The importance of youth participation is underlined by international policies, which widely stress youth’s fundamental role in developing more just and sustainable societies. At the same time, disaffection from the more traditional democratic processes is registered by young people, who instead seem to be looking for forms of expression of a different nature. This paper aims to question the forms of participation of young people, offering to consider them as resources for the broader society within the perspective of public pedagogy (...) (Biesta, 2012), suggesting that the institutions let themselves be informed by what is happening. (shrink)

This paper examines an argument by Schaffer (2017) that aims to prove how, contrary to what many philosophers hold, there is no special explanatory gap occurring in the connection between the physical and the phenomenal. This is because a gap of the same kind can be found in every connection between a more fundamental and a less fundamental level of reality. These gaps lurk everywhere in nature. For Schaffer, they can be bridged by means of substantive metaphysical principles such as (...) grounding principles. He thus puts forward a version of grounding-based physicalism, which is supposed to provide this kind of substantive bridge principle. My main contention is as follows: even if Schaffer’s argument indeed proves the existence of a gap in every connection between fundamental and derivative entities, and such gaps can be bridged by means of grounding principles, a different gap remains open in the psycho-physical connection. (shrink)

Health care systems can positively influence our personal decision-making and health-related behavior only if we trust them. I propose a conceptual analysis of the trust relation between the public and a healthcare system, drawing from healthcare studies and philosophical proposals. In my account, the trust relation is based on an epistemic component, epistemic authority, and on a value component, the benevolence of the healthcare system. I argue that it is also modified by the vulnerability of the public on healthcare matters, (...) and by the system’s credibility. I apply my proposed analysis of public trust in health care systems to the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy, a tendency to question vaccine policies, and to seek alternative vaccine schedules or to refuse vaccination. Understanding the role of trust and its components can be key to understanding the phenomenon. (shrink)

This book provides an introduction to the study of words, and how we use words to create meaning. It offers an accessible description of the main properties of words and the organizational principles of the lexicon, based on theoretical accounts and extensive empirical data.

In his recent book, Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra considers the uncoordinated bursts of violence that have punctuated the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall as tangible manifestations of the latest wave of crisis in liberal modernity. Rather than fostering peace and prosperity across the globe, he argues, the economic globalization of the last half century has created a claustrophobic and unequal world populated by frustrated individuals prone to anger and revenge. "The result is, as Hannah Arendt feared, (...) 'a tremendous increase in mutual hatred and a somewhat universal irritability of everybody against everybody else,' or ressentiment, … an existential resentment of other people's being, caused by an intense mix... (shrink)

This book provides an introduction to the study of words, their main properties and how we use them to create meaning. It offers a detailed description of the organizational principles of the lexicon, and of the categories used to classify various lexical phenomena, including polysemy, meaning variation, behaviour in composition, and the interface with pragmatics. Elisabetta Ježek uses empirical data from digitalized corpora and speakers' judgements, combined with the formalisms developed in the field of general and theoretical linguistics, to (...) propose representations for each of these phenomena. The book's clear structure and accessible approach make it an ideal textbook for all students of linguistics and a valuable resource for scholars and students of language in the fields of cognitive science and philosophy. (shrink)

Introduction: A general trend in the psychological literature suggests that guilt contributes to morality more than shame does. Unlike shame-prone individuals, guilt-prone individuals internalize the causality of negative events, attribute responsibility in the first person, and engage in responsible behavior. However, it is not known how guilt- and shame-proneness interact with the attribution of responsibility to others. -/- Methods: In two Web-based experiments, participants reported their attributions of moral culpability (i.e., responsibility, causality, punishment and decision-making) about morally ambiguous acts of (...) killing in different conditions. In Study 1 the vignettes were presented in the 1st person, while in Study 2 in the 3rd person. To test proneness to guilt and shame, we utilized the GASP scale, which differentiates between the affective and behavioral components of each emotion. Statistical analyses were performed in Matlab and R. -/- Results: We found that guilt- and shame-proneness were associated with the severity of attributions in both the first and the third person, but the effect was strong only in the guilt case (both subtypes) and shame-affect case, and not in the shame-behavior case. We call this the Moralizing Effect. -/- Discussion: We wonder whether our finding that guilt-prone people tend to attribute a higher degree of culpability to others is really consistent with the view that guilt motivates people to choose the “moral paths in life”. This echoes views about the harmful aspects of guilt, which have been expressed historically in philosophy, for example, by Friedrich Nietzsche. (shrink)

The mathematical scenario in Italy during the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance is mainly dominated by the treatises on the abacus, which developed together with the abacus schools. In that context, between approximately the last thirty years of the fourteenth century and the first twenty years of the sixteenth century, the manuscript and printed tradition tell us of queries and challenges, barely known or totally unknown, in which the protagonists were abacus masters. We report in this work on the (...) most significant examples and draw out interesting cues for thoughts and remarks of a scientific, historical and biographical nature. Five treatises, written in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, have been the main source of inspiration for this article: the Trattato di praticha d’arismetricha and the Tractato di praticha di geometria included in the codices Palat. 573 and Palat. 577 (c. 1460) kept in the Biblioteca Nazionale of Florence and written by an anonymous Florentine disciple of the abacist Domenico di Agostino Vaiaio; another Trattato di praticha d’arismetrica written by Benedetto di Antonio da Firenze in 1463 and included in the codex L.IV.21 kept in the Biblioteca Comunale of Siena; the Tractatus mathematicus ad discipulos perusinos written by Luca Pacioli between 1477 and 1480, manuscript Vat. Lat. 3129 of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; and Francesco Galigai’s Summa de arithmetica, published in Florence in 1521. (shrink)

Numerous studies suggest that both emotion knowledge and language abilities are powerfully related to young children’s theory of mind. Nonetheless, the magnitude and direction of the associations between language, emotion knowledge, and theory-of-mind performance in the first years of life are still debated. Hence, the aim of this study was to assess the direct effects of emotion knowledge and language on theory-of-mind scores in 2- and 3-year-old children. A sample of 139 children, aged between 24 and 47 months (M = (...) 35.5 months; SD = 6.73), were directly administered measures of emotion knowledge, theory of mind, and language. We conducted structural equation modeling (SEM) to evaluate the effects of these variables within a single comprehensive framework, while also controlling for any effects of age and gender. The proposed structural equation model provided an excellent fit for the data, indicating that both children’s emotion knowledge and their language ability had direct positive effects on theory of mind scores. In addition, age was found to wield statistically significant effects on all the variables under study, whereas gender was not significantly associated with any of them. These findings suggest the importance of fostering young children’s emotion knowledge and language with a view to enhancing their comprehension of mental states. (shrink)

At present, psychiatric disorders are characterized descriptively, as the standard within the scientific community for communication and, to a certain extent, for diagnosis, is the DSM, now at its fifth edition. The main reasons for descriptivism are the aim of achieving reliability of diagnosis and improving communication in a situation of theoretical disagreement, and the Ignorance argument, which starts with acknowledgment of the relative failure of the project of finding biomarkers for most mental disorders. Descriptivism has also the advantage of (...) capturing the phenomenology of mental disorders, which appears to be essential for diagnosis, though not exhaustive of the nature of the disease. I argue that if we rely on the distinction between conceptions (procedures of identification) and concepts (reference-fixing representations), which was introduced in the philosophical debate on the nature of concepts, we may understand a limited but valid role for descriptive characterizations, and reply to common objections addressed by those who advocate a theoretically informed approach to nosology. (shrink)

A growing body of scholarship has documented the experiences of different groups of migrants involved in the maintenance and development of transnational families worldwide showing that proximity is not a prerequisite of family life and that families can successfully be done from a distance. While most work deals with the experiences of labour migrants less attention has been paid to forced migrants. Still little is known about families that fail to operate transnationally and are broken by the migration experience. For (...) instance, when can we say that this type of family cannot be sustained? This article, drawing on the transnational motherhood literature and on Zontini previous study on Filipino labour migrants in Southern Europe, highlights the factors that shape transnational parenting. The authors then use this framework to explore the experiences of a group of Zimbabwean asylum seeking mothers in the UK. In doing so, the authors point out some of the specificities of this particular group; highlighting the differentiated impact of transnationalism and contributing to refining the literature on transnational parenthood. (shrink)

There is a lot of conceptual engineering going on in medical research. I substantiate this claim with two examples, the medical debate about cancer classification and about obesity as a disease I also argue that the proper target of conceptual engineering in medical research are experts’ conceptions. These are explicitly written down in documents and guidelines, and they bear on research and policies. In the second part of the chapter, I propose an externalist framework in which conceptions have both the (...) explanatory power of psychological concepts and that of semantic concepts. It is likely, however, that human activities and practices distinct from medical research, and regulated by different practices and epistemic rules, call for different targets for conceptual engineering. I conclude with indicating an open agenda of problems for philosophers of medicine interested in conceptual engineering. (shrink)

È possibile perseguire intenzionalmente la speranza o si tratta di una postura interiore che sfugge alla volontà? E se scaturisce da una ricerca, può essere trasmessa, sollecitata?Declinata in una pratica da perseguire nella relazione di aiuto? È realistico considerare la capacità di schiudere nuove possibilità per abitare con senso la vita, una competenza professionale del lavoro di cura? Nell’intento di dare risposta a questi interrogativi la riflessione attraversa il pensiero di alcuni tra i maggiori filosofi del Novecento, secondo un orientamento (...) fenomenologico che prende le mosse dall’esperienza vissuta.Is it possible to “intentionally” pursue the hope or is it an inner attitude beyond anyone’s will? And if it derives from a research, can it be transmitted, aroused? Can it be declined as a practice to be followed in a helping relationship? Is it realistic to consider the capacity of disclosing new possibilities of living a meaningful as a professional skill in care job?The intention of giving an answer to these questions crosses the beliefs of some of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, in compliance with a phenomenological orientation taking its moves from lived experience. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe a framework for studying social agents’ individual decision making, that takes account of the environment and social dynamics. We describe a study in which we explored the efficiency of foraging strategies within a group of individuals faced with a resource-limited environment. We investigated to what extent cooperative and non-cooperative behaviors impacted on the survival rates of a population of individuals. In the experiment presented here, we considered two different types of individuals: selfish individuals who gather (...) energy for their own use, and cooperative individuals who share the energy they gather with others, thus reducing their own individual chances of survival. In order to study the trade-off between non-cooperative and cooperative behaviors in a pseudo-realistic two-dimensional environment, we introduced an agent-based modeling and simulation tool called ACACIA-ES, which simulated local interactions and spatial behavior for large numbers of individuals in complex environments. The main result from our simulation was that a group of cooperative individuals displayed better survival strategies than groups of selfish individuals when faced with a variety of environmental pressures; however, it was very unlikely that such cooperative strategies could resist competition from selfish individuals, if the outcome of past social interactions was memorized, even when a very small group of selfish individuals was introduced. (shrink)

Baccarini and Malatesti (2017) defend the idea that we must use coercively biomedical means to enhance the morality of a specific group of individuals: psychopaths, diagnosed through the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) standards (Hare, 2003). Their argument is theoretical, thus it goes independently from the actual effectiveness of existent treatments, and it is based on a logical reasoning. Moral bioenhancement (MB) means include psychotropic drugs, brain stimulations, neurosurgeries, genetic editing, etc. -/- In short, the authors apply Gerald Gaus' account of open (...) justification (Gaus, 1996, 2011), according to which “a prescription addressed to an agent is a reasoning that includes premises that consider the system of reasons (such as beliefs, preferences, etc.) of that agent” (Baccarini and Malatesti, 2017, p. 1). In their view, coercive MB of psychopaths is morally sound and deducible by reasons within the psychopath's cognitive-affective system—even if the psychopath needs not to be able to consciously or sincerely endorse them. We believe that this argument is flawed. In sum, we argue that the psychopath's cognitive-affective system would consistently justify reasons against mandatory MB to herself, even if she wishes differently for others, and that the prescription cannot be extended. (shrink)

Purpose:Human navigation skills are essential for everyday life and rely on several cognitive abilities, among which visual-spatial competences that are impaired in subjects with cerebral palsy. In this work, we proposed navigation tasks in immersive virtual reality to 15 children with CP and 13 typically developing peers in order to assess the individual navigation strategies and their modifiability in a situation resembling real life.Methods:We developed and adapted to IVR an application based on a 5-way maze in a playground that was (...) to be navigated to find a reward. The learning process, navigation strategies, and adaptation to changes were compared between participants with CP and their TD peers and correlated with visual-spatial abilities and cognitive competences.Results:Most participants with CP needed more attempts than TD participants to become proficient in navigation. Furthermore, the learning phase was correlated to visual-spatial memory but not with cognitive competences. Interestingly, navigation skills were comparable between groups after stabilization. While TD participants mainly relied on allocentric strategies based on environmental cues, egocentric strategies based on body motion prevailed in participants with CP. Furthermore, participants with CP had more difficulties in modifying their navigation strategies, caused by difficulties in executive processes beyond the visual-perceptual impairment, with an inefficient shift between implicit and explicit competences.Conclusions:The navigation abilities in participants with CP seem to be different from their TD peers in terms of learning and adaptation to new conditions; this could deeply affect their everyday life and ultimately participation and inclusion. A regular assessing and focused rehabilitative plans could help to better navigate the environment and affect self-perception. (shrink)

Advanced medical imaging, such as CT, fMRI and PET, has undergone enormous progress in recent years, both in accuracy and utilization. Such techniques often bring with them an illusion of immediacy, the idea that the body and its diseases can be directly inspected. In this paper we target this illusion and address the issue of the reliability of advanced imaging tests as knowledge procedures, taking positron emission tomography in oncology as paradigmatic case study. After individuating a suitable notion of reliability, (...) we argue that PET is a highly theory-laden and non-immediate knowledge procedure, in spite of the photographic-like quality of the images it delivers; the diagnostic conclusions based on the interpretation of PET images are population-dependent; PET images require interpretation, which is inherently observer-dependent and therefore variable. We conclude with a three-step methodological proposal for enhancing the reliability of advanced medical imaging. (shrink)

A Kuhnian reformulation of the recent debate in psychiatric nosography suggested that the current psychiatric classification system (the DSM) is in crisis and that a sort of paradigm shift is awaited (Aragona, 2009). Among possible revolutionary alternatives, the proposed fi ve-axes etiopathogenetic taxonomy (Charney et al., 2002) emphasizes the primacy of the genotype over the phenomenological level as the relevant basis for psychiatric nosography. Such a position is along the lines of the micro-reductionist perspective of E. Kandel (1998, 1999), which (...) sees mental disorders reducible to explanations at a fundamental epistemic level of genes and neurotransmitters. This form of micro-reductionism has been criticized as a form of genetic-molecular fundamentalism (e.g. Murphy, 2006) and a multi-level approach, in the form of the burgeoning Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, was proposed. This article focuses on multi-level mechanistic explanations, coming from Cognitive Science, as a possible alternative etiopathogenetic basis for psychiatric classification. The idea of a mechanistic approach to psychiatric taxonomy is here defended on the basis of a better conception of levels and causality. Nevertheless some critical remarks of Mechanism as a psychiatric general view are also offered. (shrink)

Mentalization is a useful ability for social functioning and a crucial aspect of mentalizing is emotion regulation. Literature suggests programmes for children and adults to increase mentalizing abilities useful both for emotional and social competences. For this reason, the issue of how to prompt children’s mentalization has started to attract researchers’ attention, supporting the importance of the interpersonal dimension for the individual differences in the developmental of mentalization. The TiM (Thoughts in Mind) Project, a training programme based on the explanation (...) of mentalization mechanisms and designed for adults, deals with emotion regulation. Starting from the TiM Project, this study tests the effects of the TiM Child (TiM-C) training programme, over a control training programme, a conversational training designed for the school context, in children attending Year 2 of primary school. We designed a training based on narratives, followed by multiple-choice questions and conversations about mental states. Our results revealed significant improvements over the training period only in the TiM-C Project group for Metacognition, Emotion Regulation Strategies and a Theory of Mind task. As far as the educational implications, our findings suggest that it is possible to enhance mentalization through activities at school by promoting not only the understanding of the relations between mind and emotion, but also metacognitive skills. (shrink)

In 1894, the Institut Colonial International was founded in Brussels, with the aim to engage and promote transnational exchanges between jurists, scholars, politicians, colonial administrators and experts, comparing different colonial experiences. As the Institut Colonial International’s founders had hoped, its publications promoted legal debates, discussions and the prospects of specific legislation, decrees or norms to be adapted and used in entirely different colonial systems. This paper will show that the Institut Colonial International encouraged the exchange of ideas about the various (...) colonial experiences in order to create common and universal principles. International law and domestic law, or national law concerning land register systems and land law were part of the colonial discourse as it endeavoured to create and adopt universal principles of law, trying to establish a platform of common dialogue, with common premises, concerning different colonies, different colonial experiences and ultimately different cultural, social and political contexts. (shrink)

Italy is in the forefront of forensic neuroscience practice among European nations. In recent years, the country presented two major criminal cases, the Trieste Case in 2009 and the Como Case in 2011, which were the first cases employing neurogenetic and functional neuroimaging methods in European courts. In this paper we will discuss the consequences that an understanding of the neural and genetic determinants of human (mis)behavior will have on law, especially on the Italian legal context. Some claim that such (...) consequences will actually be revolutionary, while others argue that legal doctrine assumptions won’t be undermined by neuroscientific findings. In the first section of the paper, we introduce the general debate and follow with a section devoted to the two Italian cases. In the third and final section, we discuss epistemological and ethical issues regarding Italian neurolaw. We defend a position which diverges from those prevailing in the debate. While negative outcomes and concerns were usually evidenced, we focus on positive changes coming with the new paradigm of interaction between neuroscience and the law. Our view is that these cases are clearly pioneering ones, anticipating what will happen in the courtrooms of the European Union in the whole, in the near future. (shrink)

The investigation aims at analysing the two general notions of mankind and people in two lexicographic reference works on trade and commerce published in London in the 1750s: Rolt’s A New Dictionary of Trade and Commerce (1756) and Postlethwayt’s The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce (1757). An overview of the same notions in universal dictionaries of arts and sciences (cfr. References, Primary Sources), issued before and after ND and UD, will also be of help to define a more general (...) background. Starting from the key words mankind and people, their frequency and relevance in the two dictionaries, the investigation is widened to include related terms (e.g. multiword expressions and language patterns in which mankind and people occur) and semantic categories (e.g. specific contexts of use: social condition, social values, demography, identity and citizenship, etc.). The many entries, cross-references, and the various lexical clusters reveal a complex lexicographic and lexicological network. This network, beyond providing information and contents on specific topics, ultimately emphasises the hierarchical organising principle at the basis of Late Modern British society: in particular, people unfolds into a myriad of ‘entities’. Dictionaries of trade and commerce are plentiful sources of knowledge, from general concepts and notions to more specific contents, but also powerful ideological tools. (shrink)

The distinction between concept and conception has been widely debated in political philosophy, whereas in the philosophy of psychology is frequently used, but rarely focused on. This paper aims at filling in this lacuna. I claim that far from being explanatorily idle, the distinction makes it possible to provide an adequate description of phenomena such as genuine disagreement, and concept contestation, which would otherwise remain implausibly puzzling. I illustrate and assess three accounts of the concept-conception distinction. Finally I propose a (...) social externalist account, which relies on deference to experts, and builds on Tyler Burge’s ideas of many decades ago. The debate on concepts and conceptions thus shows a connection with the increasing research work on experts and expertise in psychology and social epistemology. (shrink)