Loot Boxes, i.e., virtual items embedded within video games with numerous features reminiscent of gambling, are increasingly widespread among adolescents. LB use is associated with problem gambling in youth, but few studies have been conducted on the association between LB use and gambling behavior considering adolescents. Thus, the mechanisms underlying this relationship are not clear. As LB use is a significant and positive risk factor for video gaming severity, and video gaming is associated with problem gambling, we hypothesized that LB (...) use would be related to gambling frequency and problem gambling through the intermediary role of video gaming frequency and problem video gaming. We tested our hypothesis before COVID-19-pandemic-related lockdown and during COVID-19-pandemic-related lockdown, in Italy. Study 1 was conducted with 1,078 high school students before COVID-19-pandemic-related lockdown, and Study 2 was conducted with 1,204 high school students during COVID-19-pandemic-related lockdown. A path analysis was carried out to analyze the significance of indirect effects from LB use to gambling behavior and problem gambling through video gaming and problem video gaming. In both the studies, results showed that LB use exerted significant and positive direct effects on video gaming frequency, problem video gaming, and gambling frequency. Moreover, LB use had indirect significant and positive effects on problem gambling through video gaming frequency, problem video gaming, and gambling frequency. Findings attest that LB use can be related to problem gambling through a greater involvement in videogames. Thus, a specific subtype of young gamblers can develop Gambling Disorder symptoms from the use of LBs and through an intense use of video games. Practical implications for prevention and treatment are discussed. (shrink)

This book is both an introduction to and a research work on Meinongianism. “Meinongianism” is taken here, in accordance with the common philosophical jargon, as a general label for a set of theories of existence – probably the most basic notion of ontology. As an introduction, the book provides the first comprehensive survey and guide to Meinongianism and non-standard theories of existence in all their main forms. As a research work, the book exposes and develops the most up-to-date Meinongian theory (...) (called modal Meinongianism), applies it to specific fields, and discusses its open problems. Part I of the book provides a historical introduction to, and critical discussion of, the dominant philosophical view of existence: the “Kantian-Fregean-Quinean” perspective. Part II is the full-fledged introduction to the Meinongian theories of existence as a real property of individuals: after starting with the so-called naïve Meinongian conception and its problems, it provides a self-contained presentation of the main neo-Meinongian proposals, and a detailed discussion of their strengths and weaknesses. Part III develops a specific neo-Meinongian theory of existence employing a model-theoretic semantic framework. It discusses its application to the ontology and semantics of fictional objects, and its open problems. The methodology of the book follows the most recent trends in analytic ontology. In particular, the meta-ontological point of view is largely privileged. (shrink)

Berto’s highly readable and lucid guide introduces students and the interested reader to Gödel’s celebrated _Incompleteness Theorem_, and discusses some of the most famous - and infamous - claims arising from Gödel's arguments. Offers a clear understanding of this difficult subject by presenting each of the key steps of the _Theorem_ in separate chapters Discusses interpretations of the _Theorem_ made by celebrated contemporary thinkers Sheds light on the wider extra-mathematical and philosophical implications of Gödel’s theories Written in an accessible, non-technical (...) style. (shrink)

A logic is called 'paraconsistent' if it rejects the rule called 'ex contradictione quodlibet', according to which any conclusion follows from inconsistent premises. While logicians have proposed many technically developed paraconsistent logical systems and contemporary philosophers like Graham Priest have advanced the view that some contradictions can be true, and advocated a paraconsistent logic to deal with them, until recent times these systems have been little understood by philosophers. This book presents a comprehensive overview on paraconsistent logical systems to change (...) this situation. The book includes almost every major author currently working in the field. The papers are on the cutting edge of the literature some of which discuss current debates and others present important new ideas. The editors have avoided papers about technical details of paraconsistent logic, but instead concentrated upon works that discuss more 'big picture' ideas. Different treatments of paradoxes takes centre stage in many of the papers, but also there are several papers on how to interpret paraconistent logic and some on how it can be applied to philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of language, and metaphysics. (shrink)

Language evolution, intended as an open problem in the evolutionary research programme, will be here analyzed from the theoretical perspective advanced by the supporters of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. Four factors and two associated concepts will be matched with a selection of critical examples concerning genus Homo evolution, relevant for the evolution of language, such as the evolution of hominin life-history traits, the enlargement of the social group, increased cooperation among individuals, behavioral change and innovations, heterochronic modifications leading to increased (...) synaptic plasticity. A particular form of niche construction will be considered in a multilevel framework. It will be argued that the four points mentioned above prove to be fundamental explanatory tools to understand how language might have emerged as a result of a gene-culture coevolutionary dynamics. (shrink)

In this paper we propose a narrative hypothesis on the nature of language and a proto-discursive hypothesis on the origin of our communicative abilities. Our proposal is based on two assumptions. The first assumption, concerning the properties of language, is tied to the idea that global discourse coherence governs the origin of our communicative abilities as well the functioning of these abilities. The second assumption, concerning processing devices, is connected to the idea that the systems of spatial and temporal navigation (...) are implicated in discourse coherence processing. Analysis of the relationship between these two assumptions allows us to integrate the model of language based on clues proposed by Sperber and Wilson with Relevance Theory with the discursive foundation of human communication. In this respect, our proposal can be considered as a tentative extension of Relevance Theory. (shrink)

I present a formal framework historically faithful to Leibniz's analysis of relational sentences, which: (i) engrafts thematic roles and the non-truth-functional connective insofar as (quatenus) into the monadic fragment of first-order logic; (ii) suggests a plausible ontological picture of thematic roles and relational facts; (iii) supports argument deletion and related inferential patterns that are not taken into account by standard first-order logic.

The focus of this paper is the analysis of the epistemological and practical role played bypathe/affections in Epicurus’ philosophy. Epicurus firstly considered the affections not as emotional/passional conditions, but as firm criteria of truth and more specifically as the third criterion of the canonic (i.e. the epistemological part of his philosophical system). In this article the critical reactions (in particular by the Peripatetic side: Aristocles of Messene) against the Epicurean position about the function of the affections will be investigated too. (...) Finally, two parts of this paper are devoted to the Cyrenaic tripartition ofpathe(in all likelihood, a subject criticized by Epicurus) and to the probable doctrinal relationship between Epicurus’patheand Aristotle’sNicomachean EthicsBook 2. (shrink)

The governmental restriction due to COVID-19 pandemic led to Italian Universities moving teaching from face-to-face, to online. This represented an unexpected transition from traditional learning to what can be considered “e-learning.” This, together with the psychological distress that may be associated with the experience of lockdown, might have affected students' performance. It was hypothesised that grit may be a protective factor in such situations. Indeed, compared to their less “gritty” peers, individuals with higher levels of grit are expected to exhibit (...) greater persistence in the pursuit of goals despite setbacks. Within educational contexts, grit is portrayed as a potentially important influence on outcomes such as achievement level, retention and probability of graduation. A longitudinal study was conducted using an online survey in order to assess the moderated mediation effect of grit on students' achievement. One hundred seventy-six undergraduate students from two universities in the north of Italy participated in the survey. The results showed that grit affects students' grades in final exams; perceived self-efficacy in the management of complex problems had a mediation effect on grades, while psychological distress moderated the first part of the mediation process. These novel findings extended our knowledge regarding the role of grit in academic performance investigating for the first time the role of self-efficacy and psychological distress in a learning carried out entirely online. (shrink)

According to Chomsky, creativity is a critical property of human language, particularly the aspect of ?the creative use of language? concerning the appropriateness to a situation. How language can be creative but appropriate to a situation is an unsolvable mystery from the Chomskyan point of view. We propose that language appropriateness can be explained by considering the role of the human capacity for Mental Time Travel at its foundation, together with social and ecological intelligences within a triadic language-grounding system. Our (...) proposal is based on the change of perspective from the analysis of individual sentences to the flux of speech in which the temporal dimension of language is much more relevant. (shrink)

This article aims to show the development of Wittgenstein’s conception of language from a pictorial model to a musical model. At first language is considered as a “means of representation” but in the second phase of Wittgenstein’s work the problem of understanding a proposition and the different shades of meaning supports an analogy with the musical dimension. In this perspective, Wittgenstein approaches the idea of language-game.

This article examines the problem of the status of the different degrees of being that Plato, in the Timaeus, seems to attribute to the different kinds of reality that he distinguishes. In what sense and under what conditions is it possible to state that the intelligible forms, the sensible things and the spatial and material substratum of the chora “are” and “exist”?

According to a longstanding philosophical tradition dating back to Aristotle, certain proofs do not only certify the truth of their conclusion but also explain it. Lately, much effort is being devo...

Strict-Tolerant Logic ($$\textrm{ST}$$ ST ) underpins naïve theories of truth and vagueness (respectively including a fully disquotational truth predicate and an unrestricted tolerance principle) without jettisoning any classically valid laws. The classical sequent calculus without Cut is sometimes advocated as an appropriate proof-theoretic presentation of $$\textrm{ST}$$ ST. Unfortunately, there is only a partial correspondence between its derivability relation and the relation of local metainferential $$\textrm{ST}$$ ST -validity – these relations coincide only upon the addition of elimination rules and only within (...) the propositional fragment of the calculus, due to the non-invertibility of the quantifier rules. In this paper, we present two calculi for first-order $$\textrm{ST}$$ ST with an eye to recapturing this correspondence in full. The first calculus is close in spirit to the Epsilon calculus. The other calculus includes rules for the discharge of sequent-assumptions; moreover, it is normalisable and admits interpolation. (shrink)

pt. I. Autori noti. V. 1* [Academici-Cyrenaici] V. 1*** in 2 vols. (v. 2(?): Nicolaus Damascenus-PLatonis Fragmenta; pt. 1. 2. Cultura e filosofia (Galenus-Isocrates) (2 v.); v. 3(?) : Platonis Testimonia-Zeno Tarsensis) -- pt. 3. Commentari -- pt. 4.1. Indici -- pt. 4.2. Tavole (I.1 e III). Tavole (I.2 Galenus-Isocrates).

This paper takes up some threads of Deleuze’s and Ruyer’s engagement with biology. I begin by laying out the main features of Deleuze’s scheme of morphogenesis, through the lens of his references to embryology. I take Deleuze’s interest in embryology to be guided by the effort to define bodies solely by form-generating factors which are immanent to them. His concept of virtuality, which indicates the creative component of reality, the open field of connections defining a body’s capacities for transformation and (...) interaction, plays a key role in this regard. I then consider two implications: (1) The insistence on morphogenesis displaces the question of life from given biological entities, which preserve themselves and act through regulated cycles, to the myriad of activities that compose and modify them; (2) It also rearticulates the distinction between the living and the nonliving, in that it separates the question of life from that of its emergence from a given material arrangement. In the second part I examine these points with greater reference to Ruyer. After introducing Ruyer’s concepts of functioning and formation, I focus on his account of the continuity between biological and physicochemical forms, following some of his work on the microbiology and ethology of the time. The real difference is not between the living and the nonliving, but between two modes of bonding and composition variously operating on all scales: morphogenetic and statistical. I conclude by assessing the significance of this claim with respect to the traditional distinction between vitalism and mechanism. (shrink)

Expressively equivalent logical languages can enunciate logical notions in notationally diversified ways. Frege’s Begriffsschrift, Peirce’s Existential Graphs, and the notations presented by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus all express the sentential fragment of classical logic, each in its own way. In what sense do expressively equivalent notations differ? According to recent interpretations, Begriffsschrift and Existential Graphs differ from other logical notations because they are capable of “multiple readings.” We refute this interpretation by showing that there are at least three different kinds (...) of such multiple readings. While readings of the first kind do not capture any essential difference among notations but only among vocabularies, corresponding to readings of the second and the third kind two general parameters according to which notations may differ are defined: linearity vs. non-linearity, and tabularity vs. non-tabularity. This answers the question of how there can be substantially different but expressively equivalent logical notations. (shrink)

Dynamic events such as a rolling ball moving from one place to another involve change and time intervals and thus presumably successions of static events occurring one after the other, e.g., the ball’s being at a certain place and then at another place during the interval in question. When dynamic events are experienced they should count as present and thus as existent from a presentist point of view. But this seems to imply the existence of the static events involved in (...) them. This in turn seems to imply that there exist past and perhaps even future static events. Therefore, there is a problem for presentism. A possible way out for the presentist is proposed, based on allowing for time-indexed past-oriented and future-oriented properties. One may raise objections regarding the ontological status of these properties and the commitment to past and future objects and times that they seem to bring with them, but these objections can be put to rest. (shrink)

The subjects of this research are the doctrine of providence, the criticism of fate, and the concept of divine makrothymia in the Greek letters of Isidore of Pelusium. These letters offer neither comprehensive theories nor compelling arguments but relevant, though miscellaneous, information which may help in tracing Isidore’s intellectual profile. More specifically, this study explores the interaction of Isidore with his sources, and unearths substantial new evidence of the direct influence on him of the works of Chrysostom and Pseudo-Chrysostom.

[ita] Blondel offre una prospettiva gnoseologica complementare al tomismo: se quest'ultimo sottolinea troppo la forza del concetto, Blondel da parte sua la relativizza un po' troppo. Tra le due prospettive occorre quindi cercare una sintesi. -/- [eng] Blondel offers a gnoseological perspective complementary to tomism: if the latter excessively underlines the strength of the concept, Blondel instead underestimates it. Between the two perspectives it is therefore necessary to seek a synthesis.