Affective information can be retrieved simply by measuring words co‐occurrences in linguistic contexts. Lenci and colleagues demonstrate that the affective measures retrieved from linguistic occurrences predict words’ concreteness: abstract words are more heavily loaded with affective information than concrete ones. These results challenge the Affective grounding hypothesis, suggesting that abstract concepts may be ungrounded and coded only linguistically, and that their affective load may be a linguistic factor.

The present study investigates the relationship between technology director, internationalisation, and firm performance, assuming the beneficial effect of digital-sustainable corporate governance reforms. We implied the presence of a technology director on the board and empirically examined its impact on firm performance. In addition, we also test business internationalisation as a mediator between the technology director on the board and firm performance. The empirical findings rely on the data retrieved from the S&P Dow Jones Sustainability Index 2019 for 115 top sustainable (...) EU firms and the Thomson Reuters Refinitiv Eikon database. The results reveal a significant positive relationship between the technology director's presence on the board and firm performance. We also find business internationalisation mediates the relationship between the technology director's presence on the board and firm performance. Overall, we try to lay a foundation for a digitally aware board and its impact on important firm decisions. (shrink)

This monographic section questions the concept of domesticity, and some of its concrete developments, both as a principle of order and as a device through which historically and culturally variable differences and meanings are articulated – starting with those associated with it from the very beginning, namely the values of stability, solidity and centredness. The essays collected here challenge the idea of a separation between domestic and political space, which is made to coincide tout court with that between private and (...) public space. For a long time, this dichotomy relegated domesticity to a politically irrelevant dimension. Instead, it is the home as a political form that is here investigated and questioned. (shrink)

L'opera di Primo Levi presenta un caso straordinariamente ricco e in qualche modo enigmatico di intertestualità. Con questo volume si è cercato di tracciare i lineamenti di una mappa immaginaria, uno schema degli innesti, intertesti e trapianti che collegano l'opera leviana ai libri altrui.

In recent years, the confidence in the cultural koiné of Hermeneutics (shared by many continental philosophers in the last decades of the 20th century) went into a sort of epistemological crisis. However, this offers now much opportunity to reflect seriously about the philological roots of philosophical hermeneutics and about its close relationship with Hegel’s dialectical legacy. That’s why, after half a century, it’s still worth reading the methodological introduction of Wolfgang Wieland’s standard book on Aristotle’s Physics (1961).

This paper analyzes the connection between Hegel’s theory of objective thinking and language. The current interpretative trend considers the conceptual only in a formal and propositional manner and it understands the Hegelian theory of truth in the light of semantic inferentialism. In contrast with this interpretative trend, the paper argues for two claims. 1) Hegel’s notion of concept (Begriff) does not overlap with the structure of the proposition. 2) Language plays an essential and systematic role in Hegel’s philosophy, but language (...) can not be understood as the highest form of rational understanding. As for the Hegelian theory of truth, the paper criticizes the disjunction between the logical-formal perspective and the ontological perspective. For Hegel, the concept defines the unity of subjectivity and objectivity. The correlate ontological monism represents, on the one hand, a critique of Kant’s cognitive dualism. On the other hand, Hegel’s ontological monism provides a theory of truth which constitutes an immanent criticism of the knowledge forms of the consciousness (Bewusstsein). From this point of view, language as well as the “social practice” of giving and asking for reasons show their onesidedness, because they still constitute a “subjective” sphere of knowledge. (shrink)

What does it mean “knowing through art”? This paper develops an approach of radical cognitivism, suggesting a new way of integrating aesthetics and cognitive sciences.

Riassunto: Negli ultimi anni alcuni studi cruciali condotti nell’ambito della psicologia cognitiva, della psicologia sociale e della psicologia dei media, e più in generale nelle scienze neurocognitive, hanno dimostrato che la finzione è in grado di favorire processi di apprendimento relativi alla cognizione sociale, in particolare rendendo possibile l’acquisizione di credenze, lo sviluppo di competenze sociali, il cambiamento degli atteggiamenti. Questo articolo esamina criticamente i risultati sperimentali più rilevanti relativi all’apprendimento dalla finzione e integra in un quadro teorico unitario i (...) diversi meccanismi cognitivi coinvolti. Parole chiave: Simulazione; Finzione; Credenze; Vigilanza epistemica; Riflessione Fiction and Social Cognition: In recent years several crucial studies in cognitive psychology, social psychology, media psychology, and more generally in the neurocognitive sciences, have shown that fiction can facilitate learning processes related to social cognition. In particular these studies indicate that fiction enables the acquisition of beliefs, the development of social skills, and attitude change. This article discusses the most important experimental results for learning through fiction, and integrates the cognitive mechanisms engaged by fiction in a consistent theoretical framework. Keywords: Simulation; Fiction; Beliefs; Epistemic Vigilance; Reflection. (shrink)

The author proposes that the anonymous letter dated May 19th 1641 and delivered to Descartes by Mersenne should be attributed to Thomas Hobbes. Although the content is known, what scholars are usually more interested in are Descartes’ two replies, which contain important clarifications on the proof of God’s existence. That the letter was written by Hobbes is revealed by various thematic, conceptual, and lexical analogies and, above all, by the presence of two doctrines characteristic of his thought: 1) the denial (...) of the existence of intellectual ideas; 2) the assertion that the nature of God can only be described by the proposition "God exists". Attributing this letter to Hobbes throws new light on the debate that followed Descartes’ Meditations as well as on the role played by Mersenne. (shrink)

The paper analyses Bratman’s planning theory of intention and action, trying to assess its merits in relation to contemporary debates about the constitution of agency. After discussing the limits of the so called belief-desire model in representing the agent’s standpoint, the paper focuses on how planning states can sustain an alternative view based on self-governing strategies allegedly capable of supporting a distinctive sense of personal continuity over time. It ends up with the discussion of some related concerns pertaining to metaphysics (...) and diachronic rationality, in particular the apparent tension between synchronic and diachronic rational pressure over planning deliberation. (shrink)

The evolutionary and comparative perspective represents a persuasive view to naturalize aesthetics - however, only if we avoid one of the most common prejudice. Precisely, the preliminary reduction of the aesthetic experience to the mere sensory perception. The paper falsifies this reductive framework reconstructing the zone of proximal evolution concerning the aesthetic and artistic dimension. In particular, we take as reference point the mind of the chimpanzee, at the same time unable to make art and limited to inescapable sensory and (...) perceptual constrains. (shrink)

This essay proposes an evolutionary story about the co-emergence of mind and aesthetic experience. Based on archeological data and cognitive research, the story suggests that aesthetic experience performs an adaptive function as a specific implementation of knowledge and a crucial role in human mentation.

Il metodo indiziario pone l’investigatore di fronte a un caso esemplare. Quest’ultimo, sulla scorta di indizi rivelatori, permette di rileggere la realtà, formulando ipotesi euristiche che accrescono le nostre competenze conoscitive. Lo aveva ben inteso Peirce teorizzando la cosiddetta inferenza ipotetica; ma, come ricorda Ginzburg, anche Freud, nei suoi studi su Michelangelo, aveva tematizzato come il metodo psicoanalitico, attraverso la sua vocazione allo studio dei dettagli (gli scarti obliati della coscienza), si avvicini ai fenomeni abduttivi tipici delle detection stories, mediante (...) cui si portano allo scoperto le reali operazioni subliminali della coscienza. Assai significativo è che qualcosa di analogo avvenga anche nella produzione fantascientifica di P.K. Dick: i suoi romanzi, al cospetto delle falle, delle incongruenze della logica sociale imperante, sono delle efficaci retroduzioni attraverso cui la realtà del quotidiano si rivela come una grande fantasmagoria mercificata; mentre i mondi immaginifici partoriti dalla mente dello scrittore si mostrano come proiezioni distopiche della realtà politica americana. Questa riscoperta, che si fonda sull’effetto sorpresa prodotto dal caso anomalo (inteso quale sintomo rivelatore), come avviene in modo esemplare nel romanzo Time Out of Joint, può essere intesa come il risultato di una vera e propria “critica dell’informazione spuria”. Critica dell’ideologia, realismo e Science Fiction qui trovano una sorprendente alleanza, che fa di Dick un autore tutt’altro che disimpegnato o impolitico. (shrink)

Il passaggio dalle tradizioni metaforiche ai diversi linguaggi come momento per individuare gli oggetti di cui è possibile parlare in campo politico.

Nella conferenza su Le cinéma et la nouvelle psychologie Merleau-Ponty introduce una singolare, ma decisiva notazione sull’arte filmica, legandola alla nozione di “ritmo”. Tale nozione dà avvio a una riflessione sull’immagine e sul rapporto tra l’immagine e lo sguardo dello spettatore al cinema. Nel presente articolo, l’uso che Merleau-Ponty ne fa e il senso di questa operazione saranno letti in riferimento alla riflessione di Émile Benveniste sul ritmo e ad alcune annotazioni contenute nei corsi di Merleau-Ponty al Collège de France, (...) di qualche anno successivi alla conferenza, su Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression e quello sulle Recherches sur l’usage littéraire du langage. Dans le texte de sa conférence sur Le cinéma et la nouvelle psychologie, Merleau-Ponty introduit une lecture, singulière mais décisive, de l’art filmique, en la rapprochant de la notion de « rythme ». Cette notion engage une réflexion sur l’image et sur le rapport entre l’image et le regard du spectateur au cinéma. Dans cet article, l’utilisation que Merleau-Ponty en fait et le sens de cette opération seront lus à partir de la réflexion d’Émile Benveniste sur le rythme et à partir de certaines notes présentes dans les cours de Merleau-Ponty au Collège de France sur Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression et sur les Recherches sur l’usage littéraire du langage, qui suivent de quelques années la conférence.In the text of his lecture on “Film and the new psychology,” Merleau-Ponty introduces a singular and decisive reading of filmic art, approaching the notion of “rhythm.” This notion engages in a reflection on image and on the relation between the image and the gaze of the spectator at the cinema. In this article, Merleau-Ponty’s actual usage of this notion and the meaning of this operation will be read starting from the reflection of Émile Benveniste on rhythm as well as certain notes presented in Merleau-Ponty’s courses at the Collège de France on The sensible world and the world of expression and Research on the literary usages of language, that follow some years after the lecture. (shrink)

The article focuses on the twofold-nobility idea, a nobility of conduct and line, starting from some brief comments by Brunetto Latini, Thomas Aquinas and a more explicit formulation by Henry of Ghent. Then it focuses on the usage of this double notion in the De regimine principum by Giles of Rome and on how, through this couple, particularly in the vernaculars, it leads to the creation of a new political space for thinking nobility and courtesy.