THE NEED OF AN INTERNATIONAL DIDACTIC PERSPECTIVE ABOUT THE EXAMINATION OF THE LEGAL ISSUES RELATED TO BIG DATA The rules governing cyberspace structure and content in general, and the so-called big data in particular, are increasingly clashing with the principles set out in law, and in particular with the principles concerning the international protection of human rights. This...
THE FOUR SEASONS OF QUANTUM MYSTICISM The article offers a historical genealogy of the so-called “quantum mysticism” argument, i.e. the tendency to consider quantum mechanics in accordance with issues coming from Eastern mysticism or New Age spirituality. Specifically, the article retraces the four historical phases of the debate on quantum consciousness, namely, the idea that...
THE CONSTRUCTION OF SELF (AND “US”) IN THE TIME OF DATAISM The essay intends to analyze some elements concerning the crux of the construction of Self (and “Us”) in the age of the so-called Dataism. The analysis moves, first of all, from epistemological considerations, and then goes on issues concerning the crux of identity and subjectivation within the conceptual couple...
THE TRANSCENDENTAL AND THE HISTORICAL. ON THE ROLE OF THE CONCEPT OF PRIMITIVE IN ERNESTO DE MARTINO’S PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY “Primitive” has been a core concept of cultural anthropology for a long time. Its interpretations were, however, manifold. On this background, this paper aims at showing the particular Ernesto de Martino’s non-historical (that is, transcendental...
THE LAW IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND COMPUTER SCIENCE: DO THE BIG DATA HELP TO LIVE BETTER OR RESTRICT INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM? In this interview Fabio Caprabianca highlights the question and concern about Big Data, i.e. how the reduction of the existent in data is going to modify also the sense of things and the concept of knowledge.
DATA AS RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. SOME REMARKS ON THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF HYPERMODERN SOCIETIES The paper investigates the relationship between ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) and religion. The focus is not how religions and religious life has changed thanks to technological evolution, but rather how it is possible to interpret our relationship to technology as a...
ABSTRACT: FRAGMENTS OF THE ONLINE SELF: CONSCIOUSNESS, SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND DIGITAL MEMORY The digital revolution has exposed cognitive and mnemonic functions: in this work we discuss the concept of collective memory not so much in terms of sharing opinions and events, but in the Augustinian terms of memory as container, support, custodian and origin of one’s own individuality...
ERNST HAECKEL AND THE “PUZZLE” OF THE EMBRYONIC DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN ART AND SCIENCE Every biological form can be explained as the product of two different processes: the development from the egg (also known as “ontogenesis”) and the evolution from the ancestors (the “phylogenesis”). Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionism, recognized the importance of both processes to explain...
DIDEROT INTERPRETER OF NATURE De l’interprétation de la nature is a fundamental work to understand Diderot’s scientific thought and probably of the whole century. His preference for biology rather than mathematics is not an idiosyncrasy but it’s instead a signal of the new dynamic conception of materialism. The reader has the availability of the materials to build a solid...
ABOUT THE NON EUCLIDEAN NATURE OF INTERNET'S BIG DATA AND ITS CONSEQUENCES In this paper we discuss the non Euclidean nature of navigable Big Data, hinting as it could introduce – thanks to its combinatorial richness – the possibility of multiple interpretation spaces. We also propose that, in such structures, exploration algorithms have a paradoxical nature insofar they either...
FROM CYBERNETICS TO DATAISM. SOME NOTES ON THE OBSOLESCENCE OF THEORY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE ERA OF BIG DATA The dataism is the new frontier of technological era, where the being is converted in quantity. The so called Big Data are, in this scenario, the new oil, the principal source for the extraction of value and information. The possibility to process a huge amount...
BIG DATA AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE To say or write something innovative on the ongoing revolution in the fields of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence is very difficult. The advent of these two new technologies is in fact among the most relevant events in human history since in a little more than a decade it will likely lead to the creation of the First...
Transformations of the concept of Humanity This report aims to analyze how the developm ent of technological artifacts – ICTs – and generally of new media can lead to a real transformation of the concept of Humanity, or even to the “end of man”. The first part of these contributions is about a possible redefinition of the concept of human. The second part considers the...
The tuned brain Although music is not restrained to the human species and a number of nonhuman creatures produce music, especially birds and cetaceans, music appears as a unique characteristic of human beings, as language and speech. Indeed, music is probably older than speech and more universal. Music has played a central role in human culture since the beginning of humanity...
Tensional-integrity and Stress-Integrity: some considerations about structures in architecture and cultural heritage Engineers and architects often ask themselves about which one is the most suitable form of the structures in function of the load and constraint conditions, but, is it really necessary to look for an answer for this question? Probably Nature already contains the...
Tensile integrity across the scales of the living matter: a structural picture of the human cell Tensile integrity principle governs the existence of stable constructs in which sets of pre-tensed cables and pre-compressed struts mutually interconnect according to specific topological rules and exchange forces in a way to guarantee the structure’s overall self-equilibrium...
Tensegrity, multivocity and the ethics of images When transposed to the field of philosophy, the notion of tensegrity can become the matrix to justify an approach to reality, based on the contextual action of several factors. This specificity is shown with reference to the photographs of patients allegedly hysterical, photographed at the end of the nineteenth century in the...
Tensegrity and beyond The tensegrity concept describes the organization of matter into compressive and tensional moments, aimed at providing stability to a structure. Its legacy by engineers and architects is well established. In the past decades, thanks to the work of the American biologist Donald Ingber, the notion of tensegrity has been brightly developed in cell biology. In...
Tensegrities. The thing is, by nature, restless Tensegrity is the way the world organizes itself. “Tensegrity” is a kind of compound word, coined by Richard Buckminster Fuller in 1920s, that becomes autonomous and would eventually structure the way of the being of the world. Tension and integrity, or rather integrity for tension. Tensegrity, in Fuller’s opinion, is a construction...
Processes, not Things. Towards a Philosophy of Tensegrity This contribution aims to offer a first answer to the question: how can we make conceivable the meaning and the consequences of “tensegrity”? In order to do this, I highlight some philosophically relevant elements of the concept of tensegrity (§ 1); then, I put together the perspective of a Philosophy of Tensegrity with...
We have never been lacking. The technical Core of human Existence according to Paul Alsberg Paul Alsberg (1883-1965) represent a minor, though influential author within philosophical anthropology. The aim of this paper is firstly to analyze some of his most relevant intuitions concerning the problem of hominization and the nature of the tool. In his work Das Menschheitsrätsel...
Inventive image Can a term generate new perspectives on phenomena that have already been studied in depth by science? This is the case of tensegrity. The image of the skeleton of a cell helps to understand its meaning: a structure that sustains itself in the cooperation of rigid and elastic parts. Data is interpreted in a different way, which art and architecture use to build...
Immediate power of excogitation. For a body “ecology” without representation This essay explores the possibility of an ecological model of knowledge which stresses the immediacy of the relationship between individual and its environment on the basis of a holistic mind-body perspective. The aim is to emphasize the primacy of a non-conceptual and non-symbolic cognition in order to...
The early Rousseau and his controversial Approach to Science Already in his first well-known Discourse on the Arts and the Sciences, J.-J. Rousseau marks clearly the points of friction with his contemporaries. In fact, in his works, 'science' is seen, almost entirely, as an effect of nefarious vices of human nature. But, despite his incessant criticism, Rousseau followed the...
Hugo Tristram Engelhardt jr. Christian Bioethics in the Land of moral Strangers This paper deals with the foundations of Engelhardt’s moral and bioethical view. In particular, it focuses 1) the relationship between procedural Ethics and Morality; 2) Engelhardt’s arguments aimed at legitimating an extrarational moral perspective within our societies in which traditional moralities...