Arguing for mathematical realism on the basis of Field’s explanationist version of the Quine–Putnam Indispensability argument, Alan Baker has recently claimed to have found an instance of a genuine mathematical explanation of a physical phenomenon. While I agree that Baker presents a very interesting example in which mathematics plays an essential explanatory role, I show that this example, and the argument built upon it, begs the question against the mathematical nominalist.

The Dignity of the Children according to the New Testament teaching should be a landmark for modern era. New Testament raised the dignity of the unborn child, from a simple mass of cells to a child who has the right to be born and live. The child born has the value of a person that to enjoy family and society not only for economic potential but for the soul value as they bear the image of God. Children of different ages (...) have the right to be baptized, have access to the grace of the Sacraments and become saints. In fact the true dignity of man is his power to become a saint. And the child is the image of the saint, heir of the Heaven. (shrink)

Traditional approaches to conflict are oriented towards establishing consensus, either in the form of a resolution of the conflict or in the form of an ‘agree-to-disagree’ standstill between the stakeholders. In this paper, we criticize these traditional approaches, each for specific reasons, and we propose and develop the agonistic approach to conflict. Based on Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic democratic theory, the agonistic approach to conflict is more welcoming of dissensus, replacing discussion stoppers with discussion starters and replacing standstills with contestation. We (...) illustrate such replacements and develop this approach, we analyse technological conflicts in a concrete R&D setting: the global hydrogen economy. From this context, we focus on the conflict between the proponents of blue hydrogen and those of green hydrogen. We conclude by highlighting the advantage of the agonistic approach but also drawing attention to its own specific risk, namely, antagonism. (shrink)

The inclusion of stakeholders in science is one of the core ideas in the field of responsible innovation. Conspiracists, however, are not your garden-variety stakeholders. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, the conflict between conspiracists and science is deep and intractable. In this paper, we ask how the game of responsible innovation can be played with those who believe that the game is rigged. Understanding the relationship between conspiracism and responsible innovation is necessary in order to understand the unvisited corners (...) of the science-society interface in the post-pandemic future. We claim that pluralism, already part of the philosophical background that spurred responsible innovation, can offer insights into how conspiracism can be approached. As a case in point, we develop these insights starting from the policy on conspiracism developed in 2021 by the European Commission. We show that the ideal of inclusion can only be extended to conspiracists by accepting a pluralist framework, and we explain this pluralist response. (shrink)

The temple from Jerusalem was never more defended by Jewish servants and believers, as when the Apostle Paul wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews. We are not referring to the armies of the revolutionaries. We should know that in Sanhedrin was judged every word that a Jew talked about the temple. But when St. Stephan was killed, and after too, St. James, because they have seen the True temple of Christ, the Levites and the Priests became killers not worshipers. With (...) diplomacy, the Apostle Paul wrote to the Jews this letter without even saying a word about the Temple, but asking them to remember the way they can fulfil the ideals of unity and freedom patented by Moses and the Tent: through Christ and through the Church. (shrink)

The interpretation of the Holy Bible has always done in two distinct environments: in the Church and outside it. If for the Holy Fathers the Church was the only institution that can guarantee the integrity, apostolicity, inspiration and canonicity of the sacred text, as well as the right way of interpreting, heretics have read the Bible for widening an already created gap between them and the Church. The current Protestant exegesis tends to reconsider the interpretative tradition, inquiring about the effects (...) or the understanding of the Holy Scriptures texts, quoting as Wirkungsgeschichte a summary of the directions of where some pericopes were understood. But is this new approach sufficient for an accurate understanding of the Holly Bible message? (shrink)

This paper presents an analytical framework for analyzing how multimodal resources of emotion expression are semiotically materialized in discursive interactions specific to political discourse. Interested in how political personae are emotionally constructed through multimodal meaning-making practices, our analysis model assumes an interdisciplinary perspective, which integrates facial expression analysis – using FaceReader™ software –, the theory of emotional arcs and bodily actions (hand gestures) analysis that express emotions, in the analytical framework of multimodality. The results show how the multimodal choices that (...) political actors make during discursive interactions allow them to build their political brand and make connections with the audience on an emotional level. (shrink)

Lengthy critical notice of J. B. Kennedy, The Musical Structure of Plato's Dialogues (Acumen, 2011). -/- We approached the prospect of reviewing Kennedy’s book with excitement and optimism, but we’ve left rather disappointed. The case doesn’t hang together, we think, because it requires us to suppose that Plato composed to a pattern that his readers wouldn’t be looking for. They wouldn’t be looking for it musically, because it is not musically significant. Moreover, if he expected them to be looking for (...) such a pattern in the stichometry, then the evidence available to us suggests that his expectations went wholly unfulfilled. Plato may have been a perverse writer in many ways – for instance, by disparaging philosophical writing in a philosophical text – but we think Kennedy’s hypothesis requires us to attribute a touch too much perversity to one of our favourite authors. (shrink)

In two recent articles I have argued that Kant’s legal and political philosophy can shed new light on his much-contested account of moral autonomy and that important changes in his political theory help to explain why in his later work the Formula of Autonomy disappears. In the present essay, I respond to comments by Sorin Baiasu and Marie Newhouse, who argue that the changes in Kant’s political theory fail to explain the disappearance of the Formula of Autonomy, since in (...) both phases Kant held that laws are given by the people’s representatives. I offer additional support for my original argument by developing a more detailed account of Kant’s conception of the relation between the legislating representatives and the people they are taken to represent. I argue that Kant’s conception of the proper representation relation changed, and that it changed so fundamentally that the analogy at the basis of the Formula of Autonomy was no longer apt, thus providing a plausible explanation for its disappearance. I also address several related comments and propose an explanation for why Kant dropped the very idea of autonomy as a property of the will. (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is an analysis of agreement in relation to genitival constructions. It proposes that the Apulian non-prepositional enitives of San Marco in Lamis can be described as regulated by a definiteness agreement mechanism manifesting itself in the necessity of articled heads (excluding vocatives) and genitival nouns, coupled with an adjacency requirement which limits the realization of post-nominal modifiers of the head in a post-genitival position, where they might only refer to the genitive noun. This work thus (...) proposes that such agreement for definiteness is the same holding in Romanian non-al genitives which result in the linker construction when agreement is disrupted. In chapter 1 we thus introduce Kartvelian genitives by Suffixaufnahme which notoriously represent a genitive-head noun morphological agreement phenomenon. Plank (1995) also shows that in a series of genitives, Suffixaufnahme shows up only on the last one, demonstrating that when it comes to agreement in genitives, local dynamics of sorts are often at stake (as it happens with the Costruct State). In 2 we move to linkers; linkers have been connected to agreement in Suffixaufnahme genitives at least since Plank (1995) and later works such as Larson and Yamakido (2006), Manzini et al (2016), and Manzini (2018), according to which linkers can be assimilated to agreement. In fact, in synthetic systems such as Romanian and Aromanian, Albanian and Arbëresh, and Kurdish varieties, linkers agree for φ with either the head or the genitive noun. Giurgea and Dobrovie-Sorin (2013: 126) further show that in Romanian non-linker constructions possessives agree for case with the head noun. In linker constructions, agreement for case is not present: it’s the linker itself which agrees with the head noun, this time for φ. Chapter 3 deals with genitival modification in Hebrew and a number of Arabic varieties. It proposes that the pseudoprepositions found in Arabic varieties are nouns in the Construct State. This was previously proposed for Palestinian Arabic in Mohammad (1999), which also shows that such elements agree for φ with the modified noun. 3.2 takes into account the Semitic preposition l-, dealing with the question of whether this lement can be characterized as possessive and locative as it happens for Romance a. 4 analyzes Apulian non-prepositional genitives and proposes as anticipated that the necessity of articled nouns in the construction is to be linked to an agreement relation taking place via D. Lastly, 5 subsumes the conclusions of this work. (shrink)

At 287c of the Statesman the Eleatic Visitor — or, more deeply, Plato — faces a daunting task. Because statesmanship has been shown to collaborate with “countless” other arts that share with it the work of “caring” for the city, to understand statesmanship requires distinguishing these arts into an intelligible set of kinds and recognizing how these might go together. Accordingly, the Visitor abandons the mode of division he has practiced without exception up until this moment, bifurcation or “halving,” and (...) offers, instead, a sorting of the arts into fifteen kinds of work. How was Plato able to get his bearings towards the heterogeneous multiplicity of the arts in order to do this sorting? In this paper I suggest that he may have found a paradigm in the double octave matrix of notes from which, according to contemporary musical theory, the seven musical “modes” are drawn. To show the plausibility of this suggestion, I first reconstruct the double octave matrix, which was later to be called the Greater Perfect System, and then show a striking series of points of substantive and structural analogy that hold between this matrix and the Visitor’s division of the arts into fifteen kinds. (shrink)

Proportional relationships of simple numbers were commonly used in architecture during the Renaissance period. These proportional relationships were based on the primary musical consonances of the Greek musical system: the octave (2:1), fifth (3:2), and fourth (4:3). In a similar manner, Obrecht uses the proportional relationships created by periods of rest and the last notes of the cantus firmus segments. These proportional relationships are found in the same voice as the cantus firmus, and appear when the statements of the cantus (...) firmus segments are absent. Together with the statements of the cantus firmus segments, these proportional relationships provide the entire form and structure for the various parts of Obrecht's segmentation masses. (shrink)

The book is very well structured to support practical skills development in understanding DSGE modelling through exercises to graduate a user knowledge on macroeconomic application relevant for policy decisions through use of scientific programs like DYNARE /IRIS, appropriate for use with MatLab/Octave. The author also provided useful references for the more inquisitive reader or practitioner to develop his / her ontological quest for further knowledge in the macroeconomic management of a state (Jackson, 2016). On the basis of relevance of its (...) contents pertaining to theoretical application of macroeconomic policy and management of an economy, I strongly recommend this book to anyone preparing for graduate courses in Economics and related areas like Econometrics, Economic Policy Management and also, to the practitioner-researcher engaged in macroeconomic model construction and policy formulation. (shrink)