170,072 research outputs found
L'adozione di modelli formali nella linguistica germanica: prospettive ecdotiche ed ermeneutiche
No full text
New incidence and mortality data. 2003-2005
No full textThis is an update of incidence and mortality cancer data provided by the Italian Network of Cancer Registry (AIRTUM) relative to the period 2003-2005.AIRTUM is a network of general and specialized population-based cancer registries that covers about 1/3 of the Italian resident population (www.registri-tumori.it). Incidence and mortality data for the period 2003-2005 are based on 20 Registries. The five most frequently diagnosed cancers were: - prostate (18.5%), non melanoma skin (15.8%), lung (13.1%), colorectal (12.0%), bladder (5.7%) among males; - breast (24.9%), non melanoma skin (15.1%), colorectal (11.9%), lung (5.0%) and stomach (4.1%) among females. In the same period the most frequent causes of cancer death were: - cancer of the lung (27.6%), colorectal (10.7%), prostate (8.5%), stomach (7.3%) and liver (6.1%) among males; - breast cancer (16.3%), colorectal (11.9%), lung (10.3%), stomach (7.2%) and pancreas (6.5%) among females. According to the age-specific incidence rates one man and one woman every two will receive a cancer diagnosis during his/hers life (from birth to the age of 84 years). From 1993-1995 to 2003-2005, overall crude cancer incidence rate (males and females together) increased from 555.4 to 654.8 x 100,000. Standardization showed that 63% of this increase was due to ageing of the population. Moreover, most of the residual increase was among those cancer sites (breast, prostate, colorectal, thyroid and melanoma) for which early detection may have played a relevant role in anticipating (and therefore increasing) the number of diagnoses. Due to population ageing also overall cancer mortality did not show any decrease when crude rates were compared. On the contrary, standardized mortality rates (all cancers together) showed a strong decrease (311.4 vs. 266.5 x 100.000). The risk of receiving a diagnosis or dying because of cancer is still lower in residents in the regions of the South of Italy than in those of Central and Northern Italy, but they are becoming more and more similar. In Italy cancer incidence and mortality rates are similar to those in northern European countries and in USA among males, but they are still lower for women
Science and Operationality
No full textOne of the most important aspects of Evandro Agazzi’s operationalism lies in his attempt to wed the main idea of operationalism with a perspectival view of scientific knowledge. In the Sect. 1 of this paper I argue that this connection is essential to understanding Agazzi’s substantial contribution to the philosophy of science. In the Sect. 2, I briefly compare Agazzi’s and Searle’s treatment of Turing ’s test, to show how important the notion of perspectival knowledge is for Agazzi. In the last section of my paper, even though I essentially agree with Agazzi’s operationalism, I raise some doubts concerning the relationship between theory and experiment and the connection between science and technique, and I propose the modifications that I believe are needed to make Agazzi’s operationalism more consistent
Multilingualism in Medieval Britain (c. 1066-1520). Sources and Analysis
No full textI saggi che compongono la miscellanea a cura di Judith A. Jefferson e Ad
Putter (con la collaborazione di Amanda Hopkins) sono stati inizialmente presentati
a un convegno tenutosi nel luglio 2008 presso l’Università di Bristol, a
conclusione di un programma di ricerca quadriennale (2005-2008) dedicato a un
tema che è andato progressivamente affermandosi nel panorama della ricerca internazionale,
quello della diffusione e del ruolo del plurilinguismo nel medioevo
(Multilingualism in the Middle Ages). Il programma è stato sostenuto dal Worldwide
University Network e ha visto la partecipazione delle Università di Bergen,
Bristol, Leeds, Madison Wisconsin, Manchester, Oslo, Penn State, Utrecht e
York, insieme con la casa editrice Brepols per i cui tipi è apparso il volume qui
recensito
"Ibai mag blindana tiuhan?" (Luke, 6.39): Pragmatic functions and syntactic strategies in the Gothic left sentence periphery.
No full textNowadays it is commonly accepted that in the old and modern Indo-European languages the so-called left periphery of the sentence marks the interface between syntax and discourse/context features. The present paper deals with the analysis of the left sentence periphery in Gothic. For this purpose, the behaviour of the following linguistic elements will be analysed: (a) interrogative particles; (b) sentence introducers in relative clauses; (c) textual connectors. On the basis of the consideration - corroborated through interlinguistic comparison - that the discourse layer finds a specific formalization in the syntactic structure, the main aim of the present study is to investigate how and to what extent a different pragmatic function of the aforementioned elements correlates with a specific syntactic representation. The interference role of the Greek and Latin source texts will also be taken into consideration, mainly in order to ascertain whether the grammaticalization processes which those elements underwent were either induced or implemented by the models. Finally, it will be proved that a deeper understanding of the sentence structure can fruitfully be applied to text-based hermeneutics, since it allows to better recognize those variation phenomena within the Gothic language which are detectable in the lucky - albeit scanty - evidence provided by the double-recension textual portions
Thought Experiments and Computer Simulations
No full textAbstract. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate some important aspects of the relationship between thought experiment (hereafter TE) and computer simulation (hereafter CS), from the point of view of real experiment (RE). In the first part of this paper, I shall pass in critical review four important approaches concerning the relationship between TE and CS. None of these approaches, though containing some important insights, has succeeded in distinguishing between CS and TE, on the one hand, and REs, on the other. Neither have they succeeded in distinguishing TEs and REs (Section 1-4). In Section 5, the paper briefly outlines an account of CSs as compared with TEs that takes REs as a central reference point. From the perspective of the analysis of the empirico-experimental intensions of the concepts of TE, CS, and RE—considering their empirical content and actual performance within a discipline—, the attempts to find a distinction in logical kind between TEs, CSs and REs breaks down: for every particular characteristic of one of these notions there is a corresponding characteristic in the two others. From an epistemological-transcendental point of view, the only difference in kind between TEs and CSs consists in the fact that any simulation, even a computer one, involves a kind of real execution, one that is not merely psychological or conceptual. In TEs the subject operates concretely by using mental concepts in the first person; in contrast, real experiments and simulations involve an ‘external’ realisation. As shown in Section 6, this manifests itself in the in the higher degree of complexity often found in CSs as compared with TEs
Science, Philosophy, and Interfaith Understanding
No full textThe paper discusses two central topics in the philosophy of science, namely the demarcation problem and the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification, in order to solve the problem of pluralism, not only in science but also in philosophy and in interfaith understanding. On the one hand, the discussion of the neo-positivist verifi ability principle will show that it can only be consistently adopted by admitting a wider notion of reason, from which neither philosophy nor religious belief are excluded. On the other hand, the
inquiry into the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification leads to define more accurately this wider concept of reason and to apply it to the problem of the mutual understanding between different scientific, philosophical and religious traditions. Not only in the empirical sciences, but also in other cultural fields, all discussions are guided by the underlying assumption that some settlement of different opinions or rival interests is in principle always possible because things are as they are, quite independently
of our opinion on the subject. However, this pre-operational (or transcendental) validity claim would be devoid of any meaning and truth, in the absence ofspecifi c procedures that allow us to retrace in the fi rst person the methodical steps that guide participants in that discourse to their conclusions. Without this methodical moment, which is essentially neglected by Popper and the Logical Empiricists, any dialogue between groups holding rival views would be de facto impossible
Gödel, Searle, and the Computational Theory of the Mind
No full textAccording to Sergio Galvan, some of the arguments offered by Lucas
and Penrose are somewhat obscure or even logically invalid, but he accepts their
fundamental idea that a human mind does not work as a computational machine.
His main point is that there is a qualitative difference between the principles of
the logic of provability and those of the logic of evidence and belief. To evaluate
this suggestion, I shall first compare it with Searle’s concept of “intentionality”,
and then introduce a distinction between two different senses of intentionality: a
reflexive-transcendental sense and a positive (that is, historical empirical or formal
logical) one. In the first of these senses, the nature of human reason is such that we
have no idea how a real material system – or the corresponding formal one - could
instantiate it. However, although this will turn out to be an important element of
truth in Searle’s and Galvan’s conception, it does not exclude the opposite truth of
Turing’s functionalism: because intentionality, intuition, vision or insight – taken in
their reflexive-transcendental sense — are simply invisible to the scientific eye, a man
and a machine (or a robot) that is and one that is not endowed with intentionality
are de facto indistinguishable from a strictly scientific point of view. For this reason,
we might eventually be entitled, or even morally obliged, to attribute minds to machines
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