Mental causation: a defence

If we accept causal exclusion, property dualism and physical determinism, mental epiphenomenalism follows. Accord-ing to Yablo (1992), we can save mental causation by rejecting causal exclusion and considering the mental/physical relation as an instance of the determinable/determinate relation. In this paper I ex-amine Crane’s argument (2008) against the causal relevance of de-terminables, and I argue that we still have good reasons to think that determinables may be causally efficacious. As mental properties can be also considered as exhaustive disjunctions of physical realizers, the causal relevance of mental properties is also questioned by the widely shared opinion that disjunctive properties can not be causally efficacious. I consider Clapp’s arguments (2001) in favor of the causal relevance of disjunctive properties, and I conclude that dis-junctive properties may survive both Armstrong’s famous objections (1978)

Hunger as a Constitutive Property of a Culinary Work

AbstractIn this paper I attempt to show that a certain degree of hunger, intended as a material and psychological condition of the diner, can become a constitutive property of a culinary work. One may believe that the best possible argument supporting this thesis is one relying on the general assertion that an author's stipulative authority over the features of his or her work, if adequately exercised, is absolute. Quite the contrary, I show that we should prefer a different and more specific argumentative strategy based on the twofold fact that the conventions ruling over culinary works are peculiarly less stringent than in many other art fields, and that hunger has a very special status with regard to culinary works, in the sense that fixing the degree of hunger of the diner may serve to fix the appropriate conditions for any minimally acceptable perceptual experience of a culinary work to take place

The ontology of the architectural work and its closeness to the culinary work

Abstract According to a standard view, architectural works are nothing but material buildings. This paper argues that this is just one of many options, each of which may capture more incisively what architects really produce in different circumstances. Three fundamental splits are examined. First, architectural works can be regarded as either objects or events. Second, they can be understood as mere abstract entities, types, or concrete particulars. Third, they can be identified narrowly or broadly. The resulting combinations are explored and tested against concrete situations. The paper argues that, while adopting the type view in conjunction with the narrow view is simpler when we consider stereotypical, vernacular or modular architecture, when we have to do with more experimental and creative approaches it seems more appropriate to identify the architectural work with a broadly identified concrete particular or, at most, with a broadly identified abstract entity that can hardly coincide with the content of the architectural design. The paper highlights that the same goes—mutatis mutandis—for traditional and stereotypical cooking, on the one hand, and haute cuisine, on the other hand. So the paper is also an investigation of the closeness between architecture and cooking, and of the contingent character of some of their differences

Generalized, energy-conserving numerical simulations of particles in general relativity. II. Test particles in electromagnetic fields and GRMHD

Direct observations of compact objects, in the form of radiation spectra, gravitational waves from VIRGO/LIGO, and forthcoming direct imaging, are currently one of the primary source of information on the physics of plasmas in extreme astrophysical environments. The modeling of such physical phenomena requires numerical methods that allow for the simulation of microscopic plasma dynamics in presence of both strong gravity and electromagnetic fields. In Bacchini et al. (2018) we presented a detailed study on numerical techniques for the integration of free geodesic motion. Here we extend the study by introducing electromagnetic forces in the simulation of charged particles in curved spacetimes. We extend the Hamiltonian energy-conserving method presented in Bacchini et al. (2018) to include the Lorentz force and we test its performance compared to that of standard explicit Runge-Kutta and implicit midpoint rule schemes against analytic solutions. Then, we show the application of the numerical schemes to the integration of test particle trajectories in general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations, by modifying the algorithms to handle grid-based electromagnetic fields. We test this approach by simulating ensembles of charged particles in a static GRMHD configuration obtained with the Black Hole Accretion Code (BHAC)

The indispensability of race in medicine

A movement asking to take race out of medicine is growing in the US. While we agree with the necessity to get rid of flawed assumptions about biological race that pervade automatic race correction in medical algorithms, we urge caution about insisting on a blanket eliminativism about race in medicine. If we look at racism as a fundamental cause, in the sense that this notion has been introduced in epidemiological studies by Bruce Link and Jo Phelan, we must conclude that race is indispensable to consider, investigate, and denounce the health effects of multilevel racism, and cannot be eliminated by addressing more specific risk factors in socially responsible epidemiology and clinical medicine. This does not mean that realism about human races is vindicated. While maintaining that there are no human races, we show how it is that a non-referring concept can nonetheless turn out indispensable for explaining real phenomena

Can a City Be Relocated? Exploring the Metaphysics of Context- Dependency

This paper explores the Persistence Question about cities, that is, what is necessary and sufficient for two cities existing at different times to be numerically identical. We first show that we can possibly put an end to the existence of a city in a number of ways other than by physically destroying it, which reveals the metaphysics of cities to be partly different from that of ordinary objects. Then we focus in particular on the commonly perceived vulnerability of cities to imaginary relocation; and we make the hypothesis that cities do have among their essential properties that of being surrounded by a specific geographical context. Finally we investigate the pos- sibility that a city can survive relocation in virtue of the capacity of its geographical context to survive it in the first place. We suggest that city contexts may not be essentially context-dependent in turn, and outline a possible description of the cri- teria for their persistence over time

Advances of nanotechnology in agro-environmental studies

With the increase in the world population and the demand for food, new agricultural practices have been developed to improve food production through the use of more effective pesticides and fertilisers. These technologies can lead to an uncontrolled release of undesired substances into the environment, with the potential to contaminate soil and groundwater. Today, nanotechnology represents a promising approach to improve agricultural production and remediate polluted sites. This paper reviews the recent applications of nanotechnologies in agro-environmental studies with particular attention to the fate of nanomaterials once introduced in water and soil, to the advantages of their use and their possible toxicology. Findings show that the use of nanomaterials can improve the quality of the environment and help detect and remediate polluted sites. Only a small number of nanomaterials demonstrated potential toxic effects. These are discussed in detail

Using big data at Istat: forecasting consumption

Resumen de la comunicación[EN] In our paper we discuss the possibility to use Big Data on payment instruments to improve the short-term forecast of Italian household consumption. The literature on forecasting has evolved rapidly in the last few years. Several papers have been focused on the use of variable selection methods on large dataset of economic indicators that can potentially improve the forecasting of the main macroeconomic variables. The variable selection methods implemented anyway are always based on economic indicator (soft or hard) released by the Statistical Offices. More recently given the presence of several sources of data on real-time economic activity available from Google, MasterCard, Facebook and many others, the use of Big data for macroeconomic forecasting has started to be exploited. With respect to Official Statistics Big data could provide potentially important complementary information based on different information sets. Moreover, compared to economic indicators, Big data are timely available and, generally, not subject to any revision process. Between different Big data possible sources, data on payment instruments (cheques, credit transfers, direct debits, payment cards) represent a relevant source of information for short-term forecasting of the main macroeconomic variables. Concerning consumption, they capture a wide range of spending activities and are available on a very timely basis. One of the issue of Big data anyway is to structure them in a statistical form. To reach this aim data needs to be controlled for outliers and then seasonally adjusted. The ability of retail payment data to forecast the short-term development of household consumption (both for durable and non-durable goods) has been tested compared to traditional benchmark.Bacchini, F.; Iannaccone, R.; Zurlo, D. (2018). Using big data at Istat: forecasting consumption. En 2nd International Conference on Advanced Reserach Methods and Analytics (CARMA 2018). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 268-268. https://doi.org/10.4995/CARMA2018.2018.8575OCS26826