In this study, we use temporally aligned word embeddings and a large diachronic corpus of English to quantify language change in a data-driven, scalable way, which is grounded in language use. We show a unique and reliable relation between measures of language change and age of acquisition (AoA) while controlling for frequency, contextual diversity, concreteness, length, dominant part of speech, orthographic neighborhood density, and diachronic frequency variation. We analyze measures of language change tackling both the change in lexical representations and (...) the change in the relation between lexical representations and the words with the most similar usage patterns, showing that they capture different aspects of language change. Our results show a unique relation between language change and AoA, which is stronger when considering neighborhood-level measures of language change: Words with more coherent diachronic usage patterns tend to be acquired earlier. The results support theories positing a link between ontogenetic and ethnogenetic processes in language. (shrink)

Magic and religion are at the origin of the concept of money as a unit for measuring value. Actually, they determined the first forms money took: precious objects, engraved stones, amulets and talismans which conferred a special power, within a social group, on the one who possessed them. In time, this power came to include the power of acquisition in commercial terms, but its original ties with magic were never lost. Aristotle clearly saw the relationship between a certain concept of (...) money (in Politica) and a new ethical concept as a corrective for the imbalances within a social community (in Ethica Nicomachea). If we look closely, we see that this ethical concept is not in opposition to the former but emphasizes the double aspect of the idea of money in antiquity, an idea which has survived, with some modifications, in Christianity and the modern era. (shrink)

_Philosophy of Molecular Medicine: Foundational Issues in Theory and Practice_ aims at a systematic investigation of a number of foundational issues in the field of molecular medicine. The volume is organized around four broad modules focusing, respectively, on the following key aspects: What are the nature, scope, and limits of molecular medicine? How does it provide explanations? How does it represent and model phenomena of interest? How does it infer new knowledge from data and experiments? The essays collected here, authored (...) by prominent scientists and philosophers of science, focus on a handful of mainstream topics in the philosophical literature, such as _causation_, _explanation_, _modeling_, and _scientific inference_. These previously unpublished contributions shed new light on these traditional topics by integrating them with problems, methods, and results from three prominent areas of contemporary biomedical science: _basic research_, _translational_ and _clinical research_, and _clinical practice_. (shrink)

Triangular Landscapes: Environment, Society, and the State in the Nile Delta under Roman Rule. By Katherine Blouin. Oxford Studies on the Roman Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. xxv + 429, illus. $150.

Questo libro, come chiariscono i curatori, è il risultato di un progetto scientifico sullo studio dei commentari neoplatonici del Fedone, già realizzatosi in un convegno del 1970 diretto da Westerink, e poi ampliatosi in un convegno sulla storia delle interpretazioni del dialogo nell’antichità realizzatosi nel 2012 a Bruxelles: non più solo platonici, ma anche aristotelici, stoici, scettici. Dopo un’ «Introduzione», redatta dai tre editori, i saggi raccolti sono 13, a cura di Sylvain Delcomm...

This article analyzes the definition of res in two places of Augustine's works, namely, De dialectica, ch. 5, and De doctrina christiana, I, ii, 2. In these places, the concept of res is treated in relation to the concept of sign (signum). In the first text, Augustine suggests that with our words we mean things by expressing ideas of those things. According to the second text, something is a thing only insofar as it is not being used currently as a (...) sign, given that anything can be used as a sign. (shrink)

Humanity’s self-ordained mandate to subdue and dominate nature is part of the cognitive foundation of the modern world—a perspective that remains deeply ingrained in science and technology. Marine biology has not been immune to this anthropocentric bias. But this needs to change, and the gaps between basic scientific disciplines and the global conservation imperatives of our time need to be bridged. In the face of a looming ecological and climate crisis, marine biologists must upgrade their values and professional standards and (...) help foster the radical transformation needed to avert a climate and ecological breakdown. To prevent some of the damage, they must cross the imaginary line that separates science from science-based activism and consciously pursue the health and durability of human and natural communities. To this end, they can (1) develop compelling narratives that engage human society, with emphasis on care for the wild living world; (2) move beyond marine conservation on paper and avoid self-serving complaisance; (3) advocate constructive changes in market and human behaviour, not only by documenting damage but also by clarifying how the extraction, production and consumption system can be steered away from practices that harm nature; (4) push for systemic change in politics through individual and collective efforts, supporting environmental activism and those who demand biosphere-saving policies; and (5) endorse a more ecocentric and holistic world vision, relinquishing contempt for spiritual wisdom and liaising with (or at least not dismissing) spiritual traditions that encourage equality, self-restraint and environmental sustainability. (shrink)

Need the moral be repeated? There exist two distinct circuits, each with its own final market. The equilibrium of the economic process is conditioned by the balance of the two circuits: each must be allowed the possibility of continuity, of basic outlay yielding an equal basic income and surplus outlay yieldingan equal surplus income, of basic and surplus income yielding equal basic and surplus expenditure, and of these grounding equivalent basic and surplus outlay. But what cannot be tolerated, much less (...) sustained, is for one circuit to be drained by the other. That is the essence of dynamic disequilibrium. (shrink)

L’intento di questo articolo è di porre in luce come, all’interno della Critica della ragione dialettica temi quali Prassi, Materia e Destino siano in un necessario ed essenziale rapporto. Per fare emergere tale cooriginarietà, ci siamo serviti della parola “costituzione”, intendendo con questa non una qualche descrizione statica, quanto piuttosto il senso dinamico della Storia secondo una motilità particolare, l’errare.

In this commentary, I focus on Jones' suggestion of a close connection between the domain of space and that of kinship. I expand on that suggestion by introducing the concept of frame of reference and show how it can possibly participate to the generation of kinship systems.

This paper proposes to model legal reasoning asdialectical theory-constructiondirected by teleology. Precedents are viewed asevidence to be explained throughtheories. So, given a background of factors andvalues, the parties in a case canbuild their theories by using a set of operators,which are called theory constructors.The objective of each party is to provide theoriesthat both explain the evidence (theprecedents) and support the decision wished by thatparty. This leads to theory-basedargumentation, i.e., a dialectical exchange ofcompeting theories, which support opposedoutcomes by explaining the same (...) evidence and appealingto the same values. The winneris the party that can reply with a more coherent theoryto all theories of its adversary. (shrink)

The authors propose some methodological considerations on thanatochronological estimations. They first consider the problem of the definition of death, and then they deal with the issue of the estimations of death time, that is, with the Post-Mortem Interval (PMI). As regards the first question, they note that it does not concern only the definition of death, but also the choice of a particular kind of definition of 'definition'. With reference to the second question, the authors suggest a causal model showing (...) that the presence of many causal chains must be taken into consideration. Finally they discuss what 'most convenient and reliable causal chain' means for a thanatochronologist. (shrink)

BackgroundAssessment of capacity to consent to treatment is an important legal and ethical issue in daily medical practice. In this study we carefully evaluated the capacity to consent to treatment in patients admitted to an acute medical ward using an assessment by members of the medical team, the specific Silberfeld's score, the MMSE and an assessment by a senior psychiatrist.MethodsOver a 3 month period, 195 consecutive patients of an internal medicine ward in a university hospital were included and their capacity (...) to consent was evaluated within 72 hours of admission.ResultsAmong the 195 patients, 38 were incapable of consenting to treatment (unconscious patients or severe cognitive impairment) and 14 were considered as incapable of consenting by the psychiatrist (prevalence of incapacity to consent of 26.7%). Agreement between the psychiatrist's evaluation and the Silberfeld questionnaire was poor (sensitivity 35.7%, specificity 91.6%). Experienced clinicians showed a higher agreement (sensitivity 57.1%, specificity 96.5%). A decision shared by residents, chief residents and nurses was the best predictor for agreement with the psychiatric assessment (sensitivity 78.6%, specificity 94.3%).ConclusionPrevalence of incapacity to consent to treatment in patients admitted to an acute internal medicine ward is high. While the standardized Silberfeld questionnaire and the MMSE are not appropriate for the evaluation of the capacity to consent in this setting, an assessment by the multidisciplinary medical team concurs with the evaluation by a senior psychiatrist. (shrink)

The field of psychiatry has long struggled with developing models of practice; most underemphasize the interpersonal aspects of clinical practice. This essay is unique in putting intersubjectivity front and centre. It is an attempt to provide a clinical method to re-establish the fragile dialogue of the soul with oneself and with others.

Esse artigo visa demonstrar como o psicanalista francês Jacques Lacan delineou e reformulou o conceito freudiano de pulsão de morte no interior dos três registros da experiência humana. Dito isso, iremos inicialmente compreender de forma geral como o conceito de pulsão de morte aparece na obra lacaniana, de maneira a demonstrarmos como ela é reformulada pelo autor francês. Depois, iremos delinear como esse conceito aparece no interior dos registros do Imaginário, Simbólico e Real; desse modo, estaremos envoltos com o Estágio (...) do Espelho desenvolvido por Lacan no decorrer dos anos 1930 e 1940, a teoria do significante fundada por nosso autor mais atentamente nos anos 1950 e por último o registro do Real, o qual foi introduzido com mais atenção a partir dos anos 1960 em diante. (shrink)