In this paper, we report on the development of The Sustainable Port video game, which aims to simulate the complex dynamics and decisions occurring in the present and future development of a port area considering environmental aspects (CO2 emissions) and profit. To evaluate if this game fulfills its purpose, we asked 75 students and 34 employees at the Port of Rotterdam (PoR) to play The Sustainable Port. Our results show that PoR employees score higher than students suggesting a transfer between (...) real-life experience of being an employee in the port and performance in the game. Furthermore, port participants reported that The Sustainable Port can be successfully used to start discussions about the future of the Port of Rotterdam and to raise awareness about the complexity characterizing the decision-making processes occurring in a port environment. Our results, taken together, provide evidence of the effectiveness of The Sustainable Port in simulating dynamics occurring in port development and give us optimism about future applications. (shrink)

This study aimed to evaluate if eye blinks can be used to discriminate players with different performance in a session of Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Tetris. To that end, we developed a state-of-the-art method for blink extraction from EAR measures, which is robust enough to be used with data collected by a low-grade webcam such as the ones widely available on laptop computers. Our results show a significant decrease in blink rate per minute (blinks/m) during the first minute of playing (...) Tetris. After having defined 3 groups of proficiency based on in-game performance (Novices, Intermediates, and Experts) we found out that expert players display a significantly lower decrease in blinks/m compared to novices during the first minute of gameplay, which shows that Tetris players' proficiency can be detected by looking at eye blinks/m variations during the early phase of a game session. This difference in blinks/m is observed throughout the entire game session, which supports the general conclusion that proficient Tetris players have a lower decrease in blinks/m, even when playing more difficult levels. Finally, we offer some interpretations of this effect and the relationship that our results may have with the visual cognitive workload experienced during the gameplay. (shrink)

In this paper, we report on an experiment with The Walking Dead (TWD), which is a narrative-driven adventure game with morally charged decisions set in a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies. This study aimed to identify physiological markers of moral decisions and non-moral decisions using infrared thermal imaging (ITI). ITI is a non-invasive tool used to capture thermal variations due to blood flow in specific body regions that might be caused by sympathetic activity. Results show that moral decisions seem to (...) elicit a significant decrease in temperature in the chin region 20 seconds after participants are presented with a moral decision. However, given the small sample involved, and the lack of significance in other regions, future studies might be needed to confirm the results obtained in this work. (shrink)

Uno dei principali problemi nello studio della mente e della sua "collocazione" consiste nell'identificazione del corretto Livello di Astrazione a cui le varie descrizioni fenomeniche e le corrispondenti ipotesi esplicative possono essere sviluppate e confrontate. L'articolo contribuisce all'attuale dibattito metodologico in filosofia della mente analizzando due nozioni fondative, quella di modello e quella di simulazione, sulla base del concetto di Livello di Astrazione. L'ambito è quello del Metodo delle Astrazioni, proposto in Floridi e Sanders [2003]. Il Metodo delle Astrazioni si (...) basa su una particolare branca dell'informatica teorica, quella dei Metodi Formali (Roever e Engelhardt [1998]; Woodcock e Davies [1996]), dove la matematica discreta è utilizzata per descrivere analiticamente le specifiche del comportamento di sistemi che elaborano informazioni. I sistemi sono descritti in termini di osservabili e regole di transizione, cioè come sistemi di transizione. Le descrizioni comportano l'utilizzo di variabili che rappresentano osservabili nella realtà, astraendo da altri eventuali osservabili. L'idea di fondo del Metodo delle Astrazioni è che tale processo di filtraggio sia ineliminabile in qualsiasi accesso alla realtà. Il tentativo di sondare un sistema in maggiore profondità produce una maggiore astrazione delle teorie e degli oggetti teorici che descrivono tale sistema. Il Metodo delle Astrazioni si presenta quindi come uno strumento per organizzare e chiarificare le varie teorie che intendono fornire una spiegazione della realtà o della conoscenza. La principale tesi dell'articolo è che "modello" e "simulazione" non possano essere pensati come nozioni a sé stanti, ma che la loro natura possa essere chiarita nei termini di tipi di relazioni tra sistemi di transizione. Nello specifico, si argomenta che la relazione di simulazione è una relazione tra gli osservabili di sistemi di transizione, mentre il modello è una relazione tra le regole di transizione di questi sistemi. Dati questi due nuovi tipi di relazioni, è possibile arricchire con ulteriori strutture di analisi il Metodo delle Astrazioni, estendendo la sua applicabilità. Queste strutture sono discusse nell'articolo come "Reti di Astrazione". (shrink)

In this study, we predict the different levels of performance in a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Tetris session based on the score and the number of matches played by the players. Using the first 45 seconds of gameplay, a Random Forest Classifier was trained on the five keys used in the game obtaining a ROC_AUC score of 0.80. Further analysis revealed that the number of down keys (forced drop) and the number of left keys (left translation) are the most relevant (...) keys in this task, showing that by merely including the data from these two keys our Random Forest Classifier reached a ROC_AUC score of 0.83.We conclude that the keylogger data during the early phases of a game session can be successfully used to predict performance in longer sessions of Tetris. (shrink)

We argue that legal argumentation, as the subject matter as well as a special subfield of Argumentation Studies (AS), has to be examined by making skilled use of the full panoply of tools such as argumentation and story schemes which are at the forefront of current work in AS. In reviewing the literature, we make explicit our own methodological choices (particularly regarding the place of normative deliberation in practical reasoning) and then illustrate the implications of such an approach through the (...) analysis of a case study in the English law of evidence. We argue that a clear distinction must be drawn between practical argumentation and stories. Because of the institutional separation between legal judgment and fact-finding in common-law jury trials, we argue for the combination of argument and story-based analysis. (shrink)

La convinzione che la corretta comprensione della filosofia di Giordano Bruno sia imprescindibile dal tempo e dal luogo in cui il testo venne scritto è il principio ispiratore dell’originale metodo di ricerca di Guido del Giudice. Questa antologia, che raccoglie per la prima volta tutte le epistole dedicatorie delle opere latine, giunge a coronamento di un lavoro decennale dell’autore.

In this paper we introduce three methods to approach philosophical problems informationally: Minimalism, the Method of Abstraction and Constructionism. Minimalism considers the specifications of the starting problems and systems that are tractable for a philosophical analysis. The Method of Abstraction describes the process of making explicit the level of abstraction at which a system is observed and investigated. Constructionism provides a series of principles that the investigation of the problem must fulfil once it has been fully characterised by the previous (...) two methods. For each method, we also provide an application: the problem of visual perception, functionalism, and the Turing Test, respectively. (shrink)

In the wake of high profile and recent events of blatant privacy violations, which also raise issues of democratic accountability as well as, at least potentially, undermining the legitimacy of current local and international governance arrangements, a rethinking of the justification of the right to privacy is proposed. In this paper, the case of the violation of the privacy of a bullied autistic youngster and the consequent prosecution of 3 Google executives will be discussed first. We will then analyse the (...) arguments made by both academic experts and pundits who agree with Google’s claim that if the first sentence had been left unchallenged, it would have opened the floodgates to several other jurisdictions that would as a consequence have used it as a pretext to increase control on the internet, jeopardising in such a way free speech, which has been seen so far as an inalienable right which should not be censored. Finally, by going beyond the sentences and their immediate contexts, we will propose a theoretical justification of our analysis. Our main claim is that the value of the right to privacy is based on the argument that its violation would undermine citizens’ capacity to participate effectively in democratic politics. (shrink)

In this study, we analyzed the blinking behavior of players in a video game tournament. Our aim was to test whether spontaneous blink patterns differ across levels of expertise. We used blink rate, blink duration, blink frequency, and eyelid movements represented by the Eye Aspect Ratio (EAR) to train a machine learning classifier to discriminate between different levels of expertise. Classifier performance was highly influenced by features such as the mean, standard deviation and median EAR. Moreover, further analysis suggests that (...) blinking rate and blink duration are likely to increase along with the level of expertise. We speculate this may be indicative of a reduction in cognitive load and lowered stress of expert players. In general, our results suggest that EAR and blink patterns can be used to identify different levels of expertise of video game players. (shrink)

In this article we analyse the problem of emergence in its diachronic dimension. In other words, we intend to deal with the generation of novelties in natural processes. Our approach aims at integrating some insights coming from Whitehead’s Philosophy of the Process with the epistemological framework developed by the “autopoietic” tradition. Our thesis is that the emergence of new entities and rules of interaction (new “fields of relatedness”) requires the development of discontinuous models of change. From this standpoint natural evolution (...) can be conceived as a succession of emergences — each one realizing a novel “extended” present, described by distinct models — rather than as a single and continuous dynamics. This theoretical and epistemological framework is particularly suitable to the investigation of the origin of life, an emblematic example of this kind of processes. (shrink)

In this study, we extracted facial action units (AUs) data during a Hearthstone tournament to investigate behavioural differences between expert, intermediate, and novice players. Our aim was to obtain insights into the nature of expertise and how it may be tracked using non-invasive methods such as AUs. These insights may shed light on the endogenous responses in the player and at the same time may provide information to the opponents during a competition. Our results show that player expertise may be (...) characterised by specific patterns in facial expressions. More specifically, AU17 (chin raiser), AU25 (lips apart), and AU26 (jaws drop) intensity responses during gameplay may vary according to players' expertise. Such results were obtained by training a random forest classifier to test whether we can use these three AUs alone to accurately detect players' expertise. The classifier reached 0.75 accuracy on 5-fold cross-validation, after balancing the class weights, and 0.85 after having applied the Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE) function. These results suggest that AUs can be effectively used to discriminate different levels of expertise in competitive video game players. (shrink)

This article aims to evaluate the contribution of Bentham’s ideas to the jurisprudential debate in view of their relevance vis a vis their contemporary reception. The focus is on Bentham’s revolutionary idea of publicity with its spill-over effects on contemporary debates on the rule of law and accountable and transparent governance. As far as the method is concerned, after having examined Bentham’s ideas on the rule of law and the debate they raised, the focus in the second section of this (...) article is specifically on his conception of publicity. Some critical remarks then show that Bentham’s focus on publicity and transparency has been rightly interpreted in the contemporary debate as an important contribution. However, it is their justification that it is judged to be problematic. In fact, the assessment of the fundamental importance of publicity for the rule of law and transparent and accountable governance leads to a critical engagement with contemporary readings of Bentham’s scholarship, in primis that of Gerald Postema, with a development of the latter’s republican interpretation. The direction of travel that is proposed is towards a more liberal republicanism. The article not only shows how Bentham’s contribution should be revaluated in view of contemporary interpretations, but also proposes directions for further research developments according to which contemporary conceptions of regulation need to take a reflexive turn while aiming at legitimate legality at the same time. (shrink)

The debate on the argumentative turn in Public Policy and Administration (PPA), as reflective of the influence of politico-legal theory on the discipline, is reviewed with a thorough and indepth engagement with the Argumentation Theory (AT) literature. The focus in this article is in fact of a methodological nature since we argue that critical scholars - who have contributed to the general and specialized (i.e. political discourse analysis and critical contextualism) literature of AT as well as politico-legal theory - pave (...) the way to a novel methodology which will be exemplified through the analysis of the transparency concept. (shrink)

On the basis of the conception of aesthetic imagination derived from evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, and social cognitive neuroscience, today it is possible - and more appropriate - to invert the traditional view of anthropologists and archeologists that conceives the arts (from the early pre-historic arts) as mere instruments supporting religious beliefs, practices, and rituals.

Gini coefficients, which measure gross inequalities rather than their unfair components, are often used as proxy measures of absolute or relative distributive injustice in Western societies. This presupposes that the fair inequalities in these societies are small and stable enough to be ignored. This article presents a model for a series of ideal, perfectly just societies, where comfortable lives are equally available to everyone, and calculates the Gini coefficients for each. According to this model, inequalities produced by age (...) and other demographic factors, together with reasonable choices under equal opportunity, can raise the Gini coefficients for perfectly just societies to levels at least as high as those of any current Western country, and can as easily account for differences in Gini coefficients between such societies or within one such society over time. If Gini coefficients at these levels are possible for ideal societies without distributive injustice, then they should not be used as proxy measures of distributive injustice in real societies. (shrink)

This essay is my critical review of Al Gini and Alexei Marcoux’s fine text, The Ethics of Business. Unlike most business ethics texts, Gini/Marcoux recognize that most businesses are small, and that business is not inherently immoral and always in need of reform. And they put their focus on using ethical theory to find action-guiding principles to help guide business behavior. Moreover, they adopt the Schumpeterian view that business is an entrepreneurial activity—one that not merely executes transactions, but (...) seeks them out. I critically probe a number of issues with their book such as their reliance upon virtue ethics as their main ethical theory, and their view that trust plays an overwhelming role in business. (shrink)

In the 1960s Mancur Olson and Samuel Huntington suggested that the positive correlation between per capita income and the level of sociopolitical destabilization that they detected for low and middle income countries might be partly accounted for by the growth of the inequality associated with the economic and technological development in these countries. The empirical tests we perform generally support this hypothesis, but they also identify certain limits for such an explanation. Our tests reveal for low and middle income countries (...) a statistically significant correlation between GDP per capita and the economic inequality levels, but this correlation is not particularly strong. Earlier we found for the same countries significantly stronger positive correlations between GDP per capita and some important components of sociopolitical destabilization, such as the intensity of political assassinations, general strikes and anti-government demonstrations. It is quite clear that the strong association between the increase in the intensity of these components of sociopolitical destabilization and GDP per capita growth, can be explained by a much weaker tendency toward the growth of economic inequality only partly. In addition, our empirical tests suggest the presence of a certain threshold level of about 40 points on the Gini scale, after crossing which one can expect a radical increase in levels of sociopolitical destabilization in general, and the intensity of terrorist acts / guerrilla warfare and anti-government demonstrations in particular. According to the World Bank, the value of the Gini coefficient for Russia is now just in this zone, which suggests that the further growth of inequality in Russia could lead to an abrupt increase in political destabilization. (shrink)

The overall objective of the study was to examine the pros and cons of the participatory approach adopted in natural resource management in the ecologically protected areas of the Sundarbans mangrove of Bangladesh. A comparative study was done between the people who are involved and non-involved in this approach. Empirical data was collected through personal interviews with a structured questionnaire. The Gini coefficient was measured first and then embedded with the Lorenz curve to draw a line between perfect equality (...) and inequality vis-a-vis. The study revealed that the co-management built awareness in favor of biodiversity conservation and the efficient use of natural resources. Contradictorily, a segment of different hierarchical committees was involved in destructive activities like poisoning the wetlands for fishing. Therefore, a mixed outcome was found. The findings will help the policymakers in identifying the pitfalls and bottlenecks rooted in co-management. Hence, the study recommends revising the approach to ensure the community’s active participation on an equal basis and take action against them who degrade those resources. Exploring profitable alternative income-generating activities is warranted to narrow down the dependency on the Sundarbans mangrove’s natural resources. In order to address the tragedy of the commons, the study advocates for the unity of all knowledge ranging from science to humanistic scholarship for sound policymaking. (shrink)

Auty (1993) and Sachs and Warner (1997) reignited the line of argument of the resource curse: the idea that natural resource wealth has negative net effects on the development of nations. However, the result has been found to be highly dependent on the types of variables used to represent natural resource wealth (Brunnschweiler, 2007) and similar questions can raised about variables used to represent being “cursed”. In this paper we pursue the hunt for better variables by looking at the relationship (...) between average income from natural resources per person and a wide array of key development indicators: Adjusted National Net Income, GDP per capita, an aggregate of services and industrialized goods, inequality measured by the Gini index, Poverty, the Human Development Index, the Prosperity Index, the Social Progress Index and the Fragile State Index. We do this on a global scale between 1970 and 2010. On the contrary, we find that natural resource wealth is positively linked to development. We suggest, alternatively, that much of the actual cases where abundant natural resources hurt nations have been cases of common theft by tyrants, often backed by imperial powers. (shrink)

In this paper, first the term 'prioritarianism' is defined, with some mathematical precision, on the basis of intuitive conceptions of prioritarianism, especially the idea that "benefiting people matters more the worse off these people are". (The prioritarian weighting function is monotonously ascending and concave, while its first derivation is smoothly descending and convex but positive throughout.) Furthermore, (moderate welfare) egalitarianism is characterized. In particular a new symmetry condition is defended, i.e. that egalitarianism evaluates upper and lower deviations from the social (...) middle symmetrically and equally negatively (as do e.g. variance and Gini). Finally, it is shown that this feature distinguishes egalitarianism also extensionally from prioritarianism. (shrink)

Einer der traditionell gegen den Utilitarismus erhobenen Vorwürfe besagt, Utilitarismus sei mit der Konzeption unveräußerlicher Individualrechte unvereinbar, er könne die Menschenrechte entweder nicht begründen oder schlösse deren Gebotensein schlicht aus. Der Berechtigung dieser Behauptung wird zuerst bei den klassischen Utilitaristen Jeremy Bentham und John Stuart Mill nachgegangen. Der Einwand von Bernhard Williams gegen den Utilitarismus, er würdige den Wert von Integrität der Persönlichkeit nicht, wird anhand seines von ihm selbst gebotenen Beispiels erwogen. Unter den nicht-klassischen Utilitarismen wird die Theorie von (...) Rainer W. Trapp auf ihre Vereinbarkeit mit unveräußerlichen Rechten geprüft. Das Resümee ist uneindeutig: Nicht alle Utilitarismen schließen die Rechtsinhalte unveräußerlicher Individualrechte aus. Nicht alle der uns heute bekannten und als unveräußerlich postulierten Individualrechte lassen sich inhaltlich utilitaristisch begründen. Im Paralipomenon wird das Verhältnis der utilitaristischen Methode zu moralischen Intuitionen überdacht und ein weiterer Einwand Bernard Williams gegen den Utilitarismus geprüft: Ist der Utilitarismus konformistisch? Ein Plädoyer für einen freiheitlichen Utilitarismus in der Tradition Mills bildet den Abschluss. -/- 1. Klassischer Utilitarismus und unveräußerliche Individualrechte / 1.1. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832): Utilitarismus im Sicherheitsinteresse der Gemeinschaft / 1.2. John Stuart Mill (1806–1873): Utilitarismus der Freiheit als Lebenskunst der Individuen / 2. Zu Bernard Williams` Utilitarismus-Kritik: Integrität oder „Hier steh` ich und ich kann nicht anders!“ / 2.1. Das Jim-Pedro-Beispiel / 2.2. Negative Verantwortlichkeit: „Verhindere das größere Übel!“ / 3. Nicht-klassischer Utilitarismus und unveräusserliche Individualrechte / 3.1. Rainer W. Trapp: Gerechtigkeitsutilitarismus / 3.2. Utilitaristen und deontologische Rigoristen / 4. Resümee: Utilitarismus und unveräusserliche Individualrechte - 5. Paralipomenon: Plädoyer für Utilitarismus als Lebenskunst / 5.1. Ist der Utilitarismus konformistisch? / 5.2. Utilitarismus im Sinne John Stuart Mills als freiheitliche Lebenskunst, als „Art of Life“. (shrink)