People with mild to moderate intellectual or multiple disabilities may have serious difficulties in accessing leisure events, managing communication exchanges with distant partners, and performing functional daily activities. Recently, efforts were made to develop and assess technology-aided programs aimed at supporting people in all three areas. This study assessed a new technology-aided program aimed at helping four participants with intellectual and multiple disabilities in the aforementioned areas. The program, which was implemented following a non-concurrent multiple baseline across participants design, relied (...) on the use of a smartphone or tablet connected via Bluetooth to a two-switch device. This device served to select leisure and communication events and to control the smartphone or tablet’s delivery of step instructions for the activities scheduled. Data showed that during the baseline phase, three participants failed in each of the areas while one participant managed to access a few leisure events. During the intervention phase, all participants managed to independently access leisure events, make telephone calls, and carry out activities. These results suggest that the program might be a useful tool for helping people with intellectual and multiple disabilities improve their condition in basic areas of daily life. (shrink)

The target article misrepresents the foundations of integrated information theory and ignores many essential publications. It, thus, falls to this lead commentary to outline the axioms and postulates of IIT and correct major misconceptions. The commentary also explains why IIT starts from phenomenology and why it predicts that only select physical substrates can support consciousness. Finally, it highlights that IIT's account of experience – a cause–effect structure quantified by integrated information – has nothing to do with “information transfer.”.

The aim of the study was to assess the effects of visual aesthetic perception on event-related potentials . Eight subjects assigned an aesthetic judgment and a 10-step beauty estimation to the target stimuli, consisting of famous artistic pictures and geometric shapes. In a further task, the subjects performed a motor response to the previously judged pictures and geometric shapes. ERPs were recorded through 54 scalp electrodes during both tasks. The P3b amplitude was increased during the categorization of the geometric shapes (...) compared to the artistic figures and during the vision of the beautiful targets preceding the motor response. The categorization of the aesthetic qualities of geometrical shapes seems to induce a higher level of attention, while a higher arousal variation was elicited by the recognition of beauty, in any form that was presented. (shrink)

In juxtaposition with the myth and tragedy of Ovid’s Medea, this paper investigates the possibility within the Kantian conception of agency of understanding moral evil as acting against one’s better judgment. It defends the thesis that in Kant self-deception, i. e. the intentional untruthfulness to oneself, provides the fundamental structure for choosing against the moral law. I argue that, as Kant’s thought progresses, self-deception slowly proceeds to become the paradigmatic case of moral evil. This is discussed with regard to two (...) important topics in his later moral philosophy: the doctrine of radical evil and the crucial role of the duty of truthfulness in ethics. The inquiry into Kant’s theory of conscience unfolds both against this theoretical background and in light of its historical roots in the polemic against casuistry and probabilism. This contribution closes with a brief look at the tools Kant implements to counter this tendency to self-deception in moral judgment and particularly at the role casuistry plays within his conception of moral education. (shrink)

«Stare insieme, sulla faccia della terra, è diventato un compito quotidiano. (…) Sicuramente il terzo millennio sarà ricordato per aver iniziato un tratto di questa storia: la storia della convivenza degli esseri umani al plurale su tutta la terra». Il rebus pluralista è il problema per eccellenza del nostro tempo. Il problema è forse risolvibile. La libertà individuale e la giustizia sociale, la dignità della persona e la cultura, nella sua pluralità storica di forme morali, religiose, linguistiche e civili, possono (...) convivere, anzi convivono in una miracolosa quanto ovvia sintesi: la natura umana. La filosofia politica e del diritto, la scienza politica, la storia delle idee e i vari metodi delle scienze sociali suggeriscono nelle pagine che seguono alcune risposte, pongono ulteriori dubbi e propongono nuove domande. (shrink)

In his book, which is a sort of summa of his philosophy, Ferraris outlines a general and comprehensive ontology. To distinguish the three major regions within which everything can be classified, Ferraris makes use of the concepts of space and time specifying its distance from Kant and referring instead to Leibniz; but, trying to develop his thinking on this point, some problems arise. The article also summarizes the position of Mauro Dorato, that unlike Ferraris built his interpretation of space and (...) time in a profound confrontation with science. (shrink)

In his book, which is a sort of summa of his philosophy, Ferraris outlines a general and comprehensive ontology. To distinguish the three major regions within which everything can be classified, Ferraris makes use of the concepts of space and time specifying its distance from Kant and referring instead to Leibniz; but, trying to develop his thinking on this point, some problems arise. The article also summarizes the position of Mauro Dorato, that unlike Ferraris built his interpretation of space and (...) time in a profound confrontation with science. (shrink)

Modern color science finds its birth in the middle of the nineteenth century. Among the chief architects of the new color theory, the name of the polymath Hermann von Helmholtz stands out. A keen experimenter and profound expert of the latest developments of the fields of physiological optics, psychophysics, and geometry, he exploited his transdisciplinary knowledge to define the first non-Euclidean line element in color space, i.e., a three-dimensional mathematical model used to describe color differences in terms of color distances. (...) Considered as the first step toward a metrically significant model of color space, his work inaugurated researches on higher color metrics, which describes how distance in the color space translates into perceptual difference. This paper focuses on the development of Helmholtz’s mathematical derivation of the line element. Starting from the first experimental evidence which opened the door to his reflections about the geometry of color space, it will be highlighted the pivotal role played by the studies conducted by his assistants in Berlin, which provided precious material for the elaboration of the final model proposed by Helmholtz in three papers published between 1891 and 1892. Although fallen into oblivion for about three decades, Helmholtz’s masterful work was rediscovered by Schrödinger and, since the 1920s, it has provided the basis for all subsequent studies on the geometry of color spaces up to the present time. (shrink)

The urban traffic environment is characterized by the presence of a highly differentiated pool of users, including vulnerable ones. This makes vehicle automation particularly difficult to implement, as a safe coordination among those users is hard to achieve in such an open scenario. Different strategies have been proposed to address these coordination issues, but all of them have been found to be costly for they negatively affect a range of human values (e.g. safety, democracy, accountability…). In this paper, we claim (...) that the negative value impacts entailed by each of these strategies can be interpreted as lack of what we call Meaningful Human Control over different parts of a sociotechnical system. We argue that Meaningful Human Control theory provides the conceptual tools to reduce those unwanted consequences, and show how “designing for meaningful human control” constitutes a valid strategy to address coordination issues. Furthermore, we showcase a possible application of this framework in a highly dynamic urban scenario, aiming to safeguard important values such as safety, democracy, individual autonomy, and accountability. Our meaningful human control framework offers a perspective on coordination issues that allows to keep human actors in control while minimizing the active, operational role of the drivers. This approach makes ultimately possible to promote a safe and responsible transition to full automation. (shrink)

This in-depth study of the apophatic dimension crafted by Gregory of Nissa is the translation on the epistemological level of a new ontology, developed in debates with Arianism, and intended to expand classical metaphysics on the meaning of relationship. In Neoplatonic philosophy silence protects the absolute nature of the First Principle leaving expressive mediation to degrees of intermediate ontologies. Through trinitarian revelation God is manifested as a communion of love within which the external Logos is identified with the divine essence (...) itself, in a unity founded upon relationship and will. Beginning from this new trinitarian ontology, Gregory sees in contemplation and in adoration, made up of silence and word, the human response to a free creative act of divine love and thus cognitive instruments, paths of access to the personal relationship of union with the Beloved. (shrink)

This in-depth study of the apophatic dimension crafted by Gregory of Nissa is the translation on the epistemological level of a new ontology, developed in debates with Arianism, and intended to expand classical metaphysics on the meaning of relationship. In Neoplatonic philosophy silence protects the absolute nature of the First Principle leaving expressive mediation to degrees of intermediate ontologies. Through trinitarian revelation God is manifested as a communion of love within which the external Logos is identified with the divine essence (...) itself, in a unity founded upon relationship and will. Beginning from this new trinitarian ontology, Gregory sees in contemplation and in adoration, made up of silence and word, the human response to a free creative act of divine love and thus cognitive instruments, paths of access to the personal relationship of union with the Beloved. (shrink)

Nel 1919, Alfred North Whitehead interviene nel corso di un convegno interdisciplinare dedicato ai dati scientifici ultimi, mostrando come né il tempo né lo spazio né alcun tipo di materiale siano in grado ricoprire questo ruolo. La natura, ai suoi occhi, è invece un insieme in continua crescita di eventi ed oggetti che si intersecano e si sovrappongono tra loro, totalmente irriducibile a ogni visione materialistica e atomistica. Il testo, finora inedito in lingua italiana, si presenta come un’efficace panoramica intorno (...) ad alcuni concetti-chiave della filosofia di Whitehead ed è corredato da una breve introduzione, utile a contestualizzarlo. (shrink)

Is it possible to compose a history of images? It is obvious that history can be composed only from that which is intrinsically historical; history has an order of its own because it interprets and clarifies an order which already exists in the facts. But is there an order in the birth, multiplication, combination, dissolution and re-synthesis of images? Mannerism had discredited or demystified form with its pretense of reproducing an order which does not exist in reality. But is the (...) world of existence, like the world of images, chaos or cosmos? Erwin Panofsky's1 great merit consists in having understood that, in spite of its confused appearance, the world of images is an ordered world and that it is possible to do the history of art as the history of images. In order to do this, he had to begin, as indeed he did, with the demonstration that classical art, in spite of the deep-rooted theoretical certitude, is also an art of the image; its forms are nothing if not images to which one tries to attribute the consistency of concepts, with the sole result of the demonstrating that even concepts are images and that the intellect is still another sector or segment of the image. · 1. See, e.g., Erwin Panofsky, Meaning in the Visual Art: Papers in and on Art History ; Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance ; Problems in Titian, Mostly Iconographic ; Idea: Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeshicte der älteren Kunsttheorie [Idea: a concept in art theory, trans. Joseph J. S. Peake ]. Giulio Carlo Argan, who has seriously influenced the course of art history and criticism in postwar Italy, is professor of modern art at the University of Rome. He has written on Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Borromini, Brunelleschi, and Gropius and three volumes of critical essays on modern art. His Skira volume on Baroque art, Europe of the Capitals, is his only major work published in English. "Ideology and Iconology" originally appeared in Italian in the journal Storia dell'arte, which he edits, and in Psicon. Rebecca West, translator of this article and assistant professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago, presently is collaborating on a translation of Dario Fo's theater. She has translated "Narrative Structures and Literary History" by Cesare Segre, for the Winter 1976 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)