The author, who shared the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics with Owen Chamberlain, offers impressions and recollections of the development of modern physics. Rather than a chronological approach, Segre emphasizes interesting, complex personalities who often appear only in footnotes. Readers will find that this book adds considerably to their understanding of science and includes compelling topics of current interest.

Concepts are the elementary units of reason and linguistic meaning. They are conventional and relatively stable. As such, they must somehow be the result of neural activity in the brain. The questions are: Where? and How? A common philosophical position is that all concepts—even concepts about action and perception—are symbolic and abstract, and therefore must be implemented outside the brain’s sensory-motor system. We will argue against this position using (1) neuroscientific evidence; (2) results from neural computation; and (3) results about (...) the nature of concepts from cognitive linguistics. We will propose that the sensory-motor system has the right kind of structure to characterise both sensory-motor and more abstract concepts. Central to this picture are the neural theory of language and the theory of cogs, according to which, brain structures in the sensory-motor regions are exploited to characterise the so-called “abstract” concepts that constitute the meanings of grammatical constructions and general inference patterns. (shrink)

The complex organization of syntax in hierarchical structures is one of the core design features of human language. Duality of patterning refers, for instance, to the organization of the meaningful elements in a language at two distinct levels: a combinatorial level, where meaningless forms are combined into meaningful forms; and a compositional level, where meaningful forms are composed into larger lexical units. The question remains wide open regarding how such structures could have emerged. The aim of this paper is to (...) address these two aspects in a self-consistent way. First, we introduce suitable measures to quantify the level of combinatoriality and compositionality in a language, and we present a framework to estimate these observables in human natural languages. Second, we show that a recently introduced multi-agent modeling scheme, namely the Blending Game, provides a mathematical framework to address the problem of how a population of individuals can bootstrap combinatoriality and compositionality. Theoretical predictions based on this model turn out to be in good agreement with empirical data. It is remarkable that the two sides of duality of patterning emerge simultaneously as a consequence of a pure cultural dynamics in a simulated environment that contains meaningful relations, provided a simple constraint on message transmission fidelity is also considered. (shrink)

A new class of visuomotor neuron has been recently discovered in the monkey’s premotor cortex: mirror neurons. These neurons respond both when a particular action is performed by the recorded monkey and when the same action, performed by another individual, is observed. Mirror neurons appear to form a cortical system matching observation and execution of goal-related motor actions. Experimental evidence suggests that a similar matching system also exists in humans. What might be the functional role of this matching system? One (...) possible function is to enable an organism to detect certain mental states of observed conspecifics. This function might be part of, or a precursor to, a more general mind-reading ability. Two different accounts of mind-reading have been suggested. According to “theory theory‘, mental states are represented as inferred posits of a naive theory. According to “simulation theory‘, other people’s mental states are represented by adopting their perspective: by tracking or matching their states with resonant states of one’s own. The activity of mirror neurons, and the fact that observers undergo motor facilitation in the same muscular groups as those utilized by target agents, are findings that accord well with simulation theory but would not be predicted by theory theory. (shrink)

Agassi has undertaken the challenge of performing a microanalysis of the works of several scientists, pointing out areas of complexity, raising questions, and criticizing current histories of science. Among the topics he has tackled are Bacon’s philosophy of science, Boyle’s ideology, the rationale of Galileo’s work, Newton’s declared methodology—influential, but misleading—, Faraday’s emancipatory enterprise; and the roots of the quantum revolution. He attempts to reconstruct what scientists did in the immediate context, rather than what they said they did, and highlights (...) difficulties and points of scepticism. Agassi considers many neglected factors that influenced science, taking in the metaphysical, social, anthropological, and even psychological spheres. (shrink)

Simulation theories of social cognition abound in the literature, but it is often unclear what simulation means and how it works. The discovery of mirror neurons, responding both to action execution and observation, suggested an embodied approach to mental simulation. Over the last years this approach has been hotly debated and alternative accounts have been proposed. We discuss these accounts and argue that they fail to capture the uniqueness of embodied simulation (ES). ES theory provides a unitary account of basic (...) social cognition, demonstrating that people e their own mental states or processes represented with a bodily format in functionally attributing them to others. (shrink)

"The essay discusses the question in which sense there are continuities between the pre-Soviet, the Soviet, and the post-Soviet phase of Russian culture. It discovers in the rejection of the bourgeois value system an important constant factor. Even if originally rooted in the specific orthodox Christian sensibility, it helped prepare the Soviet revolution and survived even after 1991. From the Song of Igor’s Campaign to Tolstoy’s dramas, Eisenstein’s films and his film theory, and Maxim Kantor’s iconic interpretations of the late (...) Soviet Union and its aftermath the essay tries to unveil crucial features of Russian culture. Der Aufsatz diskutiert die Frage, in welchem Sinne es Kontinuitäten zwischen der vor-sowjetischen, der sowjetischen und der post-sowjetischen Phase der russischen Kultur gibt, und entdeckt in der Ablehnung des bürgerlichen Wertesystems einen wichtigen konstanten Faktor. Auch wenn sie ursprünglich in der spezifischen orthodoxen christlichen Sensibilität verwurzelt war, half sie, die sowjetische Revolution vorzubereiten, und überlebte auch noch nach 1991. Von dem Igorlied bis hin zu Tolstois Dramen, Eisensteins Filmen und Filmtheorie sowie Maxim Kantors ikonischen Interpretationen der späten Sowjetunion und ihren Nachwirkungen enthüllt der Aufsatz entscheidende Merkmale der russischen Kultur. ". (shrink)

Un célèbre enseignement du Talmud de Babylone maudit la « sagesse grecque ». Or qu’est-ce que la « sagesse grecque »? On a souvent compris que le Talmud récusait la philosophie. C’est pourtant une lecture hâtive et, en définitive, erronée. Car par « sagesse grecque », le Talmud entend désigner une forme d’intelligence pratique qui caractérise les hommes de pouvoir. Ce que le Talmud maudit, c’est donc une forme de « machiavélisme » avant la lettre, et non une radicalité rationaliste.

The ethics committee of the University of São Paulo Medical College Hospital and Clinics has authorized partial liver transplantation from living donors. The request for this type of transplantation was brought to the committee by a team of professors of surgery operating at the university, headed by Dr. Silvano Raia. Their request and justification are presented here, with discussion following.

This book provides a compact and up-to-date presentation of Jürgen Habermas’ oeuvre, with particular reference to his theory of communicative action. Segre explores Habermas’ themes of the rationalization of the life-world and its consequences on the social, cultural, and personality systems. This book also overviews the reception of Habermas’ work.

Spinoza avait un trou à son manteau. On avait tenté de le poignarder et son manteau en portrait la trace. La haine dont Spinoza fut l'objet est originaire. Dès la parution du Traité théologico-politique, une sainte alliance est scellée, garante d'un ordre moral menacé par la philosophie d'un homme libre. Dans ce livre, Ivan Segré s'intéresse aux derniers avatars de la réaction idéologique qui a pris Spinoza pour cible, et singulièrement aux penseurs juifs qui ont reconnu en lui un "traître". (...) Est-ce à dire qu'une vie sous la conduite de la raison est une trahison de la cause des Juifs? Philosophe et talmudiste, Segré examine l'acte d'accusation qu'on a dressé contre le philosophe d'Amsterdam et il conclut que la fidélité à l'antique tradition hébraïque exige, aujourd'hui, d'arborer le manteau troué de Spinoza. A ceux qu'il appelle les théoriciens bourgeois du nom "juif", il oppose l'intelligence des textes hébraïques, dont il nous dit qu'ils sont solidaires du nom "ouvrier", solidaires de son devenir révolutionnaire. (shrink)

In this article we provide a unifying neural hypothesis on how individuals understand the actions and emotions of others. Our main claim is that the fundamental mechanism at the basis of the experiential understanding of others' actions is the activation of the mirror neuron system. A similar mechanism, but involving the activation of viscero-motor centers, underlies the experiential understanding of the emotions of others.

Summary Embodied simulation, a basic functional mechanism of our brain, and its neural underpinnings are discussed and connected to intersubjectivity and the reception of human cultural artefacts, like visual arts and film. Embodied simulation provides a unified account of both non-verbal and verbal aspects of interpersonal relations that likely play an important role in shaping not only the self and his/her relation to others, but also shared cultural practices. Embodied simulation sheds new light on aesthetic experience and is proposed as (...) a key element for the dialogue between neuroscience and the humanities within the biocultural paradigm. (shrink)

abstract Much of the literature on torture in recent years takes the position of denouncing the barbarity of torture, while allowing for exceptions to this veto in extreme circumstances. The ticking‐bomb argument, where a terrorist is tortured in order to extract information of a primed bomb located in a civilian area, is often invoked as one of those extreme circumstances where torture becomes justified. As the War on Terrorism intensifies, the ticking‐bomb argument has become the dominant line of reasoning used (...) by both academics and policy advisers to justify a legalized, state‐sponsored program of torture. This paper argues for the unconditional refutation of any attempt to justify torture, without exceptions. We argue against the consequentialist reasoning of the ticking‐bomb argument not from a deontological position, but on consequentialist grounds. Empirical evidence suggests that the institutionalization of torture practices creates serious problems. Torture interrogation fails to fulfil its initial purpose as a low‐cost life saver, while its long‐term potential is the devastation of democratic institutions. (shrink)

Background The 2020-2021 coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is just the latest epidemic event that requires us to rethink and change our understanding of health. Health should no longer be conceived only in relation to human beings, but in unitary terms, as a dimension that connects humans, animals, plants, and the environment (holistic view, One Health). In general, alterations occurring in this articulated chain of life trigger a domino effect. Methodology In this paper, we review the One Health paradigm in the light (...) of the Covid-19 pandemic and distinguish two approaches within it that might be dubbed the Prudent one and the Radical one. Each approach is structured in three levels – epistemological, medical, and ethical. Results In this way, we show how we humans can better address the pandemic today and how, in the future, we can treat the whole living system better, by renouncing our anthropocentric perspective on health. Conclusion We hold that the Prudent approach can be very helpful, and we discuss the medical and ethical issues related to it. We also consider the Radical view and the epistemological turn it requires compared to the Prudent one. (shrink)

Torricelli elaborated the theory of ballistics as part of Galileo's theory of motion. In 1647 he had an interesting exchange of letters with G. B. Renieri, from Genoa, who complained that some experiments he had made with guns contradicted Galileo's theory. The correspondence discloses some fundamental issues of the Seventeenth century Scientific Revolution, the main one being to what extent mathematics can be applied to physics. Torricelli's view on this issue is ambivalent. He defends Galileo's kinematics as the correct description (...) of reality yet says that mathematics does not describe reality. It is suggested that this ambivalence is an outcome of the climate of uncertainty which followed Galileo's trial. (shrink)

The current debate on why colonialism is wrong overlooks what is arguably the most discernible aspect of this particular historical injustice: its exreme violence. Through a critical analysis of the recent contributions by Lea Ypi, Margaret Moore and Laura Valentini, this article argues that the violence inflicted on the victims and survivors of colonialism reveals far more about the nature of this historical injustice than generally assumed. It is the arbitrary nature of the power relations between colonizers and the colonized (...) which is at the heart of the injustice of colonization, and violence was the way arbitrariness and domination was cemented. The example of colonialism in the Caribbean during the 16th and 17th centuries is used to expose the full extent of this historical injustice. (shrink)

My initial scope will be limited: starting from a neurobiological standpoint, I will analyse how actions are possibly represented and understood. The main aim of my arguments will be to show that, far from being exclusively dependent upon mentalistic/linguistic abilities, the capacity for understanding others as intentional agents is deeply grounded in the relational nature of action. Action is relational, and the relation holds both between the agent and the object target of the action , as between the agent of (...) the action and his/her observer . Agency constitutes a key issue for the understanding of intersubjectivity and for explaining how individuals can interpret their social world. This account of intersubjectivity, founded on the empirical findings of neuroscientific investigation, will be discussed and put in relation with a classical tenet of phenomenology: empathy. I will provide an 'enlarged' account of empathy that will be defined by means of a new conceptual tool: the shared manifold of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

The aim of our paper is to show that there is a sense of body that is enactive in nature and that enables to capture the most primitive sense of self. We will argue that the body is primarily given to us as source or power for action, i.e., as the variety of motor potentialities that define the horizon of the world in which we live, by populating it with things at hand to which we can be directed and with (...) other bodies we can interact with. We will show that this sense of body as bodily self is, on the one hand, antecedent the distinction between sense of agency and sense of ownership, and, on the other, it enables and refines such distinction, providing a conceptual framework for the coherent interpretation of a variety of behavioral and neuropsychological data. We will conclude by positing that the basic experiences we entertain of our selves as bodily selves are from the very beginning driven by our interactions with other bodies as they are underpinned by the mirror mechanism. (shrink)

This article compares Weber’s notion of Verstehende Soziologie with Znaniecki’s concepts of humanistic coefficient and cultural sociology. While both authors follow an interpretive perspective and agree that the specific object of sociological inquiry is social action, they diverge in their conceptions of social action and in their definition of sociology and its methods and aims. For, in contrast to Znaniecki, Weber holds that sociology aims not only to understand social action, but also to explain it. Social action, moreover, is differently (...) defined according to whether it is oriented to the conduct of others, as with Weber, or aims to exert influence on others, as with Znaniecki. As for their respective methods of inquiry, Znaniecki proposes to reconstruct the actor’s experiences and viewpoints, while Weber advocates the formulation of generic ideal types for the purposes of describing and explaining social and historical courses of events. Finally, the study of the social order belongs to the cultural sciences, according to Znaniecki. For Weber, the social order is sociological, and follows from the prevalence of consensual action in particular communities such as the market or language communities. Otherwise, its prevalence should not be taken for granted. (shrink)

Résumé Les ancêtres de la téléréalité, comme l’émission américaine Candid Camera, ont su très tôt mobiliser un charisme de la réalité qui magnétise aujourd’hui un nombre croissant de nos contemporains. Ces pratiques télévisuelles se sont développées en étroite interaction avec les expérimentations faites sur la psychologie sociale et l’hypnose, révélant une convergence entre sciences, technologies médiatiques et mécanismes de pouvoir que cet article s’efforce de faire apparaître dans ses dimensions à la fois historique et théorique.

German sociologist Alfred Vierkandt is hardly remembered today. This may seem surprising. Several prominent sociologists from the German-speaking countries contributed to the Handwörterbuch der Soziologie (1931), which Vierkandt edited and published. However, Vierkandt did not interact with any of them significantly, and this publication brought no recognition of the importance of his sociological oeuvre in Germany, the United States, or elsewhere. His key notion of the social group found no acknowledgment among other contemporary or later sociologists, even though several of (...) them used this notion and discussed social groups in their own writings. Moreover, those who paid close attention to his writings, like Abel and Hochstim, evaluated them quite critically. Both before and after World War II, Vierkandt remained a solitary and relatively unknown author. (shrink)

Can we explain why some propositions are necessary? Blackburn (Fact, science, and value. Blackwell, Oxford, 1987) has presented a dilemma aimed at showing that the necessity of a proposition cannot be explained either in the case where the explanans is another necessary proposition (necessity horn) or in the case where the explanans is a contingent proposition (contingency horn). Blackburn’s dilemma is intended to show that necessary truth is an explanatorily irreducible kind of truth: there is nothing that explains why propositions (...) are necessary, nothing that makes necessary necessary truths. In this paper, I criticize the contingency horn of Blackburn’s dilemma. On the one hand, I show that the official reconstruction of the horn uses a principle that is incompatible with the notion of explanation plausibly needed to explain why propositions are necessary; on the other, I show that a simpler formulation of the horn, which does not make use of such a controversial principle, makes essential use of principles that are incompatible with the idea that possibilities can have explanatory roles. I then defend the view that possibilities can have explanatory roles, and that the explanatory role of possibilities is best represented, within possible worlds, as the existence of trans-world relations of explanation. (shrink)

Hailed by the Journal of the History of Astronomy as "charming and witty," this chronicle by a renowned physicist traces the development of scientific thought from the works of the "founding fathers" — Galileo, Huygens, and Newton — to the more recent discoveries of Maxwell, Boltzmann, and Gibbs. 1984 edition.

In this article, I am starting with a question which many years ago was at the center of the debate on structuralism. Are structures to be found in the object or in the subject ? If we take one of the famous analyses by Jakobson, we ascertain that as long as attention is brought to bear on the graphemic or phonological elements, or on rhymes and accents, then the objectivity of the examination is incontestable. The absolute or relative computation of (...) phonemes or groups of phonemes and the specification of their place in the text are independent of the critic's subjectivity. Subjectivity begins to impose itself when categories like "abstract" and "concrete" or "metaphor" and "symbol" are introduced, and even more so when these categories are grouped into classes the denomination of which does not have its basis in the data offered by the text but in nomenclative schemata developed by the critic . Cesare Segre, director of the Institute of Romance Philology at the University of Pavia and president of the International Association of Semiotic Studies, is coeditor of the journals Strumenti Critici and Medioevo Romanza and the series Critica e Filologia. His principal works of linguistic and semiotic criticism are Lingua, stile e società, Esperienze ariosteche, Semiotics and Literary Criticism , I metodi attuali della critica in Italia , La tradizione della Chanson de Roland, and Le strutture e il tempo . His editions of old Italian and French texts are Fornival's Li bestiaires d'Amours, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Giamboni's Libro de' Vizi e delle Virtudi, and the Chanson de Roland. "Narrative Structures and Literary History" originally appeared in Strumenti Critici . His contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Culture and Modeling Systems," appeared in Spring 1978. Rebecca West's previous contribution to Critical Inquiry was the translation of Guilio Carlo Argan's "Ideology and Iconology". (shrink)

This book sketches the history of higher education, in parallel with the development of science. Its goal is to draw attention to the historical tensions between the aims of higher education and those of science, in the hope of contributing to improving the contemporary university. A helpful tool in analyzing these intellectual and social tensions is Karl Popper's philosophy of science demarcating science and its social context. Popper defines a society that encourages criticism as "open," and argues convincingly that an (...) open society is the most appropriate one for the growth of science. A "closed society," on the other hand, is a tribal and dogmatic society. Despite being the universal home of science today, the university, as an institution that is thousands of years old, carries traces of different past cultural, social, and educational traditions. The book argues that, by and large, the university was, and still is, a closed society and does not serve the best interests of the development of science and of students' education. (shrink)

This article rejects the received view that Post-Truth is a new, unprecedented political phenomenon. By showing that Truth and Post-Truth share the same genesis, this article will submit the idea of a Consensus Theory of Post-Truth. Part 1 looks at the difference between Post-Truth, lies and bullshit. Part 2 suggests reasons behind the current preoccupation with Post-Truth. Part 3 focuses on Habermas’s influential consensus theory of truth to suggest that truth and Post-Truth have more in common than is generally assumed. (...) Part 4 puts forward the Consensus Theory of Post-Truth. Part 5 suggests three ways to emasculate the potentially destructive effect of Post-Truth on democratic society. (shrink)

Despite the persistent affirmations of the ill-informed, the great promise of semiotics is the possibility it represents of welding together both language and text analysis and the analysis of pragmatic and ideological context. It is merely a matter of judicious planning if attention has so far been directed primarily to distinctive aspects of techniques and texts rather than to the general character of the frames of reference within which they operate. And yet, as we know, investigations of the total functioning (...) of culture have been carried out with far-reaching results. This has been so particularly when the areas examined have been those, like the mass media, in which the weight of individual contribution is small. For culture in the widest sense of the term., the most highly elaborated hypotheses are those put forward by the Soviet semioticians, Lotman first among them. It is with these that I mean to deal here in an act of criticism which may also prove to be one of integration. Lotman's thought is clearly still in the making, and rather than follow out its likely developments, or, it may be, contradictions, it seems more helpful to get into its seams in an attempt to perceive alternative interlacings. Cesare Segre, director of the Institute of Romance Philology at the University of Pavia and the president of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, is coeditor of the journals Strumenti Critici and Medioevo Romanzo and the series Critica e Filologia. "Culture and Modeling Systems" originally appeared in his Semiotica, storia e cultura ; his previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Narrative Structures and Literary History," appeared in Winter 1976. John Meddemmen teaches the history of the English language at the University of Pavia. He has worked on predominantly linguistic aspects of contemporary Italian authors such as Montale and Fenglio. (shrink)

The present contribution is mainly intended to illustrate how some recent discoveries in the field of neurosciences have revolutionized our ideas about perception, action and cognition, and how these new neuro-scientific perspectives can shed light on the human relationship to art and aesthetics, in the frame of an approach known as "experimental aesthetics". Experimental aesthetics addresses the problem of artistic images by investigating the brain-body physiological correlates of the aesthetic experience and human creativity, providing a perspective that is complementary, and (...) not in opposition, to the humanistic one on the arts and the aesthetic. (shrink)

Vittorio Hösle , , | : Cet article ambitionne de comprendre la crise écologique dans sa portée métaphysique. Pour ce faire, l’auteur analyse d’abord ce qu’il considère comme l’interprétation métaphysique la plus courante de cette crise, soit la métaphysique de l’esprit, qui trouve sa source dans une lecture simpliste de la pensée de G.W.F. Hegel. Ensuite, il examine les deux principales critiques adressées à cette métaphysique de l’esprit, soit d’une part l’interprétation heideggérienne de l’histoire de l’être et, d’autre part, (...) le panthéisme naturaliste d’inspiration écologiste dont le philosophe allemand Klaus Michael Meyer-Abich est le principal représentant. Enfin, en guise de synthèse, l’auteur élabore sa propre analyse en mettant en lumière le phénomène d’éloignement croissant de la subjectivité et de l’être à l’époque moderne comme la principale source métaphysique de la présente crise écologique. | : This article aims to understand the ecological crisis in its metaphysical significance. To do so, the author first analyzes what he sees as the most common metaphysical interpretation of the crisis, viz. the metaphysics of the mind, which is rooted in a simplistic reading of the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. Next, he examines the two main criticisms of the metaphysics of mind, on the one hand, Heidegger’s interpretation of the history of Being and, on the other hand, the naturalistic ecologist pantheism best represented by the German philosopher Klaus Michael Meyer-Abich. Finally, by way of summary, the author develops his own analysis by highlighting the phenomenon of growing alienation of subjectivity and Being in modern times as the main metaphysical source of the current ecological crisis. (shrink)