Analogue Gravity Phenomenology is a collection of contributions that cover a vast range of areas in physics, ranging from surface wave propagation in fluids to nonlinear optics. The underlying common aspect of all these topics, and hence the main focus and perspective from which they are explained here, is the attempt to develop analogue models for gravitational systems. The original and main motivation of the field is the verification and study of Hawking radiation from a horizon: the enabling feature is (...) the possibility to generate horizons in the laboratory with a wide range of physical systems that involve a flow of one kind or another. The years around 2010 and onwards witnessed a sudden surge of experimental activity in this expanding field of research. However, building an expertise in analogue gravity requires the researcher to be equipped with a rather broad range of knowledge and interests. The aim of this book is to bring the reader up to date with the latest developments and provide the basic background required in order to appreciate the goals, difficulties and success stories in the field of analogue gravity. Each chapter of the book treats a different topic explained in detail by the major experts for each specific discipline. The first chapters give an overview of black hole spacetimes and Hawking radiation before moving on to describe the large variety of analogue spacetimes that have been proposed and are currently under investigation. This introductory part is then followed by an in-depth description of what are currently the three most promising analogue spacetime settings, namely surface waves in flowing fluids, acoustic oscillations in Bose-Einstein condensates and electromagnetic waves in nonlinear optics. Both theory and experimental endeavours are explained in detail. The final chapters refer to other aspects of analogue gravity beyond the study of Hawking radiation, such as Lorentz invariance violations and Brownian motion in curved spacetimes, before concluding with a return to the origins of the field and a description of the available observational evidence for horizons in astrophysical black holes. (shrink)

This article attempts to add a corrective to the exclusive focus of the academic historiography of republicanism on the mainstream of the tradition in Italy and north-western Europe by bringing a perspective from the European south-east on the transmission and evolution of republican ideas. An illustration of this broader perspective on the history of republicanism is provided by the treatise Hellenic Nomarchy anonymously published in Italy in 1806. The article examines the origins of Modern Greek republicanism, the meaning of ‘nomarchy’ (...) and the context and sources of the work. It stresses its social and political radicalism and points to its affinities with the ideas of 18th-century Tuscan republicanism and with the work of Vittorio Alfieri and Ugo Foscolo. (shrink)

Few thinkers have left such an influence across such a diverse range of studies as Michel Foucault has. This book pays homage to that diversity by presenting a multidisciplinary series of analyses dedicated to the question of power today.

The paper deals with the peculiar nature of Anselm’s rationalism, focussing on the dialogue Cur deus homo. On the one hand, the argument in Cur deus homois based on reason alone. On the other hand, the dialogic nature of the work allows Anselm to unfold emotional states in a way that almost anticipates Kierkegaard. Anselm’s rationalism does not exclude the experience of anxiety and despair, and this is where faith comes to the rescue. Finally, God’s presence in the search is (...) shown to be logically compatible with the rationalist nature of the search. (shrink)

Il testo che qui presentiamo riproduce l’Introduzione al volume miscellaneo Il transindividuale. Soggetti, relazioni, mutazioni, a cura di E. Balibar e V. Morfino, Mimesis, Milano 2014.

v. 1. L'Antichità. Il Medioevo.--v. 2. Il Cinquecento. Il Seicento.--v. 3. Il Settecento.--v. 4. L'Ottocento.

Generalizing the notion that muscles are positional frames of reference, a high-dimensional muscle space is defined for multi-muscle systems with an embedded low-dimensional motor manifold of functional articulators. A central representation of such a manifold is proposed as computational body schema. The example of the jaw-tongue system is presented, discussing the relation of functional articulators with kinematic invariances and control problems.

The Cyrenaic school of philosophy (named after its founder Aristippus’ native city of Cyrene in North Africa) flourished in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. Ugo Zilioli’s book provides the first book-length introduction to the school in English. The book begins by introducing the main figures of the Cyrenaic school beginning with Aristippus and by setting them into their historical context. Once the reader is familiar with those figures and with the genealogy of the school, the book offers an overview (...) of ancient and modern interpretations of the Cyrenaics, to provide readers with alternative accounts of the doctrines they endorsed and of the role they played in the context of ancient thought. Finally, the book offers a reconstruction of Cyrenaic philosophy and shows how the ethical side of their speculation connected with the epistemology and ontology they endorsed and that, as a result, the Cyrenaics were able to offer a quite sophisticated philosophy. Indeed, Zilioli demonstrates that they represented, in ancient philosophy, an important and original metaphysical position and alternative to the kind of realism endorsed by Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

The Anthology of the Works of Ugo Spirito captures the trajectory of Ugo Spirito's complex body of thought that spanned more than fifty years, from 1921 to 1977.

This paper starts with an examination of the terms use d to designate the face in different languages, in particular in Italian, comparing these with the definitions provided by some authoritative dictionaries as well as with their etymology. This exploration yields some remarkable results: firstly, it appears that the face is indeed a term that has a material meaning, but at the same time it is a social object; secondly, the importance of the communicative function emerges, which makes the face (...) similar to the mask and in some ways to the arbitrariness of language. All this suggests that the philosophical status of the face is that of ‘transcendence’ which is a condition of that state of freedom that we attribute to ourselves and that can be defined as ‘human exception’. (shrink)

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)

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)

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.

No single moral theory can instruct us as to whether and to what extent we are confronted with legal loopholes, e.g. whether or not new legal rules should be added to the system in the criminal law field. This question on the primary rules of the law appears crucial for today’s debate on roboethics and still, goes beyond the expertise of robo-ethicists. On the other hand, attention should be drawn to the secondary rules of the law: The unpredictability of robotic (...) behaviour and the lack of data on the probability of events, their consequences and costs, make hard to determine the levels of risk and hence, the amount of insurance premiums and other mechanisms on which new forms of accountability for the behaviour of robots may hinge. By following Japanese thinking, the aim is to show why legally de-regulated, or special, zones for robotics, i.e. the secondary rules of the system, pave the way to understand what kind of primary rules we may want for our robots. (shrink)

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)

The paper focuses on concerns and legal challenges brought on by the use of algorithms. A particular class of algorithms that augment or replace analysis and decision-making by humans, i.e. data analytics and machine learning, is under scrutiny. Taking into account Balkin’s work on “the laws of an algorithmic society”, attention is drawn to obligations of transparency, matters of due process, and accountability. This US-centric analysis on drawbacks and loopholes of current legal systems is complemented with the analysis of norms (...) and principles of the EU data protection law, or “GDPR”. The aim is twofold. On the one hand, the intent is to shed light on some crucial differences between the US and EU law on the regulation of algorithmic operators, both public and private. Whereas, in the USA, scholars debate whether and to what extent new duties and responsibilities of algorithmic operators, e.g. information fiduciaries, have to amend the current framework of self-regulation and light government—as shown by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy report from November 2016—in EU law much of the new duties and responsibilities of algorithmic operators have been passed upon them as data controllers. Whether such approaches will successfully tackle the normative challenges of the algorithmic society is, on the other hand, an open issue that will likely represent the main topic of debate over the next years. Disagreement may concern: the terms framing the legal question in e.g. statistical purposes of the data processing; how such terms are related to each other in legal reasoning ; and legal hard cases that will increasingly have to do with the principles that are at stake also but not only in data protection. By entrusting such legal hard cases to algorithms, or some sort of smart artificial agent, humans still bear full responsibility for the judgment of what is socially, ethically, and legally “plain” and “hard” in social affairs. The balance between delegation of decisions to algorithms and non-delegation will be the leitmotiv of the algorithmic society. Since the devil is in the detail, the current paper is devoted to some of them. (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)

The nature of matter and the idea of indivisible parts has fascinated philosophers, historians, scientists and physicists from antiquity to the present day. This collection covers the richness of its history, starting with how the Ancient Greeks came to assume the existence of atoms and concluding with contemporary metaphysical debates about structure, time and reality. Focusing on important moments in the history of human thought when the debate about atomism was particularly flourishing and transformative for the scientific and philosophical spirit (...) of the time, this collection covers: - The discovery of atomism in ancient philosophy - Ancient non-Western, Arabic and late Medieval thought - The Renaissance, when along with the re-discovery of ancient thought, atomism became once again an important doctrine to be fully debated - Logical atomism in early analytic philosophy, with Russell and Wittgenstein - Atomism in Liberalism and Marxism - Atomism and the philosophy of time - Atomism in contemporary metaphysics - Atomism and the sciences Featuring 28 chapters by leading and younger scholars, this valuable collection reveals the development of one of philosophy's central doctrines across 2,500 years and within a broad range of philosophical traditions. (shrink)

This book explores how the design, construction, and use of robotics technology may affect today's legal systems and, more particularly, matters of responsibility and agency in criminal law, contractual obligations, and torts. By distinguishing between the behaviour of robots as tools of human interaction, and robots as proper agents in the legal arena, jurists will have to address a new generation of "hard cases." General disagreement may concern immunity in criminal law (e.g., the employment of robot soldiers in battle), personal (...) accountability for certain robots in contracts (e.g., robo-traders), much as clauses of strict liability and negligence-based responsibility in extra-contractual obligations (e.g., service robots in tort law). Since robots are here to stay, the aim of the law should be to wisely govern our mutual relationships. (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)

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)

Protagoras was an important Greek thinker of the fifth century BC, the most famous of the so called Sophists, though most of what we know of him and his thought comes to us mainly through the dialogues of his strenuous opponent Plato. In this book, Ugo Zilioli offers a sustained and philosophically sophisticated examination of what is, in philosophical terms, the most interesting feature of Protagoras' thought for modern readers: his role as the first Western thinker to argue for relativism. (...) Zilioli relates Protagoras' relativism with modern forms of relativism, in particular the 'robust relativism' of Joseph Margolis, gives an integrated account both of the perceptual relativism examined in Plato's Theaetetus and the ethical or social relativism presented in the first part of Plato's Protagoras and offers an integrated and positive analysis of Protagoras' thought, rather than focusing on ancient criticisms and responses to his thought. This is a deeply scholarly work which brings much argument to bear to the claim that Protagoras was and remains Plato's subtlest philosophical enemy. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe present study examined the effects of emotions on eye movements, head motion, and iPad motion during reading. Thirty-one participants read neutral, emotionally negative texts and emotio...

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)

Studies on the 1616 and 1633 actions brought against Galilei by the Index and the Inquisition generally presumed that part of the documentation was still to be unveiled. This assumption was frequently accompanied by the hypothesis that some available documents were forgeries, merely composed to justify the 1633 condemnation. New documents from the Archive of the Roman Inquisition, including a censure of Saggiatore, official acts concerning the public dissemination of the verdict, and applications for permission to read Galilei¹s works, show (...) that the 1984 edition of his trial was not exhaustive. It is argued, however, that these documents were not concealed intentionally by the Holy Office and their not being found so far has been mainly due to the poor organisation of the Archive. Gianfranco Catelli, Gouhier e la cosiddetta dottrina della terza nozione primitiva In questo studio non si condivide l’opinione, dominante per molti decenni, che il cosiddetto dualismo cartesiano sia dovuto ad un “malinteso”, che può chiamarsi originario, dato che a rimanerne coinvolti furono alcuni tra i primi seguaci della filosofia di Cartesio. Una presa di posizione, questa, che, già sviluppata in altri precedenti lavori, viene qui riproposta relativamente a H. Gouhier, lo studioso che più di ogni altro, con ricchezza di documenti e sottigliezza di analisi interpretative, ha sostenuto la tesi del “malinteso” e ha individuato nella dottrina della terza nozione primitiva la spiegazione autenticamente cartesiana del rapporto sussistente tra anima e corpo. Una interpretazione di cui nel presentge studio si mostra tutta la debolezza, soprattutto se la si considera alla luce dell’altra dottrina, anch’essa cartesiana, ma di gran lunga più articolata, che fa del rapporto tra anima e corpo un nesso da spiegarsi in analogia al rapporto che nel linguaggio intercorre tra il segno e il suo significato. (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.