The automated identification of national implementations of European directives by text similarity techniques has shown promising preliminary results. Previous works have proposed and utilized unsupervised lexical and semantic similarity techniques based on vector space models, latent semantic analysis and topic models. However, these techniques were evaluated on a small multilingual corpus of directives and NIMs. In this paper, we utilize word and paragraph embedding models learned by shallow neural networks from a multilingual legal corpus of European directives and national legislation (...) to develop unsupervised semantic similarity systems to identify transpositions. We evaluate these models and compare their results with the previous unsupervised methods on a multilingual test corpus of 43 Directives and their corresponding NIMs. We also develop supervised machine learning models to identify transpositions and compare their performance with different feature sets. (shrink)

It is well-known that versions of the lottery paradox and of the preface paradox show that the following three principles are jointly inconsistent: (Sufficiency) very probable propositions are justifiably believable; (Conjunction Closure) justified believability is closed under conjunction introduction; (No Contradictions) propositions known to be contradictory are not justifiably believable. This paper shows that there is a hybrid of the lottery and preface paradoxes that does not require Sufficiency to arise, but only Conjunction Closure and No Contradictions; and it argues (...) that, given any plausible solution to this paradox, if one is not ready to deny Conjunction Closure (and analogous consistency principles), then one must endorse the thesis that justified believability is factive. (shrink)

Prominent theories in moral psychology maintain that a core aspect of moral competence is the ability to distinguish moral norms, which derive from universal principles of justice and fairness, from conventional norms, which are contingent on a specific group consensus. The present study investigated the psychological bases of the moral-conventional distinction by manipulating the framing of the test question, the authority’s license, and the historical context. Participants evaluated moral and conventional transgressions by answering an ‘okay for you’ test question (i.e., (...) judging according to their opinion) or an ‘okay in context’ test question (i.e., judging by imagining being a contemporary of the story protagonist). In evaluating moral transgressions that happened in a distant context or with the authority’s license, most of the participants condemned the violations when responding to the ‘okay for you’ test question, but did not do so when responding to the ‘okay in context’ test question. A similar effect of the question framing was found also on scenarios presenting conventional violations suggesting that subtle changes in the framing of the test question can influence people’s evaluations of both moral and conventional prototypical transgressions. We propose that these effects indicate the presence of moral and conventional construals of social actions that are highly flexible and context-sensitive. (shrink)

The notion of grounding is usually conceived as an objective and explanatory relation. It connects two relata if one—the ground—determines or explains the other—the consequence. In the contemporary literature on grounding, much effort has been devoted to logically characterize the formal aspects of grounding, but a major hard problem remains: defining suitable grounding principles for universal and existential formulae. Indeed, several grounding principles for quantified formulae have been proposed, but all of them are exposed to paradoxes in some very natural (...) contexts of application. We introduce in this paper a first-order formal system that captures the notion of grounding and avoids the paradoxes in a novel and non-trivial way. The system we present formally develops Bolzano’s ideas on grounding by employing Hilbert’s ε-terms and an adapted version of Fine’s theory of arbitrary objects. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an analysis of the depictive properties of deepfakes. These are videos and pictures produced by deep learning algorithms that automatically modify existing videos and photographs or generate new ones. I argue that deepfakes have an intentional standard of correctness. That is, a deepfake depicts its subject only insofar as its creator intends it to. This is due to the way in which these images are produced, which involves a degree of intentional control similar to that (...) involved in the production of other intentional pictures such as drawings and paintings. This aspect distinguishes deepfakes from real videos and photographs, which instead have a non-intentional standard: their correct interpretation corresponds to the scenes that were recorded by the mechanisms that produced them, and not to what their producers intended them to represent. I show that these depictive properties make deepfakes fit for communicating information in the same way as language and other intentional pictures. That is, they do not provide direct access to the communicated information like non-intentional pictures (e.g., videos and photographs) do. Rather, they convey information indirectly, relying only on the viewer's assumptions about the communicative intentions of the creator of the deepfake. Indirect communication is indeed a prominent function of such media in our society, but it is often overlooked in the philosophical literature. This analysis also explains what is epistemically worrying about deepfakes. With the introduction of this technology, viewers interpreting photorealistic videos and pictures can no longer be sure of which standard to select (i.e., intentional or non-intentional), which makes misinterpretation likely (i.e., they can take an image to have a standard of correctness that it does not have). (shrink)

Cellular automata (henceforth: CA) are discrete, abstract computational systems that have proved useful both as general models of complexity and as more specific representations of non-linear dynamics in a variety of scientific fields. Firstly, CA are (typically) spatially and temporally discrete: they are composed of a finite or denumerable set of homogeneous, simple units, the atoms or cells. At each time unit, the cells instantiate one of a finite set of states. They evolve in parallel at discrete time steps, following (...) state update functions or dynamical transition rules: the update of a cell state obtains by taking into account the states of cells in its local neighborhood (there are, therefore, no actions at a distance). Secondly, CA are abstract, as they can be specified in purely mathematical terms and implemented in physical structures. Thirdly, CA are computational systems: they can compute functions and solve algorithmic problems. Despite functioning in a different way from traditional, Turing machine-like devices, CA with suitable rules can emulate a universal Turing machine, and therefore compute, given Turing's Thesis, anything computable.... (shrink)

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...

This paper aims at investigating the vocabulary of thingness in the thought of Henry of Ghent. The paper features two main parts: in the first part we try to clarify the statement and the implications of the distinction between the concept of res a reor, reris and the concept of res a ratitudine. On the subject the thesis argued that this distinction has essentially an epistemological function in Henry of Ghent's thought. The second part of the paper, instead, takes into (...) consideration the concept of realitas as it is formulated by Henry in some sections of his Quodlibeta. The argued thesis is that realitas is not a synonym of being, but rather designates the inner foundation of every ontological attribution. (shrink)

La reflexión de Francesco D'Agostino procede a partir de una sintética presentación de la genealogía y de los sucesivos desarrollos del concepto de "persona" en la cultura occidental, deteniéndose específicamente sobre su reciente identificación positivistá con la categoría de "sujeto de derecho" - y sobre su consiguiente manipulabilidad pragmática y normativa. Tal paradigma ha entrado en crisis, como testimonian las irresolubles problemáticas surgidas en torno a la disciplina legal del bias, y en particular a la dificultad, que se deriva (...) directamente, de contener normativamente toda tentación de un superpoder biopolítico: ni el intento empirista de rehabilitar el concepto de base de la capacidad de autodeterminación, aparece verdaderamente serio y persuasivo. Más prometedora resulta en cambio la propuesta de regresar a una fundamentación del derecho en la persona y en su concreta corporeidad: yendo más allá de las propuestas de Stefano Rodota, puestas fecundamente en confrontación con el personalismo de Elio Sgreccia, D'Agostino sugiere tomar en serio la idea de "biografía" para redescubrir en el fondo un integrado, por ser relacional, concepto de persona humana. En este empeño teorético aparece rico de consecuencias el paso de la consideración prioritaria de los cuerpos a aquella de la "carne", mucho más densa desde el punto de vista filosófico y teológico: tanto por vía de su referencia intrínseca a la vulnerabilidad, como por su estructural apertura, alternativa a la cerrazón individualista del cuerpo en sí mismo, a la relación con el otro por sí mismo y sobre todo con el Dios encarnado. (shrink)

The argument from convention contends that the regular use of definite descriptions as referential devices strongly implies that a referential semantic convention underlies such usage. On the presumption that definite descriptions also participate in a quantificational semantic convention, the argument from convention has served as an argument for the thesis that the English definite article is ambiguous. Here, I revisit this relatively new argument. First, I address two recurring criticisms of the argument from convention: its alleged tendency to overgenerate and (...) its apparent evidential inadequacy. These criticisms are found wanting. Second, following Zacharska, I argue that while the argument from convention does alter the landscape of logical possibilities insofar as it provides good grounds for treating Donnellan’s referential–attributive distinction as having truth-conditional consequences, the argument from convention nonetheless fails to demonstrate that ‘the’ requires two lexical entries. (shrink)

In current political analysis, as well as in discourse, the term populism has become an ‘umbrella term’, embracing a large number of concepts and phenomena. One risk underlying this conceptual stretching is that the term falls into the trap of ‘all-nothing’ and becomes so elastic that populism is used to improperly describe a wide and unrelated variety of phenomena. Some political phenomena might share some characteristics with populist movements but are nevertheless characterised by ideological elements and political projects that are (...) very much in line with the traditional left/right split, as in the case of the new radical right. This article proposes a distinction between the conformational populism typical of some populist parties and the contagious populism typical of the radical right. We argue that in the latter, populism becomes another tool in the arsenal of parties with clearly established identities. Using a comparative approach, we evaluate the programmes, ideological foundations, conception of the people and positions of the 5 Star Movement, The League and the Rassemblement National to illustrate this distinction. (shrink)

Outdoor education is a pedagogical orientation that has been present for years in the educational institutions of the municipality of Modena; the latter, through research, monitors the trend in order to identify and resolve problems. Examining the professionalism of the staff in the outdoor education field and the limitations in implementing the practice, this contribution highlights how various factors constitute an obstacle to carrying out the activities, even in the presence of adequate training; the constraints that emerged concern relationships with (...) colleagues and parents, bureaucracy and the physical structure of the service itself. The study therefore offers ideas to take into consideration for the updating and training of educational personnel on outdoor education practices. (shrink)

Guala does not go far enough in his critique of the assumption that human decisions about sharing made in the context of experimental game conditions accurately reflect decision-making under real conditions. Sharing of hunted animals is constrained by cultural rules and is not as assumed in models of weak and strong reciprocity. Missing in these models is the cultural basis of sharing that makes it a group property rather than an individual one.

We study the deviations from the exponential decay law, both in quantum field theory (QFT) and quantum mechanics (QM), for an unstable particle which can decay in (at least) two decay channels. After a review of general properties of non-exponential decay in QFT and QM, we evaluate in both cases the decay probability that the unstable particle decays in a given channel in the time interval between t and t+dt. An important quantity is the ratio of the probability of decay (...) into the first and the second channel: this ratio is constant in the Breit-Wigner limit (in which the decay law is exponential) and equals the quantity Γ1/Γ2, where Γ1 and Γ2 are the respective tree-level decay widths. However, in the full treatment (both for QFT and QM) it is an oscillating function around the mean value Γ1/Γ2 and the deviations from this mean value can be sizable. Technically, we study the decay properties in QFT in the context of a superrenormalizable Lagrangian with scalar particles and in QM in the context of Lee Hamiltonians, which deliver formally analogous expressions to the QFT case. (shrink)

Through an historical-conceptual analysis of Utopia, the essay examines several features of More’s international political thought, drawing attention to the analogies that permit to compare his work to contemporary theories and practices of justifying war. From this perspective, More’s conceptualisation of just war constitutes an early modern attempt to legitimise states’ policies aimed at exporting specific political and cultural models to other states, relying on the assumption that such models are intrinsically valuable or constitute optimal solutions for the life of (...) any political community. (shrink)

This essay considers, among other paintings, two of the most important of Caravaggio's works in reference to the theological debate concerning the inspiration of the Bible and of the Gospel of Matthew, a lively debate among contemporaries of the painter. The focus of the essay is to demonstrate a method for the analysis of figurative representations of religious themes. Liberating these works from the confines of art history, it analyzes them in the context of the Christian experience, as it was (...) in the period in which these paintings were made. (shrink)

Vittorio Hösle is internationally highly regarded for his attempt to revive objective idealism – the philosophical line along which he situates the positions of Plato, Aristotle, most medieval philosophers, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schelling, Hegel, but also Peirce and Whitehead – as a philosophical system capable of holding together the transcendental dimension of synthetic a priori judgments with the intelligibility and objectivity of being. In this interview, he discusses his work over the past decades, starting from the “Philosophische Lehrjahre” (“years of philosophical (...) apprenticeship”) between Regensburg, Tübingen, Bochum and Freiburg and from the meetings with masters and significant interlocutors (such as Tóth, Thieme, Wandschneider, Beierwaldes, Lohr, Böckenförde, without forgetting Apel and Jonas). Multiple themes dot the path of thought retraced in this dialogue: from the rethematization of Hegel’s (and Vico’s) objective idealism through transcendental pragmatics to the delineation of the relationship between ethics and politics via a theory of the social and the intent of a normative foundation; from the need for a thought that faces the ecological crisis to the reinterpretation of sociobiology; and finally, from the project of an intersubjectively valid understanding to the importance of a theory of comedy. What emerges is the philosophical self-portrait of a cosmopolitan intellectual who was able to grasp the best from inherited and acquired cultural traditions: German culture, inherited from his father; Italian culture, inherited from his mother; and American culture, acquired by moving to the USA. The interview was realised on 17 April 2024 at the University of Trento, as part of the second series of lectures “Voices from Contemporary Philosophy”. (shrink)

Quaestio, Volume 20, Issue, Page 257-288, January 2020.

This essay analyses the opera project 7 Deaths of Maria Callas by Marina Abramović, premiered in Munich in September, 2020. The first section reconstructs the role that the Greek soprano played in the life of the Serbian performer, bringing the latter to a gradual sense of self-identification. Then, the thirty-years-long development of the original concept of the video piece How to Die into the actual project through its various stages is taken into account, and the stage realisation of the work (...) is described in detail. The third section focuses on the representation of death in Marina Abramović’s performances, while section four compares Callas and Abramović’s works and lives, and their status as iconic women. The last section retraces Abramović’s artistic path which has led her from her extreme and essential performances of the 1970s to her recent experimentations with other media and to her meditation on immaterial art. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 9, September 2022.

Intuitions play a relevant role in the acquisition of knowledge. Among those who believe that this is the case, some base their claim on the peculiar phenomenology of intuitions. These theorists often adopt a perceptualist and seeming-based model for their phenomenological description. Deeming intuitions as essentially private phenomena, however, seeming-based descriptions end up supporting a dogmatic view of intuitions as a source of epistemic justifications. I argue that this is because the seeming-based model is incomplete in that it does not (...) consider some virtue-related aspects of the plasticity of intuitions in social contexts. Then, I propose a way of integrating an explanation of these aspects in it through a Neo-Kantian reinterpretation of some of the concepts involved. I will draw from the work of Christoph Sigwart on the so-called Evidenzgefühl that characterizes the phenomenology of intuitions, showing the ties between this feeling and the linguistic, communicative, and social dimension of scientific research. The broader aim is to suggest that it is possible to make an open-minded use of intuitions even when basing their epistemic relevance on their peculiar phenomenology. (shrink)

Il volume raccoglie saggi dedicati alla Fenomenologia dello spirito di G.W.F. Hegel e ad alcune sue principali interpretazioni. A scritti dal taglio più nettamente storiografico che ne ricostruiscono le influenze in autori quali Marx, Gentile, Heidegger, Kojève, Paci, Lacan e Brandom, si affiancano contributi volti a ricostruire alcuni nodi categoriali che, sollecitati dal testo hegeliano, hanno segnato le riflessioni etiche, teoretiche, filosofico-politiche e psicoanalitiche successive: dialettica, cultura, negazione, desiderio, corpo, fenomeno, riconoscimento. Questa raccolta non intende quindi né riproporre la lettera (...) del testo hegeliano, né avanzare una sua specifica interpretazione. Piuttosto, gli autori hanno condiviso lo sforzo di illustrare in actu exercito le possibilità di movimento tra questi due estremi – testo e interpretazione – tra cui la cultura filosofica si muove. Attraverso questo movimento la Fenomenologia dello spirito continua a produrre filosofia, ossia ad essere occasione e strumento per la comprensione del “proprio tempo col pensiero”. (shrink)

A multitude of scholars have recently argued that inherently ambivalent reactions ought to be accepted, and our drive toward overcoming them resisted, in order to preserve a reflectively accurate account of oneself. By contrast, I argue that a genuine commitment to overcome ambivalence aims less at avoiding than acknowledging and understanding, as well as possibly resolving, whatever conflicts led us to become ambivalent in the first place. On the other hand, certain forms of ‘reflective ambivalence’ are especially vulnerable to the (...) very kind of self‐deception they aim to prevent. (shrink)