatz wird auf die Rolle der drei pseudo-ulpianischen Regeln eingegangen, die in der Rechtslehre bei der „Allgemeinen Einteilung der Rechtspflichten“ auftauchen und verschiedene Probleme aufwerfen. Bisher wurden wenige Versuche einer genauen Definition und einer Beantwortung dieser Probleme unternommen. Dabei stellen diese Regeln einen wichtigen Schlüssel zum besseren Verständnis der ganzen Rechtslehre dar. Ihr systematischer Stellenwert bildet das Hauptthema dieser Abhandlung.

According to Gilbert Ryle, improvisation is a basic feature of ordinary action. In this paper, we take this idea seriously. Action is improvisation, in that it is situated: It is shaped by attentive responses to environmental circumstances. This is a crucial aspect of agency. However, it is neglected by causal theories of action (Bratman; Mele) and only partially addressed by Thompson’s process-oriented theory. By resorting to Kant’s theory of judgment, we argue for understanding action performance in terms of improvisational shaping (...) of action in situ. The focus on improvisation points to a situated kind of practical rationality entailing the reciprocal shaping of intention and action instead of the ordinary instrumental kind of rationality of action as unidirectionally determined by intention. (shrink)

The paper questions the assumption (widespread in semantic—and indeed pragmatic—theory) that linguistic expressions have meaning in virtue of possessing semantic properties/content. Problems created by this assumption are discussed ...

The paper is an introduction to the third issue of the Journal for the Philosophy of Language, Mind and the Arts. The authors give an account of the theories that have most enriched the study of images since the second half of the twentieth century: analytical philosophy and visual culture studies. A distinction is made between the two philosophical traditions. On the one hand, in particular within the context of analytic philosophy, images have been studied as single entities in relationship (...) with both a referent and the perceptual or interpretive abilities of an observer. On the other hand, thanks in particular to the iconographic tradition inaugurated by Aby Warburg, images have been analyzed in their multiplicity, in their mutual relationship, both synchronically and diachronically. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractWe can, for example, understand intimately how the human endocrine systems works, and likewise the chemical nature of compounds present in our environment; but the result of the interaction cannot be deduced from any simple combination of the two knowledge sets: it's not the interacting entities that we should be studying, but the process that creates the phenomena that we witness as a result of this interaction. This is the “biodynamic interface” to which Manish Arora, Alessandro Giuliani and (...) Paul Curtin refer in their article in this issue, and it is a conceptual structure that comes into being upon interaction of entities: a new way to study interactions in complex systems and better understand emergent phenomena. (shrink)

This paper will examine the sanskrit short-poem Āta ṅkavādaśataka written in 1988 by the famous indian pandit Vagish Shastri. Although composed in a language that is 2500 year old, the Century deals with one of the most dramatic events in contemporary indian history: sikh nationalist terrorism. The poet provides both a socio-political interpretation as well as a mythological-theological one, managing to combine a traditional approach with a pronounced ideological awareness. We will both supply information on the social and historical background (...) of the phenomenon, and discuss the poetic qualities of the work. Special attention will be given to linguistic, metrical and rhetorical features, which link this contemporary composition to classical kāvya poetry. (shrink)

The label Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID) refers to a heterogeneous class of conditions whose sufferers desire a particular type of physical impairment. Variants of the desire for disability share the experiential “friction” elicited by the mismatch between the physical body and the subjective body. Perceived from childhood, body integrity dysphoria intensifies progressively throughout life, often leading sufferers to simulate disability and attempt to engage in self-injury. The contemporary scientific community agrees on the assumption that BID is a complex phenomenon that (...) involves biological, social, and psychological dimensions. The present work aims to provide a preliminary qualitative overview of the desire for permanent visual impairment through novel descriptions from a recent narrative interview we conducted. The desire for blindness appears to be extremely rare. To date, there have been very few studies investigating this phenomenon. Despite these limitations, this paper aims to describe the subjective aspect of visual dysphoria, considering its similarities and differences with other variants grouped under the label of BID. (shrink)

Wilkie 5 397) proved a “theorem of the complement” which implies that in order to establish the o-minimality of an expansion of with C∞ functions it suffices to obtain uniform bounds on the number of connected components of quantifier free definable sets. He deduced that any expansion of with a family of Pfaffian functions is o-minimal. We prove an effective version of Wilkie's theorem of the complement, so in particular given an expansion of the ordered field with finitely many C∞ (...) functions, if there are uniform and computable upper bounds on the number of connected components of quantifier free definable sets, then there are uniform and computable bounds for all definable sets. In such a case the theory of the structure is effectively o-minimal: there is a recursively axiomatized subtheory such that each of its models is o-minimal. This implies the effective o-minimality of any expansion of with Pfaffian functions. We apply our results to the open problem of the decidability of the theory of the real field with the exponential function. We show that the decidability is implied by a positive answer to the following problem ): given a language L expanding the language of ordered rings, if an L-sentence is true in every L-structure expanding the ordered field of real numbers, then it is true in every o-minimal L-structure expanding any real closed field. (shrink)

In this essay, I analyze the role of physics in Baumgarten’s founding of aesthetics. After examining for the first time his courses on physics and their relationship with aesthetics, I explore the importance of physical metaphors in the issues of aesthetic experiments and aesthetic enthusiasm, with special regard to the influence of Bacon, Boyle, and Leibniz’s doctrine of vis viva.

We argue that there is a simple, unique, reason for all quantum paradoxes, and that such a reason is not uniquely related to quantum theory. It is rather a mathematical question that arises at the intersection of logic, probability, and computation. We give our ‘weirdness theorem’ that characterises the conditions under which the weirdness will show up. It shows that whenever logic has bounds due to the algorithmic nature of its tasks, then weirdness arises in the special form of negative (...) probabilities or non-classical evaluation functionals. Weirdness is not logical inconsistency, however. It is only the expression of the clash between an unbounded and a bounded view of computation in logic. We discuss the implication of these results for quantum mechanics, arguing in particular that its interpretation should ultimately be computational rather than exclusively physical. We develop in addition a probabilistic theory in the real numbers that exhibits the phenomenon of entanglement, thus concretely showing that the latter is not specific to quantum mechanics. (shrink)

In questo lavoro vengono sviluppate alcune considerazioni sulla funzione dell’istruzione nel presente contesto storico–culturale, in particolare riguardo alla matematica. Tra i molti aspetti che rendono l’epoca attuale diversa dalle precedenti ve ne sono due che più di altri invocano la necessità di un cambiamento nelle impostazioni didattiche. Il primo è una crisi che, per durata ed estensione, appare non più come dinamica di aggiustamento all’interno di un modello ma come irreversibile degenerazione del modello stesso. Il secondo riguarda la quantità di (...) informazione a cui l’individuo ha accesso e la facilità e velocità di tale accesso. Cambiamenti così profondi provocano una domanda: i modi e i contenuti della didattica devono rimanere gli stessi o occorre ripensare l’istruzione progettando cambiamenti altrettanto irreversibili quanto lo sono quelli dell’economia e della società? Queste considerazioni ci portano a una riflessione sul rapporto tra educazione e società e, più in generale, tra cultura e società. I prodotti scientifici e culturali sono dei codici cristallizzati come idee platoniche o piuttosto acquistano valenza e significato a partire dal contesto in cui nascono? Questa domanda poi ne richiama altre ancora sul rapporto tra individuo, sistema scolastico e società. In che misura il ruolo della scuola di standardizzare la cultura è compatibile con quello di favorire la creatività e le possibilità espressive dell’individuo? E cosa significa oggi dare all’individuo gli strumenti per sviluppare al meglio le proprie possibilità? L’insegnante dovrebbe osservare, ipotizzare, sperimentare, esplorare opportunità senza pregiudizi culturali. Egli sa che molte idee che sulla carta sembrano vincenti potrebbero rivelarsi inefficaci, ma ciò non deve costituire un alibi. Se infatti si possono nutrire dei dubbi su alcune proposte di innovazione, su una cosa vi è certezza: la didattica tradizionale ha ormai poco senso ed è totalmente inadeguata rispetto alle sfide di questi e dei prossimi anni. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead famously compares the philosophical method of knowledge acquisition with the process of flying an airplane. Likewise, “shamanic flight” marks stages of cognitive processing in navigation through perceptible and imperceptible worlds. This article focuses on the cosmovision of the Amazon people Huni Kuin, the Whiteheadian method of imaginative rationalization, and the concept of Amerindian perspectivism. This study also investigates shamanism as an experience of knowledge generation. Furthermore, “shamanic flight,” as an ecstatic technique experienced in many diverse Amerindian rituals, (...) will be explored as a method in the discovery and organization of nonhuman alterities. Finally, Amazonian-based shamanic epistemology will be discussed within a “multinaturalist” ontology. (shrink)

The concepts of “improvisation” and “emergency” share interesting semantic traits. Both have a neutral meaning, according to which “improvisation” means an action developed as it is done, and “emergency” means the “surfacing” of so-mething. However, in a negative sense, “improvised” means “poorly done or exe-cuted” and “emergency” is an “accident,” a “problem” to be solved. In this contri-bution, I offer some ideas for elaborating this connection between improvisation and emergency in relation to the aesthetic realm of art.

This book has been conceived from a series of speeches which took place during the Filmforum Festival of Udine and Gorizia whose main theme was the use of moving images in the space of contemporary art. The aim of this publication is to create a scientific framework of some of the most important artistic experiences: from the use of archive images to the newest participatory practices. The book consists of essays selected during the Filmforum Festival and the MAGIS International Film (...) Studies Spring School and texts from invited researchers. It examines the ways in which the transient qualities of time have been used in contemporary moving images production and in their display. (shrink)

A presente pesquisa teve como objetivo conhecer as reflexões que emanam em curso de formação continuada para professores de Química, fundamentado por recursos de tecnologias digitais. Metodologicamente adotou-se a Pesquisa-Formação e seus aspectos procedimentais no desenvolvimento da pesquisa. No percurso que compreendem os instrumentos, produção e coleta de dados estiveram: roda de conversa, observação, anotações de campo, gravação de áudio e questionários. A fim de observar a realidade, desenvolver a formação, compreender o conjunto de procedimentos e analisar os dados, utilizou-se (...) o método indutivo. Os resultados indicaram diferentes proximidades e familiaridades dos professores em relação as TD em suas práticas pedagógicas, além disso, constatou-se que as exigências formativas da profissão docente são muito amplas frente ao advento da cibercultura. Quanto as possibilidades oferecidas no espaço de formação continuada, elas se confirmam no sentido de conhecer diferentes realidades, promover reflexão conjunta, bem como otimizar os encontros para proposição de diálogos com sugestões para dificuldades enfrentadas no cotidiano do trabalho escolar. Constatou-se que a formação continuada proposta trouxe contribuições para o fortalecimento de práticas pedagógicas para o ensino de Química, por meio de ações, trocas de experiência e participação colaborativa nas propostas pedagógicas com recursos de TD. (shrink)