In questo articolo i doni di cui Gerolamo ringrazia Eustochio e Marcella (epist. 31 e 44) sono riletti alla luce della tradizione classica dello scambio di regali, collegata specialmente ai Saturnalia: infatti, da un lato, essi trovano riscontro negli Xenia e negli Apohoreta di Marziale; dall’altro, Gerolamo, quando ne fornisce un’interpretazione, si conforma a un tipo di ricezione attiva del dono – una sua “decifrazione” –, che talora è attestata nella tradizione antica, specialmente saturnalizia (cfr. e.g. Petron. 56). In (...) termini più generali, Gerolamo realizza un’appropriazione cristiana dello scambio dei regali, offrendo un saggio di come la nuova “aristocrazia della fede”, da lui propugnata, non disdegni di rivivere i “riti” e l’etichetta propri delle élites, con l’intenzione sia di esserne legittimata agli occhi del mondo, sia – forse – di restituirli al loro significato vero. (shrink)

This paper examines how Descartes’ philosophy was presented and discussed in articles and reviews published in Mind from 1900 to 1947, a period in which this most prestigious British philosophical journal was edited by George F. Stout (until 1920) and then by George E. Moore (from 1921 to 1947). The survey deals with various aspects of the reception of Cartesian philosophy in the journal: articles devoted to several topics of Cartesian thought, critical notices and reviews of the secondary literature, discussions (...) of twentieth-century English translations of Cartesian works. In line with the theoretical character of Mind, most of the interpreters discussed Cartesian philosophy with the aim either of checking its internal consistency or of proving how the Cartesian system might be rendered consistent with its own premises. In this respect, all the themes revolving around the problem of the Cartesian circle attracted the attention of commentators, and the intuitionist foundation of Cartesian theory was analyzed. Descartes’ metaphysics and natural philosophy were often evaluated from the perspective of contemporary philosophical debates, while their original historical context was neglected. Of particular relevance were issues like the mind-body problem, discussed at the beginning of the century in relation to developments in psychology, and the question of the existence of the external world, which was examined from various standpoints, metaphysically, epistemologically and from the point of view of linguistic analysis. Interest in Descartes was shown by many authors from major philosophers (such as Ward, Schiller, Taylor, Broad, Ryle) to lesser known scholars whose profiles and contributions are outlined. Through the angle of the Cartesian presence a sketch emerges of the rich and variegated philosophical scene of British culture in the first half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Legislation for dementia care needs to be continually rethought, if the rights of older persons and other persons with dementia are to be addressed properly. We propose a theoretical framework for understanding vulnerability and dependency, which enables us to problematize the currently prevailing legal conception of adults as always able — irrespective of health or age — to act autonomously in their everyday lives. Such an approach gives rise to difficult dilemmas when persons with dementia are forced to make decisions (...) on their own about basic living conditions, such as housing and care, without decision-making support. In Sweden, for example, such matters are frequently left to the person him- or herself to decide, often without any assistance from social workers, and with family members serving as caregivers of last resort.Using vulnerability theory as the framework for our discussion, we argue that policymakers should not apply a group-oriented approach (based on factors like age, legal status, or mental capacity) to persons suffering from dementia. The needs of such individuals are as complex and varied as they themselves are. We discuss our findings from an interdisciplinary (law/social work) research project in which we examine the dilemma that social workers face when they are required, under the terms of the Swedish Social Services Act, to determine whether persons with dementia are to be granted support.We argue further that a cross-disciplinary approach — in which vulnerability theory furnishes the framework — opens up for new ways of understanding and developing social welfare law and practice. This, we believe, can help us better address the rights, interests, and needs of people with dementia, of their families, and of professionals in the social welfare system. Finally, many of the problems faced by ageing societies in general can be understood on the basis of such an approach. (shrink)

As a scientific, materialist worldview becomes increasingly difficult to repudiate, and as philosophers increasingly uncover and articulate the conceptual nature of morality and distinctively moral normativity, the threat of moral anti-realism becomes more and more real. This perspective is argued in Chapter One. Chapter Two discusses how laws and bioethical trends that pertain to the clinical management of patients in a vegetative coma differ from country to country and continue to give rise to unresolved legal debates and scientific controversy. Chapter (...) Three covers how caregivers in palliative care must be supported to better understand patients hopes and needs, making them comfortable to decide when or how much they want to eat. Chapter Four synthesises findings from four empirical studies conducted in Western Africa (Togo) on topics related to the autonomy (end of life decision-making among terminally-ill patients), benevolence and non-malevolence (breaking bad news to elderly patients and their families), and justice (informal payments to physicians, criminal prosecution in cases of HIV transmission) principles of bioethics. Finally, Chapter Five argues that expert members in Ethics committees have an unfair upper-hand, with their decisions trumping other debates in committee deliberations. Qualitative research is brought to bear which illustrates this and which also notes how expertise dilutes the training given to newly appointed ethics committee members. (shrink)

ArgumentFollowing an international trend, Italy has reformed its university system, especially concerning methods and tools for research evaluation, which are increasingly focused on a number of bibliometric indexes. To study the effects of these changes, we analyze the changing profiles of economists who have won competitions for full professorship in the last few decades in the country. We concentrate on individual characteristics and on scientific production. We show that the identification of a univocal and standardized concept of “research quality” within (...) the new research assessments has progressively imposed a strategy of “homologation,” especially for women. We find that women economists are at a higher risk of discrimination than their male colleagues and thus they are more likely to conform their research activities to the standardized profile imposed by the gender-blind application of simplistic bibliometric methods. (shrink)

Stephen Davies taught philosophy at the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. His research specialty is the philosophy of art. He is a former President of the American Society for Aesthetics. His books include Definitions of Art (Cornell UP, 1991), Musical Meaning and Expression (Cornell UP, 1994), Musical Works and Performances (Clarendon, 2001), Themes in the Philosophy of Music (OUP, 2003), Philosophical Perspectives on Art (OUP, 2007), Musical Understandings and Other Essays on the Philosophy of Music (OUP, 2011), The Artful (...) Species: Aesthetics, Art, and Evolution (OUP, 2012), The Philosophy of Art (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016 second ed.), and Adornment: What Self-decorations Tells Us about Who We Are, (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). (shrink)

Aristotle often describes virtue in an idealized way, indicating that the virtuous person will never err or have a bad desire. Yet, drawing from empirical work on character and personality, many philosophers and psychologists believe that most people’s behavior stems from situational factors and that good behavior often stems from the wrong motives, such as maintaining a good mood or relieving feelings of guilt. Further, some suggest that the variability in most people’s behavior raises a challenge to traditional categories of (...) character such as virtue, vice, continence, and incontinence. Thus, it may seem impossible to develop virtue and that people lack character as Aristotle conceived of it. Drawing from Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Politics, I develop accounts of actual virtue and the character of ordinary people and respond to these two concerns. (shrink)

The globalism objection poses two distinct challenges to Aristotelian views of virtue. On the one hand, the consistency thesis demands that a virtue is behaviorally expressed in a wide range of trait-relevant situations. On the other hand, the evaluative integration thesis suggests that the presence of one virtue increases the probability of other, similar virtues, posing a problem for Aristotle’s reciprocity of the virtues thesis. I show that, by contrast to contemporary Aristotelian views and views attributed to Aristotle, Aristotle’s own (...) theory of virtue escapes the globalism objection. I address the consistency thesis by showing that each of Aristotle’s moral virtues are narrower than commonly assumed. I then address the evaluative integration thesis through a discussion of practical wisdom, showing that Aristotle believed one could fall short of perfect virtue, while still being fully virtuous. The upshot is that, despite idealizations of virtue throughout the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle held a realistic account of virtue, one that is different from contemporary Aristotelian views, and one that is empirically adequate insofar as it allows for more than a few virtuous people. (shrink)

This contribution contextualizes the relationship between fragility and education in the light of people’s changing conditions and perspectives, and their impact on educational processes, focusing in particular on the consequences of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. By doing so, it introduces this focus, illustrates its coherence, and explains the basic methodological choice, namely the adoption of the Systematic Review, to explore different aspects of the relationship between fragility and education.

The article proposes looking at children's literature, particularly the form of the picture book, as an educational resource for producing body awareness in school. Eight reading steps for as many bodily actions aimed at naming the body, activating it, getting to know it and moving it in space, on and off the pages; between grounding, listening, breathing, playing and moving, the rediscovery of gestures and anatomical truths invites to deepen self-knowledge as a preliminary act to the encounter and relationship with (...) the other and with the environment. The picture books by their specificities of short form and cross-over, offer, even in non-fiction production, the possibility of bringing attention back to the body dimension within the school and educational debate, where it lives today in a state of malaise and oblivion. Meaningful conversations, explorations and relationships flow from the pages of the albums: research on language as a tool that gives dignity and value to each person, and encounters with the artistic representation of the world as an infinite mirror of its multiplicity and variety, constitute valuable opportunities for an education that is aware of the wholeness of learners and teachers and the integrated, erotic and embodied dimension of their relationship. (shrink)

Increasingly, biologists are using computers to model and to create biological representations. However, the exponential growth in available biological dataposes a challenge for experimental and theoretical researchers in both Biology and in Computer Science. In short, when even the simple retrieval of relevant biological information for a researcher becomes a complex task — its analysis and synthesis with other biological information will become even more daunting and unlikely. In this context, specially organized ‘structures of representation’ are needed for the efficient (...) interpretation of experimentally generated data. The “semantic Web” is a recent trend in networking techniques that we will examine here as a possible strategy for the computation of biological data — one that may allow us to take into account both the semiotic dimensions of biological processes, as well as their dynamic organization into stable and systemic levels. Thereupon, we propose that a semantic network for biology could benefit from principles rooted in such previous representation efforts as computer-generated ‘landscapes’ and ‘physical attractors’ — and that such principles could, in turn, then be better integrated into biological research through the development of a more semiotically informed user / computer interface design. (shrink)

BackgroundCognitive dysfunctions, both subjective and detectable at psychometric testing, may follow SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, the ecological-functional relevance of such objective deficits is currently under-investigated. This study thus aimed at investigating the association between objective cognitive measures and both physical and cognitive, ecological-functional outcomes in post-COVID-19.MethodsForty-two COVID-19-recovered individuals were administered the Mini-Mental State Examination and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. The Functional Independence Measure was adopted to assess functional-ecological, motor/physical and cognitive outcomes at admission and discharge.ResultsWhen predicting both T0/T1 FIM-total and-Motor scores (...) based on MMSE/MoCA scores, premorbid risk for cognitive decline and disease-related features, no model yielded a significant fit. However, the MoCA - but not the MMSE significantly predicted T0/T1 FIM-Cognitive scores. The MoCA was significantly related only to T0/T1 FIM-Cognitive Memory items.DiscussionCognitive measures are not associated with physical/motor everyday-life outcomes in post-COVID-19 patients. The MoCA may provide an ecological estimate of cognitive functioning in this population. (shrink)

Aim of this study was to investigate whether parental mental representations during pregnancy and after delivery differed between parents who conceived after Assisted Reproductive Treatments and spontaneous conceiving parents. Effects of specific ART variables were also taken into account. Seventeen ART couples and 25 SC couples were recruited at Santa Maria Nuova Hospital. At both 32 weeks of gestation and 3 months postpartum participants completed the Semantic Differential of the IRMAG, a self-report tool which measures specific domains of mental representations (...) pertaining either individual or parental characteristics. Results showed that ART parents had significantly more positive representations of the child compared to SC parents, while the scores at Partner dimension improved from T1 to T2 for SC parents only. With regards to ART history, scores at the Self-as-woman/man dimension were significantly less positive for ICSI than IVF parents and improved substantially from T1 to T2 only in case of mothers with previous ART attempts and of fathers at the first ART cycle. The representation of own parents increased from T1 to T2 in case of infertility diagnosis due to male factors, while a decrease emerged when infertility was due to female factors. Findings suggest the need to investigate parental mental representations after ART, in order to improve the understanding on the transition to parenthood of infertile couples and to target more specific intervention for parenting support. (shrink)

In Berkeley’s writings the topic of light is discussed in two different ways, within a theory of perception and within a metaphysics of nature of a Platonic stamp. In his first work, the original Essay for a New Theory of Vision, light and colours are regarded as condition and object of vision; they are examined as contents of visual perception distinct from tangible perception. Light will be dealt with in a completely different manner in Berkeley’s last work, Siris, in which (...) a spiritualistic reading of the natural world is superimposed on modern science in general and on Newtonian physics in particular. In Siris, light is the instrument by which the causal activity of divine Intellect orders and permeates the natural world. A detailed analysis of the topic of light in the two aforementioned contexts shows inconsistencies and strained interpretations which derive from the apologetic use of the theory of vision in Berkeley’s early immaterialism and from the multi-layered and confused speculations of his late Siris. On the whole, Berkeley conceives light within the idealistic frame inherited from Platonic metaphysics of light; however, the specific themes examined in the Essay for a New Theory of Vision and in Siris derive from acquisitions of modern science, and are recast within a spiritualistic interpretation which intended both to neutralize scientific ideas through their phenomenistic reading and to exploit them for apologetic ends. (shrink)

This qualitative classroom study investigated the development of pragmatic competence in academic discussions through content analysis of student reflective writing. The aims of the study were: to understand the greatest challenges that students faced during the learning process, the causes of those challenges, and the most successful strategies that students employed to overcome the challenges. In addition, the analysis investigated other significant themes in the reflective writing that related to the students’ experiences in developing their pragmatic competence in discussions. Five (...) advanced English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students at a Sino-US institution in China participated over the course of a semester. Results showed that common challenges included: hesitation resulting in missed opportunities to speak, lack of clarity when speaking, inability to repair communication breakdowns, and difficulty with listening comprehension. Self-reflection allowed the learners to understand the various reasons for the challenges they faced and to develop appropriate pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic strategies for coping with them. It also enabled the instructor to make suggestions suited to learners’ specific needs. In addition to revealing specific challenges, causes, and strategies that students employed, themes that emerged through content analysis included the impact of students’ emotional lives on their learning and performance, as well as the value of authentic communication in the development of pragmatic competence for academic discussions. This exploratory classroom investigation provides suggestions for teaching pragmatic competence in academic discussions and for additional classroom explorations that empower learners to develop autonomy. (shrink)

In light of the structural role of computational technology in the expansion of modern global finance, this essay investigates the ontology of contemporary markets starting from a reformulation of liquidity—one of the tenets of financial trading. Focusing on the nexus between financial and algorithmic flows, the paper complements contemporary philosophies of the market with insights into recent theories of computation, emphasizing the functional role of contingency, both for market trading and algorithmic processes. Considering the increasing adoption of advanced computational methods (...) in automated trading strategies, this article argues that the event of price is the direct manifestation of the incomputability at the heart of market exchange. In doing so, it questions the ontological assumptions of “flow” and “fluidity” underpinning traditional conceptions of liquidity and challenges the notion of rationality in market behavior. Ultimately, the paper gestures toward some of the social and political consequences of this reformulation. (shrink)