The current study provides data about the immediate risk perceptions and psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic among Italian participants. A sample of 1034 volunteers answered a web-based survey which aimed to investigate the many facets of risk perceptions connected to COVID-19 (health, work, economy, social and psychological), and risk-related variables such as knowledge, news seeking, perceived control, efficacy of containment measures, and affective states. Socio-demographic characteristics were also collected. Results showed that although levels of general concern are relatively high (...) among Italians, risk perceptions are highest with regards to the economy and work, and lowest concerning health. Cognitive and affective risk-related variables affected the several risk perception domains differently. COVID-19 knowledge did not affect any risk perception while the perceived control decreased health risk likelihood. The other risk-related variables amplified risk perceptions: News seeking increased work-economy risk; efficacy of containment measures increased all perceived risks; negative affective states of fear, anger and sadness increased health and psycho-social risks; anxiety increased only health risk, and uncertainty increased work-economy and psycho-social risk perceptions. Finally, positive affective states increased health risk perception. Socio-psychological implications are discussed. (shrink)

This paper aims to demonstrate how museum collection sustainability is grounded in a range of concrete care practices that are social and material. It explores the unstable nature of heritage materials, drawing on the ecological approach of infrastructure and maintenance studies in the field of art and museums. To do this, I analyse the role of mundane operations in the daily functioning of an exhibition area, presenting data from fieldwork I conducted from 2015–2016 at the Musée du quai Branly in (...) Paris, which preserves collections of art and ethnology from outside Europe. I observed the museum's preventive conservation practices, which work to minimise the risks of material deterioration of heritage objects, focusing attention on stabilising the relationship between objects and their environments. These practices contribute to the construction of the temporalities of museum objects. In exploring the means and devices of preserving these heritage objects, the very assumption of perpetuation is destabilised. Environments continually unfold with the silent material metamorphosis of objects. The exhibition becomes a place of flows, where a multitude of entities circulate and cohabit at different scales, such as insects, dust, and powdery fragments. The daily human work of vacuuming, cleaning, trapping, and measuring provide a set of actions united with other entities engaged in the material life of the exhibited object. As we zoom in on the exhibition space, different timelines emerge that are inextricably linked to the different lives of the museum. (shrink)

The notion of transgenerational community is usually based on two diachronic interactions. The first interaction consists of present generations taking up the legacy (not only economic, but also institutional, artistic, cultural, and so forth) of past generations and giving it continuity, exercising a form of active agency. The second interaction occurs when present generations pass on their legacy to future generations. This is supposed to expand the boundaries of the community in a transgenerational sense (both backward- and forward-looking). In this (...) article we argue that the transgenerational community can be grounded on a different ontological insight: future generations play the role of fictional actors for present generations, i.e., present generations entertain a present-time interaction with future generations, insofar as future generations are functional for the realization of transgenerational actions. This lays the foundations for more solid community-based bonds of intergenerational justice. (shrink)

The ability of a group of adults with high functioning autism (HFA) or Asperger Syndrome (AS) to distinguish moral, conventional and disgust transgressions was investigated using a set of six transgression scenarios, each of which was followed by questions about permissibility, seriousness, authority contingency and justification. The results showed that although individuals with HFA or AS (HFA/AS) were able to distinguish affect-backed norms from conventional affect-neutral norms along the dimensions of permissibility, seriousness and authority-dependence, they failed to distinguish moral and (...) disgust transgressions along the seriousness dimension and were unable to provide appropriate welfare-based moral justifications. Moreover, they judged conventional and disgust transgressions to be more serious than did the comparison group, and the correlation analysis revealed that the seriousness rating was related to their ToM impairment. We concluded that difficulties providing appropriate moral justifications and evaluating the seriousness of transgressions in individuals with HFA/AS may be explained by an impaired cognitive appraisal system that, while responsive to rule violations, fails to use relevant information about the agent’s intentions and the affective impact of the action outcome in conscious moral reasoning. (shrink)

In this study, we investigated the relationships between judgments of intentionality and moral evaluation in individuals with High Functioning Autism (HFA) or Asperger Syndrome (AS). HFA or AS are neurodevelopmental disorders characterised by severe deficits in communication and social functioning. Impairments in Theory of Mind (ToM), i.e., the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and to others, are thought to be the core features of autism. Of all mental states, the concept of ‘intentional action’ is particularly important. People normally (...) distinguish between actions that are performed intentionally and those that are performed unintentionally and this distinction plays a crucial role in social understanding and moral judgment. Recently, Knobe (Analysis 63: 190–193, 2003a ), (Philosophical Psychology 16: 309–324, 2003b ) showed that people’s moral evaluations might serve as input to the process by which people intuitively arrive at the intentionality judgments. Here, by using two pairs of vignettes, the Knobe’s Harm/Help cases and Murder/Bull’s-eye cases, we showed that, as already observed in typical population, in individuals with HFA/AS judgment of intentional action is informed by the moral appreciation of the action outcome. However, the two groups differed on praise judgments and moral justifications, suggesting that these processes were poorly influenced by the agent’s psychological states. We concluded that, although under certain circumstances, individuals with HFA/AS and people with typical development have similar intuitive judgments of intentionality, over-assignment of praise judgments and the reduced use of folk-psychological concepts in moral judgment likely reflect difficulties using intentionality information for moral reasoning. (shrink)

Why should one take action to move toward a greener world if doing so will cause the birth of a totally different group of future people? This chapter starts from the metaphysical evidence that many collective climate actions imply a change in the identity of future generations, as opposed to a counterfactual laissez-faire attitude. The climatic fallout from the non-identity paradox introduced by Derek Parfit is examined to determine if and how a principle of transgenerational responsibility can be defended against (...) this metaphysical complexity. The paradox is divided into a moral argument, based on the person-affecting view of harm, and a metaphysical premise, treating non-identity as a result of variations in timing and pair combination of a person’s conception. Three strategies to circumvent the moral argument are explored: non-consequentialist accounts of harm, moral thresholds, and impersonal ethics. However, it is argued that all three strategies fall short or come with too high a cost. The metaphysical premise is then examined through the introduction of transgenerational actions in relation to the climate crisis. A principle of transgenerational responsibility applicable to climate change mitigation is inferred from the hypothetical consent to be obtained from those who will continue transgenerational actions in the future. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of applying the theory of Documentality to the photograph, examining it in the context of the photo archive. To this end, I maintain that a photograph’s document value is not determined by its nature, but by its relationship to inscription practices. And I regard the space of the archive as a paradigmatic device that produces cognitive strategies on the word pairing “photograph/photographs” inextricably linked to the inscriptions connected with it, in the form of “archiwritings” and (...) registrations, in essence: with the words of the archive itself. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of applying the theory of Documentality to the photograph, examining it in the context of the photo archive. To this end, I maintain that a photograph’s document value is not determined by its nature, but by its relationship to inscription practices. And I regard the space of the archive as a paradigmatic device that produces cognitive strategies on the word pairing “photograph/photographs” inextricably linked to the inscriptions connected with it, in the form of “archiwritings” and (...) registrations, in essence: with the words of the archive itself. (shrink)

Did Leibniz exploit infinitesimals and infinities à la rigueur or only as shorthand for quantified propositions that refer to ordinary Archimedean magnitudes? Hidé Ishiguro defends the latter position, which she reformulates in terms of Russellian logical fictions. Ishiguro does not explain how to reconcile this interpretation with Leibniz’s repeated assertions that infinitesimals violate the Archimedean property (i.e., Euclid’s Elements, V.4). We present textual evidence from Leibniz, as well as historical evidence from the early decades of the calculus, to undermine Ishiguro’s (...) interpretation. Leibniz frequently writes that his infinitesimals are useful fictions, and we agree, but we show that it is best not to understand them as logical fictions; instead, they are better understood as pure fictions. (shrink)

The term ‘moral resilience’ has been gaining momentum in the nursing ethics literature. This may be due to it representing a potential response to moral problems such as moral distress. Moral resilience has been conceptualised as a factor that inhibits immoral actions, as a favourable outcome and as an ability to bounce back after a morally distressing situation. In this article, the philosophical analysis of moral resilience is developed by challenging these conceptualisations and highlighting the risks of such limiting perspectives. (...) It is argued that moral resilience is best understood as a virtue with two associated vices, faintheartedness and rigidity. The intellectual virtue of practical wisdom is required to express resilience as a virtue. This understanding leads to recommendations for professional education, for practice and for further research. (shrink)

The nature of space and time is one of the most fascinating and fundamental areas of the philosophy of physics. This study aims to provide a complete account of current debates in the application of spacetime to string theory. String theory has been an important discipline within physics for many years but is only now being applied to the problems faced by philosophers of science. This emerging area of physics is discussed in relation to a number of theories including general (...) relativity, T-duality and moduli space, and set in the context of current and future research. (shrink)

Background During the first wave of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the sudden increase in hospitalised patients put medical facilities in southern Switzerland under severe pressure. During this time, bachelor’s degree programs in nursing, physiotherapy and occupational therapy were disrupted, and students in their second year were displaced. Students experienced the continuous reorganisation of their traineeship as healthcare facilities adapted to a climate of uncertainty. Purpose The aim of this study was to investigate the degree of moral distress and the (...) ethical issues most often encountered by physiotherapy, nursing and occupational therapy students enrolled in a traineeship during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in southern Switzerland. Participants and research context The sample consisted of 102 participants, and the response rate was 81.6%. Research design Based on a pragmatic approach, a mixed-method with a convergent design was adopted. Data were collected between 30 April 2020 and 14 May 2020, via a survey administered to all occupational therapy, physiotherapy and nursing students in their fourth semester. Ethical considerations Given that no vulnerable persons were involved, the Ethics Committee of Southern Switzerland waived authorisation. However, all measures were put into place to protect participants by guaranteeing their anonymity and confidentiality. Results and discussion The data analysis showed that the main source for moral distress was ‘poor teamwork’ and that the moral issues encountered most often by students were related to the appropriateness of care and working conditions, with a clear reference to students’ own safety and that of their loved ones; the other concerns reported included the loss of learning opportunities and the perceived lack of technical knowledge and skills. Conclusions This survey offers a faithful overview of physiotherapy, nursing and occupational therapy students’ experience during the first pandemic wave. This study also identifies some key recommendations for healthcare professions’ education. (shrink)

In relation to a thesis put forward by Marx Wartofsky, we seek to show that a historiography of mathematics requires an analysis of the ontology of the part of mathematics under scrutiny. Following Ian Hacking, we point out that in the history of mathematics the amount of contingency is larger than is usually thought. As a case study, we analyze the historians’ approach to interpreting James Gregory’s expression ultimate terms in his paper attempting to prove the irrationality of \. Here (...) Gregory referred to the last or ultimate terms of a series. More broadly, we analyze the following questions: which modern framework is more appropriate for interpreting the procedures at work in texts from the early history of infinitesimal analysis? As well as the related question: what is a logical theory that is close to something early modern mathematicians could have used when studying infinite series and quadrature problems? We argue that what has been routinely viewed from the viewpoint of classical analysis as an example of an “unrigorous” practice, in fact finds close procedural proxies in modern infinitesimal theories. We analyze a mix of social and religious reasons that had led to the suppression of both the religious order of Gregory’s teacher degli Angeli, and Gregory’s books at Venice, in the late 1660s. (shrink)

This article advances some considerations on the current production of hegemonic effects, starting with some problems posed by the work of one of the most influential writers in cultural studies – the American Palestinian critic Edward Said. Said's commentary on the coverage of Islam in the US media in the late 1970s allows for some challenging considerations on how hegemonic strategies directed at the formation of publics and public opinion are increasingly integrated within a global noopolitics of communication whose understanding (...) of the public is not derived from the notion of civil society but from the biopolitical element of the population – and the bio-racist segmentation that constitutes it. As outlined in Michel Foucault's analysis of liberal and neoliberal governmentality, such understanding of the public locates the latter straight within a new dispositif of power which is biopolitical and noopolitical at the same time, that is, which addresses itself at the same time to the biological, economic and spiritual life of the population. Such understanding involves a reconsideration of the constitution of publics and public opinion in times of netwars and information warfare as both subjects and objects of power/knowledge. In as much as such noopolitics affects what Maurizio Lazzarato calls a second bios, the life of the brain, it has the potential to give expression to the virtual power of immaterial events of subjectification which materialize in the bodies which actualize them and the possible, shared worlds that they are capable of producing. (shrink)

Lue et appréciée par Schelling et Hegel, mais férocement critiquée par Lobeck et les cercles philologiques rationalistes, la Symbolik de Creuzer ne manqua pas d'exercer son influence sur Bachofen et le jeune Nietzsche, jusqu'à Klages, Frobenius, W. Fr. Otto et Kerényi. Point de repère incontournable de toute recherche historique et philologique sensible aux racines mystériques, dionysiaques et orientales de la grécité, la Symbolik a eu le mérite de conjuguer l'érudition typique du XVIII e siècle et une vision métaphysique et religieuse (...) de l'histoire de l'antiquité et de son immense patrimoine symbolique et mythologique. (shrink)

The article focuses on the relation established by Foucault in the two lecture courses Security, Territory, Population and The Birth of Biopolitics between life, nature and political economy. It explores the ways in which liberalism constructs a notion of economic nature as a phenomenon of circulation of aleatory series of events and poses the latter as an internal limit to sovereign power. It argues that the entwinement of vital and economic processes provides the means of internal redefinition of the raison (...) d’État and uses such an explanation to understand the emergence of the network topos as a technology of regulation of the unstable co-causality of milieus of circulation. The article also follows Foucault’s argument that the neoliberal market is significantly different from the liberal market inasmuch as, unlike the latter, it is not defined as an abstract logic of exchange among equals but as an ideal logic of competition between formal inequalities. Finally it asks whether new theories of social production and sympathetic cooperation, in the work of authors such as Yochai Benkler and Maurizio Lazzarato, can offer an alternative to the neoliberal logic of market-based competition as the basis for the production of new forms of life. (shrink)

Brazilian women rely on sterilization as the main source of birth control. Sterilization has been one of the causes of the steep decline in fertility in Brazil, at least since the second half of 1970. It is hypothesized that understanding couples’ relationships might be key to explaining this high rate of female sterilizations. Possible reasons for the higher level of fertility among women in unstable unions than among women in stable ones could be the less effective use of contraceptive methods, (...) or that women in unstable unions tend to use less effective or reversible contraceptive methods. In this paper discrete time modelling of the timing of sterilization according to union histories is presented. The analysis uses the calendar data of the 1996 Brazilian DHS. It is shown that women in second or higher order unions have a lower risk of sterilization. This result should be taken into account in the analysis of the determinants of female sterilization in Brazil. (shrink)

Dans cet ouvrage remarquable, Davesh Soneji, revisite deux siècles d’histoire artistique et sociale des danseuses indiennes, mieux connues sous le terme générique sanskrit de devadāsīs (deva, « divinité », et dāsīs, « servantes », « servantes des dieux »). Depuis la fin du xiiie siècle, la majorité des voyageurs européens en Inde ont évoqué ces femmes, à la fois danseuses, poétesses et musiciennes accomplies, dont la présence dans les temples les surprenait. Ces artistes étant aussi courtisan...

The beginning of the twentieth century marked the confutation and negation of traditional Chinese values by intellectuals, who thought that Confucianism, and in general traditional Chinese culture, had hindered scientific, economic, and social progress. Nonetheless, we are now witnessing a revival of the tradition, from a political and cultural perspective, aiming to address and provide resolutions to the contradictions and issues of contemporary societies. Which are the most valuable traditions in China today, and what is their impact on Chinese society? (...) This paper will provide some of the theories promoted by Chinese scholars and their interpretation of the role of philosophy and religion today. (shrink)

In Feeling of Knowing cases, subjects have a form of consciousness about the presence of a content (such as an item of information) without having access to it. If this phenomenon can be correctly interpreted as having to do with consciousness, then there would be a P-conscious mental experience which is dissociated from access.

In On Local Motion in the Two New Sciences, Galileo distinguishes between ‘time’ and ‘quanto time’ to justify why a variation in speed has the same properties as an interval of time. In this essay, I trace the occurrences of the word quanto to define its role and specific meaning. The analysis shows that quanto is essential to Galileo’s mathematical study of infinitesimal quantities and that it is technically defined. In the light of this interpretation of the word quanto, Evangelista (...) Torricelli’s theory of indivisibles can be regarded as a natural development of Galileo’s insights about infinitesimal magnitudes, transformed into a geometrical method for calculating the area of unlimited plane figures. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to literally explore the declinations of the status of the “monstruous thing”, investigating if and when monsters are abnormal phenomena, not of nature but of culture. Which features, of both expression and content, must a non-living artificial subject present in order to be perceived and judged as a “monster”? In the West, the image of the monster is traditionally associated with an abominable creature belonging to the universe of nature whose touchstone is a standard (...) unit of measurement associated with a human or animal body. Here, we are interested in seeing what happens when these value judgments about monsters are applied to non-organic entities. Our case study of the large cruise ships, starting with ocean liners and moving toward the modern behemoths that now enter our historic cities, discloses a new semiosis of monstrosity caused by the war of movement produced by globalization. (shrink)

Weyl symmetry of the classical bosonic string Lagrangian is broken by quantization, with profound consequences described here. Reimposing symmetry requires that the background space-time satisfy the equations of general relativity: general relativity, hence classical space-time as we know it, arises from string theory. We investigate the logical role of Weyl symmetry in this explanation of general relativity: it is not an independent physical postulate but required in quantum string theory, so from a certain point of view it plays only a (...) formal role in the explanation. (shrink)

Handling Religious Diversity: The Case of "Holy/Rest Days" in Italy The accommodation of a plurality of values within the same institutional framework is one of the main challenges with which contemporary democracies have been persistently confronted. This challenge has recently gained strength even in such traditionally homogeneous countries as Italy, as a consequence of an increase in the number of residents committed to diverse religious beliefs. Against this backdrop, this paper focuses on the case of requests for the legal recognition (...) of religion-specific holy/rest days in Italy. The analysis of such a case will disclose—or so we believe—some valuable pointers as to how democratic societies could try to accommodate religious diversity in a way that is both respectful of the specificities of each religious group and compatible with the typically liberal commitment to the safeguard of individual freedom. (shrink)

Norman in 1969 emphasised a linguistic difference between the Vedic compound yogakṣema- interpreted as a dvandva and the widely distributed Early Buddhist compound yogakkhema-, analysed as a tatpuruṣa “rest from exertion”. On the basis of our analysis of the relevant Pali sources and of the more ancient Vedic occurrences—some of which are quite far from the earliest denotation of the two cyclic phases of the assumed semi-nomadic Indo-Āryan life—we have undertaken a classification of the several meanings of this compound, in (...) order to distinguish their different facets and to enable us to easily bring about the comparison proposed by Norman in 1969 and in 1993 [1991]. Unlike Norman, we eventually postulated a common reading of this compound as a tatpuruṣa originally denoting an almost material target of welfare, from which both the Brāhmaṇic and the Buddhist usages, whose meaning is predominantly immaterial, might have developed. (shrink)

This paper aims at presenting the work of Dutch architecture Hans van der Laan through a comparison with the Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti by stating the similarity of the role assigned to proportion in architectural design by both architects. In particular, the study will show how both Van der Laan and Alberti understood proportion and the perceptive and aesthetic values of proportioned forms as the result of an intellectual appreciation.

This introduction frames the articles collected in the special section as the outcome of a process of ‘self-education’ taking place in the Italian free university network UniNomade 2.0 between 2010 and 2013. The open seminars and conferences organized by UniNomade 2.0 took as their object of inquiry the concept of the Common, while the articles selected focus in particular on the sovereign debt crisis of the European Union following the global financial crisis of 2008. The introduction thus summarizes the overall (...) approach of contemporary ‘post-operaist’ authors such as Toni Negri, Christian Marazzi, Maurizio Lazzarato, Andrea Fumagalli and Stefano Lucarelli, and Carlo Vercellone to the new role of financial capital, the transformation of money, the material constitution of Europe, the role played by the relationship between debtors and creditors, and the possibilities opened by the concept of Commonfare for struggles against austerity. (shrink)