During the COVID-19 outbreak, individuals with or without mental disorders may resort to dysfunctional psychological strategies that could trigger or heighten their emotional distress. The current study aims to explore the links between maladaptive daydreaming, psychological symptoms of depression, anxiety, and negative stress, and COVID-19-related variables, such as changes in face-to-face and online relationships, during the COVID-19 lockdown in Italy. A total of 6,277 Italian adults completed an online survey, including socio-demographic variables, COVID-19 related information, the 16-item Maladaptive Daydreaming Scale, (...) and Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scales-21 Items. Based on an empirically derived cut-off score, 1,082 participants were identified as probable maladaptive daydreamers. A binary logistic regression revealed that compared to controls, probable MDers reported that during the COVID-19 lockdown they experienced higher levels of anxiety and depression, decreased online social relationships, and, surprisingly, stable or increased face-to-face social relationships. Given the peculiar characteristics of the pandemic context, these findings suggest that the exposure to the risk of contagion had probably exacerbated the tendency of probable MDers to lock themselves inside their mental fantasy worlds, which in turn may have contributed to further estrangement from online social relationships and support, thus worsening their emotional distress. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the problems facing a policy maker who observes inconsistent choices made by agents who are boundedly rational. We contrast a model-less and a model-based approach to welfare economics. We make the case for the model-based approach and examine its advantages as well as some problematic issues associated with it.

Toleration classically denotes a relation between two agents that is characterised by three components: objection, power, and acceptance overriding the objection. Against recent claims that classical toleration is not applicable in liberal democracies and that toleration must therefore either be understood purely attitudinally or purely politically, we argue that the components of classical toleration are crucial elements of contemporary cases of minority accommodation. The concept of toleration is applicable to, and is an important element of descriptions of such cases, provided (...) that one views them as wholes, rather than as sets of isolated relations. We explain this by showing how certain cases of toleration are multi‐dimensional and how the descriptive concept of toleration might be understood intersectionally. We exemplify this by drawing on case studies of mosque controversies in Germany and Denmark. Finally, we propose that intersectionality is not only relevant to the descriptive concept of toleration but also captures an important aspect of normative theories of toleration. We illustrate this by discussing ideals of respect‐based toleration, which we also apply to the case studies. (shrink)

In 1964, Jacques Derrida’s long essay “Violence and Metaphysics” opened a dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas that would not be interrupted until Derrida’srecent death. Published only three years after the appearance of Totality and Infinity and at a moment when Derrida’s own early texts were still in the course of elaboration, this text right away recognizes the legitimacy and the import of Levinas’s philosophical project. Derrida pays homage to the Levinasian attempt to interrogate the whole of the western philosophical tradition beginning (...) from its Greek origin — which should not be understood as an empirical place but as a system of categories and fundamental concepts, elaborated for the first time in Greece and structuring the entire philosophical discourse. According to Levinas, these concepts are dominated by “the supremacy of the One and the Same” (cf. TO 35) making the long history of philosophy a history that takes place in the shadow of Parmenides, who would still command — all the more surely from afar — the phenomenology of Husserl and the ontology of Heidegger. The reservations that Derrida expresses in “Violence and Metaphysics” concern more Levinas’s discursive strategy than his intentions. He does not contest the desire to open philosophy to another origin than the Greek origin, no more than the necessity of making resonate in philosophical discourse the call of an alterity capable of contesting the supremacy of the One and the Same. His reservations are situated, rather, at the level of the strategy to follow in order to render this opening finally effective. (shrink)

There is widespread agreement that an adequate understanding of the nature of science (NOS) is a critical component of scientific literacy and a major goal in science education. However, we still do not know many specific details regarding how students and teachers learn particular aspects of NOS and what are the most important feature traits of instruction. In this context, the main objective of this review is to analyze articles from nine main science education journals that consider the teaching of (...) NOS to K-12 students, pre-service, and in-service science teachers in search of patterns in teaching and learning NOS. After reviewing 52 studies in nine journals that included data regarding participants’ views of NOS before and after an intervention, the main findings were as follows: (1) some aspects of NOS (empirical basis, observation and inference, and creativity) are easier to learn than others (tentativeness, theory and law, and social and cultural embeddedness), and subjective aspects of NOS and “the scientific method” seemed to be difficult for participants to understand; (2) the interventions most frequently lasted 5 to 8 weeks for students, one semester for pre-service teachers, and 1 year for experienced teachers; and (3) most of the interventions incorporated both decontextualized and contextualized activities. Given the substantial diversity in the methods and intervention designs used and the variables studied, it was not possible to infer a pattern of more-effective NOS teaching strategies from the reviewed studies. Future investigation should focus on (a) disentangling whether a difference exists between the easy and difficult aspects of learning NOS and formulating a theoretical explanation for distinguishing the two types of aspects and (b) assessing the effectiveness of different kinds of courses (e.g., history of science, NOS or informal) and strategies (e.g., hands-on vs. drama activities; SSI vs. HOS). (shrink)

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) uses the conceptualization of psychopathology to make psychiatric diagnoses operational. The use of explicit operational criteria appears to be based on an implicit neo-positivist epistemology. Operationalism involves an excessive focus on quantitative descriptions of behavior manifestations, contesting that psychopathology is understood as a deviation from the normal or the average in a given population. Consequently, the normal and the psychopathological become homogeneous. Our analysis investigates if this neo-positivist epistemology narrows (...) psychopathology conceptualization and endanger integration with the hybrid biopsychosocial model of psychiatry. Based on Georges Canguilhem’s theorization of a qualitative approach to the individual organism who is in a state of morbidity, we show that the (psychiatric) pathology also contains differences in quality. Moreover, that humans are norm-producing organisms that actively respond to changes in their internal and external environment. In this regard, the operationalization of mental disorders could include the normativity in humans, i.e., the ability to produce norms. We argue this will mitigate the one-sided psychopathology conceptualization and strengthen the relationship between psychiatric nosology and psychiatry’s hybrid biopsychosocial model. (shrink)

Use of videogames (VGs) is almost ubiquitous in preadolescents’ and adolescents’everyday life. One of the most intriguing research topic about positive effects of VG use is about the domain of visuospatial competencies. Previous research show that training with videogames enables children and adolescents to improve their scores in visuospatial tests (such as mental rotation of shapes and cubes), and that such training could overcome gender differences in these domains. Our study aimed at (1) verifying the positive effects of videogame use (...) in the visuospatial domain both for male and female adolescents and preadolescents and (2) verifying whether the visualization style (2D or isometric 3D) of the VG has an influence about the positive effects of gaming. Six measures of visuospatial competency were administered to 318 preadolescents (mean of age = 13.94 years, range 10-18) prior and after a 3-day training with 2D and 3D Tetris. Results indicate that (1) gaming on the whole has slight positive effects both for males and females in enhancing visuospatial competencies, at least in the short term, and (2) it seems that participants who used the videogame with 2D graphics obtained greater improvements in the mental rotation domain while the participants who used the videogame with 3D gobtained greater improvements in the spatial visualization domain. However, a general learning effect between T1 and T2 was measured, which was found regardless of Experimental condition, indicating that the effect of training with videogames can be less relevant than expected. (shrink)

While moral perfectionists rank conscious beings according to their cognitive abilities, Paola Cavalieri launches a more inclusive defense of all forms of subjectivity. In concert with Peter Singer, J. M. Coetzee, Harlan B. Miller, and other leading animal studies scholars, she expands our understanding of the nonhuman in such a way that the derogatory category of "the animal" becomes meaningless. In so doing, she presents a nonhierachical approach to ethics that better respects the value of the conscious self. Cavalieri (...) opens with a dialogue between two imagined philosophers, laying out her challenge to moral perfectionism and tracing its influence on our attitudes toward the "unworthy." She then follows with a roundtable "multilogue" which takes on the role of reason in ethics and the boundaries of moral status. Coetzee, Nobel Prize winner for Literature and author of _The Lives of Animals_, emphasizes the animality of human beings; Miller, a prominent analytic philosopher at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, dismantles the rationalizations of human bias; Cary Wolfe, professor of English at Rice University, advocates an active exposure to other worlds and beings; and Matthew Calarco, author of _Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida_, extends ethical consideration to entities that traditionally have little or no moral status, such as plants and ecosystems. As Peter Singer writes in his foreword, the implications of this conversation extend far beyond the issue of the moral status of animals. They "get to the heart of some important differences about how we should do philosophy, and how philosophy can relate to our everyday life." From the divergences between analytical and continental approaches to the relevance of posthumanist thinking in contemporary ethics, the psychology of speciesism, and the practical consequences of an antiperfectionist stance, _The Death of the Animal_ confronts issues that will concern anyone interested in a serious study of morality. (shrink)

Se revisan las prácticas fotográficas en los territorios asociados a la producción y sus consecuencias en el Chile contemporáneo, incluyendo cómo se hizo la selección y categorización del campo para construir un cuerpo de estudio con 28 casos. Con este se opera un análisis crítico, actualizándolo dentro de la discusión que ubica a la fotografía tensada entre la producción de «obra» y la de «documentos», y se recurre a las «poéticas de la fotografía del paisaje» propuestas por Santos Zunzunegui. Así (...) se hace evidente cómo la veladura del hecho estético sobre la fotografía deja ver, debajo de ella, el dolor irritante de la destrucción del paisaje, y los trabajos seleccionados devienen ora obras, ora documentos, para atraer la mirada y, al ser mirados, evidenciar el daño humano sobre el paisaje. (shrink)

Despite that it is commonly accepted that migraine is a disorder of the nervous system with a prominent genetic basis, it is comorbid with a plethora of medical conditions. Several studies have found bidirectional comorbidity between migraine and different disorders including neurological, psychiatric, cardio- and cerebrovascular, gastrointestinal, metaboloendocrine, and immunological conditions. Each of these has its own genetic load and shares some common characteristics with migraine. The bidirectional mechanisms that are likely to underlie this extensive comorbidity between migraine and other (...) diseases are manifold. Comorbid pathologies can induce and promote thalamocortical network dysexcitability, multi-organ transient or persistent pro-inflammatory state, and disproportionate energetic needs in a variable combination, which in turn may be causative mechanisms of the activation of an ample defensive system with includes the trigeminovascular system in conjunction with the neuroendocrine hypothalamic system. This strategy is designed to maintain brain homeostasis by regulating homeostatic needs, such as normal subcortico-cortical excitability, energy balance, osmoregulation, and emotional response. In this light, the treatment of migraine should always involves a multidisciplinary approach, aimed at identifying and, if necessary, eliminating possible risk and comorbidity factors. (shrink)

Introduction:Healthcare workers facing the threatening COVID-19 can experience severe difficulties. Despite the need to evaluate both the psychological distress and positive protective resources, brief and reliable assessment tools are lacking.Aim:Study 1 aimed at developing a new assessment tool to measure psychological distress and esteem in healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Study 2 aimed to explore and compare the psychological reactions of healthcare workers of the COVID-19 and the non-COVID-19 wards.Methods:In Study 1, psychologists created 25 items based on their clinical (...) experience. A preliminary qualitative evaluation selected the best 15 items for the new tool assessing the COVID-19 psychological impact with 2 scales: psychological distress and esteem. The CPI-HP was administered to 110 healthcare professionals to study its psychometric properties and the internal structure with exploratory graph analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Study 2 compared two groups of healthcare professionals of the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 departments.Results:In Study 1, the CPI-HP showed satisfying psychometric properties, and the two-factor structure was confirmed with good fit indices. In Study 2, the two groups of healthcare workers showed comparable levels of psychological distress and resilient coping, but the COVID-19 group displayed significantly higher esteem and appreciation of the experience.Discussion:All operators showed high psychological distress during the emergency, but the COVID-19 group reported higher resources, probably due to stronger group cohesion and greater esteem, perceived meaning, and own work value.Conclusion:Assessing the psychological distress and resources of healthcare professionals with specific tools is important. Psychological interventions should promote their psychological health. (shrink)

L’esperienza della Pandemia ci ha obbligato a sperimentare modalità di studio inusuali e stereotipate all’interno dell’acronimo DAD (Didattica A Distanza). Il gruppo di ricerca crede che ci troviamo in un momento storico molto importante che, grazie a questa esperienza e nonostante tutti i suoi limiti, ci apre a possibilità di innovazione didattica ancora da esplorare. Pertanto, l’obiettivo è sondare, fra gli studenti delle diverse Università Pontificie, alcuni aspetti dell’esperienza fatta, non per contrapporre DAD a PRESENZA, quanto per capire come poter (...) integrare meglio queste tecnologie digitali per la conoscenza, all’interno della didattica universitaria. (shrink)

We invited five Cavell scholars to write on this topic. What follows is a vibrant exchange among Paola Marrati, Andrew Norris, Jörg Volbers, Cary Wolfe and Thomas Dumm addressing the question whether, in the contemporary political context, Cavell’s skepticism and his Emersonian perfectionism amount to a politics at all.

Cross-situational statistical learning of words involves tracking co-occurrences of auditory words and objects across time to infer word-referent mappings. Previous research has demonstrated that learners can infer referents across sets of very phonologically distinct words, but it remains unknown whether learners can encode fine phonological differences during cross-situational statistical learning. This study examined learners’ cross-situational statistical learning of minimal pairs that differed on one consonant segment, minimal pairs that differed on one vowel segment, and non-minimal pairs that differed on two (...) or three segments. Learners performed above chance for all pairs, but performed worse on vowel minimal pairs than on consonant minimal pairs or non-minimal pairs. These findings demonstrate that learners can encode fine phonetic detail while tracking word-referent co-occurrence probabilities, but they suggest that phonological encoding may be weaker for vowels than for consonants. (shrink)

Accelerating environmental uncertainty and the need to cope with increasingly complex market and social demands, combine to create high value for the intuitive approach to decision-making at the strategic level. Research on intuition suffers from marked fragmentation, due to the existence of disciplinary silos based on diverse, apparently irreconcilable, ontological and epistemological assumptions. Not surprisingly, there is no integrated interdisciplinary framework suitable for a rich account of intuition, contemplating how affect and cognition intertwine in the intuitive process, and how intuition (...) scales up from the individual to collective decision-making. This study contributes to the construction of a broad conceptual framework, suitable for a multi-level account of intuition and for a fruitful dialogue with distant research areas. It critically discusses two mainstream conceptualizations of intuition which claim to be grounded in a cross-disciplinary consensus. Drawing on the complexity paradigm, it then proposes a conceptualization of intuition as emergence. Finally, it explores the theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

To contribute to our understanding of the relationship between philosophical ideas and medical and healthcare models. A diachronic analysis is put in place in order to evaluate, from an innovative perspective, the influence over the centuries on medical and healthcare models of two philosophical concepts, particularly relevant for health: how Man perceives his identity and how he relates to Nature. Five epochs are identified—the Archaic Age, Classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Modern Age, the ‘Postmodern’ Era—which can be seen, à (...) la Foucault, as ‘fragments between philosophical fractures’. From a historical background perspective, up to the early 1900s progress in medical and healthcare models has moved on a par with the evolution of philosophical debate. Following the Second World War, the Health Service started a series of reforms, provoked by anti-positivistic philosophical transformations. The three main reforms carried out however failed and the medical establishment remained anchored to a mechanical, reductionist approach, perfectly in line with the bureaucratic stance of the administrators. In this context, future scenarios are delineated and an anthropo-ecological model is proposed to re-align philosophy, medicine and health care. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the importance of literature in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s reflections concerning two strictly connected phenomenological themes: 1) the virtuality of objects and of existence itself; 2) the genesis of truth and the intuition of essences. According to Merleau-Ponty, modern novelists have adopted a phenomenological method: instead of ‘explaining’ the world through words, they ‘show’ the lifeworld and its paradoxes indirectly. In his view, and against Jean-Paul Sartre’s position, analyzing literature means developing a theory integrating perception and the (...) imagination. Moreover, at the beginning of the 1950’s, this perspective led Merleau-Ponty to a deep revision of the Sartrian concepts of spontaneity and engagement in literary practice in favour of a theory of expression as style. As a conclusion, the paper argues for the key-role of literature in Merleau-Ponty’s indirect ontology as a way of rediscovering unity and harmony behind the metamorphosis of reality. (shrink)

This book takes the reader on a philosophical quest to understand the dark side of emotions. The chapters are devoted to the analysis of negative emotions and are organized in a historical manner, spanning the period from ancient Greece to the present time. Each chapter addresses analytical questions about specific emotions generally considered to be unfavorable and classified as negative. The general aim of the volume is to describe the polymorphous and context-sensitive nature of negative emotions as well as changes (...) in the ways people have interpreted these emotions across different epochs. The editors speak of ‘the dark side of the emotions’ because their goal is to capture the ambivalent – unstable and shadowy – aspects of emotions. A number of studies have taken the categorial distinction between positive and negative emotions for granted, suggesting that negative emotions are especially significant for our psychological experience because they signal difficult situations. For this reason, the editors stress the importance of raising analytical questions about the valence of particular emotions and focussing on the features that make these emotions ambivalent: how – despite their negativity – such emotions may turn out to be positive. This opens up a perspective in which each emotion can be understood as a complex interlacing of negative and positive properties. The collection presents a thoughtful dialogue between philosophy and contemporary scientific research. It offers the reader insight by illuminating the dark side of the emotions. (shrink)

Developmental research typically relies on face-to-face testing at laboratories, childcare centers, museums or playgroups. Current social distancing measures have led to a halt in research. Although face-to-face interaction is considered essential for research involving young children, current technology provides viable alternatives. This paper introduces an accessible, replicable and easy to follow method to conduct online developmental research with young children employing a word-learning task as an exemplar, including a detailed workflow and step-by-step guide to using easily accessible programs and platforms. (...) Four-year-old children's performance on a word-learning task delivered online vs. face-to-face is provided as a method validation. Children's performance on the word-learning task was predominantly consistent across delivery modes, with only slight variation in performance between modes. The implications of these similar results across face-to-face and online methods are discussed alongside avenues for further research. Importantly, this paper presents an emerging methodological approach for the online administration of developmental science both within and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, adding a new tool to current and future developmental scientist's toolkits. (shrink)

In this study, Paola Marrati approaches—in an extremely insightful, rigorous, and well-argued way—the question of the philosophical sources of Derrida's thought through a consideration of his reading of both Husserl and Heidegger. A central focus of the book is the analysis of the concepts of genesis and trace as they define Derrida's thinking of historicity, time, and subjectivity. Notions such as the contamination of the empirical and the transcendental, dissemination and writing, are explained as key categories establishing a guiding (...) thread that runs through Derrida's early and later works. Whereas in his discussion of Husserl Derrida problematizes the relationship between the ideality of meaning and the singularity of its historical production, in his interpretation of Heidegger he challenges the very idea of the originary finitude of temporality. This book is essential reading not only for those interested in the philosophical roots of deconstruction, but for all those interested in the central questions of history and temporality, subjectivity and language, that pervade contemporary debates in cultural, literary, and visual theory alike. (shrink)

This text was first published in Theory, Culture & Society, May 13, 2015. For a special issue of Body & Society on ‘Rhythm, Movement, Embodiment', Paola Crespi presents two previously untranslated texts, Rudolf Bode's ‘Rhythm and its Importance for Education' and Rudolf Laban's ‘Eurhythmy and Kakorhythmy'. In the following interview she uncovers further unpublished and untranslated sources and she discusses some of the main themes of these texts in relation to the more widely known text - Danse, théâtre et (...) spectacle vivant – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

How much do animals matter--morally? Can we keep considering them as second class beings, to be used merely for our benefit? Or, should we offer them some form of moral egalitarianism? Inserting itself into the passionate debate over animal rights, this fascinating, provocative work by renowned scholar Paola Cavalieri advances a radical proposal: that we extend basic human rights to the nonhuman animals we currently treat as "things." Cavalieri first goes back in time, tracing the roots of the debate (...) from the 1970s, then explores not only the ethical but also the scientific viewpoints, examining the debate's precedents in mainstream Western philosophy. She considers the main proposals of reform that recently have been advanced within the framework of today's prevailing ethical perspectives. Are these proposals satisfying? Cavalieri says no, claiming that it is necessary to go beyond the traditional opposition between utilitarianism and Kantianism and focus on the question of fundamental moral protection. In the case of human beings, such protection is granted within the widely shared moral doctrine of universal human rights' theory. Cavalieri argues that if we examine closely this theory, we will discover that its very logic extends to nonhuman animals as beings who are owed basic moral and legal rights and that, as a result, human rights are not human after all. (shrink)

Although remote working can involve positive outcomes both for employees and organizations, in the case of the sudden and forced remote working situation that came into place during the COVID-19 crisis there have also been reports of negative aspects, one of which is technostress. In this context of crisis, leadership is crucial in sustainably managing and supporting employees, especially employees with workaholic tendencies who are more prone to developing negative work and health outcomes. However, while research on the role of (...) the positive aspects of leadership during crises does exist, the negative aspects of leadership during the COVID-19 crisis have not yet been studied. The present study aimed to explore the role of authoritarian leadership in a sample of 339 administrative university employees who worked either completely from home or from home and the workplace. The study examined the moderating effect of a manager on this relationship and the connections between workaholism and technostress through conditional process analysis. Results pointed out that high authoritarian leadership had an enhancing effect, whereas low authoritarian leadership had a protective effect on the relationship between workaholism and technostress, only in the group of complete remote workers. Thus, authoritarian leadership should be avoided and training leaders to be aware of its effect appears to be essential. Limitations, future directions for the study, and practical implications are also discussed. (shrink)

This collection of essays sheds new light on the relationship between two of the main drivers of intellectual discourse in ancient Greece: the epic tradition and the Sophists. The contributors show how throughout antiquity the epic tradition proved a flexible instrument to navigate new political, cultural, and philosophical contexts. The Sophists, both in the Classical and the Imperial age, continuously reconfigured the value of epic poetry according to the circumstances: using epic myths allowed the Sophists to present themselves as the (...) heirs of traditional education, but at the same time this tradition was reshaped to encapsulate new questions that were central to the Sophists' intellectual agenda. This volume is structured chronologically, encompassing the ancient world from the Classical Age through the first two centuries AD. The first chapters, on the First Sophistic, discuss pivotal works such as Gorgias' Encomium of Helen and Apology of Palamedes, Alcidamas' Odysseus or Against the Treachery of Palamedes, and Antisthenes' pair of speeches Ajax and Odysseus, as well as a range of passages from Plato and other authors. The volume then moves on to discuss some of the major works of literature from the Second Sophistic dealing with the epic tradition. These include Lucian's Judgement of the Goddesses and Dio Chrysostom's orations 11 and 20, as well as Philostratus' Heroicus and Imagines. (shrink)