In an effort to produce new and more sustainable technologies, designers have turned to nature in search of inspiration and innovation. Biomimetic design (from the Greek bios, life, mimesis, imitation) is the conscious imitation of biological models to solve today's technical and ecological challenges. Nowadays numerous different approaches exist that take inspiration from nature as a model for design, such as biomimicry, biomimetics, bionics, permaculture, ecological engineering, etc. This variety of practices comes in turn with a wide range of different (...) promises, including sustainability, increased resilience, multi-functionality, and a lower degree of risk. How are we to make sense of this heterogeneous amalgam of existing practices and technologies, and of the numerous promises attached to them? We suggest that a typology of biomimetic approaches would provide a useful hermeneutic framework to understand the different tensions that pull this variegated landscape in different directions. This is achieved through a critical analysis of the literature in different fields of biomimetic design and the philosophy of biomimicry, in order to derive conceptual and normative assumptions concerning the meaning and value of the imitation of nature. These two dimensions are then intersected to derive an analytical grid composed of six different biomimetic types, which enable the classification of existing and possible biomimetic approaches, practices, and technologies according to their specific conceptual assumptions and guiding norms. (shrink)

My aim in this tentative text is framing political philosophy in the planetary context of Anthropocene. I will explore the political meaning of three non-excluding scenarios (emergencies, transitions and collapse) in order to demand the adequate doses of realism and utopianism to survive as an eco-dependent humanity. The climate emergency implies the acceptance of resilience as a political objective from the starting point of our radical vulnerability. We need a practical political philosophy that makes room for hope.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Three Poems on MemoryAlessio ZanelliMICROCHIMERISMI feel them,the way I feel the stardust seeping through my skin.I feel them in the light and in the dark,in absolute silence and in deafening noise,in peaceful days and in gloomy days,while awake and while asleep.They whisper to me who I am,where I came from and where I'm headed.They uphold mewhen my body falters or my mind breaks down.I feel them loud and cleareven (...) though turmoil surrounds me,and I wonder whether she can feel them in turn,wherever she is now.And if our swapped cells don't do the job,I'm sure we'll join anewas waves afloat in spacetime,liminal ripples invisibly entwinedthat eternally propagate within the whole,within the cosmic womb astir with zillions more. [End Page 465]TIMEHanging on in quiet desperation—Roger Waters1They were right. We would get to know the hoax.They had ridden the carousel before.The swallows have always been returning,only fewer with every passing year,though they have never really gone away.Now they speak to me in dreams, one by one.The time has come. To regret time. And all.We are drops off the stalactites of time,settling the concretions of memory.And the sun burns on. Up and down around. [End Page 466]WHIFFSLight has no edge, darkness has no center, both have shape.They visit with me briefly, quick life whiffs,between a misty trip into nowhere and the next.They speak a few words, terse phrases,neat like scratches of diamond over limestone,in a forgotten lively voice,from a time long before they left.I gather nothing, mostly, no real sense.I retrieve a very distant memory, every so often,as if arising from yesterday.They hardly show themselves while speaking,and when they do I can but have a fleeting glance.Their face shines upon an invisible body,illuminates the whole ambience,belongs in an older past,not the last I have known with them.It is a face from youth,one I am allowed to recall only when they appear.Why do they come if they cannot stay?How is it they take the long way around?What do they mean?Maybe youth is the message.Maybe they just want me to thinkI have been young, we all have, together.There could be more I miss, I must still realize.I may do one day, or never, but it is already enough.A few words and a face.A darting glow.Whiffs.Edge has light, center has darkness, both have no shape.Cremona, ItalyAlessio ZanelliCremona, ItalyFootnotes1. Pink Floyd, "Time," by Roger Waters, on The Dark Side of the Moon, Abbey Road Studios, originally released 1973.Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

This is a critical review of the book Variational Approach to Gravity Field Theories - From Newton to Einstein and Beyond (2017), written by the Italian astrophysicist Alberto Vecchiato. In his work, Vecchiato shows that physics, as we know it, can be built up from simple mathematical models that become more complex step by step by gradually introducing new principles. The reader is invited to follow the steps that lead from classical physics to relativity and to understand how this happens (...) and why. Moreover, while presenting the variational approach to gravity field theories in a clear and elegant manner, Vecchiato shows a constant worry in leading the readers in such a way that they understand the relevance of what the author considers to be the most powerful technique and unifying concept of theoretical physics - and how it works. Each chapter is enriched with exercises, of which a step-by-step solution is offered, so that the reader can gain a real insight into the topic presented and follow the reading as fruitfully as possible. The most innovative aspect of the book, however, is not the rigorousness and the clarity of the treatment of the variational approach, but rather the point of view that Vecchiato keeps and that the reader is led to endorse too: physics is a human enterprise, prone to error and open to improvement, and not a complete and definite system of truths about our world. (shrink)

SOCREAL 2013 : 3rd International Workshop on Philosophy and Ethics of Social Reality 2013. Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, 25-27 October 2013. Session 2 : Imperatives and Norms.

The evaluation of the quality of the processes of educational and social inclusion of people with disabilities is considered a key element in the improvement of their living conditions. The research presented here is part of the analyses carried out in Italy and abroad on the identification of indicators and categories able to provide a representative picture of the processes of school inclusion by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the system in local contexts. Assessing the quality of inclusive education (...) is complex because the contextual aspects of educational interventions cannot be ignored. In a research-action approach, the study analyses the Italian situation in the regions of Lazio and Campania through the point of view of 291 specialized teachers or in the process of specialization in the support of pupils with special educational needs Their evaluations, based on a scale from 1 (insufficient) to 5 (excellent), were obtained through a structured questionnaire that collects their opinions on cultural and educational aspects, on management, organisational and collaborative activities between teachers, school directors, local authorities and families, and finally on elements of a pedagogical and didactic nature necessary for quality school inclusion. The descriptive and inferential statistical analysis of the aggregate data sketches a school whose strength in terms of inclusion lies in pedagogical and didactic planning. On the other hand, collaborative aspects, especially synergies between schools and local authorities, are pointed out and hinder effective co-planning of different types of support. These results therefore argue in favour of a systematization of integrated networks of support services for all pupils with special educational needs Regarding training, teachers generally have a negative view of in-service training, which should be deepened and extended to all categories of teachers. The article concludes on the need to promote the development and systematization of qualitative research and documentary collections on good practices of inclusive education in schools. (shrink)

The primacy of the act of observation, one of the hallmarks of empiricism, found new life in the centrality of the distinction, made in Bas van Fraassen's constructive empiricism, between observable and unobservable. As Elliott Sober have pointed out, however, it is not clear what van Fraassen understands by observing an object. Worse, the Dutch philosopher does not seem to consider that a clarification of this point is necessary. This, of course, represents an important lacuna in a position generally considered (...) as the main reference for modern empiricism. My goal is to take up again the counterfactual conditionals characterizing perception that Otávio Bueno presented in 2011 in this journal, and also to consider the observability and the existence criteria proposed by Filip Buekens and Michel Ghins, in order to get to a definition of observation that should give van Fraassen's observability concept the support it actually lacks, but without presenting itself as an ad hoc solution. (shrink)

Constructive empiricism is a prominent anti-realist position whose aim is to make sense of science. As is well known, it also crucially depends on the distinction between what is observable and what scientific theories postulate but is unobservable to us. Accordingly, adopting an adequate notion of observability is in order, on pain of failing to achieve the goal of grasping science and its aim. Bas van Fraassen, the originator of constructive empiricism, identifies observation with unaided (at least in principle) human (...) perception. So far, though, he has not put forward any convincing argument to support this (unpopular) stand. He did it on the grounds that it is (allegedly) a matter for empirical investigation and not for philosophical analysis. Nonetheless, he seems to have introduced a criterion for observability that is not the result of any scientific research and is not supported by any scientific theory. Countering his own words, he seems to have instead reflected qua philosopher on how an empiricist should interpret the meaning of the verb ‘to observe’. And then tried to defend his point of view by means of metaphors and analogies. But the very same metaphors and analogies van Fraassen put forward could be used to back up the opposite position. Worse, not only does his criterion counter common sense, it does not work either. Perhaps the time has come for van Fraassen to put forward or endorse alternative criteria of observability. (shrink)

El fenómeno migratorio es creador de transnacionalidad. En este contexto se replantea el carácter restrictivo de la ciudadanía ligada a la mera garantía de los derechos de los individuos pertenecientes al Estado-Nación. La discusión sobre la desterritorialización de la ciudadanía está abierta y no puede desligarse de los cambios propiciados por la globalización. Sin embargo, la perspectiva de género a la que obliga el fenómeno de la feminización de las migraciones, tanto en el plano normativo como en los estudios empíricos, (...) es, hoy por hoy, marginal. Visibilizar las injusticias estructurales ligadas al género tanto en las sociedades emisoras como receptoras de inmigración es una clave para reproponer un nuevo modelo de ciudadanía, con especial incidencia en la igualdad y en los derechos sociales y económicos, coherente con el marco normativo de los derechos humanos. (shrink)

¿Qué cabida tienen, o pueden tener, las éticas y las políticas de la alteridad en el horizonte filosófico actual? En el contexto de la filosofía española reciente, la obra de Gabriel Bello Reguera (Dehesas, León, 1943) ha afrontado el reto ético-político que plantea el tomarse en serio la alteridad. Ha desarrollado su carrera académica en la Universidad de La Laguna como catedrático de Filosofía Moral y en su trayectoria cabría señalar tres giros fundamentales, si bien relacionados entre sí. El primero (...) podemos derivarlo del impacto de la lectura de la obra del neopragmatista Richard Rorty, que incidió en su crítica al fundamentalismo autoritario de la tradición filosófica despertó su interés por la narratividad, ligada a la conversación, como herramienta edificante de la ética. El segundo es debido a la influencia del pensamiento de Emmanuel Lévinas, a partir del cual problematiza las relaciones entre las categorías éticas de identidad, diferencia y alteridad. El tercero, y más reciente, le llevará al terreno del análisis de las migraciones internacionales en su contexto postcolonial como acuciante asunto necesitado, precisamente, de un nuevo marco filosófico, ético y político. En este libro colectivo, a través de la obra de Gabriel Bello, afrontamos con rigor la contextualización de las éticas y las políticas de la alteridad, proseguimos la discusión en torno a estas a la vez que elaboramos, conjuntamente, un balance crítico de una línea de investigación, de sus posibilidades y límites. Con todo ello, además, seguimos la tradición de prestar reconocimiento y gratitud a nuestros maestros y a nuestras maestras. En este caso, reconocemos la trayectoria docente e investigadora del Profesor Gabriel Bello Reguera y su dedicación rigurosa y concienzuda a la vida universitaria. Su obra, que, recorre cuatro décadas, es testimonio de cómo la filosofía en el contexto del Estado español, tras abandonar el erial instigado por el franquismo, participa de los debates transnacionales actuales en los que las éticas y las políticas de la alteridad, especialmente, plantean desafíos insoslayables. Hemos, pues, recreado el ritual académico del Homenaje, algo tan central en la filosofía alemana como la Festschrift, con el deseo de dotarlo del sentido más relevante que, a nuestro juicio, puede tener: el del debate intelectual crítico. (shrink)

Biobased production has been promoted as a sustainable alternative to fossil resources. However, controversies over its impact on sustainability highlight societal concerns, value tensions and uncertainties that have not been taken into account during its development. In this work, the consideration of stakeholders’ values in a biorefinery design project is investigated. Value sensitive design is a promising approach to the design of technologies with consideration of stakeholders’ values, however, it is not directly applicable for complex systems like biorefineries. Therefore, some (...) elements of VSD, such as the identification of relevant values and their connection to a technology’s features, are brought into biorefinery design practice. Midstream modulation, an approach to promoting the consideration of societal aspects during research and development activities, is applied to promote reflection and value considerations during the design decision making. As result, it is shown that MM interventions during the design process led to new design alternatives in support of stakeholders' values, and allowed to recognize and respond to emerging value tensions within the scope of the project. In this way, the present work shows a novel approach for the technical investigation of VSD, especially for biorefineries. Also, based on this work it is argued that not only reflection, but also flexibility and openness are important for the application of VSD in the context of biorefinery design. (shrink)

Le livre refermé, le lecteur peut avoir l’impression d’avoir littéralement accompli une promenade à cheval dans la culture française du xixe siècle. Culture au sens large, qu’elle soit littéraire, philosophique, politique, scientifique ou visuelle, qu’elle touche aux loisirs ou à l’étude. Tout fait source : les idéologues, les écrivains, les peintres, la presse illustrée, la photographie (peut-être nénamoins sous-estimée), les affiches, le théâtre, le cirque, les rituels sociaux populaires ou...

In June 1888, Oliver Heaviside received by mail an officially unpublished pamphlet, which was written and printed by the American author Willard J. Gibbs around 1881–1884. This original document is preserved in the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. Heaviside studied Gibbs’s work very carefully and wrote some annotations in the margins of the booklet. He was a strong defender of Gibbs’s work on vector analysis against quaternionists, even if he (...) criticised Gibbs’s notation system. The aim of our paper is to analyse Heaviside’s annotations and to investigate the role played by the American physicist in the development of Heaviside’s work. (shrink)

In Dynamis. Ontologia dell’incommensurabile, Gaetano Chiurazzi offers an account of the philosophical sense and implications of the discovery of incommensurable magnitudes in ancient thought. In his study, Chiurazzi presents the scope of the idea of incommensurability in contrast to those theories that have interpreted perception as the primary access to reality. Chiurazzi claims that the discovery of incommensurable relations, such as that of “1/square root of 2,” which expresses the relation between the side and the diagonal of a square, introduces (...) the conception of asymmetrical relations into Western epistemology and ontology. This conception finds in the modern idea of transcendental philosophy its mature formulation. In this paper, I draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s proposal of a phenomenology of perception in order to critically evaluate the working assumption in Chiurazzi’s account that perception is the faculty of intuition that seizes upon the individual and therefore as “atomic” in nature. (shrink)

In Politics 2.2-5 Aristotle criticises the state described in Plato’s Republic. The general consensus in the secondary literature is that Aristotle’s critique is unfair and too narrow in scope. Aristotle unjustifiably ignores significant parts of Plato’s Republic and unreasonably assumes that the community of wives, children and property extends to the whole of Kallipolis. Although R. Mayhew’s defence of Aristotle’s criticism has mitigated this negative assessment, the problem has remained unresolved. This paper questions the traditional view and suggests an explanation (...) of Aristotle’s selective reading of Plato’s Republic. Based on what turns out to be a reasonable interpretation of Plato’s text, Aristotle does not extend Plato’s communism to the whole city, but rather reduces Plato’s city to the community of the guardians. As a result, Aristotle’s arguments in fact hit the mark and present Aristotle as a much fairer reader than is usually acknowledged. (shrink)

In this paper we defend structural representations, more specifically neural structural representation. We are not alone in this, many are currently engaged in this endeavor. The direction we take, however, diverges from the main road, a road paved by the mathematical theory of measure that, in the 1970s, established homomorphism as the way to map empirical domains of things in the world to the codomain of numbers. By adopting the mind as codomain, this mapping became a boon for all those (...) convinced that a representation system should bear similarities with what was being represented, but struggled to find a precise account of what such similarities mean. The euforia was brief, however, and soon homomorphism revealed itself to be affected by serious weaknesses, the primary one being that it included systems embarrassingly alien to representations. We find that the defense attempts that have followed, adopt strategies that share a common format: valid structural representations come as “homomorphism plus X”, with various “X”, provided in descriptive format only. Our alternative direction stems from the observation of the overlooked departure from homomorphism as used in the theory of measure and its later use in mental representations. In the former case, the codomain or the realm of numbers, is the most suited for developing theorems detailing the existence and uniqueness of homomorphism for a wide range of empirical domains. In the latter case, the codomain is the realm of the mind, possibly more vague and more ill-defined than the empirical domain itself. The time is ripe for articulating the mapping between represented domains and the mind in formal terms, by exploiting what is currently known about coding mechanisms in the brain. We provide a sketch of a possible development in this direction, one that adopts the theory of neural population coding as codomain. We will show that our framework is not only not in disagreement with the “plus X” proposals, but can lead to natural derivation of several of the “X”. (shrink)

We investigate an extension of the formalism of interpreted systems by Halpern and colleagues to model the correct behaviour of agents. The semantical model allows for the representation and reasoning about states of correct and incorrect functioning behaviour of the agents, and of the system as a whole. We axiomatise this semantic class by mapping it into a suitable class of Kripke models. The resulting logic, KD45n i-j, is a stronger version of KD, the system often referred to as Standard (...) Deontic Logic. We extend this formal framework to include the standard epistemic notions defined on interpreted systems, and introduce a new doubly-indexed operator representing the knowledge that an agent would have if it operates under the assumption that a group of agents is functioning correctly. We discuss these issues both theoretically and in terms of applications, and present further directions of work. (shrink)

Social research, from economics to demography and epidemiology, makes extensive use of statistical models in order to establish causal relations. The question arises as to what guarantees the causal interpretation of such models. In this paper we focus on econometrics and advance the view that causal models are ‘augmented’ statistical models that incorporate important causal information which contributes to their causal interpretation. The primary objective of this paper is to argue that causal claims are established on the basis of a (...) plurality of evidence. We discuss the consequences of ‘evidential pluralism’ in the context of econometric modelling. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to explore what role persuasion plays in the early education of children. Advocating Wittgenstein, I claim that persuasion involves imparting to a pupil about a particular world-picture (Weltbild) by showing rather than explaining. This because we cannot introduce a child to the hinges of a world-picture through a discursive argument. I will employ the remarks of Wittgenstein in On Certainty (1969) (OC) to define what persuasion (Überredung) is. I will make use of the notes regarding (...) seeing-an-aspect from the Philosophical Investigations (2009) to clarify such a notion. Afterwards, I will contextualise this in early-childhood education and conclude providing some examples of how persuasion solidifies hinges. (shrink)

This is the Portuguese translation of Kathleen Okruhlik's paper "Bas van Fraassen’s Philosophy of Science and His Epistemic Voluntarism" (2014) Bas van Fraassen’s anti-realist account of science has played a major role in shaping recent philosophy of science. His constructive empiricism, in particular, has been widely discussed and criticized in the journal literature and is a standard topic in philosophy of science course curricula. Other aspects of his empiricism are less well known, including his empiricist account of scientific laws, his (...) relatively recent re-evaluation of what it is to be an empiricist, and his empiricist structuralism. This essay attempts to provide an overview of these diverse aspects of van Fraassen’s empiricism and to show how they relate to one another. It also focuses on the nature of van Fraassens’s epistemic voluntarism and its relationship to his empiricist philosophy of science. (shrink)

Whereas geometrical oppositions (logical squares and hexagons) have been so far investigated in many fields of modal logic (both abstract and applied), the oppositional geometrical side of “deontic logic” (the logic of “obligatory”, “forbidden”, “permitted”, . . .) has rather been neglected. Besides the classical “deontic square” (the deontic counterpart of Aristotle’s “logical square”), some interesting attempts have nevertheless been made to deepen the geometrical investigation of the deontic oppositions: Kalinowski (La logique des normes, PUF, Paris, 1972) has proposed a (...) “deontic hexagon” as being the geometrical representation of standard deontic logic, whereas Joerden (jointly with Hruschka, in Archiv für Rechtsund Sozialphilosophie 73:1, 1987), McNamara (Mind 105:419, 1996) and Wessels (Die gute Samariterin. Zur Struktur der Supererogation, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 2002) have proposed some new “deontic polygons” for dealing with conservative extensions of standard deontic logic internalising the concept of “supererogation”. Since 2004 a new formal science of the geometrical oppositions inside logic has appeared, that is “ n -opposition theory”, or “NOT”, which relies on the notion of “logical bi-simplex of dimension m ” ( m = n − 1). This theory has received a complete mathematical foundation in 2008, and since then several extensions. In this paper, by using it, we show that in standard deontic logic there are in fact many more oppositional deontic figures than Kalinowski’s unique “hexagon of norms” (more ones, and more complex ones, geometrically speaking: “deontic squares”, “deontic hexagons”, “deontic cubes”, . . ., “deontic tetraicosahedra”, . . .): the real geometry of the oppositions between deontic modalities is composed by the aforementioned structures (squares, hexagons, cubes, . . ., tetraicosahedra and hyper-tetraicosahedra), whose complete mathematical closure happens in fact to be a “deontic 5-dimensional hyper-tetraicosahedron” (an oppositional very regular solid). (shrink)

The act of observing is crucial for constructive empiricism, Bas van Fraassen's celebrated position on the aim of science. As Buekens and Muller noted in 2012, the Dutch philosopher should have characterized observation as an intentional act, because observation in science has a purpose. In the present article, which will also address the distinction between observing and observing that, introduced by Hanson and Dretske, it will be shown that considerations about the intentionality of the act of observing are, on the (...) contrary, unnecessary for drawing the distinction between observable and unobservable entities on which constructive empiricism depends. (shrink)

Is there an ontological question relative to van Fraassen’s Constructive Empiricism? It seems so, despite this philosophical position, a reference for contemporary Empiricism, presenting itself as an epistemological thesis. It is, furthermore, a very up-to-date matter, as the Dutch philosopher has recently changed his mind about the possibility for us to observe common optical phenomena as the rainbow. This reveals the necessity for a discussion about the concept of phenomena as used by van Fraassen, as Foss stated more than twenty (...) years ago, but also – and this is an intertwined question – about what ontology is assumed by Constructive Empiricism. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza algunos interesantes momentos en la recepción feminista del pensamiento de Hannah Arendt. Al igual que respecto a otros clásicos y clásicas del pensamiento contemporáneo —Beauvoir, Foucault o Habermas, por poner sólo tres ejemplos— nos hemos encontrado con una nutrida historia de encuentros y desencuentros. Tras una primera valoración negativa del pensamiento arendtiano, por parte de las teóricas feministas de la segunda ola, el juicio, posteriormente, se matizará y el estudio de la riqueza conceptual de la autora y (...) de su potencia filosófica —su novedosa concepción de la política, su apuesta por la narratividad y el juicio, su definición de la libertad en conexión con la noción de natalidad, …— harán que se desate un interesante juego de apropiaciones y reapropiaciones, de lecturas e interpretaciones, que, incluso, en el caso de Linda Zerilli, propondrá la posibilidad de pensar un feminismo adjetivado como arendtiano. Al hilo de esta reconstrucción histórico-crítica, hemos enhebrado nuestra propia estimación de la recepción feminista de la obra de Arendt en el contexto de los debates políticos feministas de las últimas décadas. La controvertida filósofa política se ha convertido, en suma, en un referente insoslayable en el decurso de la teoría feminista contemporánea. (shrink)

the scholion to Lucan, “Bellum Civile” 8, 618 that is found in the “Adnotationes super Lucanum” is at first sight pointless, but it becomes immediately meaningful if we accept the idea that the scholiast commented the text by systematically comparing it with Livy’s narrative on those same events. This approach casts a new light on how these ancient commentators read Lucan and can be also useful to solve exegetical issues.

IntroductionAnorexia nervosa promotes psychological distress in caregivers who adopt different coping strategies. Dysfunctional caregiving styles exacerbate further distress in the patient promoting the maintenance of the illness. We aimed to assess the possible contribution of personality traits of caregivers to the adoption of different coping strategies to deal with the affected relative.MethodsAbout 87 adolescents with AN were recruited. Their parents completed the Family Coping Questionnaire for Eating Disorders and the Temperament and Character Inventory-Revised. Differences between mothers and fathers were assessed (...) through the independent sample t-test. Multivariate regression analyses were run to assess if personality traits, the occurrence of psychiatry conditions in the parents, the marital status, and the duration of the illness predicted parental coping strategies.ResultsThe group of mothers showed higher levels of avoidance and seeking for information coping strategies than the sample of fathers. Lower illness duration predicted higher collusion with the illness in both parents. Harm avoidance, cooperativeness, and self-directedness positively predicted parental coercion, collusion, and seeking for information strategies with some differences between mothers and fathers.DiscussionIllness duration and personality traits of parents affect the type of parental coping strategies developed to face AN in adolescents. These variables should be considered in the assessment of families of adolescents with AN and may be addressed to promote more fine-tuned clinical interventions for caregivers. (shrink)