Amyloid fibril formation plays a central role in the pathogenesis of a number of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer and Parkinson diseases. Transient prefibrillar oligomers forming during the aggregation process, exhibiting a small size and a large hydrophobic surface, can aberrantly interact with a number of molecular targets on neurons, including the lipid bilayer of plasma membranes, resulting in a fatal outcome for the cells. By contrast, the mature fibrils, despite presenting generally a high hydrophobic surface, are endowed with a low (...) diffusion rate and poorly penetrate the interior of the lipid bilayer. However, increasing evidence shows that both intracellular α‐synuclein fibrils, as well and as extracellular amyloid‐β and β2‐microglobulin fibrils, can release oligomers over time that quickly diffuse to reach the membrane of the neighboring cells. The persistent leakage of harmful oligomers from fibrils triggers an ongoing cascade of events resulting in a sustained injury to neurons and glia and also provides aggregates with the ability to cross biological membranes and diffuse between cells or cellular compartments. (shrink)

Cognitive penetration of perception, broadly understood, is the influence that the cognitive system has on a perceptual system. The paper shows a form of cognitive penetration in the visual system which I call ‘architectural’. Architectural cognitive penetration is the process whereby the behaviour or the structure of the perceptual system is influenced by the cognitive system, which consequently may have an impact on the content of the perceptual experience. I scrutinize a study in perceptual learning that provides empirical evidence that (...) cognitive influences in the visual system produce neural reorganization in the primary visual cortex. The type of cognitive penetration can be synchronic and diachronic. (shrink)

Il volume offre una riflessione sulle forme di esperienza musicale della contemporaneità e di un passato che spazia dalla prima età moderna alla fine del ventesimo secolo. Queste possono essere riportate a un concetto ampliato di mediazione musicale che non si applica soltanto all’esperienza “mediatizzata” della musica, proposta da dischi, film, trasmissioni radio e televisive, piattaforme di archiviazione web e social media, ma anche a un concerto dal vivo, a un’installazione, a una partitura a stampa e a un manoscritto musicale (...) miniato. Saggi di Cecchi, Borio, Albert, Bratus, Borghetti, Garda, Sala, Senici, Calabretto, Varon, Corbella, Soldani, Giuggioli, Meandri e Aldeni. (shrink)

The article aims at showing how far the technologies of audiovisual registration affect not only the ontology of images but also our sense of realism in politics and history. As argue Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, historical events have become “tele-events” after the birth of these technologies. Our handling with images has changed accordingly. As argues Pietro Montani, we no longer consider them as “copies” of real objects but rather as “occasions” for initiating processes of “validation” of history. Hannah Arendt’s (...) opposition between the ancient concept of history being based on praxis and the modern concept of history as “fabrication” (poiesis) of the humankind must be therefore reconsidered. History is rather the negotiation between these two attitudes (praxis and poiesis): cinema might be one of the exemplary sources of this negotiation, as epitomized by the documentary work in the audiovisual archives conducted by Esfir Shub (1927) and Harun Farocki (1992). Representation (Louis Martin) becomes thus a dynamical power of imagination dealing with historical and political reality; consequently, the “ideal spectator”, just as the “ideal reader” for novels (Umberto Eco), is charged with a new task of actualizing the sense of images with regard to their historical and political references. (shrink)

The essay reconsiders Wolfgang Iser’s phenomenology of reading, taken as a possible non reductionist answer to the neuroscientific theories of literature. By emphasizing the aesthetic nature of reading, thanks also to Hans Robert Jauss’ contribution, the idea of a ‘reader’s imagination’ emerges here, as a specific and unique power which allows not only the access to the world of the literary text, but opens also new spheres for the understanding and exploration of the real world. In shorts, it is concerned (...) with the constitution of a special cognitive-emotional pattern, which depends on the building of what Iser considers as the reader’s «artificial habitats», through the interaction with the text. (shrink)

Il saggio propone una lettura estetica del documentario contemporaneo, considerato dal punto di vista delle pratiche intermediali.

Fino a una quindicina di anni fa, l’idea di una connessione forte tra l’estetica da una parte e l’intermedialità e l’interattività dall’altra non sarebbe stata probabilmente pensata nei termini in cui essa emerge nei contributi qui presentati. Di interattività si sarebbe presumibilmente parlato a partire dagli esperimenti di arte interattiva e di incontro tra arte e video: una forma di interazione tutta compresa all’interno di un discorso sulle pratiche artistiche, poco o nulla aperto al conf...

The article considers the nature of series as a narrative, focusing especially on its chronotope, i.e. its spatiotemporal coordinates. The concept of chronotope can be applied at at least two different levels of the interpretation of a narrative: the real world of reception and the expressive form of narration. The impact of series entails both aspects. It is for this reason that series, once on television then on the internet, represented a revolutionary turn in the modern experience of storytelling. Series (...) are therefore bound to the progressive spread of a new form of sociality known as a digital “total mobilisation”. Since the era of TV series up to the emergence of web series, seriality has been able to regulate the increase of interaction in the use of visual devices. Series play the role of a dietetical regulator, which designs the spectators’ attention. An artistic, i.e. experimental, exploitation of this new form of storytelling is possible when one considers the emergence of a new narrative genre, which we propose to call the “short form”. (shrink)

This article compares two philosophers who have a different theoretical origin: respectively, Arthur C. Danto and Jean-François Lyotard. Both of them are interested in the revolutionary character of Andy Warhol’s art. Danto as well as Lyotard argues that Warhol conceives the work of art as a machine: according to the former, it is a philosophical machine; according to the latter, it is a consumerist machine. Nonetheless, the two hypotheses converge on judging Warhol’s art as a turn in the history of (...) art and its relationship to the world. According to Danto, who follows Hegel here, Warhol at the same time interprets and transcends the 1960s and their Zeitgeist. But paradoxically, Warhol’s historical gesture, epitomized by his work Brillo Box, initiates the age of the “end of art”. According to Lyotard, on the contrary, Warhol represents the end of the critical power of modern art, to which the sublime alone can remediate. The two perspectives converge in the idea that the investigation of repetition is the very center of Warhol’s art. Art has now become the pivot of the Western capitalism and consumerist society. Warhol actually explores the different forms and modes of repetition (commodities, icons, symbols) and, in this way, anticipates the confrontation of contemporary art with the “finite infinite” represented by the media world. (shrink)

Cognitive and affective penetration of perception refers to the influence that higher mental states such as beliefs and emotions have on perceptual systems. Psychological and neuroscientific studies appear to show that these states modulate the visual system at the visuomotor, attentional, and late levels of processing. However, empirical evidence showing that similar consequences occur in early stages of visual processing seems to be scarce. In this paper, I argue that psychological evidence does not seem to be either sufficient or necessary (...) to argue in favour of or against the cognitive penetration of perception in either late or early vision. In order to do that we need to have recourse to brain imaging techniques. Thus, I introduce a neuroscientific study and argue that it seems to provide well-grounded evidence for the cognitive penetration of early vision in face perception. I also examine and reject alternative explanations to my conclusion. (shrink)

Il saggio tratta dell'estetica di John Dewey dal punto di vista della sua teoria dell'esperienza, mettendola in relazione con la filosofia critica di Kant.

La Critique de la faculté de juger ne relève pas seulement d’une théorie esthétique, pour originelle qu’elle puisse être. Elle met surtout en œuvre un nouveau discours philosophique. La critique de la métaphysique y est reconsidérée d’une manière positive, comme une réflexion sur la donation de sens à la croisée entre principes généraux et expériences contingentes. Le philosophe italien Emilio Garroni a développé ce nouveau point de vue sur le troisième Critique, en soutenant que, dans cette Critique, Kant a formulé (...) une nouvelle forme de « libre schématisme », et en même temps la primauté de ce schématisme par rapport au « schématisme objectif » de la Critique de la raison pure. De manière générale, il partage l’idée que le schématisme représente le lieu théorique où Kant développe implicitement sa théorie sémantique. Lisant, comme Garroni, Kant après Wittgenstein, nous posons alors la question : qu’est-ce qu’une forme de vie après le langage? (shrink)

Il saggio propone una ricognizione nell'estetica dei media contemporanei.

The article focuses on the possibility of reconsidering the relationship existing between monstrosity and sublime in the light of Jean-François Lyotard’s interpretation of the Kantian sublime. Sublime and monstrosity unveil a system of analogies and differences, which can depict the aesthetic experience mediated by mass media, rather than by art. The lack of form and the sometimes obscene drift, which are typical of media experience, configure indeed a sensibility that oscillates between the ascension to sublime heights and the emergence of (...) monsters. (shrink)

Il libro di Nicola Perullo – una raccolta di sei saggi già pubblicati su varie riviste e presentati ora in forma rielaborata – suscita interesse sia per l’ampiezza della tematica, sia per l’originalità di una prospettiva che si presenta al tempo stesso come antifondazionalista e realista. La possibilità di filosofare tenendo insieme i presupposti, che potrebbero apparire prima facie divergenti, antifondazionalista e realista è mostrata dall’Autore sulla scorta di una lettura incrociata di Wit...

The paper is concerned with arguing the existence of a relationship between the enactive theory of perception and aesthetics. One of the leading figures in the theory of enactment, Alva Noe, pointed out that the works of art constitute one of the keys to understand how perception and cognition realize their enactment onto reality. Art objects are, in fact, a very peculiar case of artefacts since they are considered as being able to quicken the living beings’ organization in their interaction (...) to the world. Do they create a different atmosphere? Do they “furnish” the surrounding habitat with new meanings? The paper argues that these are, of course, fundamental elements in the art’s action onto reality. As far as the subjective enactment of perception is concerned, together with power in designing life organization, art has arguably another original functions, that of building new “environs” where experience can meet reality under a different light and thus prepare the field for other creative contributions, both cultural and technological. (shrink)

v. 1. Presentazione de Biagia Catanzaro Gligora -- v. 2. Logica, totalità-reale e realtà -- v. 3. Anima e coscienza.

Through a direct reference to Louis Marin’s theory of the visual representation, in the article some filmic and non-filmic images (Biblical episodes, paintings, tapestry, movies and digital images) are analysed as they all display the character of a screen. The convergence between visual representations and screens is then generalized in order to show that, at least during Western Modernity, image vision often functioned as an absorption into a screen space, where the spectator was not only able to reorganize his optical (...) experience, but was also empowered, through the relationship established with the figures in the representation, to act and display his/her agency, desires and claims. Considered as screens, images show thus the coincidence between an aesthetic and a political experience, where the spectator is not a passive consumer, but an actor on the stage. (shrink)

The article examines the use of the concept of mimesis in Adorno’s notes towards a theory of musical performance. In trying to idiosyncratically define the latter as “reproduction”, Adorno relied on a framework elaborating on concepts introduced by Arnold Schoenberg, Hugo Riemann and Walter Benjamin – a framework that the article discusses insofar as it deals with the problem of mimesis. Specific attention is devoted to the relation between Benjamin’s essays on language and translation and Adorno’s theory of notation, that (...) soon became the crucial aspect of his theory of reproduction. Given the shortcomings of Adorno’s theory, which in the end did not achieve its goals, the article proposes to capitalize on his terminology while at the same time rethinking his framework in the light of recent musicological paradigms for the study of musical performance. On the whole, the article shows that it was Adorno’s philosophical assumptions – in particular the theses of music’s non-intentionality and of its non-similarity to language – that prevented him from convincingly theorizing musical performance, and suggests an alternative framework for future research. (shrink)

John Dewey puts aesthetic experience at the center of his reflection on art and beauty, reconsidering it dynamically. Nowadays, this view opened the path to somaesthetics, a term coined by Richard Shusterman, and aesthetic anthropology. Here, it is argued that the contribution of pragmatist aesthetics could be further developed by exploring its analogies with techno-aesthetics, a paradigm proposed by French philosopher Gilbert Simondon in the early 1980s. Art occupies accordingly a special place within the different forms of aesthetic experience, being (...) considered as a way of experimenting the impact of new technologies in the human experience. It is a process by which technologies create ‘devices’ for experimenting perception and reflection: namely, ways of reconstructing the nature of the human mind in-between body and technology, and by means of their interaction. Cinema reconsidered after Dewey’s fellow George H. Mead, offers an exemplary case as both artistic and technological devices. (shrink)

Although empirical evidence may provide a much desired sense of certainty amidst a pandemic characterised by uncertainty, the vast gamut of available COVID-19 data, including misinformation, has instead increased confusion and distrust in authorities’ decisions. One key lesson we have been gradually learning from the COVID-19 pandemic is that the availability of empirical data and scientific evidence alone do not automatically lead to good decisions. Good decision-making in public health policy, this paper argues, does depend on the availability of reliable (...) data and rigorous analyses, but depends above all on sound ethical reasoning that ascribes value and normative judgement to empirical facts. (shrink)

Philosophers of medicine have formulated different accounts of the concept of disease. Which concept of disease one assumes has implications for what conditions count as diseases and, by extension, who may be regarded as having a disease and for who may be accorded the social privileges and personal responsibilities associated with being sick. In this article, we consider an ideal diagnostic test for coronavirus disease 2019 infection with respect to four groups of people—positive and asymptomatic; positive and symptomatic; negative; and (...) untested—and show how different concepts of disease impact on the disease and sickness judgements for these groups. The suggestion is that sickness judgements and social measures akin to those experienced during the current COVID-19 outbreak presuppose a concept of disease containing social harm as a component. We indicate the problems that arise when adopting this kind of disease concept beyond a state of emergency. (shrink)

Anne Conway’s philosophy has been categorized as “vitalism,” “vital monism,” “spiritualism,” “monistic spiritualism,” “immaterial vitalism,” and “antimaterialism.” While there is no doubt that she is a monist and a vitalist, problems arise with the categories of “spiritualism,” “immaterial vitalism,” and “antimaterialism.” Conway conceives of created substances as gross and fixed spirit, or rarefied and volatile matter. While interpreters agree that Conway’s “spirit” shares characteristics traditionally attributed to matter (e.g., extension, divisibility, impenetrability), and that she is critical of Henry More’s immaterial (...) spirit, Conway’s spirit is still conceived as an immaterial soul-like or mind-like entity. I argue that Conway’s vitalism is material, and is best understood in the tradition of Renaissance vital naturalism. First, Conway does not criticize materialism per se, only mechanical materialism, which characterizes matter as lifeless. Her vitalism has to be materialistic in some sense, since only God is an immaterial substance. Second, Conway’s conceptions of matter and spirit, the language she uses, and the fact that she attributes thinking to extended, divisible, and impenetrable substances all place her within the tradition of Renaissance vital naturalism, wherein Bernardino Telesio, Tommaso Campanella, and Francis Bacon used “spirit” to account for all natural processes. (shrink)

Traditional engineering courses typically approach teaching and problem solving by focusing on the physical dimensions of those problems without consideration of dynamic social and ethical dimensions. As such, projects can fail to consider human rights, community questions and concerns, broader impacts upon society, or otherwise result in inequitable outcomes. And, despite the fact that students in engineering receive training on the Professional Code of Ethics for Engineers, to which they are expected to adhere in practice, many students are unable to (...) recognize and analyze real-life ethical challenges as they arise. Indeed, research has found that students are typically less engaged with ethics—defined as the sensitivity and judgment of microethics and macroethics, sensitivity to diversity, and interest in promoting organizational ethical culture—at the end of their engineering studies than they were at the beginning. As such, many studies have focused on developing and improving the curriculum surrounding ethics through, for instance, exposing students to ethics case studies. However, such ethics courses often present a narrow and simplified view of ethics that students may struggle to integrate with their broader experience as engineers. Thus, there is a critical need to unpack the complexity of ethical behavior amongst engineering students in order to determine how to better foster ethical judgment and behavior. Promoting ethical behavior among engineering students and developing a culture of ethical behavior within institutions have become goals of many engineering programs. Towards this goal, we would like to present an overview of the current scholarship of engineering ethics and propose a theoretical framework of ethical behavior using a review of articles related to engineering ethics from 1997-2020. The review engages in theories across disciplines including philosophy, education, and psychology. In this work-in-progress paper, we present a subset of initial results based on a review of the first 50 articles out of the systematically selected 409 articles from Springer, Engineering Village, and EBSCO-Education Full Text. Preliminary results identify two major kinds of drivers of ethical behavior, namely individual level ethical behavior drivers and institutional drivers. Our preliminary results indicate that a sensitivity to both microethics and macroethics as well as the implicit and explicit understanding of ethics are essential in promoting ethical behavior amongst students. Furthermore, while drivers of ethical behavior at the individual level is important, one should not ignore the roles of the drivers of ethical behavior at the institutional level in promoting a collective ethical culture within organizations. The review also points to a need to focus on increasing students’ macroethical sensitivity to topics such as sustainability and protection of human rights. This research thus addresses the need, driven by existing scholarship, 2 to identify a conceptual framework for explaining how ethical judgment and behavior in engineering can be further promoted. (shrink)

Nas últimas décadas, a ideia de criatividade tem obtido um aumento de interesse nos campos da filosofia, ciências cognitivas, sociologia, etc. e tem havido uma contribuição renovada com relação à ideia clássica de criatividade. Consideramos que a contribuição do pragmatismo clássico merece uma menção especial – em especial, as obras de Charles S. Peirce e John Dewey. Neste artigo, iremos nos referir, exclusivamente, ao tratamento deweyiano a essa ideia. Sustentaremos que a teoria de Dewey fornece elementos interpretativos que são inovadores (...) e disruptivos com relação à tradição filosófica, inclusive, uma nova concepção de imaginação criativa. Exporemos algumas consequências de sua posição – como nós a interpretamos. Com efeito, sustentaremos que Dewey afasta-se das demandas clássicas para as quais um produto criativo envolve, necessariamente, uma transformação radical da vida humana, segundo a ideia de níveis de criatividade; essa teoria deweyiana constitui um insight interessante para a promoção da atitude criativa; esse processo criativo preserva a mesma estrutura em todos os casos – ciência e arte, por exemplo – e essa criatividade é, agora, uma potencialidade intrínseca dos seres humanos – a qual pode ser realizada ou não. Por fim, consideramos a relevância de alguma tese deweyiana para as posições atuais, como no caso do psicólogo cognitivo Robert Weisberg, enfatizando as coincidências e desacordos de ambos. (shrink)

Background: In the present study, we aimed to better investigate attention system profile of Parkinson's disease-Mild Cognitive Impairment patients and to determine if specific attentional deficits are associated with 123I-FP-CIT SPECT.Methods: A total of 44 de novo drug-naïve PD patients [ with normal cognition and 17 with MCI ], 23 MCI patients and 23 individuals with subjective cognitive impairment were recruited at the Clinical Neurology Unit of Santa Chiara hospital. They were assessed by a wide neuropsychological battery, including Visual Search (...) Test measuring selective attention. Performances among groups were compared by non-parametric tests. Further, Spearman's rank correlations were performed to explore the association between neuropsychological variables and 123I-FP-CIT SPECT data in PD subgroup.Results: PD-MCI patients performed worse on VST than patients with PD-NC, patients with MCI and individuals with SCI. The performance of PD-MCI patients on VST significantly correlated with caudate nucleus 123I-FP-CIT SPECT uptake, whereas a negative correlation between such test and 123I-FP-CIT SPECT uptake in the left putamen was found in PD-NC patients.Conclusions: We suggest that selective attention deficit might be a trigger of cognitive decay in de novo PD-MCI patients. The VST should be routinely used to detect attentional deficits in hospital clinical practice, in the light of its closely association with dopamine depletion of basal ganglia in mildly impaired PD patients. (shrink)

Resenha do livro “O Arsenal da Democracia”, de Claude-Jean Bertrand, Bauru, 2002.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo formular comparação entre as concepções de ética e direito dos autores Bentham e Kant. A posição assumida neste artigo ressalta que tanto para Kant quanto para Bentham o direito se baseia nos mesmos princípios que fundamentam a ética. No caso de Kant, é o imperativo categórico que fundamenta a ética e o direito e, no caso de Bentham, é o princípio de utilidade. Embora ambos os autores possuam apenas um princípio para fundamentar a ética e (...) o direito, há inúmeras diferenças entre ambos os campos do pensamento, bem como entre as teorias, que se pretende apresentar neste artigo. Entre elas estão a origem epistemológica dos princípios e o que cada um deles prescreve. The aim of this work is to formulate a comparison between Bentham’s and Kant’s conceptions of ethics and law. The position taken in this paper is that, for Bentham and Kant, law is grounded in the same principles which are the basis of ethics. For Kant it is the categorical imperative which is the basis of ethics, while the principle of utility is the basis of Bentham’s theory of law and ethics. Although both authors have established only one principle on which to ground ethics and law, there are several differences between the two fields and between the theories of the two philosophers. Among these differences, we mention the epistemological origin of principles and their prescriptions. (shrink)

Neste trabalho nos ocupamos centralmente em compreender a proposta ética de Hans Jonas e como ele apresenta o Princípio Responsabilidade como uma categoria ética a ser norteadora das ações humanas. Apresentamos um breve histórico do desenvolvimento da Filosofia da Tecnologia enquanto uma disciplina filosófica específica e, então, discutimos as principais considerações de Jonas sobre a necessidade de uma ética inteiramente nova que tome a técnica como objeto e a proposta que este apresente de uma ética do futuro pautada na responsabi (...) lidade enquanto princípio. (shrink)

Con el presente artículo se propone continuar el diálogo entre la tradición hermenéutica y el psicoanálisis, reconociendo en ellas dos de las corrientes de pensamiento más influyentes en la época contemporánea. Con este acercamiento se pretende aportar a la reflexión, siempre fecunda, sobre el abordaje de textos literarios a partir del acto interpretativo.