Playing fields are “spaces where the communitas suspends its everyday life and structures” and “The internal logic of sporting games is connected to values from the social context”, Playing fields: Power, practice, and passion in sport, 127–144. Reno: University of Nevada Press). But what about the space in between? What kind of semiotics organisation can be detected in the membrane between player and liminal space where spectators are not allowed yet specific characters needed to carry out an event? We can (...) therefore identify a liminality that can be connected either to the controlled or the wild playing field and depending on which of the two is the case can be analysed according to the degree of regulated system of signs which they produce. This implies different pathways and rituals: as matches are played, a variety of bodily activities may be taking place concurrently. Furthermore, it is inevitable that these activities attract the attention of the audience or alternately lead a player to interact with a non-player. In this article, I will first try to identify certain semiotics features, especially connected to Eco’s Peircian concept of Encyclopedia, that characterize the status of liminal space around the playing field. Then I will focus on liminality in soccer, investigating what kinds of interaction exist outside the playing area. (shrink)

A comprehensive and scholarly study Fr. Rosini has, perhaps for the first time, provided a complete, well-balanced exposition of Scotus on Our Lady, with all the many inter-connections between the mystery of Mary and the whole of theology, ...

A diagrammatic logical calculus for the syllogistic reasoning is introduced and discussed. We prove that a syllogism is valid if and only if it is provable in the calculus.

Doors play a complex role in architecture. The very word, at least in Italian and French, illuminates the marking of the deliberate interruption of the act of foundation during the ceremony of the wall's enceinte tracing. The word porta indicates the action of portare. During the tracing of the furrow into the ground, the blade is lifted out of the ground in order to mark the place of the future entrance to the city. Another significant role is the marking of (...) the “exit” from this world and it is loaded with intense significance in funereal architecture. But if we look at the semantic “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” it will be easy to discover the other, complementary, and necessary role of the porta. The reading of Aristophanes' Lysistrata shows the explicit “hidden” metaphor of the door, which has been very well christened as the “Origin of the World” in the famous Courbet painting. (shrink)

Climate change, rising energy costs, and other dilemmas raise the prospect for major change in energy-ecology-society relations. Two prominent proposals for change include: a nuclear power renaissance; and mega-scale renewable energy development. Both suggest that modern society will receive a rising stream of less CO2-rich kilowatt-hours, so that increased energy consumption and economic growth can continue. The article doubts these CO2 claims and finds both options lead to deepening unsustainability and environmental injustice. A third approach is proposed. A new institutional (...) and community strategy called a Sustainability Energy Utility. The SEU looks to reduce energy use and seeks to support remaining energy needs by community-scale renewables. To accomplish deep energy change, the authors show how an SEU can move society from an energy commodity to energy commons regime. Commonwealth economy and community trusts are key means to significant change: a future commons is offered as the more appropriate strategy. (shrink)

We present a reading of the traditional syllogistics in a fragment of the propositional intuitionistic multiplicative linear logic and prove that with respect to a diagrammatic logical calculus that we introduced in a previous paper, a syllogism is provable in such a fragment if and only if it is diagrammatically provable. We extend this result to syllogistics with complemented terms à la De Morgan, with respect to a suitable extension of the diagrammatic reasoning system for the traditional case and a (...) corresponding reading of such De Morgan style syllogistics in the previously referred to fragment of linear logic. (shrink)

De spatio, ac tempore -- De spatio, et tempore, ut a nobis cognoscuntur -- De motu absoluto, an possit a relativo distingui -- De vi inertiae.

Scientists and laypeople alike use the sense of understanding that an explanation conveys as a cue to good or correct explanation. Although the occurrence of this sense or feeling of understanding is neither necessary nor sufficient for good explanation, it does drive judgments of the plausibility and, ultimately, the acceptability, of an explanation. This paper presents evidence that the sense of understanding is in part the routine consequence of two well-documented biases in cognitive psychology: overconfidence and hindsight. In light of (...) the prevalence of counterfeit understanding in the history of science, I argue that many forms of cognitive achievement do not involve a sense of understanding, and that only the truth or accuracy of an explanation make the sense of understanding a valid cue to genuine understanding. (shrink)

As far as we know, no notion of concrete fibration is available. We provide one such notion in adherence to the foundational attitude that characterizes the adoption of the fibrational perspective in approaching fundamental subjects in category theory and discuss it in connection with the notion of concrete category and the notions of locally small and small fibrations. We also discuss the appropriateness of our notion of concrete fibration for fibrations of small maps, which is relevant to algebraic set theory.

By splitting idempotent morphisms in the total and base categories of fibrations we provide an explicit elementary description of the Cauchy completion of objects in the categories Fib) of fibrations with a fixed base category \ and Fib of fibrations with any base category. Two universal constructions are at issue, corresponding to two fibered reflections involving the fibration of fibrations \.

This paper argues that for the purposes of any sort of serious discussion about immoral conduct in sport very little is illuminated by claiming that the conduct in question is cheating. In fact, describing some behavior as cheating is typically little more than expressing strong, but thoroughly vague and imprecise, moral disapproval or condemnation of another person or institution about a wide and ill-defined range of improper advantage-seeking behavior. Such expressions of disapproval fail to distinguish cheating from many other types (...) of immoral conduct. The discussion shows that we should set the concept aside and assess the moral disapproval implied by claims of cheating by reference to the moral and other principles that underlie the practice of sport. This allows us to consider carefully the complexity of the issues that are raised when allegations of cheating are made and not be distracted by the emotionally loaded, conversation-stopping tendency of the concept. This means that some types of disputes in sport will be messy and demand more effort to resolve, but the payoff will be better informed and more thoughtful discussions and greater awareness of the moral complexity of sport and of its principled underpinnings. (shrink)

Pre-existing mathematical formulations are generally used for the treatment of new scientific problems. In this note we show that the construction of mathematical structures from open physical, chemical, and biological problems leads to new intriguing mathematics of increasing complexity called iso-, geno-, and hyper-mathematics for the treatment of matter in reversible, irreversible, and multi-valued conditions, respectively, plus anti-isomorphic images called isodual mathematics for the treatment of antimatter. These novel mathematics are based on the lifting of the multiplicative unit of ordinary (...) fields (with characteristic zero) from its traditional value +1 into: (1) invertible, Hermitean, and single-valued units for isomathematics; (2) invertible, non-Hermitean, and single-valued units for genomathematics; and (3) invertible, non-Hermitean, and multi-valued units for hypermathematics; with corresponding liftings of the conventional associative product and consequential lifting of all branches of mathematics admitting a (left and right) multiplicative unit. An anti-Hermitean conjugation applied to the totality of quantities and their operation of the preceding mathematics characterizes the isodual mathematics. Intriguingly, the emerging formulations preserve the abstract axioms of conventional mathematics (that based on the unit +1). As such, the new formulations result to be new realizations of existing abstract mathematical axioms. We then show that the above mathematical advances permit corresponding liftings of conventional classical and quantum theories with a resolution of basic open problems in physics, chemistry, and biology, numerous experimental verifications, as well as new industrial applications. (shrink)

In this note we outline the history of q-deformations, indicate their physical shortcomings, suggest their apparent resolution via an invariant Lie-admissible formulation based on a new mathematics of genotopic type, and point out their expected physical significance.

We identify new, rather serious, physical and mathematical inconsistencies of the current formulation of noncanonical or nonunitary string theories due to the lack of invariant units necessary for consistent measurements, lack of preservation in time of Hermiticity-observability, and other shortcomings. We propose three novel reformulations of string theories for matter of progressively increasing complexity via the novel iso-, geno-, and hyper-mathematics of hadronic mechanics, which resolve the current inconsistencies, while offering new intriguing possibilities, such as: an axiomatically consistent and invariant (...) inclusion of gravity, the reduction of macroscopic irreversibility to the most primitive level of vibrations of the universal substratum (ether), or the treatment of multi-valued, irreducible, biological structures. We then identify three corresponding classical formulations of string theories for antimatter via the novel anti-isomorphic isodual mathematics. We finally outline the intriguing features of the emerging new cosmologies (including biological structures, as it should be for all cosmologies), such as: universal invariance (rather than covariance) under a symmetry isomorphic to the Poincaré group and its isodual; equal distributions of matter and antimatter in the universe (as a limit case); continuous creation; no need for the missing mass; significantly reduced dimensions; possibility of experimental identification of antimatter in the universe; identically null total characteristics of time, energy, linear and angular momentum, charge, etc.; and other intriguing features. (shrink)

The most majestic scientific achievement, of this century in mathematical beauty, axiomatic consistency, and experimental verifications has been special relativity with its unitary structure at the operator level, and canonical structure at the classical levels, which has turned out to be exactly valid for point particles moving in the homogenenous and isotropic vacuum (exterior dynamical problems). In recent decades a number of authors have studied nonunitary and noncanonical theories, here generally calleddeformations for the representation of broader conditions, such as extended (...) and deformable particles moving within inhomogeneous and anisotrophic physical media (interior dynamical problems). In this paper we show that nonunitary deformations, including, q-, k-, quatum-, Lie-isotopic, Lie-admissible, and other deformations, even thoughmathematically correct, have a number of problematic aspects ofphysical character when formulated on conventional spaces over conditional fields, such as lack of invariance of the basic space-time units, ambiguous applicability to measurements, loss of Hermiticity-observability in time, lack of invariant numerical predictions, loss of the axions of special relativity, and others. We then show that the classical noncanonical counterparts of the above nonunitary deformations are equally afflicted by corresponding problems of physical consistency. We also show that the contemporary formulation of gravity is afflicted by similar problematic aspects because Riemannian spaces are noncanonical deformations of Minkowskian spaces, thus having noninvariant space-time units. We then point out that new mathematical methods, calledisotopies, genotopies, hyperstructures and their isoduals, offer the possibilities of constructing a nonunitary theory, known asrelativistic hadronic mechanics which: (1) is as axiomatically consistent as relativistic quantum mechanics, (2) preserves the abstract axioms of special relativity, and (3) results in a completion of the conventional mechanics much along the celebrated Einstein-Podolski-Rosen argument. A number of novel applications are indicated, such as a geometric unification of the special and general relativity via the isominkowskian geometry in which the two relativities are differentiated via the invariant basic unit, while preserving conventional Riemannian metrics, Einstein's field equations, and related experimental verifications; a novel operator form of gravity verifying the axioms of relativistic quantum mechanics under the universal isopoincaré symmetry; a new structure model of hadrons with conventional massive particles as physical constituents which is compatile with composite quarks and with established unitary classifications; and other novels applications in nuclear physics, astrophysics, theoretical biology, and other fields. The paper ends with the proposal of a number of new experiments, some of which may imply new practical applications, such as conceivable new forms of recycling nuclear waste. The achievement of axiomatic consistency in the study of the above physical problems has been possible for the first time in this paper thanks to mathematical advances that recently appeared in a special issue of theRendiconti Circolo Matematico Palermo, and in other journals identified in the Acknowledgements. (shrink)

By using a language as accessible to as broad an audience as possible, in this paper we identify serious insufficiencies of the neutrino and quark hypotheses for the synthesis of the neutrons from protons and electrons inside stars according to the familiar reaction ${{\rm p}^+ + \bar {\nu} + {\rm e}^-\rightarrow {\rm n}}$ . We introduce, apparently for the first time, the hypothesis that the energy and spin needed for the synthesis of the neutron originate either from the environment or (...) from the ether conceived as a universal medium with very high energy density via an entity here called etherino, denoted with the letter “a” (from the Latin aether), carrying mass and charge 0, spin ${1\over 2}$ and 0.78 MeV energy according to the synthesis ${{\rm p}^+ + {\rm a} + {\rm e}^-\rightarrow {\rm n}}$ . We identify the compatibility ${{\rm p}^+ + {\rm a} + {\rm e}^-\rightarrow {\rm n}\rightarrow {\rm p}^+ + {\rm e}^- + \bar \nu}$ and the incompatibility condition ${{\rm p}^+ + {\rm a} + {\rm e}^-\rightarrow {\rm n}\rightarrow {\rm p}^+ + {\rm e}^- + \bar{{\rm a}}}$ of the neutrino and etherino hypotheses, the latter representing the possible return of missing features to the ether, without being necessarily in conflict with neutrino experiments. We review the new structure model of the neutron and hadrons at large with massive physical constituents produced free in the spontaneous decays as permitted by the covering hadronic mechanics. We show its compatibility with the standard model when interpreted as only providing the final Mendeleev-type classification of hadrons. We point out basically new clean energies predicted by the new model. We indicate new experiments confirming the above studies although in a preliminary form. Finally, we conclude with the proposal of new experiments suggested for the much needed search of new clean energies. (shrink)

This volume examines Diderot's and d'Holbach's views on determinism to illuminate some of the most important debates taking place in eighteenth-century Europe. It problematises their atheism by showing their philosophy to be deeply rooted in the Christian tradition and provides a more nuanced and historicised interpretation of the so-called 'Radical Enlightenment', challenging the notions that this movement can be taken to be a perfectly coherent set of ideas and that it represents a complete break with 'the old'.

Philosophical Analysis Its Development between the Two World Wars.

The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is the most likely site where egocentric spatial relationships are represented in the brain. PPC cells receive visual, auditory, somaesthetic, and vestibular sensory inputs; oculomotor, head, limb, and body motor signals; and strong motivational projections from the limbic system. Their discharge increases not only when an animal moves towards a sensory target, but also when it directs its attention to it. PPC lesions have the opposite effect: sensory inattention and neglect. The PPC does not seem (...) to contain a “map” of the location of objects in space but a distributed neural network for transforming one set of sensory vectors into other sensory reference frames or into various motor coordinate systems. Which set of transformation rules is used probably depends on attention, which selectively enhances the synapses needed for making a particular sensory comparison or aiming a particular movement. (shrink)

Providing an original and systematic treatment of foundational issues in philosophy of religion, J. L. Schellenberg's new book addresses the structure of..

The philosophical literature on sport and games has had little to say about boredom beyond presuming that sports and games can be important ways of overcoming or preventing it. But boredom is an interesting and often misunderstood phenomenon with overlooked implications in this context. Boredom has significant human value and motivates play in ways that contribute to well-being and culture, often through encouraging engaged agency and exploration of novelty. Understanding boredom can also help to clarify problems and tendencies in sports (...) and games that qualify them as havens from boredom. (shrink)

This book reconstructs the concept and practice of dialectics as a means of grounding a critical theory of society. At the center of this project is the thesis of phronetic criticism or a form of reason that is able to synthesize human value with objective rationality. This book argues that defects in modern forms of social reason are the result of the powers of social structure and the norms and purposes they embody. Increasingly, modern societies are driven not by substantive (...) values concerning human good but by the technical imperatives of economic management leading to a cultural condition of nihilism that has eroded dialectical consciousness. The first half of the book demonstrates the various ways that social power erodes and undermines critical-rational forms of consciousness. The second part of the book constructs an alternative basis for critical reason by showing how it requires seeing human value as essentially ontological: that is, constituted by objective forms of sociality that either promote human freedom or pervert our capacities and drives toward pathological forms of life. The philosophical claim is that a critical theory of ethics must be rooted in these concrete forms of life and that this will serve as a critical vantage point for critical political judgment and transformational praxis. Descent of the Dialectic will be of interest to researchers working in philosophy, political theory, social theory, and critical theory. (shrink)

Ned Block argues that the higher-order (HO) approach to explaining consciousness is ‘defunct’ because a prominent objection (the ‘misrepresentation objection’) exposes the view as ‘incoherent’. What’s more, a response to this objection that I’ve offered elsewhere (Weisberg 2010) fails because it ‘amounts to abusing the notion of what-it’s-like-ness’ (xxx).1 In this response, I wish to plead guilty as charged. Indeed, I will continue herein to abuse Block’s notion of what-it’s-like-ness. After doing so, I will argue that the HO approach accounts (...) for the sense of what-it’s-like-ness that matters in a theory of consciousness. I will also argue that the only incoherence present in the HO theory is that generated by embracing Block’s controversial notion of what-it’s-like-ness, something no theorist of any stripe ought to do. Block is famous for (among other things) having introduced the notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ into contemporary philosophy of mind (Block 1995). This term is widely employed in the philosophical literature and it even appears in the empirical literature. But wide-speared usage has brought about divergent interpretations of the term. We can distinguish a ‘moderate’ and a ‘zealous’ reading of ‘phenomenal consciousness’. On the moderate reading, ‘phenomenal consciousness’ just means ‘experience’. Many people have embraced this sense of the term and use it to roughly pick out conscious experience involving sensory quality (states like conscious visual experiences or conscious pains, for example).2 On the zealous reading, however, phenomenal consciousness is held to be ‘distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional property’ (Block 1995: 234). That is, any explanation of phenomenal consciousness in exclusively cognitive, intentional, or functional terms will fail to capture, without remainder, what is really distinctive about phenomenal consciousness. Block, of course, is fully clear about embracing the zealous reading; indeed, his initial introduction of the notion is in those terms. The same ambiguity occurs with the much-used (and abused) idea of ‘what-it’s-like-ness’.. (shrink)