Food allergy represents an increasing public health issue, and a large number of food control authorities have provided regulations aimed to minimize the risk of allergic reaction for sensitized consumers. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations together with the World Health Organization established the Codex Alimentarius Commission whose main goal is to protect the consumers’ health. To purse this task the Commission listed the foods and ingredients causing the most severe allergic reactions that should be labelled. It (...) has been reported that some cases of specific foods hypersensitivity display a different prevalence among different Countries. Thus, the European Union drew up a list of mandatory allergens longer than that provided by Codex Alimentarius. As a consequence of the complexity of the legal phraseology of the European Union and/or European Community the Regulations and/or Directives were differently translated in all EC/EU official languages determining possible misinterpretations of the legislation. Moreover, food labelling regulations were also established with the goal to promote the consumers’ conscious choice about what they eat. Starting from the case of the fermented beverages, we analysed the European legislative scenario concerning the allergen labelling of the last fifteen years, highlighting that mistranslations, misinterpretations and lack of information in the EU Regulations might lead to health and ethical issues. (shrink)

This article aims to demonstrate the enduring impact of Rodolfo Sacco’s influential contributions to comparative law on the perspectives of young scholars. It explores two pivotal aspects of his research that continue to significantly influence the work of a young scholar—the theory of legal formant and exploration of the relationship between law and language. The article also briefly highlights the relevance of legal comparison in the contemporary European legal context.

Duranti gli anni della _Querelle des femmes_ si è assistito ad un’importante crescita di testi in difesa o in detrazione della causa femminile. Una delle caratteristiche principali di questa tendenza letteraria risiede nelle reciproche relazioni che le opere stabiliscono tra loro, attraverso una fitta rete di richiami intertestuali. Il Dialogo _Della Dignità e della nobiltà delle donne_ (1624) dello scrittore marchigiano Cristoforo Bronzini aderisce appieno alla pratica intertestuale che mette a servizio della memoria storico-culturale. Nel presente articolo si analizzano i (...) rapporti intertestuali del trattato seicentesco con opere di scrittrici come Lucrezia Marinella, Moderata Fonte ed Isabella Cervoni, mettendo in rilievo le diverse funzioni che l’intertestualità adempie nei testi della _Querelle des femmes_. (shrink)

Il volume analizza e commenta le lezioni inedite che Cosmo Guastella, docente di Filosofia teoretica nell’Università di Palermo, tenne tra il 1903 e il 1915. Il testo contribuisce a colmare un aspetto inedito per la ricostruzione dell’intera produzione de.

The literature’s interest has been focused on the study of well-being or depression. However, there has been little research that investigates the relationship between well-being and hopelessness (HPL) and the underlying contextual and dispositional variables. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between some contextual (need-supportive interpersonal behavior and need-thwarting interpersonal behavior) and dispositional variables (dispositional optimism, positive/negative affectivity, explanatory style), academic achievement, general well-being, and school HPL in adolescent students. The results showed that general (...) well-being was positively predicted by need-supportive interpersonal behavior, dispositional optimism, positive affectivity, and adaptive explanatory style (attribution to commitment in the school context), while it was negatively predicted by negative affectivity. Meanwhile, school HPL was positively predicted by need-thwarting interpersonal behavior, negative affectivity, dysfunctional explanatory style (attribution to luck in the school context), while it was negatively predicted by attribution to commitment in the school context and academic achievement. These results provide useful data for the implementation of well-being promotion and school HPL prevention. The implications are discussed as follows. (shrink)

Cognitive reflection is recognized as an important skill, which is necessary for making advantageous decisions. Even though gender differences in the Cognitive Reflection test appear to be robust across multiple studies, little research has examined the source of the gender gap in performance. In Study 1, we tested the invariance of the scale across genders. In Study 2, we investigated the role of math anxiety, mathematical reasoning, and gender in CRT performance. The results attested the measurement equivalence of the Cognitive (...) Reflection Test – Long, when administered to male and female students. Additionally, the results of the mediation analysis showed an indirect effect of gender on CRT-L performance through mathematical reasoning and math anxiety. The direct effect of gender was no longer statistically significant after accounting for the other variables. The current findings suggest that cognitive reflection is affected by numerical skills and related feelings. (shrink)

Despite the recent upsurge of interest in the investigation of creativity, the question of how to measure creativity is arguably underdiscussed. The aim of this paper is to address this gap, proposing a multidimensional account of creativity which identifies problem-solving, evaluation, and naivety as measurable features that are common among creative processes. The benefits that result from the adoption of this model are twofold: integrating discussions on creativity in various domains and offering the tools to assess creativity across systems of (...) different kinds. By situating creativity within this framework, I aim to contribute to a non-anthropocentric, more comprehensive understanding of the notion, and to debates on natural and artificial creativity. (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroscience have paved the way to innovative applications that cognitively augment and enhance humans in a variety of contexts. This paper aims at providing a snapshot of the current state of the art and a motivated forecast of the most likely developments in the next two decades. Firstly, we survey the main neuroscience technologies for both observing and influencing brain activity, which are necessary ingredients for human cognitive augmentation. We also compare and contrast such technologies, as their (...) individual characteristics (e.g., spatio-temporal resolution, invasiveness, portability, energy requirements and cost) influence their current and future role in human cognitive augmentation. Secondly, we chart the state of the art on neurotechnologies for human cognitive augmentation, keeping an eye both on the applications that already exist and those that are emerging or are likely to emerge in the next two decades. Particularly, we consider applications in the areas of communication, cognitive enhancement, memory, attention monitoring/enhancement, situation awareness and complex problem solving, and we look at what fraction of the population might benefit from such technologies and at the demands they impose in terms of user training. Thirdly, we briefly review the ethical issues associated with current neuroscience technologies. These are important because they may differentially influence both present and future research on (and adoption of) neurotechnologies for human cognitive augmentation: an inferior technology with no significant ethical issues may thrive while a superior technology causing widespread ethical concerns may end up being outlawed. Finally, based on the lessons learned in our analysis, using past trends and considering other related forecasts, we attempt to forecast the most likely future developments of neuroscience technology for human cognitive augmentation and provide informed recommendations for promising future research and exploitation avenues. (shrink)

Current research in artificial intelligence (AI) sheds light on algorithmic bias embedded in AI systems. The underrepresentation of women in the AI design sector of the tech industry, as well as in training datasets, results in technological products that encode gender bias, reinforce stereotypes and reproduce normative notions of gender and femininity. Biased behaviour is notably reflected in anthropomorphic AI systems, such as personal intelligent assistants (PIAs) and chatbots, that are usually feminized through various design parameters, such as names, voices (...) and traits. Gendering of AI entities, however, is often reduced to the encoding of stereotypical behavioural patterns that perpetuate normative assumptions about the role of women in society. The impact of this behaviour on social life increases, as human-to-(anthropomorphic)machine interactions are mirrored in human-to-human social interactions. This article presents current critical research on AI bias, focusing on anthropomorphic systems. Moreover, it discusses the significance of women’s engagement in AI design and programming, by presenting selected case studies of contemporary female media artists and designers. Finally, it suggests that women, through their creative practice, provide feminist and critical approaches to AI design which are essential for imagining alternative, inclusive, ethic and de-biased futures for anthropomorphic AIs. (shrink)

In contemporary works on conditionals, the Ramsey test is a procedure for the evaluation of conditional sentences. There are several versions of the test, all inspired by a footnote by the British philosopher and mathematician Frank Ramsey, in his General Propositions and Causality. However, no study on Ramsey's own account of conditionals has been put forth so far. Furthermore, the footnote seems to cover indicative conditionals only, and this has led to the belief that no account of counterfactuals can be (...) found in Ramsey's work. In this paper, I recover Ramsey's account of counterfactuals and show that it is sketched in the footnote too. The result is a well-developed account of counterfactuals that resembles many contemporary ones. But Ramsey uses the same approach also for other types of conditionals, and this casts doubts on the current criteria for the classification of this type of sentences. (shrink)

This article examines to what extent a particular case of cross-disciplinary research in the 1930s was structured by mechanistic reasoning. For this purpose, it identifies the interfield theories that allowed biologists and chemists to use each other’s techniques and findings, and that provided the basis for the experiments performed to identify plant growth hormones and to learn more about their role in the mechanism of plant growth. In 1930, chemists and biologists in Utrecht and Pasadena began to cooperatively study plant (...) growth. I will argue that these researchers decided to join forces because they believed to rely on each other’s findings and methods to solve their research problems adequately. In the course of the cooperation, organic chemists arrived at isolating plant growth hormones by using a test method developed in plant physiology. This achievement, in turn, facilitated biologists’ investigation of the mechanism of plant growth. Researchers eventually believed to have the means to study the relation between a substance’s molecular structure and its physiological activity. The way they conceptualized the problem of identifying hormones and unraveling the mechanism of plant growth, as well as their actual research actions are compatible with the new mechanists’ account of mechanism research. The study illustrates that focusing on researchers’ mechanistic reasoning can contribute considerably to explaining the structure of cross-disciplinary research projects. (shrink)

Riassunto: Questo contributo si propone di instaurare un proficuo dialogo tra la Philosophie des subjektiven Geistes hegeliana e i principali studi neuroscientifici e psicologici sulle emozioni. Ciò alla luce del fatto che caratteristica dell’attuale dibattito sulle emozioni è proprio l’interazione tra neuroscienze, psicologia e filosofia. Dopo aver mostrato come Hegel abbia elaborato una Theorie des Gefühls, mediante un’analisi del ruolo di Empfindungen e Gefühle nella Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, emergerà come il dialogo tra il pensiero hegeliano e le prospettive contemporanee (...) sulle emozioni possa contribuire a chiarire questioni quali la distinzione tra diversi tipi di emozioni o la differenza che sussiste tra il loro aspetto cognitivo e quello affettivo. È l’aspetto cognitivo insito nelle emozioni, come sottolineato sia da Hegel sia dai più recenti studi sulle emozioni, che consente al soggetto di orientarsi nel mondo. Parole chiave : G.W.F. Hegel; Spirito soggettivo; Emozione; Sentimento; Cognizione Hegel’s Theorie des Gefühls in Dialogue with Contemporary Theories of Emotions: Considering the relevance of the interaction between neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy in the contemporary debate on emotions, this paper aims at establishing a fruitful dialogue between Hegel’s Philosophie des subjektiven Geistes and the most important neuroscientific and psychological research on emotions. By means of an analysis of the role of Empfindungen and Gefühle in the Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, we will show that Hegel developed a Theorie des Gefühls. The proposed dialogue between Hegel’s thought and contemporary theories is useful for distinguishing the various types of emotions and their cognitive and affective aspects. In fact, it will emerge that both Hegel and recent studies on emotion consider emotions to be characterized by a cognitive valence which enables a person to orient herself/himself in the world. Keywords: G.W.F. Hegel; Subjective Spirit; Emotion; Feeling; Cognition. (shrink)

The reactions that science triggers on the people it studies, describes, or theorises about, can affect the science itself and its claims to knowledge. This phenomenon, which we call reactivity, has been discussed in many different areas of the social sciences and the philosophy of science, falling under different rubrics such as the Hawthorne effect, self-fulfilling prophecies, the looping effects of human kinds, the performativity of models, observer effects, experimenter effects and experimenter demand effects. In this paper we review state-of-the-art (...) research that falls under the remit of the philosophy of reactivity by considering ontological, epistemic and moral issues that reactivity raises. Along the way, we devote special attention to articles belonging to this journal's Topical Collection entitled “Reactivity in the Human Sciences”. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that successful evidence-based policy should rely on two kinds of evidence: statistical and mechanistic. The former is held to be evidence that a policy brings about the desired outcome, and the latter concerns how it does so. Although agreeing with the spirit of this proposal, we argue that the underlying conception of mechanistic evidence as evidence that is different in kind from correlational, difference-making or statistical evidence, does not correctly capture the role that information about (...) mechanisms should play in evidence-based policy. We offer an alternative account of mechanistic evidence as information concerning the causal pathway connecting the policy intervention to its outcome. Not only can this be analyzed as evidence of difference-making, it is also to be found at any level and is obtainable by a broad range of methods, both experimental and observational. Using behavioral policy as an illustration, we draw the implications of this revised understanding of mechanistic evidence for debates concerning policy extrapolation, evidence hierarchies, and evidence integration. (shrink)

While the presence of monsters in popular culture is ever-increasing, their use as an explicit or implicit category to frame, stigmatise, and demonise the other is seemingly on the rise. At the same time, academic interest for monsters is ever-growing. Usually, monstrosity is understood as a category that emerges to signal a transgression to a given order; this approach has led to the demystification of the insidious characterisations of the (racial, sexual, physical) other as monstrous. While this effort has been (...) necessary, its collateral effects have reduced the monstrous to a mere (socio-cultural) construction of the other: a dialectical framing that de facto deprives monstrosity from any reality. 'Monstrous Ontologies: Politics, Ethics, Materiality' proffers the necessity of challenging these monstrous otherings and their perverse socio-political effects, whilst also asserting that the monstrous is not simply an epistemological construct, but that it has an ontological reality. There is a profound difference between monsters and monstrosity. While the former is an often sterile political and social simplification, the end-product of rhetorical and biopolitical apparatuses; the latter may be understood as a dimension that nurtures the un-definable, that is, that shows the limits of these apparatuses by embodying their material excess: not a 'cultural frame', but the limit to the very mechanism of 'framing'. The monstrous expresses the combining, hybridising, becoming, and creative potential of socio-natural life, albeit colouring this powerful vitalism with the dark hue of a fearful, disgusting, and ultimately indigestible reality that cannot simply be embraced with multicultural naivety. As such, it forces us towards radically changing not the categories, but the very mechanisms of categorisation through which reality is framed and acted upon. Here lies the profound ethical dimension that monstrosity forces us to acknowledge; here lies its profoundly political potential, one that cannot be unfolded by merely deconstructing monstrosity, and rather requires to engage with its uncomfortable, appalling, and revealing materiality. This book will appeal to postgraduate students, PostDocs, and academics alike in the fields of philosophy, critical theory, humanities, sociology and social theory, criminology, human geography, and critical legal theory. (shrink)

Recent studies suggest that covering the face inhibits the recognition of identity and emotional expressions. However, it might also make the eyes more salient, since they are a reliable index to orient our social and spatial attention. This study investigates whether the pervasive interaction with people with face masks fostered by the COVID-19 pandemic modulates the processing of spatial information essential to shift attention according to other’s eye-gaze direction, and whether this potential modulation interacts with motor responses. Participants were presented (...) with face cues orienting their gaze to a congruent or incongruent target letter location while wearing a surgical mask, a patch, or nothing. The task required to discriminate the identity of the lateralized target letters by pressing one of two lateralized response keys, in a corresponding or a non-corresponding position with respect to the target. Results showed that GCE was not modulated by the presence of the Mask, but it occurred in the No-Mask condition, confirming previous studies. Crucially, the GCE interacted with Simon effect in the Mask and Control conditions, though in different ways. While in the Mask condition the GCE emerged only when target and response positions corresponded, in the Control condition it emerged only when they did not correspond. These results indicate that people with face masks induce us to jointly orient our visual attention in the direction of the seen gaze in those conditions resembling a general approaching behavior. This is likely promoted by the fact that we tend to perceive wearing the mask as a personal safety measure and, thus, someone wearing the face mask is perceived as a trustworthy person. In contrast, people with a patch on their face can be perceived as more threatening, therefore inducing a GCE in those conditions associated with a general avoidance behavior. (shrink)

Although he developed one of the most important modern theories of time, Bergson has often been criticised for not thinking history. Drawing on his writings from Creative Evolution to The Two Sources, I show that, on the contrary, he was trying to define history in a new way, one that would not be exhausted by the traditional opposition to the natural sciences. Bergson’s new philosophy of history, free of teleology and determinism, allows us to think the specificity of the human (...) historical dimension without erasing its articulation with natural evolution. Against the critical readings Aron and Merleau-Ponty have offered, I maintain that Bergson’s philosophy does not withdraw into an individualist spiritualism but includes the collective dimension and the history of non-human, both natural and technological, reality. (shrink)

The phenomenon of interactive human kinds, namely kinds of people that undergo change in reaction to being studied or theorised about, matters not only for the reliability of scientific claims, but also for its wider, sometimes harmful effects at the group or societal level, such as contributing to negative stigmas or reinforcing existing inequalities. This paper focuses on the latter aspect of interactivity and argues that scientists studying interactive human kinds are responsible for foreseeing harmful effects of their research and (...) for devising ways of mitigating them. (shrink)

This paper defends Musical Stage Theory as a novel account of the ontology of musical works. Its main claim is that a musical work is a performance. The significance of this argument is twofold. First, it demonstrates the availability of an alternative, and ontologically tenable, view to well-established positions in the current debate on musical metaphysics. Second, it shows how the revisionary approach of Musical Stage Theory actually provides a better account of the ontological status of musical works.

This article explores the state of the art in relation to the theme of living and working together in organizations and proposes a new theoretical model. A thorough examination of literature highlights that there are almost no works specifically coping with this theme, defining its theoretical perspective and specifying the choice of proposed indicators. Several, instead, are the works indirectly dealing with living and working together in organizations, mostly considered equivalent to the quality of interpersonal relationships, or developed starting from (...) the theme of diversity and conflict. In reference to the social context, an important defining effort was carried out by Renzo Carli, who defines living together [convivenza in Italian] as the symbolic component of a social relationship, generated by three components: belonging systems, strangers and rules of the game. Living together means integrating these three elements of a relationship in order to create innovative products. This article proposes a... (shrink)

In light of the interrelation between motor and cognitive development and the predictive value of the former for the latter, the secular decline observed in motor coordination ability as early as preschool urges identification of interventions that may jointly impact motor and cognitive efficiency. The aim of this study was twofold. It (1) explored the outcomes of enriched physical education, centered on deliberate play and cognitively challenging variability of practice, on motor coordination and cognitive processing; (2) examined whether motor coordination (...) outcomes mediate intervention effects on children’s cognition, while controlling for moderation by lifestyle factors as outdoor play habits and weight status. Four hundred and sixty children aged 5-10 years participated in a 6-month group randomized intervention in physical education, with or without playful coordinative and cognitive enrichment. The weight status and spontaneous outdoor play habits of children (parental report of outdoor play) were evaluated at baseline. Before and after the intervention, motor developmental level (Movement Assessment Battery for Children) was evaluated in all children, who were then assessed either with a test of working memory (Random Number Generation task), or with a test of attention (from the Cognitive Assessment System, CAS). Children assigned to the ‘enriched’ intervention showed more pronounced improvements in all motor coordination assessments (manual dexterity, ball skills, static/dynamic balance). The beneficial effect on ball skills was amplified by the level of spontaneous outdoor play and weight status. Among indices of executive function and attention, only that of inhibition showed a differential effect of intervention type. Moderated mediation showed that the better outcome of the enriched physical education on ball skills mediated the better inhibition outcome, but only when the enrichment intervention was paralleled by a medium-to-high level of outdoor play. Results suggest that specifically tailored physical activity games provide a unique form of enrichment that impacts children’s cognitive development through motor coordination improvement, particularly object control skills, which are linked to children’s physical activity habits later in life. Outdoor play appears to offer the natural ground for the stimulation by designed physical activity games to take root in children’s mind. (shrink)

This book provides a fully developed account of Frank Ramsey's theory of conditionals. No proper study of Ramsey's view of conditionals has been carried out so far. This work aims at filling this gap. The book is divided in two parts and in four chapters. The first part of the book is historical, investigating Ramsey’s texts and recovering his view on conditionals. The second part is systematic, updating and developing a unified account of conditionals following Ramsey’s ideas.

Philosophers of the social sciences are increasingly convinced that macro-and micro-explanations are complementary. Whereas macro-explanations are broad, micro-explanations are deep. I distinguish between weak and strong complementarity: Strongly complementary explanations improve one another when integrated, weakly complementary explanations do not. To demonstrate the explanatory autonomy of different levels of explanation, explanatory pluralists mostly presuppose the weak form of complementarity. By scrutinizing the notions of explanatory depth and breadth, I argue that macro- and micro-accounts of the same phenomenon are more often (...) strongly complementary. This invites a revision of the pluralist position in which integration promotes explanatory progress. Key Words: explanatory pluralism • social science • explanatory depth • explanatory breadth • mechanism. (shrink)

Philosophers of the social sciences are increasingly convinced that macro-and micro-explanations are complementary. Whereas macro-explanations are broad, micro-explanations are deep. I distinguish between weak and strong complementarity: Strongly complementary explanations improve one another when integrated, weakly complementary explanations do not. To demonstrate the explanatory autonomy of different levels of explanation, explanatory pluralists mostly presuppose the weak form of complementarity. By scrutinizing the notions of explanatory depth and breadth, I argue that macro- and micro-accounts of the same phenomenon are more often (...) strongly complementary. This invites a revision of the pluralist position in which integration promotes explanatory progress. (shrink)