Why is it so important to study Nietzsche? Many works about Nietzsche’s thought have been published over the years, from every conceivable position, including analytical philosophy.1 One more essay on Nietzsche may seem a bit repetitive. Yet, as Giuseppe Fornari wrote in the preface of Il Caso Nietzsche (The Nietzsche Case), it is fundamental to analyze Nietzsche deeply, because the most important themes of his works are still hidden among the pages of his books.2 René Girard has made an original (...) contribution to understanding Nietzsche by underlining the close connections between Nietzsche’s philosophy and the personal relationships he established during his life. In particular, Girard’s .. (shrink)

As colleges and universities seek to invigorate ethics education, they need methods to identify where and describe how ethics is already present across their curricula. Meeting this need is complicated by the fact that much ethics education occurs in courses not explicitly focused on ethics or morality. In this paper, we review recent methodological advances before presenting a new Ethics Course Identification Tool (ECIT) that combines application of an expert-derived weighted dictionary and natural language processing methods to identify ethics-related courses (...) based on their titles and course catalog descriptions, even when the terms “ethic” or “moral” are not present. Two studies, the second a pre-registered replication, revealed considerable interrater reliability among experts in ethics education regarding the ethical relevance of courses. Critically, both studies revealed strong correlations between expert judgments and ECIT scores. This empirical evidence points to a shared understanding of ethics education among experts, and it supports the valid use of the ECIT to rapidly and reliably identify ethics-related courses. Based on these findings, we propose that the ECIT can be used both to advance research on trends in ethics education and to help target interventions to improve ethics education at colleges and universities. (shrink)

In recent years, the fight against money laundering has emerged as a key issue of financial regulation. The Wolfsberg Group is an important multistakeholder agreement establishing corporate responsibility principles against money laundering in a domain where international coordination remains otherwise difficult. The fact that 10 out of the 25 top private banking institutions joined this initiative opens up an interesting puzzle concerning the conditions for the participation of key industry players in the Wolfsberg Group. The article presents a fuzzy-set analysis (...) of seven hypotheses based on firm-level organizational factors, the macro-institutional context, and the regulatory framework. Results from the analysis of these 25 financial institutions show that public ownership of the bank and the existence of a code of conduct are necessary conditions for participation in the Wolfsberg Group, whereas factors related to the type of financial institution, combined with the existence of a black list, are sufficient for explaining participation. (shrink)

In an era characterized by fast technological progress that introduces new unpredictable scenarios every day, working in the law field may appear very difficult, if not supported by the right tools. In this respect, some systems based on Artificial Intelligence methods have been proposed in the literature, to support several tasks in the legal sector. Following this line of research, in this paper we propose a novel method, called PRILJ, that identifies paragraph regularities in legal case judgments, to support legal (...) experts during the redaction of legal documents. Methodologically, PRILJ adopts a two-step approach that first groups documents into clusters, according to their semantic content, and then identifies regularities in the paragraphs for each cluster. Embedding-based methods are adopted to properly represent documents and paragraphs into a semantic numerical feature space, and an Approximated Nearest Neighbor Search method is adopted to efficiently retrieve the most similar paragraphs with respect to the paragraphs of a document under preparation. Our extensive experimental evaluation, performed on a real-world dataset provided by EUR-Lex, proves the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed method. In particular, its ability of modeling different topics of legal documents, as well as of capturing the semantics of the textual content, appear very beneficial for the considered task, and make PRILJ very robust to the possible presence of noise in the data. (shrink)

In section 1 we argue that the adoption of a tenseless notion of truth entails a realistic view of propositions and provability. This view, in turn, opens the way to the intelligibility of theclassical meaning of the logical constants, and consequently is incompatible with the antirealism of orthodox intuitionism. In section 2 we show how what we call the potential intuitionistic meaning of the logical constants can be defined, on the one hand, by means of the notion of atemporal provability (...) and, on the other, by means of the operator K of epistemic logic. Intuitionistic logic, as reconstructed within this perspective, turns out to be a part of epistemic logic, so that it loses its traditional foundational role, antithetic to that of classical logic. In section 3 we uphold the view that certain consequences of the adoption of atemporal notion of truth, despite their apparent oddity, are quite acceptable from an antirealist point of view. (shrink)

Brouwer's theorem of 1927 on the equivalence between virtual and inextensible order is discussed. Several commentators considered the theorem at issue as problematic in various ways. Brouwer himself, at a certain time, believed to have found a very simple counter-example to his theorem. In some later publications, however, he stated the theorem in the original form again. It is argued that the source of all criticisms is Brouwer's overly elliptical formulation of the definition of inextensible order, as well as a (...) certain ambiguity in his terminology. Once these drawbacks are removed, his proof goes through. (shrink)

How the cilium appeared is still such a poorly defined question that current hypotheses range from a symbiotic spirochaete to a cellular eye. In this paper, the whole question is subdivided into a list of problems which are morphological, physiological and temporal. These problems are examined one by one, in order to analyse the most popular exogenous hypothesis of Margulis as well as other recent exogenous and endogenous hypotheses. To overcome fundamental topological and temporal difficulties, a new endogenous hypothesis is (...) expounded, according to which the cilium derives from a cellular peduncle reinforced with microtubules. This hypothesis implies a geometrical rationale for the ninefold symmetry. In the last paragraph the consequences of the various hypotheses are compared. (shrink)

Within the broader scope of joint actions, there is a particular kind, i.e. transgenerational actions, the realization of which requires a long time span and, consequently, a complex and peculiar subject. This paper starts from the detailed definition of transgenerational actions, such as complex, long-term, and asymmetrical actions and aims at outlining a theory of their subject. Such a theory, without embracing the principles of holism, is able to give account of subjects’ specificities. In particular, this is possible if we (...) focus on the notion of end, as defined by Seumas Miller. The paper will then examine an example of transgenerational action to highlight how a theory which is both non-reductionist and non-holistic allows us to address the question of responsibility – and therefore of normativity, so pressing when it comes to social issues – from another point of view: the phenomenological one. Not implying a notion of collective responsibility, like the one held by traditional plural subject theories, this point of view focuses on the possibility of stimulating the sense of responsibility in the individuals who constitute the collective subject. (shrink)

A noção de “interesse público” parece ter uma tradição antiga e profícua nos estudos políticos, em particular nas pesquisas sobre mídia, comunicação e política. No entanto, parece haver um aparente paradoxo entre a própria noção de “interesse” e a ideia de algo “público”: como uma ação ou decisão política pode contemplar a miríade de interesses de grupos e indivíduos diversos? Este artigo delineia alguns aspectos da noção de “interesse” no debate atual sobre comunicação política. Com base em uma pesquisa bibliográfica, (...) este artigo argumenta que, nas últimas décadas, as principais obras sobre o tema têm dedicado menos espaço à noção de 'interesse público' como uma entidade única em favor de uma visão mais nuançada e identitária cultural, noção que contempla a pluralidade de uma esfera pública repleta de novas formas de ativismo e demandas coletivas por espaço, igualdade e visibilidade. (shrink)

Dox ed episteme: il senso comune e la fenomenologia -- Una filosofia dell'esperienza -- Intenzionalità e realta.

Cohen Kadosh & Walsh (CK&W) argue that recent findings challenge the hypothesis of abstract numerical representations. Here we show that because, like many other authors in the field, they rely on inaccurate definitions of abstract and non-abstract representations, CK&W fail to provide compelling evidence against the abstract view.

This text illuminates the relevance and importance of Heidegger’s thought today. The chapters address the modern living conditions of intense social transformation intertwined with the continuous and rapid development of technologies that redefine the borders between nations and cultures. Technology globalizes markets, customs, the exchange of information, and economic flows but also – as Heidegger reminds us – revolutionizes the way we relate to bodies, to life, and to earth, by way of introducing both unprecedented opportunities and great dangers.

Human beings are permanently required to process the world numerically and, consequently, to perform computations to adapt their behaviour and they have developed various calculation strategies, some of them based on specific manipulations of the fingers. In this chapter, we argue that the way we express physically numerical concepts by raising fingers while counting leads to embodied representations of numbers and calculation procedures in the adult brain. To illustrate this, we focus on number and finger interactions in the context of (...) simple arithmetic operations. We show that the fixed order of fingers on the hand provides human beings with unique facilities to increment numerical changes or represent a cardinal value while solving arithmetic problems. In order to specify the influence of finger representation on mental arithmetic both at the cognitive and neural level, we review past and recent findings from behavioural, electrophysiological, and brain imaging studies. We start with anthropological and developmental data showing the role of fingers in the acquisition of arithmetic knowledge, then address the issue of whether number and finger interactions are also observed in adults solving arithmetic problems mentally. We suggest that arithmetic performance depends on the integrity of finger representations in children and adults. Finally, we overview the results of recent functional magnetic resonance imaging studies showing a common brain substrate for finger and number representations during and after the acquisition of arithmetic skills. (shrink)

We introduce an epistemic version of validity and completeness of first order logic, based on the notions of ideal agent and fictional model. We then show how the perspective here considered may help to solve an epistemic puzzle arising from Gödel's second incompleteness theorem.

Human needs play a crucial role in the moral evaluation of distributions of goods and services. This role is attested by the rhetorical effectiveness of appeals to needs. But what moral currency do these appeals to needs. But what moral currency do these appeals have? Which needs are morally most important? ;I argue that our morally most important needs are what we require or find indispensable in order to avoid harm as damage, or as the impairment of our fundamental capabilities. (...) To illustrate their moral importance, I show that these needs are more important than are competing wants or desires. To this end, I offer a novel defense of the intuitively plausible view that universal moral claims to assistance in meeting needs have a presumptive precedence over competing claims to assistance in satisfying wants or desires. These needs have a presumptive precedence over competing wants largely because one person's reasons to meet these needs are presumptively stronger than another person's reasons to satisfy competing wants. ;Instead of considering the full moral importance of what we need in order to avoid harm as damage--an evaluation that requires studying the role played by these needs in other fundamental distributive principles, such as property rights--I turn to consider two challenges to this principle of precedence to needs in assistance. Is this principle not too demanding in requiring that one help others meet their needs before allowing one to help others satisfy competing wants and desires? Is this principle not too demanding in requiring one to help others meet their needs beyond what it would be fair for one to do? ;Although the first challenge is intuitively appealing, I reject it because the suggestions made about where to draw the limits to moral requirements of assistance on grounds of costs or burdensomeness are unsatisfactory. In order to evaluate the second challenge, I propose that we understand fair shares of a collective obligation of assistance as equally burdensome shares. I then argue we have little reason to think we are morally required to do only what it is fair for us to do in this sense. (shrink)