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C’è una caratteristica centrale che distingue ChatGPT e simili da un interlocutore umano: pur sapendo rispondere in modo coerente e creativo a richieste anche complesse, sono del tutto incapaci di proporre contenuti conversazionali non puramente reattivi, manca, all’AI, la parte “affiliativa” della conversazione

In this paper, we bring together two unrelated strains of recent literature on eating local, which have respectively evidenced its socio-political and artistic values. Our argument contends that eating local can, in some instances, be regarded as a form of public art. Our study improves our understanding and appreciation of the complex web of culinary values linked to eating local, in particular the entanglement between its aesthetic, political, and cultural significance. We first review three extant definitions of eating local (§ 2), which we then employ to discuss the three specific forms of public art that eating local can occasion (§ 3), namely: memorial art, social protest art, and art that enhances. Finally, we present the links between the three approaches to local food and the three forms of public art (§ 4), providing a heuristic framework for both scholars and stakeholders.

This paper proposes a (re)reading of the famous section in the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, 2.1: “We picture facts to ourselves” and its relation to the similar section in the Prototractatus, 2.1: “Facts are grasped by us in images”. We reject the dominant solution that interprets the relation between facts and images as an isomorphic relation and propose that instead it is an internal relation: there are no facts that are not perceived through images. In other words: For us, linguistic animals, there is no world independent of language.

In this article, starting with the exemplary case of Charlie Hebdo, we discuss the way in which the theme of laughter is intertwined with that of freedom of expression. More precisely, we try to answer the following questions: how can the comic framework modify the space of freedom of expression? Can everything be said within this kind of framework? Can laughter be both an antidote and an enhancer of verbal violence?

Over the last two decades, the concepts of defence and security have overlapped to the point where the former is merged with the latter. Since jihadist terrorism broke out at the dawn of the millennium, governments have been forced to review the classic paradigm according to which the military is employed in overseas operations—or the defence of the homeland from external enemies—and police and law enforcement agencies are tasked with internal security. In such a context, the military has taken on an increasing role in national security matters, although security itself is an umbrella concept under development that currently includes such cross-cutting topics as terrorism, cyber threats, health, food, energy, the economy, poverty, climate change, information technology, social security, job security, just to mention a few. The inclination to replace the idea of defence with security has contributed to the expansion of the idea of security itself. This way, defence activities abroad, such as military assistance to Ukraine in the context of the ongoing conflict with Russia, are presented to the public as "security" operations. Well-established and reputable dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster, Britannica, Collins, Oxford, Cambridge, Longman, and Macmillan provide similar definitions of the term "security": safety; safety from attack, harm, or damage; freedom from danger or threat; freedom from fear or anxiety; being safe and free from worry; being protected or safe from harm. Security is the protection from, or resilience against, the potential harm caused by others by restricting one's freedom to act. In addition to these definitions, some of which are more focused on the person and his concerns and fears, there is a more comprehensive idea that incorporates the term “defence”. The definitions given by several dictionaries in this respect are pertinent. Therefore, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, security is the "protection of a person, building, organization, or country against threats such as crime or attacks by foreign countries". A similar definition is provided by the Oxford Dictionary: "the safety of a state or organization against criminal activity such as terrorism, theft, or espionage". On the same line, Longman says: "things that are done to keep a person, building, or country safe from danger or crime". These definitions show how the nature of the concept of security is changing, incorporating that of defence into much broader domains than the military realm. The term "defence", is given as a synonym of "security" by the majority of these dictionaries (Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, Oxford, Collins), even though Britannica and Macmillan continue to be anchored to the dichotomy of defence/external and security/internal, respectively, by providing the words "national security" and "internal security", is evidence of this trend. The evolving concept of security must be scrutinised, with special attention paid to the notion of human security, boosted by UN General Assembly resolution 66/290 and the NATO Strategic Concept 2022, and currently under investigation by the Exploratory Team of the NATO Science and Technology Organization., Poster presented at the XII Portuguese Congress of Sociology, organised by the Portuguese Sociological Association (APS), the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra (FEUC), and the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra (CES-UC), held at FEUC, Portugal, 4-6 April 2023. More info in https://xii-congresso-aps.eventqualia.net/en/2023/home/ and https://eu-central-1.linodeobjects.com/evt4-media/documents/programa_de_comunicações_APS_21Mar.pdf. Abstract published at p. 277 in the Book of Abstracts available at https://eu-central-1.linodeobjects.com/evt4-media/documents/book-of-abstracts_5_2.pdf

A widespread (and often tacit) assumption is that fear is an anticipatory emotion and, as such, inherently future-oriented. Prima facie, such an assumption is threatened by cases where we seem to be afraid of things in the past: if it is possible to fear the past, then fear entertains no special relation with the future—or so some have argued. This seems to force us to choose between an account of fear as an anticipatory emotion (supported by pre-theoretical intuitions as well as empirical research in psychology) and admitting cases of past-oriented fear. In this paper, we argue for a proposal that dissolves this dilemma. Our claim is: with the right account in place, the future-orientation of fear can be made compatible with, and is actually explanatory of, cases where we are genuinely afraid of something in the past. So, there is no need to choose: fear is still future-oriented, even when we are genuinely afraid of things in the past. The key is a correct understanding of what fear’s temporal orientation amounts to, and the framework we offer here provides us with such an understanding.

There is a cat meowing at the door: it wants to go out for a walk. The owner of the office where that door is located gets very nervous: he spends his time opening and opening and closing it because the animal is constantly coming and going and he, who is in poor health, does not tolerate draughts. The cat would like the door always open. He always closed. Hence these constant meows, on the one hand, and these constant opening and closing, on the other hand, with the associated angry and collective shrieking. What a stress.

The Anthropocene is not a time of a crisis of nature, but a time of an epistemic one. That stimulates the semiotics of culture to take up the project of an archaeology of knowledge. In this article, we give some indications of how to deal with this in the discourse of environmental law. We will focus on the turning point of the 1960s and 1970s, which is very significant for environmental law. Based on a corpus including French national law, international law and European regulations, we will start by proposing a semiotic genealogy of natural spaces ; then, we will show how it leads to the reformulation of legal temporalities ; finally, we will end by evoking its repercussions on the actorialisation of non-humans as subjects of law. L’Anthropocène n’est pas l’époque d’une crise de la nature, mais l’époque d’une crise épistémique qui stimule la sémiotique de la culture à reprendre le projet d’une archéologie du savoir. Dans cet article nous donnons quelques indications pour en faire état dans le discours du droit de l’environnement. Nous nous focaliserons sur le tournant des années ‘60 et ‘70, très significatif pour le développement de cette branche du droit. À partir d’un un corpus comprenant droit national français, droit international et régulations européennes, nous proposerons d’abord une généalogie sémiotique des espaces naturels ; ensuite, nous montrerons comment elle conduit à la reformulation des temporalités juridiques ; enfin, nous terminerons par évoquer ses retombées sur l’actorialisation des non-humains en tant que sujets de droit.

In this paper, we establish gastrospaces as a subject of philosophical inquiry and an item for policy agendas. We first explain their political value, as key sites where members of liberal democratic societies can develop the capacity for a sense of justice and the capacity to form, revise, and pursue a conception of the good. Integrating political philosophy with analytic ontology, we then unfold a theoretical framework for gastrospaces: first, we show the limits of the concept of “third place;” second, we lay out the foundations for an ontological model of gastrospaces; third, we introduce five features of gastrospaces that connect their ontology with their political value and with the realization of justice goals. We conclude by briefly illustrating three potential levels of intervention concerning the design, use, and modification of gastrospaces: institutions, keepers, and users.

In this paper we will consider metaphor as a phenomenon that lies at the interface between language and imagination. By focusing on how this phenomenon works, we will attempt to shed light on how symbols work. After analyzing the relationship between metaphor and sym bol to highlight the main similarities and differences, we will examine the functions of metaphor with particular reference to the thought of Paul Ricœur. In particular, we will highlight the role that the French thinker attributes to the imagination in constructing the meaning of a metaphor. Finally, after highlighting the relationship between images and words, between the linguistic dimension and the dimension of aisthesis in metaphor, we will try to evaluate the possible consequences for a theory of symbols and, more generally, for a theory of language.

Metaphor is considered a figurative use of language, a term that seems to recall the imagistic dimension characterizing this kind of utterances. Tzvetan Todorov (1967) speaks of “figure” as “visibility of speech”: as a figure, metaphor provides a kind of figurability to what is communicated. As Paul Ricoeur wrote in La métaphore vive (Ricoeur, 1975), metaphor makes “speech appear”. Precisely because of the reliance on the idea of figure, it is therefore not surprising that discussions on metaphor often refer to the role that mental images play in their comprehension. A long tradition holds that the formation of a mental image is fundamental for the comprehension of certain kinds of metaphor. This is the case of authors such as Aristotle, Gianbattista Vico, George W. F. Hegel or Friedrich Nietzche in the classical tradition, or Raymond Gibbs, Daniel Gleason and Marcel Just in the more recent experimental tradition (Aristotle, 2014; Gleason, 2009). By contrast, for other authors, mental imagery is, at most, a tangential phenomenon, playing no important role in metaphor comprehension. This is the position of several authors such as I. A. Richards (1936), for whom mental imagery “is a mere distraction and of no service” (Richards, 1936, p. 130). Pragmatics today follows this latter direction and most accounts of metaphor omit any mention of mental imagery (Grice, 1975; Searle, 1979; Glucksberg, 2001) and explain the comprehension of metaphor entirely in terms of implicitly communicated propositions (Sperber & Wilson, 2008). Within the framework of Relevance Theory, Robyn Carston (2018) takes up the problem and discusses directly what role, if any, mental imagery plays in under standing metaphor, concluding that although mental images can be activated an Metaphor is considered a figurative use of language, a term that seems to recall the imagistic dimension characterizing this kind of utterances. Tzvetan Todorov (1967) speaks of “figure” as “visibility of speech”: as a figure, metaphor provides a kind of figurability to what is communicated. As Paul Ricoeur wrote in La métaphore vive (Ricoeur, 1975), metaphor makes “speech appear”. Precisely because of the reliance on the idea of figure, it is therefore not surprising that discussions on metaphor often refer to the role that mental images play in their comprehension. A long tradition holds that the formation of a mental image is fundamental for the comprehension of certain kinds of metaphor. This is the case of authors such as Aristotle, Gianbattista Vico, George W. F. Hegel or Friedrich Nietzche in the classical tradition, or Raymond Gibbs, Daniel Gleason and Marcel Just in the more recent experimental tradition (Aristotle, 2014; Gleason, 2009). By contrast, for other authors, mental imagery is, at most, a tangential phenomenon, playing no important role in metaphor comprehension. This is the position of several authors such as I. A. Richards (1936), for whom mental imagery “is a mere distraction and of no service” (Richards, 1936, p. 130). Pragmatics today follows this latter direction and most accounts of metaphor omit any mention of mental imagery (Grice, 1975; Searle, 1979; Glucksberg, 2001) and explain the comprehension of metaphor entirely in terms of implicitly communicated propositions (Sperber & Wilson, 2008). Within the framework of Relevance Theory, Robyn Carston (2018) takes up the problem and discusses directly what role, if any, mental imagery plays in under standing metaphor, concluding that although mental images can be activated an Metaphor is considered a figurative use of language, a term that seems to recall the imagistic dimension characterizing this kind of utterances. Tzvetan Todorov (1967) speaks of “figure” as “visibility of speech”: as a figure, metaphor provides a kind of figurability to what is communicated. As Paul Ricoeur wrote in La métaphore vive (Ricoeur, 1975), metaphor makes “speech appear”. Precisely because of the reliance on the idea of figure, it is therefore not surprising that discussions on metaphor often refer to the role that mental images play in their comprehension. A long tradition holds that the formation of a mental image is fundamental for the comprehension of certain kinds of metaphor. This is the case of authors such as Aristotle, Gianbattista Vico, George W. F. Hegel or Friedrich Nietzche in the classical tradition, or Raymond Gibbs, Daniel Gleason and Marcel Just in the more recent experimental tradition (Aristotle, 2014; Gleason, 2009). By contrast, for other authors, mental imagery is, at most, a tangential phenomenon, playing no important role in metaphor comprehension. This is the position of several authors such as I. A. Richards (1936), for whom mental imagery “is a mere distraction and of no service” (Richards, 1936, p. 130). Pragmatics today follows this latter direction and most accounts of metaphor omit any mention of mental imagery (Grice, 1975; Searle, 1979; Glucksberg, 2001) and explain the comprehension of metaphor entirely in terms of implicitly communicated propositions (Sperber & Wilson, 2008). Within the framework of Relevance Theory, Robyn Carston (2018) takes up the problem and discusses directly what role, if any, mental imagery plays in under standing metaphor, concluding that although mental images can be activated an play a role, they play an epiphenomenal role in the comprehension process of a metaphorical utterance. In this paper, starting from Carston (2018) and Wilson and Carston (2019), we will discuss the role of mental images in the comprehension of certain kinds of metaphor. In the first section we will analyze the treatment of metaphor in pragmat ics, paying particular attention to Relevance Theory. In the second section we will compare the hypotheses of Carston (2018) and Green (2017) on the role of mental images in the comprehension of metaphors and we will propose a synthesis between the two positions. In the third and fourth sections we will discuss some problems that mental images pose to pragmatics, showing their necessity through recourse to an experimental dimension. Finally, in the fifth section we will discuss the notion of mental image, proposing a characterization that can make this notion suitable for its insertion in the domain of analysis of pragmatics.

Poco tempo fa, a un pranzo domenicale, conversavo con una signora di mezz’età sulle vacanze estive appena trascorse. «Lasciamo perdere», mi dice, «oramai sono diventata la nonna dei cani». La signora mi spiega che i suoi due figli, precari, convivono con le rispettive fidanzate, ma non osano far figli sicché hanno preso, ognuno, una coppia di canòni, di non so quale pregiatissima razza, che amano alla follia e che durante le ferie e i sabato sera vengono, manco a dirlo, depositati a casa dei genitori, cioè della mia dirimpettaia di tavola, che ama immensamente i suoi ragazzi e tutto ciò che essi emanano, al punto da sacrificare le proprie meritate vacanze per accudire quei quadrupedi decisamente invadenti ma tanto, tanto cari. Praticamente iscritti, come da tempo accade in USA, nello stato di famiglia.

La questione che il volume di Giancarlo Gaeta (In attesa del Regno. Il Cristianesimo alla svolta dei tempi, Quodlibet, 2022) pone esplicitamente nella postilla finale, ma che in realtà attraversa – seppur in modi diversi – tutti i saggi in esso raccolti, è al tempo stesso provocatoria e cruciale: cosa resta oggi, a duemila anni dalla sua comparsa, del cristianesimo? Nelle pagine che seguono, proveremo a rispondere indirettamente a questa domanda, partendo da alcune brevi riflessioni che riguarderanno un’altra questione – quella riguardante la crisi del cristianesimo – che in un certo senso precede quella del “cosa resta” e che ad essa inevitabilmen te si connette. Più precisamente, cercheremo di incrociare il tema della crisi con il tema della natura del cristianesimo, perché mi pare essi siano in qualche modo indissolubilmente legati, come proverò a mostrare.

Cela a dû arriver à tout le monde. À Paris, au pied de la Tour Eiffel en mangeant des macarons ou une crêpe sucrée, à Palerme, avec un « panino con le panelle » sur le rivage du village balnéaire de Mondello, ou encore à Amsterdam, en se promenant sur les canaux avec un cornet en papier rempli de chips ou à Berlin, avec une bière et un jarret de porc fumé parmi les tables d’un restaurant typique. Partout, la nourriture nous relie aux lieux que nous visitons car il est dans le sens commun que la visite d’une ville passe aussi par la dégustation des plats qui la caractérisent. Elle est au cœur, après tout, du tourisme œno-gastronomique : le tour du street food ou les forfaits gastronomiques de toutes sortes proposés par les agences et les sites de voyage présupposent un touriste intéressé précisément par le voyage pour manger. Manger afin de vivre le voyage lui-même. Cependant, il ne s’agit pas seulement de tourisme : la relation entre l’espace urbain et la gastronomie est plus large et concerne toutes les manières dont la ville devient le théâtre de la consommation alimentaire et de sa préparation culinaire.

Considerando o esvaziamento semântico do prefixo pós-, o artigo propõe um conceito de pós-consumismo que não seja um simulacro de renovação ou um disfarce para a incapacidade de distingui-lo de um pré-consumismo. O trabalho analisa os sentidos do prefixo e seus usos contemporâneos, mostra a que se refere o pós-consumismo, individua esse estágio em relação a outros momentos da historicidade do consumo e, por fim, aventa as transformações pelas quais passará o fenômeno. Em sua posição pós-, o consumismo requer um ajustamento para a manutenção do equilíbrio econômico e funciona como estágio intermediário em direção a modos por enquanto impraticáveis no contexto de uma economia de mercado. Para desenvolver essas reflexões, o trabalho convoca o modelo dos regimes de interação de Eric Landowski e as discussões sobre pós-modernidade de J.-F. Lyotard, J. Baudrillard, Z. Bauman, J. Derrida, M. Maffesoli e G. Vattimo.

Il concetto di creatività è qui considerato come percorso strumentale di trasformazioni alternative che portano a definire le diverse accezioni possibili di innovazione. Oltre il portato ideológico a cui riferisce la nostra congiuntura attraverso una positivizzazione non discussa di questo percorso, sottolineiamo come, al contrario, la diversa appropriazione della regola — vedi la sua trasgressione e dunque la sua negazione —, siano alla radice del portato stesso di matrice creativa.

Over the past ten years, food and places have been at the epicenter of sophisticated branding strategies. On the one hand, there has been enormous growth in the number and complexity of branding devices such as ‘geographical indications’ (GIs) that aim to establish cultural associations between local food products and places of origin. On the other hand, cities, regions, and states use cuisine, ingredients, and traditional dishes in destination marketing strategies to introduce food identity as a distinctive element in the brand image of a place. These processes have been extensively studied by place branding researchers, inasmuch as by social and human scientists at large, while highlighting how the image of food and places can be mutually enhanced in brand strategies. This chapter investigates the relationships between food, geography, and branding from a cultural semiotic perspective. It looks at the regulations of two successful GIs: the famous movie Babette's Feast, featuring an award-winning Scandinavian restaurant; and an iconic dish of Sicilian cuisine that represents a major tourism marker. Our goal is to show how seemingly distant cultural objects can be involved in processes of translation and value transfer of identities. In this respect, semiotic analysis can contribute in capturing the incessant dialogue between brands and culture in identity construction processes. It is intended to emphasize how successful geographic and food brands act in the semiosphere by enabling the mutual dialogue between place and food identities. In this sense, semiotic analysis allows us to understand how brands not only reflect already given identity elements, but also stimulate their invention and evolution.

In this paper we propose a reflection on the intertwining of mind, body, and words in ancient Greek thought, with specific reference to Gorgias and Aristotle. In particular, we believe that it was the reflection developed within rhetoric – though not the only one – that played a central role in the first articulation of the conceptual framework where the relationship between soul and body, in a very peculiar and specific way, takes place. There are at least two salient features of this rhetorical perspective, which will be investigated here with specific reference, as mentioned, to Gorgias and Aristotle: the insistence on the close interrelationship between body and soul, an interrelationship highlighted starting from the emotional sphere in which it shows itself in the most explicit manner and never resolved in terms of a pure and simple subordination of one to the other; the role that logos, by virtue of its nature and characteristics, plays as point of intersection of somatic and psychic dimension of human experience.

We are surrounded by all kinds of objects: lamps, tables, cars, household appliances, cell phones, and more. Yet for only a few of them are we willing to use the word design. To be “design” an object must not only be industrially projected and produced, it must have something more. But what does this quid consist of? How do we recognize design? Here is where a seemingly merely technical question such as design becomes a semiotic problem in an instant. To address it we will start with a design object that everyone recognizes as such and try to move backwards, deconstructing it so as to see how the traits it manifests can create precise meaning effects. The point is not what it means, but how it does it, that is, what semiotic processes are triggered from its ma-terial articulation. For us, this object is the famous Arco designed in 1962 by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni for Flos.

This paper aims at showing the analogies between Hans Blumenberg’s Metaphorology and George Lakoff & Mark Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory. Starting from the analysis of the proportion for which ABSOLUTE METAPHOR: METAPHORICAL EXPRESSIONS = BACKGROUND METAPHOR: CONCEPTUAL METAPHOR, we propose to compare Blumenberg’s Metaphorology with Lakoff & Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory, outlining similarities and differences in reference to: (a) the fundamental notions on which the two theories are based, (b) the methods and (c) the relationship between language-thought-culture assumed by the two theories. However, the reconstruction of the relation between the two theoretical paradigms is not an end in itself as we will show that the two research paradigms could be integrated to overcome problematic aspects present in both theoretical perspectives., Philosophy Kitchen - Rivista di filosofia contemporanea, N. 17 (2022): Metafora. Tra esperienza e pensiero

The paper is inspired by a conversation of its author with Sandro Man- cini. Through a series of self-biographical notes, it tries to examine the topological gure of the labyrinth in some of its main mythical- symbolic, mathematical and conceptual articulations. Starting from a famous essay by Italo Calvino, i.e. La s da al labirinto, it seeks in par- ticular to discuss the works of Pierre Rosenstiehl, mathematician and philosopher to whom we owe some of the most re ned analyses on the subject of labyrinth. In the conclusions, after some other short intro- spective remarks, one aims at raising the necessity of more systematic and deepened investigations about this subject.