Irrational debt decisions at the individual level may harm collective welfare. For this reason, regulators are committed to encourage information-based behaviours in order to enhance likelihood of appropriate indebtedness. We analyse, with a diff-in-diff estimator, the Italian case offered by the Legislative Decree that reformed the consumer credit market adopting European Directive 2008/48/ec, and that reinforced the mandatory information acquisition, jointly asked to lenders and borrowers, before granting/receiving consumer credit. By using micro-data on 60.000 consumer credit borrowers, in total, randomly (...) sampled from the most relevant Italian Credit Bureau, our findings support that, in the medium term, the new consumer credit regulation has improved borrowers’ repayment ability, enhancing the quality of credit distribution. Nevertheless, a simplistic ‘better information-better behaviour’ relationship cannot be assured. This success is likely due to conjunct adaptation of behaviours, with shared responsibilities experienced on both the demand and offer side of the consumer credit marketplace. (shrink)

An erudite and witty collection of Umberto Eco's essays on mass culture from the 1960s through the 1980s, including major pieces which have not been translated into English before. The discussion is framed by opposing characterizations of current intellectuals as apocalyptic and opposed to all mass culture, or as integrated intellectuals, so much a part of mass culture as to be unaware of serving it. Organized in four main parts, "Mass Culture: Apocalypse Postponed," "Mass Media and the Limits of (...) Communication," "The Rise and Fall of Counter-Cultures," and "In Search of Italian Genius," Eco looks at a variety of topics and cultural productions, including the world of Charlie Brown, distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow, the future of literacy, Chinese comic strips, whether countercultures exist, Fellini's Ginger and Fred, and the Italian genius industry. (shrink)

Umberto Eco -- Stephen Jay Gould -- Jean-Claude Carrière -- Jean Delumeau.

This is the second of a series of papers that investigate fragments of quasi-Nelson logic (QNL) from an algebraic logic standpoint. QNL, recently introduced as a common generalization of intuitionistic and Nelson’s constructive logic with strong negation, is the axiomatic extension of the substructural logic |$FL_{ew}$| (full Lambek calculus with exchange and weakening) by the Nelson axiom. The algebraic counterpart of QNL (quasi-Nelson algebras) is a class of commutative integral residuated lattices (a.k.a. |$FL_{ew}$|-algebras) that includes both Heyting and Nelson algebras (...) and can be characterized algebraically in several alternative ways. The present paper focuses on the algebraic counterpart (a class we dub quasi-Nelson implication algebras, QNI-algebras) of the implication–negation fragment of QNL, corresponding to the connectives that witness the algebraizability of QNL. We recall the main known results on QNI-algebras and establish a number of new ones. Among these, we show that QNI-algebras form a congruence-distributive variety (Cor. 3.15) that enjoys equationally definable principal congruences and the strong congruence extension property (Prop. 3.16); we also characterize the subdirectly irreducible QNI-algebras in terms of the underlying poset structure (Thm. 4.23). Most of these results are obtained thanks to twist representations for QNI-algebras, which generalize the known ones for Nelson and quasi-Nelson algebras; we further introduce a Hilbert-style calculus that is algebraizable and has the variety of QNI-algebras as its equivalent algebraic semantics. (shrink)

Essays discuss poetry, communication, television, form, aesthetics, bad taste, and art.

School inclusion embodies an educational philosophy aimed at ensuring that each and every student, regardless of individual characteristics, abilities, personal circumstances, or social conditions, is fully engaged and actively involved in the educational experience. This approach emphasizes diversity as a value and promotes the acceptance and appreciation of individual differences within the school environment. Despite the desirability of inclusive education systems being enshrined in many international and national Declarations and regulations, practical approaches still often lean towards school “integration”, understood as (...) a paradigm of “assimilation”, which involves adapting disabled students to a school structure primarily designed for typical students. This article underscores the essential functions of assessing inclusion policies within individual educational institutions and, more broadly, evaluating mechanisms within the larger educational system to achieve continuous improvement in the real inclusion of all students, dedicating an in-depth analysis to the Italian context. The effective and adequate assessment in this field is challenging and methodological reflection is absolutely indispensable to define shared frameworks for evaluation policies. Building upon the recent OECD framework proposal (2023), this work suggests expanding the set of indicators to provide a more comprehensive and in-depth evaluation of school inclusion policies. (shrink)

"Eco wittily and enchantingly develops themes often touched on in his previous works, but he delves deeper into their complex nature... this collection can be read with pleasure by those unversed in semiotic theory." —Times Literary Supplement.

Antonio Rosmini is considered by many to be greatest Italian - or even European - thinker of the nineteenth century. But for christians he is also a saint. Here, marking ten years since his beatification in 2007, is an updated biography.

A collection of essays discusses such topics as the nature of perception, the semiotic links between cognition and language, and iconism, with imaginative fables featuring animal heroes to illustrate the main points.

In this book, the Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto Eco presents a learned summary of medieval aesthetic ideas.

"... fascinating throughout.... the book is recreative in the highest sense." —Arthur C. Danto, The New Republic "A gem for Holmes fans and armchair detectives with a penchant for logical reflection, and Peirce scholars." —Library Journal.

In preference aggregation a set of individuals express preferences over a set of alternatives, and these preferences have to be aggregated into a collective preference. When preferences are represented as orders, aggregation procedures are called social welfare functions. Classical results in social choice theory state that it is impossible to aggregate the preferences of a set of individuals under different natural sets of axiomatic conditions. We define a first-order language for social welfare functions and we give a complete axiomatisation for (...) this class, without having the number of individuals or alternatives specified in the language. We are able to express classical axiomatic requirements in our first-order language, giving formal axioms for three classical theorems of preference aggregation by Arrow, by Sen, and by Kirman and Sondermann. We explore to what extent such theorems can be formally derived from our axiomatisations, obtaining positive results for Sen’s Theorem and the Kirman-Sondermann Theorem. For the case of Arrow’s Theorem, which does not apply in the case of infinite societies, we have to resort to fixing the number of individuals with an additional axiom. In the long run, we hope that our approach to formalisation can serve as the basis for a fully automated proof of classical and new theorems in social choice theory. (shrink)

Il volume si presenta come un manuale di riferimento sul pensiero di Umberto Galimberti, una miscellanea di studi cui ha contribuito un alto numero di studiosi di diverse discipline. Questo libro indaga il lungo arco del lavoro galimbertiano: dal pensiero simbolico, dalla fenomenologia alla psichiatria, fino ad approdare alla riflessione sull'età della tecnica e alla consulenza filosofica.

What is beauty? What is art? What is taste and fashion? Is beauty something to be observed coolly and rationally or is it something dangerously involving? So begins Umberto Eco's intriguing journey into the aesthetics of beauty, in which he explores the ever-changing concept of the beautiful from the ancient Greeks to today. While closely examining the development of the visual arts and drawing on works of literature from each era, Eco broadens his enquiries to consider a range of (...) concepts, including the idea of love, the unattainable woman, natural inspiration versus numeric formulas, and the continuing importance of ugliness, cruelty, and even the demonic. Professor Eco takes us from classical antiquity to the present day, dispelling many preconceptions along the way and concluding that the relevance of his research is urgent because we live in an age of great reverence for beauty, "an orgy of tolerance, the total syncretism and the absolute and unstoppable polytheism of Beauty." In this, his first illustrated book, Professor Eco offers a layered approach that includes a running narrative, abundant examples of painting and sculpture, and excerpts from writers and philosophers of each age, plus comparative tables. A true road map to the idea of beauty for any reader who wishes to journey into this wonderful realm with Eco's nimble mind as guide. (shrink)

Per Aristotele la metafora non è un semplice ornamento del discorso ma possiede valore conoscitivo, perché consente di conoscere il simile e di cogliere concetti affini. Negli autori medievali la metafora mantiene la funzione di strumento di conoscenza?