O ensaio procura investigar a ideia de educação moral defendida por Jean Piaget em sua conferência intitulada “Os procedimentos de educação moral”, proferida em Paris, no ano de 1930. Concentra-se em reconstruir o núcleo central apresentado pelo autor, ou seja, a tensão entre a dupla moralidade e a ambiguidade entre heteronomia e autonomia que constitui a moralidade infantil e que se alicerça em sentimentos de respeito opostos, de unilateralidade e de reciprocidade. Ocupa-se também em confrontar os procedimentos típicos da educação (...) tradicional com os procedimentos próprios da educação progressiva que impulsionam a posição ativa do educando para a construção dos aspectos da internalização da lei e da possibilidade das relações de cooperação e respeito pelo outro nos grupos de convivência, especialmente no período da infância. Destaca a necessária presença do adulto, como aquele que exerce o papel de mediação na relação entre ele, a criança e o mundo, principalmente do professor na educação infantil pela compreensão do domínio psicológico da infância, para pensarmos por que a criança age, como ela age e de que forma age. Por fim, conclui procurando mostrar a atualidade desta reflexão do jovem Piaget para os nossos dias, mesmo se passando quase um século, revelando a importância da releitura dos clássicos para a reflexão, compreensão e intervenção em problemáticas educacionais atuais. Sua crítica ao autoritarismo inerente à determinada concepção de educação moral serve ainda como resistência ao conservadorismo autoritário atual e, ao mesmo tempo, para reestabelecer os laços cooperativos e solidários proporcionados pela ampla tradição da educação moral autônoma, oferecendo as condições intelectuais e psicológicas necessárias para o desenvolvimento saudável e o ingresso autônomo na sociedade adulta. (shrink)

: The open-ended character of natural languages calls for the hypothesis that humans are endowed with a recursive procedure generating sentences which are hierarchically organized. Structural relations such as c-command, expressed on hierarchical sentential representations, determine all sorts of formal and interpretive properties of sentences. The relevant computational principles are well beyond the reach of conscious introspection, so that studying such properties requires the formulation of precise formal hypotheses, and empirically testing them. This article illustrates all these aspects of linguistic (...) research through the discussion of non-coreference effects. The article argues in favor of the formal linguistic approach based on hierarchical structures, and against alternatives based on vague notions of “analogical generalization”, and/or exploiting mere linear order. In the final part, the issue of cross-linguistic invariance and variation of non-coreference effects is addressed. Keywords: Linguistic Knowledge; Morphosyntactic Properties; Unconscious Computations; Coreference; Linguistic Representations Conoscenza linguistica e computazioni inconsce Riassunto: Il carattere aperto del linguaggio naturale avvalora l’ipotesi che gli esseri umani siano dotati di una procedura ricorsiva che genera frasi gerarchicamente organizzate. Relazioni strutturali come il c-comando, espresse su rappresentazioni frasali gerarchiche, determinano tutte le proprietà formali e interpretative delle frasi. I principi computazionali rilevanti sono totalmente al di fuori della portata della coscienza introspettiva e così lo studio di tali proprietà richiede la formulazione di precise ipotesi formali e la loro verifica sperimentale. Questo articolo illustra tutti questi aspetti della ricerca linguistica, esaminando gli effetti di non-coreferenza. Si argomenta in favore dell’approccio linguistico formale basato su strutture gerarchiche e contro alternative basate su vaghe nozioni di “generalizzazione analogica” e/o che impiegano il semplice ordine lineare. Nella parte finale si affronta il tema dell’invarianza e della variazione cross-linguistica degli effetti di non-coreferenza. Parole chiave: Conoscenza linguistica; Proprietà morfosintattiche; Computazioni inconsce; Coreferenzialità; Rappresentazioni linguistiche. (shrink)

In On Nature and Language Noam Chomsky develops his thinking on the relation between language, mind and brain, integrating current research in linguistics into the burgeoning field of neuroscience. This 2002 volume begins with a lucid introduction by the editors Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi. This is followed by some of Chomsky's writings on these themes, together with a penetrating interview in which Chomsky provides the clearest and most elegant introduction to current theory available. It should make his Minimalist Program (...) accessible to all. The volume concludes with an essay on the role of intellectuals in society and government. Nature and Language is a significant landmark in the development of linguistic theory. It will be welcomed by students and researchers in theoretical linguistics, neurolinguistics, cognitive science and politics, as well as anyone interested in the development of Chomsky's thought. (shrink)

In this article I will try to show that economic inequality, the militarization of states, hatred and violence are the main causes of most armed conflicts. By supporting my argument upon a line originated in the East, but which is not unknown in Western thought, I propose to go on researching both Gandhian pacifism and some values consciously cultivated by Buddhism, such as the value of universal compassion, which are very important to strengthen a culture of peace.

In this paper we document the developmental trajectory of the complementizer system (CP-system) in Italian by looking at the earliest spontaneous production of eleven young children, whose transcriptions are available on CHILDES. We conducted a novel corpus analysis, tracking down a number of constructions in which the clausal left-periphery is activated. First, we considered the appearance of the different complementizer particles in the CP-system, which overtly realize the three distinct functional projections ForceP, IntP, and FinP. The analysis revealed that children (...) acquiring Italian correctly use these complementizer particles already in the third year of life. Second, we looked for the simultaneous activation of different functional projections within the CP-system. We went through our corpus searching for complex sentences in which more than one constituent was moved to the left periphery. This option is allowed by the adult grammar of Italian and, as our search revealed, it is also attested in the grammar of young children. Soon after their second birthday, sequences in which a left-dislocated Topic and a Wh- element co-occur are attested, directly supporting the existence of a (high) Topic position above FocusP. Moreover, movement in general conforms to the constraints of the adult grammar, with no attested violation of obligatory inversion (a consequence of the Q-Criterion). Importantly, “why-questions” did not require inversion, much as in the adult grammar of Italian. Taken together, children's use of complementizer particles and their activation of multiple landing sites for movement show that 2-year-olds already possess a richly articulated functional structure of the CP-system, aligned to the layered adult structure. In concluding the paper, we also discuss some temporal differences between constructions activating high and low portions of the CP-system. In particular, we detect a temporal precedence for wh-questions over why-questions. Since the former activate a lower projection, this is consistent with the recently proposedGrowing Treeshypothesis, according to which the development of the CP-system proceeds stepwise. (shrink)

The distinction between open and closed class items represents a fundamental bifurcation in the mental lexicon. It proved useful to express certain basic generalisations in linguistics and in the study of language acquisition and language pathology. The distinction is too rough tough: it must be refined by paying attention to the computational properties of the two classes and their division of labor in the generation of complex expressions. It will be shown how the distinction is expressed within current linguistic models (...) of the principles and parameters / minimalist type. (shrink)

The distinction between open and closed class items represents a fundamental bifurcation in the mental lexicon. It proved useful to express certain basic generalisations in linguistics and in the study of language acquisition and language pathology. The distinction is too rough tough: it must be refined by paying attention to the computational properties of the two classes and their division of labor in the generation of complex expressions. It will be shown how the distinction is expressed within current linguistic models (...) of the principles and parameters / minimalist type. (shrink)

L’article essaie d’expliquer la nature éthique de l’action par l’analyse de la peine. C’est dans la justification de l’acte pénal que Hegel présenta le premier noyau de la dialectique qui « dépasse » et relativise le commandement du droit positif. C’est même dans la justification de l’action pénale que Hegel expose de façon systématique le principe capital selon lequel le droit n’est réellement juste que lorsqu’il se constitue comme un acte « reconnaissable » par le destinataire.

L’article essaie d’expliquer la nature éthique de l’action par l’analyse de la peine. C’est dans la justification de l’acte pénal que Hegel présenta le premier noyau de la dialectique qui « dépasse » et relativise le commandement du droit positif. C’est même dans la justification de l’action pénale que Hegel expose de façon systématique le principe capital selon lequel le droit n’est réellement juste que lorsqu’il se constitue comme un acte « reconnaissable » par le destinataire.

Modern linguistics has highlighted the fundamental invariance of human language: A rich invariant structure has emerged from comparative studies nourished by sophisticated formal models; languages also differ along important dimensions, but variation is constrained in severe and systematic ways. I illustrate this research direction in the domains of island constraints, word order restrictions, and the expression of referential dependencies. Both language invariance and language variability within systematic limits are highly relevant for the cognitive sciences.

Objective: The present work aims to conduct the first naturalistic empirical investigation of the process and outcome assessment of functional psychotherapy treatment. The FP model of psychotherapy is rooted in psychoanalysis and integrates the verbal communication approach founded on transference and countertransference dynamics with the analysis of bodily processes.Method: The study sample included ten patients recruited on a voluntary basis and treated by clinicians in their private practices. Each patient received FP with an average duration of 40 h. Therapies had (...) weekly sessions, were audio-recorded with the patient’s written consent, and lasted for an average of 10 months. Outcome and process tools included the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 and the Luborsky’s the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme, used to assess therapeutic benefit, and the Metacognition Assessment Scale and the Italian Discourse Attributes Analysis Program system, used to evaluate therapeutic benefit and process. The MMPI-2 was used also in the follow-up assessment.Results: Results show that FP had a positive therapeutic outcome on the patients assessed in this study, and that the therapeutic benefits were maintained over time. Some specific features of the FP approach were found to contribute more than others to the observed therapeutic benefits.Conclusion: The current investigation constitutes a first step toward assessment of the therapeutic effectiveness of FP. Future developments should apply the methodology to a larger sample, possibly introducing different methodologies to enable detection of specific bodily oriented processes and techniques. (shrink)