Aperçu historiographique et méthodologique -- Notes sur le corpus deschampsien -- La double monade. Un matérialisme au-delà du système moniste de Spinoza et du système physique de d'Holbach ; Formes de totalité dans la tradition platonicienne et néoplatonicienne ; Dialectique de un et multiple -- Métaphysique et théologie négative. Réflexion sur les idées que nous avons foncièrement de Dieu ; Contre la raison du temps ; Dieu non-créateur ; Dieu créateur; Les concepts dionysiens de Théarchie et [suressentialité] ; La connaissance (...) antinomique -- Le "fond" de la religion et le "fond" de l'homme. Observations métaphysiques ; Le Dieu de la tradition ; Le Dieu des philosophes ; Dieu indistinct et distinct ; Les antithèses de Meister Eckhart ; Le "moi métaphysique" -- Quid nihil ? L'existence du Néant ; Le Livre du Néant ; Tout ou Rien ; La correspondance avec Robinet. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore the impact of Darwinism in metaethics and dispel some of the confusion surrounding it. While the prospects for a Darwinian metaethics appear to be improving, some underlying epistemological issues remain unclear. We will focus on the so-called Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (EDAs) which, when applied in metaethics, are defined as arguments that appeal to the evolutionary origins of moral beliefs so as to undermine their epistemic justification. The point is that an epistemic disanalogy (...) can be identified in the debate on EDAs between moral beliefs and other kinds of beliefs, insofar as only the former are regarded as vulnerable to EDAs. First, we will analyze some significant debunking positions in metaethics in order to show that they do not provide adequate justification for such an epistemic disanalogy. Then, we will assess whether they can avoid the accusation of being epistemically incoherent by adopting the same evolutionary account for all kinds of beliefs. In other words, once it is argued that Darwinism has a corrosive impact on metaethics, what if its universal acid cannot be contained? (shrink)

The work examines the influence of the relationship that football players have with significant others on their psychological wellbeing (PWB), adopting a psychosocial perspective. According to this perspective, PWB can be considered a basic condition for an effective talent development and holistic growth of young athletes. Current literature on talent development in sport has been analyzed to support the theoretical hypothesis of psychosocial perspective. Thus, it has been tested empirically through a Structural Equation Model. Analysis reveals a strong and positive (...) influence of some dimensions of the relationships with significant others on the psychological wellbeing, specifically team effort, coach closeness and parental learning climate. Following ANOVA shows that élite players perceive significantly better relationships than sub-élite and amateurs and have significantly higher levels of PWB. Those results provide a first evidence for the importance of relationships within and outside sport for an effective talent development, since they positively influence players’ PWB, that is higher in higher competitive level players. It emerges the necessity to further investigate different aspects of psychological wellbeing and to deepen the knowledge about the meaning of relationship in developmental athletes according to a psychosocial approach. (shrink)

A few years ago an interesting exhibition took place in Cambridge (and London) under the title ‘N01SE’.2 The title recalls of course the word ‘noise’ but written as ‘N01SE’ it also refers to the binary code (with the two numbers 0 and 1) which is the basic language of calculators - from the simplest to the most sophisticated, (eg. contemporary computers). The title of this exhibition could then be read in two ways. On one side, by playing with the word (...) ‘noise/n01se’, we are presented with the idea that there might be a core of information in any situation of noise, provided that there is a context, an interpretation, a point of view which allows us to identify such information and to decode it. On the other side, we are prompted to reflect critically on the assumptions and goals of the revolutionary field of contemporary digital technologies, whose promise is indeed that of a complete removal of any sort of noise. Is such a promise achievable? At what costs? Should noise, any form of noise, be removed? Is noise inevitably the dark side of any form of information? Is it the opposite of order? Are there contexts in which we can value its presence? Can noise turn into its purported opposite? Attendance at the Cambridge exhibition is what originally prompted some of the thoughts and ideas I explore in this paper. (shrink)

Using a range of examples from specific social sciences, the book both identifies the practical and theoretical procedures involved in the identification of the ...

Philosophers have established that certain ethically important val- ues are modally robust in the sense that they systematically deliver correlative benefits across a range of counterfactual scenarios. In this paper, we contend that recourse – the systematic process of reversing unfavorable decisions by algorithms and bureaucracies across a range of counterfactual scenarios – is such a modally ro- bust good. In particular, we argue that two essential components of a good life – temporally extended agency and trust – are under- (...) written by recourse. We critique existing approaches to the conceptualization, op- erationalization and implementation of recourse. Based on these criticisms, we suggest a revised approach to recourse and give ex- amples of how it might be implemented – especially for those who are least well off. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has strongly affected oncology patients. Many screening and treatment programs have been postponed or canceled, and such patients also experience fear of increased risk of exposure to the virus. In many cases, locus of control, coping flexibility, and perception of a supportive environment, specifically family resilience, can allow for positive emotional outcomes for individuals managing complex health conditions like cancer. This study aims to determine if family resilience, coping flexibility, and locus of control can mitigate (...) the negative affect caused by the pandemic and enhance positive affect in breast cancer patients. One hundred and fifty-four female patients with breast cancer completed the Walsh’s Family Resilience Questionnaire, the Perceived Ability to Cope With Trauma Scale, the Positive-Negative Affect Schedule, and the Mini Locus of Control Scale. Family resilience and internality of locus of control contribute significantly to positive affective responses. Family resilience is responsible for mitigating the negative affect perceived during the pandemic and is enhanced by external locus of control. Evidence suggests that clinical psychologists should develop and propose programs to support oncology patients’ family resilience, coping flexibility, and internal locus of control, allowing for decreased stress and improved adaptability for effectively managing cancer treatment during the pandemic. (shrink)

In the past two decades, epistemologists have significantly expanded the focus of their field. To the traditional question that has dominated the debate — under what conditions does belief amount to knowledge? — they have added questions about testimony, epistemic virtues and vices, epistemic trust, and more. This broadening of the range of epistemic concern has coincided with an expansion in conceptions of epistemic agency beyond the individualism characteristic of most earlier epistemology. We believe that these developments have not gone (...) far enough. While the weak anti-individualism we see in contemporary epistemology may be adequate for the kinds of cases it tends to focus on, a great deal of human knowledge production and transmission does not conform to these models. Furthermore, the dispositions and norms that are knowledge-conducive in the familiar cases may not be knowledge-conducive generally. In fact, dispositions that, at an individual level, count as epistemic vices may be epistemic virtues in common social contexts. We argue that this overlooked feature of human social life means that epistemology must become more deeply and pervasively social. (shrink)

L’idea di una costruzione logica del mondo (eines logischen Aufbaus der Welt), cruciale per la filosofia della scienza del XX secolo, non è nuova. La tradizione aristotelica ha giocato una parte fondamentale nello stabilire una connessione essenziale fra scienza e logica, come pure più avanti le discussioni filosofiche del primo periodo moderno. Parallelamente, il possibile utilizzo metodologico e pratico della logica ha spesso indirizzato il lavoro dei praticanti dell’arte medica, i pedagogisti, gli enciclopedisti, i riformisti sociali e i primi utilitaristi. (...) A partire dalla seconda metà del XX secolo assistiamo al consolidamento di due specifici orientamenti. Da un lato, la logica si è espansa fino ad includere un numero crescente di forme argomentative e discorsive applicate ai domini più disparati del ragionamento umano; dall’altro lato, la logica formale si è applicata con successo crescente a campi di riflessione altamente specializzata. In questa antologia sono raccolti contributi che prendono in considerazione prospettive storiche e contemporanee sui rapporti fra logica, epistemologia, le scienze e la pratica – prendendo le mosse da un convegno organizzato a Ca’ Foscari su questi temi nel maggio 2019. (shrink)

Self-regulation of learning is a key psychological factor that supports young athletes aiming to reach the elite level by promoting their involvement in deliberate practice. We contributed to the validation of the Italian version of the Bartulovic et al. Self-Regulation of Learning – Self-Report Scale for Sport Practice by testing its factorial structure, reliability, and measurement invariance among elite and non-elite football players, involving 415 male professional, semi-professional, and amateur youth academy players. The original six-factor structure did not fit the (...) data well and a five-factor solution was a better fit. This five-factor solution was measurement invariant across groups of elite and non-elite athletes. We found that elite athletes scored significantly higher than non-elite ones in each SRL subprocess. Implications for future validation studies and for the use of this tool are discussed. (shrink)

The paper explores the interplay among moral progress, evolution and moral realism. Although it is nearly uncontroversial to note that morality makes progress of one sort or another, it is far from uncontroversial to define what constitutes moral progress. In a minimal sense, moral progress occurs when a subsequent state of affairs is better than a preceding one. Moral realists conceive “it is better than” as something like “it more adequately reflects moral facts”; therefore, on a realist view, moral progress (...) can be associated with accumulations of moral knowledge. From an evolutionary perspective, on the contrary, since there cannot be something like moral knowledge, one might conclude there cannot even be such a thing as moral progress. More precisely, evolutionism urges us to ask whether we can acknowledge the existence of moral progress without being committed to moral realism. A promising strategy, I will argue, is to develop an account of moral progress based on moral understanding rather than moral knowledge. On this view, moral progress follows increases in moral understanding rather than accumulations of moral knowledge. Whether an understanding-based account of moral progress is feasible and what its implications for the notion itself of moral progress are, will be discussed. (shrink)

Across two studies, one of which was pre-registered, we find that a simple questionnaire that measures intellectual virtue and vice predicts how many fake news articles and conspiracy theories participants accept. This effect holds even when controlling for multiple demographic predictors, including age, household income, sex, education, ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, and news consumption. These results indicate that self-report is an adequate way to measure intellectual virtue and vice, which suggests that they are not fully immune to introspective awareness or (...) “stealthy” in the sense that Cassam (2015) argues. This is an important methodological result and may pave the way for future research on intellectual virtue and vice. (shrink)

John Doris and Friedrich Nietzsche have a lot in common. In addition to being provocative and humorous writers in their native idioms, they share a conception of human agency. It can be tiresome to point out the priority claims of an earlier philosopher, so I should say at the outset that I do so not to smugly insist that my guy got there first but to showcase a closely-allied perspective that may shed additional light and offer glimpses around blind corners. (...) In particular, I argue that Nietzsche anticipates both the anti-reflective and the dialogical aspects of Doris’s theory of agency. (shrink)

The two dominant theories relating to animal cruelty are critically reviewed. These are (1) the violence graduation hypothesis and (2) the deviance generalization hypothesis. The outcomes indicate very high consistency with the broader antisocial behavior and aggression literature, which is large and very robust. This strongly supports the validity of the animal cruelty theory proposals. Proposals that animal cruelty is one of the earliest indicators of externalizing disorders and that it is a marker of development along a more severe trajectory (...) of antisocial and aggressive behaviors are supported. The implications of these conclusions are discussed. (shrink)

The so-called Evolutionary Debunking Arguments are arguments that appeal to the evolutionary genealogy of our beliefs to undermine their justification. When applied to morality, such arguments are intended to undermine moral realism. In this paper I will discuss Andreas Mogensen’s recent effort to secure moral realism against EDAs. Mogensen attempts to undermine the challenge provided by EDAs in metaethics through the distinction between proximate and ultimate causes in biology. The problem with this move is that the proximate/ultimate distinction is misconceived. (...) If ultimate and proximate causes are properly understood to be complementary, such distinction cannot affect EDAs in metaethics. Therefore, I will argue, Mogensen’s argument fails and moral realism is still in danger. (shrink)

Research shows that animal cruelty shares many of the aetiologial pathways and risk factors that have been shown for other aggressive behaviors. The shared aetiology not only aids understanding of the co-occurrence that has been documented between animal cruelty and other aggressive and antisocial crimes, it also highlights the dangers over and above those to animals that are lurking where animal cruelty offenders remain unidentified and their crimes remain unsanctioned. This article reviews current understandings about the development of antisocial behaviors, (...) including human aggression, and animal cruelty behaviors. Available research leads one to ask, when individuals have been found to be guilty of animal cruelty, what other aggressive behaviors might they be guilty of? For young children, one must ask, are they victims of child abuse, are they living in circumstances of domestic violence, and/or what is the aggression or violence that they may have been witness to? Animal cruelty, and most aggressive behaviors from the later childhood years onward, are indicators of non-normative development. Early detection of such behaviors can provide a valuable opportunity to engage in preventative intervention for young people or for appropriate sanctions to be applied for adults. Such interventions would be beneficial for all, humans and animals alike. (shrink)

This article focuses on the animal cruelty, health, psychological and social consequences, as well as environmental consequences of an animal-based diet. Animals are intensively bred and raised in factory farms in the most inhumane ways. By far, the greatest numbers of animals reared and killed by humans every year is for human consumption. The numbers are estimated to be greater than 56 billion animals globally. The cruelty involved in the intensive farming of animals is the most widespread form of cruelty (...) imposed by humans on other species. This has significant implications for who we are as a species. Moreover, the belief that humans need to consume animal products to maintain good health has been seriously questioned over the past few decades. It is also a lifestyle choice that is responsible for significant damage to the environment. In contrast, a strong evidence base exists to show that a plant-based diet is health promoting and sustainable. Thus, by cultivating a culture of compassion toward nonhuman animals, current and future generations will benefit through better physical and psychological health and through markedly reduced damage to the planet and all of its inhabitants. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I have argued elsewhere that the psychological aspects of Nietzsche’s later works are best understood from a psychodynamic point of view. Nietzsche holds a view I dubbed the tenacity of the intentional : When an intentional state loses its object, a new object replaces the original; the state does not disappear entirely. In this article I amend and clarify T to T“: When an intentional state with a subpropositional object loses its object, the affective component of the state persists (...) without a corresponding object, and that affect will generally be redeployed in a state with a distinct object. I then trace the development of the tenacity thesis through Nietzsche’s early and middle works. Along the way, I discuss a number of related topics, including the scope of the tenacity thesis, the reflexive turn one often finds in Nietzsche’s examples, and the relations among will to power, drives, and the tenacity of the intentional. (shrink)

This paper presents two studies on the development and validation of a ten-item scale of epistemic vice and the relationship between epistemic vice and misinformation and fake news. Epistemic vices have been defined as character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. Examples of epistemic vice are gullibility and indifference to knowledge. It has been hypothesized that epistemically vicious people are especially susceptible to misinformation and conspiracy theories. We conducted one exploratory and one confirmatory observational survey study on (...) Amazon Mechanical Turk among people living in the United States. We show that two psychological traits underlie the range of epistemic vices that we investigated: indifference to truth and rigidity. Indifference manifests itself in a lack of motivation to find the truth. Rigidity manifests itself in being insensitive to evidence. We develop a scale to measure epistemic vice with the subscales indifference and rigidity. The Epistemic Vice Scale is internally consistent; has good convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity; and is strongly associated with the endorsement of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Epistemic vice explains additional variance in the endorsement of misinformation and conspiracy theories over and above demographic and related psychological concepts and shows medium to large effect sizes across outcome measures. We demonstrate that epistemic vice differs from existing psychological constructs, and show that the scale can explain individual differences in dealing with misinformation and conspiracy theories. We conclude that epistemic vice might contribute to “postfactive” ways of thinking. (shrink)

Contemporary virtue epistemology (hereafter ‘VE’) is a diverse collection of approaches to epistemology. At least two central tendencies are discernible among the approaches. First, they view epistemology as a normative discipline. Second, they view intellectual agents and communities as the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, with a focus on the intellectual virtues and vices embodied in and expressed by these agents and communities. -/- This entry introduces many of the most important results of the contemporary VE research program. These include (...) novel attempts to resolve longstanding disputes, solve perennial problems, grapple with novel challenges, and expand epistemology’s horizons. In the process, it reveals the diversity within VE. Beyond sharing the two unifying commitments mentioned above, its practitioners diverge over the nature of intellectual virtues, which questions to ask, and which methods to use. -/- It will be helpful to note some terminology before proceeding. First, we use ‘cognitive’, ‘epistemic’ and ‘intellectual’ synonymously. Second, we often use ‘normative’ broadly to include not only norms and rules, but also duties and values. Finally, ‘practitioners’ names contemporary virtue epistemologists. (shrink)

Why are mistaken beliefs about Covid-19 so prevalent? Political identity, education and other demographic variables explain only a part of individual differences in the susceptibility to Covid-19 misinformation. This paper focuses on another explanation: epistemic vice. Epistemic vices are character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. If the basic assumption of vice epistemology is right, then people with epistemic vices such as indifference to the truth or rigidity in their belief structures will tend to be more susceptible (...) to believing Covid-19 misinformation. We carried out an observational study (US sample, n = 998) in which we measured the level of epistemic vice of participants using a novel Epistemic Vice Scale. We also asked participants questions eliciting the extent to which they subscribe to myths and misinformation about Covid-19. We find overwhelming evidence to the effect that epistemic vice is associated with susceptibility to Covid-19 misinformation. In fact, the association turns out to be stronger than with political identity, educational attainment, scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test, personality, dogmatism, and need for closure. We conclude that this offers evidence in favor of the empirical presuppositions of vice epistemology. (shrink)

Risk management is a well-known method to face technological challenges through a win–win combination of protective and proactive approaches, fostering the collaboration of operators, researchers, regulators, and industries for the exploitation of new markets. In the field of autonomous and unmanned aerial systems, or UAS, a considerable amount of work has been devoted to risk analysis, the generation of ground risk maps, and ground risk assessment by estimating the fatality rate. The paper aims to expand this approach with a tool (...) for managing data protection risks raised by drones through the design of flight maps. The tool should allow UAS operators choosing the best air corridor for their drones based on the so-called privacy by design principle pursuant to Article 25 of the EU data protection regulation, the GDPR. Among the manifold applications of this approach, the design of fly zones for drones can be tailored for public authorities in the phase of authorization of new operations, much as for national Data Protection authorities that have to control the lawfulness of personal data processing by UAS operations. The overall aim is to present the first win–win approach to data protection issues, aerospace engineering challenges, and risk management methods for the threats posed by this technology. (shrink)

Risk management is a well-known method to face technological challenges through a win–win combination of protective and proactive approaches, fostering the collaboration of operators, researchers, regulators, and industries for the exploitation of new markets. In the field of autonomous and unmanned aerial systems, or UAS, a considerable amount of work has been devoted to risk analysis, the generation of ground risk maps, and ground risk assessment by estimating the fatality rate. The paper aims to expand this approach with a tool (...) for managing data protection risks raised by drones through the design of flight maps. The tool should allow UAS operators choosing the best air corridor for their drones based on the so-called privacy by design principle pursuant to Article 25 of the EU data protection regulation, the GDPR. Among the manifold applications of this approach, the design of fly zones for drones can be tailored for public authorities in the phase of authorization of new operations, much as for national Data Protection authorities that have to control the lawfulness of personal data processing by UAS operations. The overall aim is to present the first win–win approach to data protection issues, aerospace engineering challenges, and risk management methods for the threats posed by this technology. (shrink)

Risk management is a well-known method to face technological challenges through a win–win combination of protective and proactive approaches, fostering the collaboration of operators, researchers, regulators, and industries for the exploitation of new markets. In the field of autonomous and unmanned aerial systems, or UAS, a considerable amount of work has been devoted to risk analysis, the generation of ground risk maps, and ground risk assessment by estimating the fatality rate. The paper aims to expand this approach with a tool (...) for managing data protection risks raised by drones through the design of flight maps. The tool should allow UAS operators choosing the best air corridor for their drones based on the so-called privacy by design principle pursuant to Article 25 of the EU data protection regulation, the GDPR. Among the manifold applications of this approach, the design of fly zones for drones can be tailored for public authorities in the phase of authorization of new operations, much as for national Data Protection authorities that have to control the lawfulness of personal data processing by UAS operations. The overall aim is to present the first win–win approach to data protection issues, aerospace engineering challenges, and risk management methods for the threats posed by this technology. (shrink)

This paper presents the collective reflection of a temporary community of inquiry (COI) created during an international workshop at the 20th biennial ICPIC conference--“Philosophy In And Beyond the Classroom: P4wc Across Cultural, Social, and Political Differences”-- and the suggestions emerging from that event. The workshop, entitled “Pedagojazz—improvising and inquiring, community interplay”, was conducted via Zoom, but participants were both online and present in person. The topic focused on the pedagojazz perspective, and the short activities proposed were aimed at involving the (...) (temporary) COI in a collective discussion about how it would be possible to transform a community of inquiry into an inquiring-jazzing community. Three premises were introduced as common background on which to develop our reflections: the pedagojazz perspective; the connection between pedagojazz idioms and the different roles of the facilitator in P4wC; and the idea that jazz, and collective improvisation in particular, can inform COI development. The principles and practices of pedagojazz and collective improvisation are presented in detail here. During the workshop, Zoom chat and the Wooclap site were used to involve all participants and to gather their contributions and suggestions. A word cloud and three tables were produced and are presented here. Interesting themes, questions and perspectives emerged that can help us reflect in a more complex way on the education of P4wC facilitators across cultural, social and political differences. (shrink)

Le but de cet article est de contribuer au débat sur la relation entre les pratiques prédictives et l’orthodoxie religieuse, telle qu’elle est exposée dans le Liber introductorius de Michel Scot. Au cœur de ce travail se trouve l’étude de la discussion de l’interprétation des signes inhabituels et des événements inattendus par Michel Scot, à la fois dans le Liber quatuor distinctionum et le Liber particularis. L’analyse de nouvelles preuves textuelles, jusque là passées inaperçues, permettra par ailleurs la réévaluation de (...) la réception de Michel Scot en tant qu’autorité dans le domaine des pratiques prédictives. (shrink)