This study was aimed at predicting individual differences in text reading fluency. The basic proposal included two factors, i.e., the ability to decode letter strings (measured by discrete pseudo-word reading) and integration of the various sub-components involved in reading (measured by Rapid Automatized Naming, RAN). Subsequently, a third factor was added to the model, i.e., naming of discrete digits. In order to use homogeneous measures, all contributing variables considered the entire processing of the item, including pronunciation time. The model, which (...) was based on commonality analysis, was applied to data from a group of 43 typically developing readers (11- to 13-year-olds) and a group of 25 chronologically matched dyslexic children. In typically developing readers, both orthographic decoding and integration of reading sub-components contributed significantly to the overall prediction of text reading fluency. The model prediction was higher (from ca. 37% to 52% of the explained variance) when we included the naming of discrete digits variable, which had a suppressive effect on pseudo-word reading. In the dyslexic readers, the variance explained by the two-factor model was high (69%) and did not change when the third factor was added. The lack of a suppression effect was likely due to the prominent individual differences in poor orthographic decoding of the dyslexic children. Analyses on data from both groups of children were replicated by using patches of colours as stimuli (both in the RAN task and in the discrete naming task) obtaining similar results. We conclude that it is possible to predict much of the variance in text-reading fluency using basic processes, such as orthographic decoding and integration of reading sub-components, even without taking into consideration higher-order linguistic factors such as lexical, semantic and contextual abilities. The approach validity of using proximal vs distal causes to predict reading fluency is discussed. (shrink)

More than many other Austrians, Mises tried to found aprioristic methodology on a well defined and developed epistemology. Although references to Kant are scattered rather unsystematically throughout his works, he nevertheless used an unequivocal Kantian terminology. He explicitly defended the existence of ‘a priori knowledge’, ‘synthetic a priori propositions’, ‘the category of action’, and so forth.

Nombreux signes montrent qu’Aristote a conçu la Poétique en continuité avec les livres de la Politique consacrés au problème de l’éducation. Lue à la lumière de ces textes, la Poétique manisfeste la volonté de son auteur d’attribuer à la poésie, et en particulier à la poésie tragique, la fonction d’aider les hommes adultes dont le caractère a déjà été formé, à développer la phronèsis, la sagesse pratique qui guide de manière rationnelle le comportement et stabilise l’équilibre des émotions de l’agent. (...) Si cette fonction n’est pas rendue explicite dans les pages de ce traité, c’est probablement dû à la conscience à laquelle Aristote est arrivé de ce que la tragédie peut atteindre sa finalité sans une représentation publique, au moyen de la seule lecture privée de son texte. Cette idée suffit à relâcher les liens entre la réflexion sur la poésie et l’étude des institutions politiques de la cité et de leurs tâches éducatives.RiassuntoPer molti indizi la Poetica di Aristotele si revela concepita in continuità con i libri della Politica dedicati al problema educativo. Letta alla luce di questi scritti, la Poetica manifesta la volontà dei suo autore di attribuire alla poesia, specialmente tragica, la funzione di aiutare a sviluppare negli uomini adulti e già preventivamente formati nel carattere la phronesis, la sagezza pratica che guida razionalmente il comportamento e stabilisce l’equilibrio emotivo degli agenti. Se poi questa funzione non è resa esplicata nelle pagine dei trattato, cio si deve probabilmente alla nuova consapevolezza maturata da Aristotele che la tragedia potrebbe ottenere il suo scopo anche senza la pubblica rappresentazione e mediante la sola lettura privata dei testo. Questa intuizione basta ad allentare i legami tra la riflessione sulla poesia e lo studio delle istituzioni politiche cittadine e dei loro compiti educativi. (shrink)

In this article the author provides new external evidence demonstrating that the correspondence between the philosopher Seneca and the apostle Paul is a forgery. The author compares archaeological data offered by inscriptions, graffiti and regionarii with information conveyed by the apocryphal letters. The setting of the epistles, as well as information about the duration and damages of the Neronian fire, contrast with the archaeological data, indicating that the text should be considered a forgery. The contribution shows that the forger worked (...) rather in a literary mode. Conversely, the only archaeological date that scholars have brought to support authenticity is probably not a Christian inscription and does not prove anything regarding a meeting between Seneca and Paul or Seneca’s conversion. The origin of the correspondence should instead be traced to the cult of the apostles Paul and Peter during the 3rd and 4th centuries. (shrink)

In recent years, the veracity of the tradition of the martyrdom of the apostles Peter and Paul has been disputed; recently, Brent Donald Shaw denied the historicity of the persecution of Christians. In this article, the author analyzes the texts of Tacitus and Suetonius as well as other texts omitted by Shaw and demonstrates the inconsistency of the hypotheses put forward by negationist scholars from a theoretical and historical point of view.

In a previous study we examined reading, spelling, and maths skills in an unselected group of 129 Italian children attending fifth grade by testing various cognitive predictors; results showed a high degree of predictors’ selectivity for each of these three behaviors. In the present study, we focused on the specificity of the predictors by performing cross-analyses on the same dataset; i.e., we predicted spelling and maths skills based on reading predictors, reading based on maths predictors and so on. Results indicated (...) that some predictors, such as the Orthographic Decision and the Arithmetic Facts tests, predicted reading, spelling and maths skills in similar ways, while others predicted different behaviors but only for a specific parameter, such as fluency but not accuracy, and still others were specific for a single behavior. To interpret these results, we propose a novel model of learning skills separately considering factors in terms of competence, performance and acquisition. Reading, spelling and calculation skills would depend on the development of discrete and different abstract competences. By contrast, overlap among behaviors would be accounted for by defective acquisition in automatized responses to individual “instances”; this latter skill is item specific but domain independent. Finally, performance factors implied in task’s characteristics may contribute to the partial association among learning skills. It is proposed that this new model may provide a useful base for interpreting the diffuse presence of comorbidities among learning disorders. (shrink)

LetSKP be the intermediate prepositional logic obtained by adding toI (intuitionistic p.l.) the axiom schemes:S = (( ) ) (Scott), andKP = ()()() (Kreisel-Putnam). Using Kripke's semantics, we prove:1) SKP has the finite model property; 2) SKP has the disjunction property. In the last section of the paper we give some results about Scott's logic S = I+S.

The paper purports to provide an analytical treatment of the truth and legal interpretation issue. In the first part, it lays down a conceptual apparatus meant to capture the main aspects of the legal interpretation phenomenon, with particular attention paid to the several kinds of linguistic outputs resulting from interpretive activities. In the second part, it recalls three different notions of truth, focussing, so far as systemic truth is concerned, on the difference between deductive and rhetorical normative systems. In the (...) third, and last, part, it shows in which ways the phenomenon of legal interpretation encompasses truth-apt entities, leaving the choice between austere and liberal alethic pluralism to the reader. A few, final remarks address the formalism/scepticism problem. (shrink)

In this book the most important aristotelian passages concerning the question of determinism are thoroughly reexamined: chapter 9 of de interpretatione, chapter 3 of Metaphysics's book VI, several chapters from the Ethics, as well as some texts from the aristotelian commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias. This is the author's main contention: "In Aristotle's view the world of social relations and of human behaviours really is always highly undetermined; but this is mainly due to the unpredictable intersections of the different causal series (...) issuing from each agent involved, while in each of these series at least one element tends to remain constant (indeed, it is the most stable element in every situation): the personal character of the human agent and the kind of response this character offers to the new situations that constantly arise.". (shrink)

In a series of essays published from the late 1920s up to the mid-1960s, Hans Kelsen carried out a radical critique of natural law theory. The present paper purports to provide an analytical reconstruction and critical assessment of such a critique. It contains two parts. Part one surveys the fundamentals of Kelsen’s argumentative strategy against natural law and its theorists. Part two considers, in turn, two critical reactions to Kelsen’s criticisms: by Edgar Bodenheimer, on behalf of traditional natural law theory; (...) by Robert P. George, on behalf of “the new natural law theory”. As the analysis suggests, Kelsen’s critique stands up to the criticisms. (shrink)

The paper settles an open question concerning Negri-style labeled sequent calculi for modal logics and also, indirectly, other proof systems which make (more or less) explicit use of semantic parameters in the syntax and are thus subsumed by labeled calculi, like Brünnler’s deep sequent calculi, Poggiolesi’s tree-hypersequent calculi and Fitting’s prefixed tableau systems. Specifically, the main result we prove (through a semantic argument) is that labeled calculi for the modal logics K and D remain complete w.r.t. valid sequents whose relational (...) part encodes a tree-like structure, when the unique rule which contains an harmful implicit contraction—by which the condition that the premises be less complex than the conclusion is violated—is modified into a contraction-free one respecting the latter condition, thus making the proof-search space finite. (shrink)

La filosofia della scienza ha da sempre avuto il compito di gettare un ponte tra la cultura scientifica e la cultura umanistica. Tuttavia, negli ultimi decenni si è notato un fenomeno che non si concilia facilmente con il compito che le viene attribuito. Ci riferiamo alla sua crescente frammentazione. Il libro vuole fare il punto della situazione grazie agli interventi di oltre quindici filosofi della scienza italiani che hanno svolto ricerche specialistiche nei più svariati campi scientifici.

Brian Bix, Damiano Canale, Timothy Endicott, Alessio Sardo, Frederick Schauer, and Giovanni Tuzet did me the honour of reading and critically commenting Interpretation without Truth (in the followi...

Lotman and Barthes created two different critically oriented semiotic traditions. Both of them wen t through an evolution in their thought, moving from systematic organization to living transformations in cultural systems. This allowed them to carry out a bilateral critique of codes and identities in favour of either anonymous hybridity (Lotman) or neutrality (Barthes), where heterogeneity becomes a principle of creative “disorder”. Though quite different as regards their theoretical production, both scholars meet in their refusal to turn descriptive practices (studium) (...) into a model of any other form of behaviour, considering that the determination of textual or institutional perimetres is not always clear. In short, Barthes and Lotman anticipated current research trends on the semiotics of practices; Barthes because of a sort of self-reflexion on the behaviour of the interpreter in front of an object, and Lotman through his analytic interest in attitudes and ways of living.Barthes’s view on writing essentially reaches Lotman’s conception of culture as a “collective person”: we are looking for traces of breathing in the life of signs. More precisely, we can assert that, in the view of both scholars, inscribing speech events in history problematizes the dynamic and asynchronous relation between the structural frame of a culture and its textual heritage. The rhythm of fashion is not a side topic in their research, but, rather, it is the clearest exemplification of a dialectic between structural projection from the outside and local introjection of forms, depending on the conditions that make a difference. (shrink)

We give completeness results — with respect to Kripke's semantic — for the negation-free intermediate predicate calculi.

We aim at clarifying to what extent the work of the German mathematician Ernst Schröder on the algebra of logic is taken into consideration and rehashed in the work of the early Husserl, focusing on Husserl’s 1891 Review of the first volume of Schröder’s monumental Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik and on Husserl’s text Der Folgerungskalkül und die Inhaltslogik written in the same year. We will try to show how and why Husserl, while praising Schröder’s calculus, strongly criticizes Schröder’s (...) attempt at a philosophical clarification and justification of it. (shrink)

L’essai traite l’héritage de l’idéalisme allemand chez Rosenzweig dans la perspective particulière de la théorie de la reconnaissance. Dans le premier paragraphe il trace les contours d’une théorie de la reconnaissance dans L’Étoile de la Rédemption à travers le thème du temps dans le rapport entre aimant et aimée, les formes du langage de la reconnaissance et la communauté comme résultat de la reconnaissance ouverte envers la rédemption. Le deuxième paragraphe développe une confrontation synthétique avec les modèles fichtéen et hégélien (...) de la reconnaissance pour montrer qu’on peut utilement lire Rosenzweig du point de vue d’une théorie de la reconnaissance et lire les théories idéalistes de la reconnaissance du point de vue de Rosenzweig. La conclusion met en lumière quelques idées fondamentales de Schelling à la base des points décisifs de l’originalité de la théorie de Rosenzweig centrée sur l’amour capable de vaincre la mort. (shrink)

Pierluigi Piovanelli | : Tacite est le seul témoin explicite d’une persécution des « chrétiens » de Rome à la suite du célèbre incendie de la capitale, en 64 de notre ère, une catastrophe dont la population aurait attribué la responsabilité criminelle à l’empereur Néron, si les adeptes de cette « superstition pernicieuse » originaire de la Judée n’avaient pas été opportunément identifiés comme les coupables. Si, d’un côté, il est facile de comprendre la nécessité pour le pouvoir impérial (...) de trouver rapidement des boucs émissaires, de l’autre, il n’est pas aisé de concevoir les raisons qui firent que le choix se porte sur les membres d’un groupe sectaire judéen tout à fait marginal. L’examen de quelques textes clés de Flavius Josèphe et des écrits apocalyptiques contemporains permet de mieux comprendre quelles étaient les attentes des milieux radicaux judéens et quelle était la perception que les Romains pouvaient avoir de ceux qui, à leurs yeux, n’étaient que des agitateurs et des brigands. | : Tacitus is the only witness to the persecution of the “Christians” in Rome following the famous fire of 64 CE that severely burned the capital city ; a catastrophe for which Nero would have been considered responsible had the followers of that “most mischievous superstition” of Judean origins not been identified as the culprits. If, on the one hand, it is easy to understand the urgency for the imperial power to find scapegoats, on the other hand, it is not so easy to imagine the reasons why the members of a Judean sectarian, marginal group were eventually chosen. A new look at a series of key passages from the writings of Josephus and contemporary apocalyptic texts allow us to have a better understanding of the expectations at work among the members of Judean radical groups, as well as the perception that Romans could have had of those who, in their opinion, were simply agitators and bandits. (shrink)

For each ordinal $\alpha > 0, L(\alpha)$ is the intermediate predicate logic characterized by the class of all Kripke frames with the poset α and with constant domain. This paper will be devoted to a study of logics of the form L(α). It will be shown that for each uncountable ordinal of the form α + η with a finite or a countable $\eta (> 0)$ , there exists a countable ordinal of the form β + η such that L(α (...) + η) = L(β + η). On the other hand, such a reduction of ordinals to countable ones is impossible for a logic L(α) if α is an uncountable regular ordinal. Moreover, it will be proved that the mapping L is injective if it is restricted to ordinals less than ω ω , i.e. α ≠ β implies L(α) ≠ L(β) for each ordinal $\alpha,\beta. (shrink)

The economics of happiness is an influential research programme, the aim of which is to change welfare economics radically. In this paper I set out to show that its foundations are unreliable. I shall maintain two basic theses: (a) the economics of happiness shows inconsistencies with the first person standpoint, contrary claims on the part of the economists of happiness notwithstanding, and (b) happiness is a dubious concept if it is understood as the goal of welfare policies. These two theses (...) are closely related and lead to a third thesis: (c) happiness should be replaced by autonomy as the fundamental goal of welfare economics. To defend my claims I shall show that a hedonic approach to happiness leads to an awkward trilemma. Furthermore, I shall clarify the meaning of and , along with their conceptual relationships. (shrink)

In this paper the relationship between Gaia theory and fact/value dualism must be understood from two angles: I shall use Gaia as a case study to show the philosophical limits of dualism, and I shall also use the discussion of fact/value dualism to clarify the contents of Gaia theory. My basic thesis is that Lovelock is right when rejecting the suggestion that he should clear his theory of evaluative considerations. He is right because in his theory facts and moral values (...) are strictly interwoven and therefore cannot be conceptually separated. I shall show this point by arguing that if we dropped the evaluative components from Gaia theory we would not have the same theory cleared of those evaluative components. Instead we would have a theory with a different empirical meaning and different explanatory characteristics. (shrink)