The article argues that the possibility of an unlimited gap in income and wealth between the top and bottom segments of society is incompatible with a democratic commitment to political equality. T...

The concepts of molecular structure and molecular shape are ubiquitous in the chemical literature, where they are often taken as synonyms, with unavoidable drawbacks in chemistry teaching. A third concept, molecular topology, is less frequent but it is a reference term in molecular research domains such as Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationships. The present paper proposes an epistemological analysis of these three notions, aimed at clarifying the nature of their relationship, as well as the contiguities and differences between them. At first, we (...) discuss the various acceptations of the terms molecular structure and molecular shape. Then, we examine some crucial milestones in the history of these concepts and we analyse the relationship between structure, shape and topology from an epistemological viewpoint. We point out the distinguishing features of each concept and we show that their semantic openness, that may be fruitful in a specialized context, turns into a source of incoherence and inaccuracy in the teaching context, fostered by the misleading use of these terms made by textbooks. Eventually, we propose a criterion fit to discriminate between the conceptual domains of molecular shape, molecular structure and molecular topology. (shrink)

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is universally acknowledged as the prominent reference textbook for the diagnosis and assessment of psychiatric diseases. However, since the publication of its first version in 1952, controversies have been raised concerning its reliability and validity and the need for other novel clinical tools has emerged. Currently the DSM is in its fourth edition and a new fifth edition is expected for release in 2013, in an intense intellectual debate and in a (...) call for new proposals. (shrink)

Hands are commonly held up as an exemplar of well-known, familiar objects. However, conceptual knowledge of the hand has been found to show highly stereotyped distortions. Specifically, people judge their knuckles as farther forward in the hand than they actually are. The cause of this distal bias remains unclear. In Experiment 1, we tested whether both visual and tactile information contribute to the distortion. Participants judged the location of their knuckles by pointing to the location on their palm directly opposite (...) each knuckle with: 1) a metal baton (using vision and touch) 2) a metal baton while blindfolded (using touch), 3) a laser pointer (using vision). In Experiment 2, we investigated whether judgments are influenced by visual landmarks such as the creases at the base of each finger on the palm. Participants localized their knuckles on either a photograph or a silhouette of their hand. In both experiments, clear distortions were found across conditions, of generally similar magnitude. These results show that distal bias is resistant to changes in the stimulus information and does not rely on any specific stimulus cue or single sensory modality, suggesting that such mislocalisations reflect a conceptual misrepresentation of hand structure. (shrink)

Parity games are combinatorial representations of closed Boolean μ-terms. By adding to them draw positions, they have been organized by Arnold and Santocanale [3] and [27] into a μ-calculus whose standard interpretation is over the class of all complete lattices. As done by Berwanger et al. [8] and [9] for the propositional modal μ-calculus, it is possible to classify parity games into levels of a hierarchy according to the number of fixed-point variables. We ask whether this hierarchy collapses w.r.t. the (...) standard interpretation. We answer this question negatively by providing, for each n≥1, a parity game Gn with these properties: it unravels to a μ-term built up with n fixed-point variables, it is not semantically equivalent to any game with strictly less than n−2 fixed-point variables. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to illustrate how the adoption of new enterprise resource planning systems affects sensemaking in the process of Organizational Identity integration after a Merger and Acquisition.Design/methodology/approachWithin a wider case study about an acquisition in chemical/pharmaceutical industry, the paper describes the effects of SAP adoption and implementation on the organizational identity. This methodology, based on semi‐structured interviews to project leaders and to team members, has allowed a deep comprehension of the context, even if results cannot provide (...) statistical evidence of relationships.FindingsUsing the Swanson and Ramiller's approach to innovation, the paper argues that ERP adoption and implementation support sensemaking process if innovation takes place with mindfulness and because, in that case, people interact on symbolic meanings sharing retrospective knowledge and cognitive causal maps. After an M&A there are conditions for a mindful innovation with IT and therefore innovating with IT can be an effective way to enforce sensemaking process and, as a consequence, to influence the Organizational Identity evolution. In a constructionist approach, the evolution of organizational identity requires a social negotiation among members where sensemaking has a primary role. So, the integration process following acquisitions can be facilitated by adopting, implementing and assimilating common IT solutions with mindfulness.Research limitations/implicationsThe first limitation of this study is referred to timing. The author entered into the company within a year after the acquisition and went out at the beginning of SAP assimilation phase. Therefore, some perceptions could still evolve in different ways. The second limitation depends on the fact that the author analyzed a single case. By focusing on one case of acquisition – an acquisition that gives value to acquired company – the author might be limiting the transferability of the findings.Practical implicationsThese results can be useful for both scholars and practitioners. Managers who face organizational change can consider the adoption and implementation of ERP as an opportunity to influence the evolution of Organizational Identity according to strategic priorities.Originality/valueThe value of this study is in its approach that links a strategic level with a social level. This link is realized not using the ERP as an artefact but using the process of its adoption and implementation. (shrink)

The Renaissance perspective represents the three-dimensional space onto a bi-dimensional one. This cultural construction, which unifies real and virtual, like all simulations, has some limitations – the main one is that it only works from a precise viewpoint that rules the illusion. When moving away from this position the illusion becomes imperfect. Similar to physics, where reality depends on the observer’s position, perspective depends on the viewer’s position. Since perspective has been inherited by photography, cinema, video, computer images, virtual reality, (...) 3D videogames, we live in a perspective-based culture. In perception the boundaries between opposite qualities are often blurred and even indistinguishable. A screen is generally considered as rectangular, but it can be viewed as really rectangular only from its central perpendicular axis, at the crossing of the diagonals. When moving from this position it should appear as trapezoidal, but people still say it is rectangular: because they see it as rectangular or because they know it is rectangular? This threshold between vision and knowledge is imperceptible and obscure. Something similar happens with the senses. They are considered as separate entities: touch, hear, sight, smell and taste are described as distinct ways to detect the phenomenal world. But they are intermingled; the boundaries that are supposed to separate them are apparent: they are logically separable but not separate. The sensorial system is a cohesive and interrelated continuum where the senses act in synergy with each other. Continuity and discreteness, indistinguishability and distinction, inseparability and division are qualities to individuate, describe, classify and/or communicate the phenomena. These qualities are both theoretical and technical, since they depend on the general perspective of the analysis, on the goals to pursue, on the scale at which the phenomena are observed and on the accuracy of the instruments that are used. (shrink)

‘Engineered’ and ‘organic’ have always represented two sides of a challenge that went along with human evolution. Since the dawn of its existence, humankind has been trying to adapt ‘Nature’, the phenomenal world, to his goals, through projects, techniques, instruments, devices, machines, in a process that received propulsion and acceleration from the advent of symbolic ability. Inside the phenomenal world, the ‘organic’ – the material carbon-based dimension on which life is founded, according to the sciences – has always represented a (...) very important subsystem, mainly the world of the living. The ‘organic’ as food, support, pleasure, invention, care, with human skill, has been developing since prehistory, to select, hybridize and breed animals and plants, through more and more successful techniques ranging from crossbreeding to genetic manipulation and engineering. But also as ways to take care of the human body and life with tools, dresses, signs, machines and medical treatments. Scientific evolution has led to the capacity to deeply modify existing organisms and create new ones, new species that would never have evolved naturally. One major technique to describe and simulate the world and to interoperate with Nature is digital technology. Artificial intelligence, artificial life and robotics are mainly digitally based, working at the edge of Nature and the engineered. Digitally based technologies such as 3D printing and the Internet of Things can get to an intimate relationship among the engineered, the organic and Nature, blurring the divide between matter and language, life and code, ‘hardware’ and ‘software’. Hence, through sciences and technologies humanity is creating a Third Life originating from knowledge and culture, which is independently and autonomously evolving, expanding Nature from inside the realm of Nature. (shrink)

Nietzsche, para Heidegger, não teria levado a termo a desvalorização dos valores considerados até então válidos. A transvalorização, ao invés de garantir a renovação da condição existencial do homem, antepõe, à tematização do ser, o nada mudado em vontade e representação. O querido, contra os pressupostos da vontade de poder, se esclerosa na tangibilidade das coisas sem a possibilidade do além por meio do qual Nietzsche pensava superar o niilismo. A transvaloração conserva em tal aspecto a lógica dos velhos valores (...) por conta de uma vontade fixada na presumida concretude da enticidade. Nietzsche é o paradigma de uma metafísica que pensa o ser dentro da não verdade ou de uma verdade transformada na relação sujeitoobjeto. Por tudo isso, a transvaloração, longe de fundar uma nova posição de valores, é adscrivível à nadificação do sujeito, constantemente correlacionado ao objeto. O super-homem não é senão uma super-objetividade que se ilude de reviver na mais completa plenitude, com base no platonismo invertido. Contra Nietzsche, os niilismos se assemelham por não poderem não pensar o ser ao modo de um ser-aí: uma paranoica divinização da corporeidade dentro da realidade mundana. Palavras-chave: Nietzsche. Heidegger. Kant. Transvaloração. Metafísica. Niilismo. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate ignorance in relation to our capacity to justify our beliefs. To achieve this aim we specifically address scientific misconceptions, i.e. beliefs that are considered to be false in light of accepted scientific knowledge. The hypothesis we put forward is that misconceptions are not isolated false beliefs, but rather form part of a system of inferences—an explanation—which does not match current scientific theory. We further argue that, because misconceptions are embedded in a system, they cannot be (...) rectified simply by replacing false beliefs with true ones. To address our misconceptions, we must rather act on the system of beliefs that supports them. In the first step of our analysis, we distinguish between misconceptions that are easy to dispel because they represent simple errors that occur against the background of a correct explanatory apparatus and misconceptions that are, on the contrary, very difficult to dispel because they are the product of pseudo explanations. We show that, in the latter case, misconceptions constitute an integral part of an incorrect explanation and the reasons that support such misconceptions are deeply misleading. In the second step, we discuss various approaches that have been adopted to address the problem of misconceptions. Challenging the notion that directly addressing and criticizing specific misconceptions is an effective approach, we propose that critical thinking is the most fruitful means to deal with misconceptions. We define the core competences and knowledge relevant for the practice of critical thinking and discuss how they help us avoid misconceptions that arise from accepting beliefs that form part of a mistaken explanation. (shrink)

The novel pandemic called “Coronavirus Disease 2019”, as a global public health emergency and global threat, has affected many countries in unpredictable ways and impacted on physical activity behaviors to various extents. Specific populations including refugees, asylum seekers, and prisoners, are vulnerable groups with multiple complex health needs and worse health outcomes with respect to the general population worldwide and at high risk of death from the “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-related Coronavirus type 2”. Governments around the world have been implementing (...) preventive healthcare policies, including physical and social distancing, isolation, and confinement, to mitigate against the burden imposed by the COVID-19 outbreak. This pandemic period is characterized by reduced or lack of movement. During this period of lockdown, PA can represent an immunotherapy and a preventative approach to avoid the harmful effects of inactivity due to the pandemic. Moreover, PA could be prescribed to improve the immune system of specific populations, which particularly experience the condition of being confined. The present narrative review discusses the potential impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on these specific populations’ health status and the importance of performing PA/exercise to reduce the deleterious effects of COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we aim to provide useful recommendations on PA/exercise for these specific populations to maintain their level of independence, physical, and mental health as well as their wellbeing. (shrink)

This impressive edited collection investigates the relationship between British Pop Art pioneer Eduardo Paolozzi and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. At this time, when Paolozzi’s oeuvre is in the process of being rediscovered, his long-time fascination with Wittgenstein requires thorough exploration, as it discloses a deeper understanding of his artistic production, further helping to reassess the philosopher’s actual impact on visual arts and its theory in the second half of the 20th century. With 13 diverse and comprehensive chapters, bringing together philosophers (...) and art historians, this volume aims at retracing and pondering the influence of Wittgenstein on the idea of art in Paolozzi, thus giving an unprecedented insight into Wittgenstein’s philosophy as employed by contemporary artists. (shrink)

In this paper we document the developmental trajectory of the complementizer system (CP-system) in Italian by looking at the earliest spontaneous production of eleven young children, whose transcriptions are available on CHILDES. We conducted a novel corpus analysis, tracking down a number of constructions in which the clausal left-periphery is activated. First, we considered the appearance of the different complementizer particles in the CP-system, which overtly realize the three distinct functional projections ForceP, IntP, and FinP. The analysis revealed that children (...) acquiring Italian correctly use these complementizer particles already in the third year of life. Second, we looked for the simultaneous activation of different functional projections within the CP-system. We went through our corpus searching for complex sentences in which more than one constituent was moved to the left periphery. This option is allowed by the adult grammar of Italian and, as our search revealed, it is also attested in the grammar of young children. Soon after their second birthday, sequences in which a left-dislocated Topic and a Wh- element co-occur are attested, directly supporting the existence of a (high) Topic position above FocusP. Moreover, movement in general conforms to the constraints of the adult grammar, with no attested violation of obligatory inversion (a consequence of the Q-Criterion). Importantly, “why-questions” did not require inversion, much as in the adult grammar of Italian. Taken together, children's use of complementizer particles and their activation of multiple landing sites for movement show that 2-year-olds already possess a richly articulated functional structure of the CP-system, aligned to the layered adult structure. In concluding the paper, we also discuss some temporal differences between constructions activating high and low portions of the CP-system. In particular, we detect a temporal precedence for wh-questions over why-questions. Since the former activate a lower projection, this is consistent with the recently proposedGrowing Treeshypothesis, according to which the development of the CP-system proceeds stepwise. (shrink)

The standard interpretation of quantum physics (QP) and some recent generalizations of this theory rest on the adoption of a rerificationist theory of truth and meaning, while most proposals for modifying and interpreting QP in a “realistic” way attribute an ontological status to theoretical physical entities (ontological realism). Both terms of this dichotomy are criticizable, and many quantum paradoxes can be attributed to it. We discuss a new viewpoint in this paper (semantic realism, or briefly SR), which applies both to (...) classical physics (CP) and to QP. and is characterized by the attempt of giving up verificationism without adopting ontological realism. As a first step, we construct a formalized observative language L endowed with a correspondence truth theory. Then, we state a set of axioms by means of L which hold both in CP and in QP. and construct a further language Lv which can express bothtestable andtheoretical properties of a given physical system. The concepts ofmeaning andtestability do not collapse in L and Le hence we can distinguish between semantic and pragmatic compatibility of physical properties and define the concepts of testability and conjoint testability of statements of L and Le. In this context a new metatheoretical principle (MGP) is stated, which limits the validity of empirical physical laws. By applying SR (in particular. MGP) to QP, one can interpret quantum logic as a theory of testability in QP, show that QP is semantically incomplete, and invalidate the widespread claim that contextuality is unavoidable in QP. Furthermore. SR introduces some changes in the conventional interpretation of ideal measurements and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. (shrink)

1. Critica de capire e altri scritti. 2. Scritti kantiani. 3. L'analitica trascendentale. 4. Il problema della scienza e il giudizio storico.