The purpose of this research was to investigate, for the first time, tertiary education students’ ethical judgements in the Republic of Cyprus academic environment. The authors developed and administered a quantitative questionnaire to a sample of 1,000 individuals currently pursuing accredited degrees at two tertiary institutions. Statistical analysis revealed four factors, named violation of school regulations, selfishness, cheating, and computer ethics that describe students’ ethical judgements in the academic environment. The results indicate that students exhibit the lowest tolerance with ethical (...) issues relevant with selfishness and highest with issues relevant with computer ethics. In addition, a number of differences were revealed when the authors investigated the relationship between the four retained factors and variables such as gender, year of study, type of academic discipline, and religion. Finally, reflecting on the research findings, a number of practical recommendations are made mainly to educational institutions that wish to redefine their policies and procedures regarding ethics within their academic environment. (shrink)

1. Parte teorico-introduttiva -- 2. Parte pratico-operativa.

In the past few years, a wave of protest has spread across the world. The particularity of these uprisings lies in the way the Internet is used to support them. Scholars have analyzed these movements as being closely related to a generation that relies on the Internet as a means of organizing themselves as a force of social change. That is, the Internet is seen as a way of promoting the active participation of young people in political issues. Public opinion (...) and the mass media hail the Arab Spring revolutions as movements beneficial to the democratization of oppressive regimes. By contrast, when disobedient movements emerge in democratic countries, they are generally more cautious in evaluating these movements as enriching democracy. This cautious opinion also concerns the use of social media. In this article, the so-called Twitter revolutions are discussed in light of the theories of social psychology that analyze the relationship between disobedience and democracy. (shrink)

Hoy día resulta imposible hablar de pobreza y de desigualdad sin hablar de globalización. El objetivo principal de este trabajo es mostrar que no existe ningún determinismo, que el hambre, la pobreza, el subdesarrollo y las desigualdades que aún se mantienen en el planeta en medio de la abundancia y el desarrollo, no es algo inevitable, sino que es producido por unas políticas concretas que van dirigidas, intencionadamente, a unos grupos frente a otros.

The book brings into relief the variety of approaches and disciplines that have informed the quest for a theory of cognition. The center of interest are the historical, geographical, and theoretical peripheries of classic AI's mainstream research program. The twelve chapters bring back into focus the variety of strategies and theoretical questions that researchers explored while working toward a scientific theory of cognition and pre-cognition. The volume is organized in four parts, each one including three essays. The first one deals (...) with cybernetics, the approach that may be considered as the most important periphery of classic AI research. The second part focuses on the geographical periphery of AI research. It examines how the theories and techniques developed on AI's home ground were translated into countries with different cultures and traditions: Italy, France, and the Soviet Union. The third part focuses on AI's periphery understood in the cultural and historical meaning of the term. It contains essays that locate some of the central concepts of AI, like representation and computability, within a broader philosophical (Descartes, Aristotle, Leibniz) and technical background (programming theory and practice). The fourth and final part of the volume is focused directly on the limitation of Turing's classic computability theory and its possible alternatives, some of which were studied in the early years of AI's research (e.g. Ashby's re-entrant information model), while others have been intensely studied in recent times (quantum automata). (shrink)

In several places of his work, Kant distinguishes between two senses of self-consciousness: a pure one and an empirical one. The aim of this work is to analyze these two senses of consciousness and show that, for Kant, self-consciousness does not occur unrestrictedly: a relation with something other than consciousness is needed for it to become conscious of itself. I carry out these objectives throughout six sections. In the first one I lay out the Kantian principle of pure apperception. In (...) the second one, I present the limits of pure apperception through Kant’s critique of rational psychology. Then, in the third section, I set the basis to understand the relationship that Kant establishes between the I think and the I exist. In the fourth one I show that pure apperception, despite being pure, is not possible without the opportunity of perception. Next, in the fifth one, I introduce the notion of empirical apperception, establish its relationship with pure apperception, and elucidate its meaning. Finally, in the last section, I explain the way in which empirical self-consciousness is determined, in relation to the knowledge of objects of the external sense. (shrink)

This unique book provides a self-contained conceptual and technical introduction to the theory of differential sheaves. This serves both the newcomer and the experienced researcher in undertaking a background-independent, natural and relational approach to "physical geometry". In this manner, this book is situated at the crossroads between the foundations of mathematical analysis with a view toward differential geometry and the foundations of theoretical physics with a view toward quantum mechanics and quantum gravity. The unifying thread is provided by the theory (...) of adjoint functors in category theory and the elucidation of the concepts of sheaf theory and homological algebra in relation to the description and analysis of dynamically constituted physical geometric spectrums. (shrink)

The five-volume set Kant and Philosophy in a Cosmopolitan Sense contains the proceedings of the Eleventh International Kant Congress, which took place in Pisa in 2010. The proceedings consist of 25 plenary talks and 341 papers selected by a team of international referees from over 700 submissions. The contributions span 14 sections: Kant’s Concept of Philosophy; Theory of Cognition and Logic; Ontology and Metaphysics; Ethics; Law and Justice; Religion and Theology; Aesthetics; Anthropology and Psychology; Politics and History; Science, Mathematics, and (...) the Philosophy of Nature; Kant and the Leibnizian Tradition; Kant and the Philosophical Tradition; Kant and Schopenhauer; and Kant’s Heritage. Thanks to cooperation from the Schopenhauer Gesellschaft, the 2010 conference was the first in the history of the International Kant Congress to include a session on Kant and Schopenhauer. -/- . (shrink)

Die vorliegende Arbeit zielt darauf ab, Momente der Husserlschen Phänomenologie hervorzuheben, in denen diese an ihre Grenzen stößt. Der Ausweis dieser Grenzphänomene, die in der Husserl-Literatur bisher noch nicht systematisch untersucht worden sind, steht im Zentrum der Arbeit. Der Autor hat sich systematisch mit phänomenologisch orientierten Autoren zeitgenössischer Philosophie auseinandergesetzt u. a. mit der Absicht, die Fruchtbarkeit der Husserlschen Analysen für die zeitgenössische Philosophie hervorzuheben.

Viewing rhetoric as a product of pagan culture, the Apologists take a negative stance toward it. For Justin the art of persuasion may be useful in all areas ofpublic life but it is useless when it comes to the metaphysical truth of Christianity. The strength to teach or interpret Christianity, Justin posits, comes from God, not rhetoric. For his part, Tatian dismisses forensic rhetoric on the grounds that it often subverts Christian ethics by defending injustice, sycophancy and money-making, in effect (...) promoting that which is not virtuous. As for Theophilus, he places greater value on the substance and meaning of Christian purposes and less on the orator’s virtuosity and linguistic means of expression. (shrink)

Nicola Guarino is widely recognized as one of the founders of applied ontology. His deep interest in the subtlest details of theoretical analysis and his vision of ontology as the Rosetta Stone for semantic interoperability guided the development and understanding of this domain. His motivations in research stem from the conviction that all science must be for the benefit of society at large, and his motto has always been that ontologies are not just for making information systems interoperable, but – (...) more importantly – for ensuring that systems’ users understand each other. He was among the first to recognize that applied ontology must be an interdisciplinary enterprise if it is to capture the intended meaning of the terms used by an information system. (shrink)

Given Plutarch’s fragmentary piece on Aristophanes and Menander, a piece of Table Talk on almost the same topic and various attacks on comic poets scattered through the Lives, one might believe that Plutarch is a staid, conservative and humourless author. But several other instances in his writings reveal a playful, facetious, witty and humorous Plutarch. This paper will focus on the Quaestiones Convivales, which bear ample witness to this aspect of Plutarch’s personality and authorial technique. It will examine the ways (...) in which he introduces and describes the various interlocutors, discuss certain comments with which he tries to ridicule his philosophical opponents, notably the Stoics and the Epicureans, try to distinguish the various manifestations of Plutarch’s humour and finally suggest that Plutarch’s stance and attitude towards playfulness, comic situations and laughter may ultimately be affected, at least in part, by his allegiance to Plato. (shrink)

The excavation of the Yannopoulos plot and the bathing establishments at Thasos (3rd-6th c.) This article concerns the bathing establishment excavated on the Yannopoulos property in the city of Thasos, its architectural particularities, the finds recovered, and its insertion in the urban environment. The twelve-room building, of rectangular plan, has three architectural phases. Two praefurnia, two hypocausts, and eight non-heated rooms have been distinguished. The study of this baths offers an occasion to present the totality of bathing establishments, public and (...) private, identified on the island, in the city as well as outside. During our research it has become clear that the buildings on the neighbouring Yannopoulos and Vellios plots belong to a single complex. The dating of the installations confirms the use of baths at Thasos throughout the roman and protobyzantine periods. (shrink)