This study investigated how young Italian people experienced the period of peak spread of COVID-19 in their country by probing their emotions, thoughts, events, and actions related to interpersonal and community bonds. This approach to the pandemic will highlight social dimensions that characterized contextual interactions from the specific perspective of Community Psychology. The aim was to investigate young people's experiences because they are the most fragile group due to their difficulty staying home and apart from their peers and because they (...) are, at the same time, the most potentially dangerous people due to their urge to gather in groups. The research involved 568 university students, 475 females, and 93 males, with an average age of 21.82 years. The collected data were analyzed with the Grounded Theory Methodology, using the Atlas 8.0 software. From the textual data, representative codes were defined and grouped into 10 categories, which reflect the individuals' prosocial attitudes, behaviors, and values. These categories formed three macro-categories, called: “Collective Dimensions,” which includes Connectedness, Solidarity, Italian-ness, Social Problems, and Collective Mourning; “Prosocial Orientation,” which includes Trust and Hope; and “Collective Values,” which includes Values of Freedom, Respect of Social Rules, and Civic-Mindedness. All these macro-categories are indicative of the shared feelings experienced by Italians during the first time of the pandemic. Further practical implications of these results will be discussed, including a consideration of the risk of developing distress and improving well-being, as well as promoting preventive behaviors. (shrink)

Most moral theorists agree that it is one thing to believe that someone has slighted you and another to resent her for the insult; one thing to believe that someone did you a favor and another to feel gratitude toward her for her kindness. While all of these ways of responding to another's conduct are forms of moral appraisal, the reactive attitudes are said to 'go beyond' beliefs in some way. We think this claim is adequately explained only when we (...) take seriously the fact that reactive attitudes are emotions. In this paper, we appeal to insights of the emotions literature to highlight one key way in which reactive attitudes go beyond beliefs: beliefs about a person and her morally significant conduct merely ascribe to the person the property of having performed a morally significant action, while reactive attitudes are ways of experiencing that person as having performed a morally significant action. We then suggest that appreciating this is a crucial first step toward understanding why reactive emotions play roles in our practices around responsibility that beliefs do not. (shrink)

Before 1800 nothing was irrelevant. So argues Elisa Tamarkin's sweeping cultural history of a key shift in consciousness: the arrival, around 1800, of "relevance" as the means to grasp how something previously disregarded becomes important and interesting. At a time when so much makes claims to attention every day, how does one decide what is most valuable right now? This is not only a contemporary problem. For Ralph Waldo Emerson, the question for the nineteenth century was how, in the (...) immensity and "succession" of objects, anything becomes a proper object of experience. How that question was finally defined as one of relevance is the story of Apropos of Nothing. Relevance, Tamarkin shows, was primarily an Anglo-American concept. It engaged major intellectual figures, centrally the pragmatists-William James, Alain Locke, and John Dewey-and before them thinkers including Emerson and Alfred North Whitehead. Most of all, relevance was a problem for the worlds of art, literature, education, and criticism. These were fascinated by how old, boring, distant, or unfamiliar things get taken in; how they are admitted as meaningful; how they come home to us like the ludicrous raven comes to Edgar Allan Poe's student in the middle of the night in some obscure connection with himself. Many nineteenth-century American artists saw their paintings as pragmatic works that make relevance-that suggest versions of events that feel apropos of our world the moment we see them. (Tamarkin's book is richly illustrated, in color, with works by Winslow Homer, Abbott Handerson Thayer, Edgar Degas, and others.) Relevance remains a conundrum, especially for the humanities. It obliges us to say why we admit Poe's poem-or, say, a line of Emerson's-is interesting enough to study it, to dedicate ourselves to understanding it, to affirming that this effort is, in Emerson's words, "relevant to me and mine, to nature, and the hour that now passes.". (shrink)

Exploring some of the dialogic models for Yehudah’s work as well as the influence of the Biblical commentaries by his father Isaac, this book re-reads the Dialogues in the light of medieval interpretations of the Song of Songs and ...

This volume sets out to chart a path at the intersection between the histories of medicine and philosophy concerning a topic that is prominent in contemporary debates, i.e. the translation of physiology, and accordingly pathology, into numerical terms. In particular, the book discusses and contextualizes issues that are simultaneous of medical and philosophical import, such as the quantification of temperaments and complexions, the quantification of life processes and physiology, the quantification of embryology, the impact of quantified reasoning on the notions (...) of virtue, vice, health, illness, personhood, certainty, as well as the various ways in which philosophers have rejected the reduction of life to a quantitative and numerical approach. This introduction offers an overview on the epistemological challenge of quantification in classical philosophy. It also provides a historical account of the practices and conceptualizations of quantification as applied to the domains of biology, physiology, and pathology. (shrink)

This study focuses on the devices implemented in classical Indian texts on ritual and language in order to develop a structure of rules in an economic and systematic way. These devices presuppose a spatial approach to ritual and language, one which deals for instance with absences as substitutions within a pre-existing grid, and not as temporal disappearances. In this way, the study reveals a key feature of some among the most influential schools of Indian thought. The sources are Kalpasūtra, Vyākaraṇa (...) and Mīmāṃsā, three textual traditions which developed alongside each other, sharing - as the volume shows - common presuppositions and methodologies. The book will be of interest for Sanskritists, scholars of ritual exegesis and of the history of linguistics. - Cover. (shrink)

Animal Suffering: Philosophy and Culture explores the multifaceted moral meanings allocated to non-human suffering in contemporary Western culture.

In this paper, we look at installation art through the lens provided by the notion of “affective artifact” (Piredda 2019). We argue that affective character is central to some works of installation art and that some of those works can expand our knowledge of our affective lives, while others can contribute to the construction of our identities. Sections (2), (3), and (4) set the stage for our discussion of affective installation artworks by, respectively, situating it within the debate on affective (...) artifacts, looking at some general issues concerning the affective character of artworks, and sketching out a view of the ontology of installation art. In section (5), we discuss the affective character of six works of installation art. In section (6), we show how those artworks can reveal aspects of who we are. Section (7) concludes. (shrink)

This edited volume explores the intersection of medicine and philosophy throughout history, calling attention to the role of quantification in understanding the medical body. Retracing current trends and debates to examine the quantification of the body throughout the early modern, modern and early contemporary age, the authors contextualise important issues of both medical and philosophical significance, with chapters focusing on the quantification of temperaments and fluids, complexions, functions of the living body, embryology, and the impact of quantified reasoning on the (...) concepts of health and illness. With insights spanning from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, this book provides a wide-ranging overview of attempts to ‘quantify’ the human body at various points. Arguing that medicine and philosophy have been constantly in dialogue with each other, the authors discuss how this provided a strategic opportunity both for medical thought and philosophy to refine and further develop. Given today’s fascination with the quantification of the body, represented by the growing profusion of self-tracking devices logging one’s sleep, diet or mood, this collection offers an important and timely contribution to an emerging and interdisciplinary field of study. -/- . (shrink)

What does Descartes's embryology look, if related to the Scholastic theories of his time? In order to reply to this question, the present chapter aims at sketching a portrait of the embryological epigenetics Descartes could find in his recognized Scholastic sources (the Commentaries on Aristotle by Toledo, the Coimbra Jesuits, Suárez, and Rubio, as well as the Summae by Eustachius a Sancto Paulo and Abra de Raçonis), a tradition that received and incorporated in the Aristotelian-Galenic body many novelties from Renaissance (...) medicine, especially Fernel, Paré, and Vallès. It being impossible to deal extensively with the whole of the contents of these works, I picked up three issues in particular, corresponding to the first three paragraphs of this paper: 1) the nature of the semen, and the action of the vis formativa, as well as its relationship with vital heat and temperaments; 2) the problem of the real and/or rational distinction(s) between the generative, the nutritive, and the augmentative powers; 3) the epigenetic order of generation of vital organs, i.e. the right sequence over which the fundamental organs of a living body are generated and then ensouled. In the last paragraph I integrate these reconstructions with some conclusions about Descartes' own theory. (shrink)

La circulation du savoir philosophique à travers les traductions du grec au syriaque, du grec à l'arabe, du syriaque à l'arabe, de l'arabe au latin forme, depuis un siècle et plus de recherches savantes, un domaine scientifique à part entière. Ce volume réunit des spécialistes des disciplines du domaine voulant rendre hommage à un collègue dont l'activité a ouvert une voie, Henri Hugonnard-Roche. Spécialiste de la transmission du grec au syriaque de la logique aristotélicienne, Henri Hugonnard-Roche a montré par ses (...) recherches la continuité entre la philosophie de l'Antiquité tardive et la pensée des chrétiens de langue syriaque d'un côté, des savants musulmans écrivant en arabe, de l'autre. Réunis souvent par ce que Werner Jaeger avait autrefois désigné comme 'la portée œcuménique de l'Antiquité classique', des musulmans et des chrétiens faisant partie d'un cercle philosophique se penchaient, dans la ville de Bagdad au Xe siècle, sur le texte d'Aristote. Leur 'Aristote' était souvent celui de l'Antiquité tardive : l'Aristote de l'école néoplatonicienne d'Alexandrie que les intellectuels de la Syrie chrétienne avaient déjà rencontré quelque quatre siècles auparavant et qu'ils avaient traduit, en même temps que Galien, et parfois commenté. Des noms presque inconnus comme celui de Sergius de Resh'ayna (mort en 536) commencent dans nos manuels à en côtoyer d'autres bien plus connus, comme celui de Boèce, grâce aux recherches de Henri Hugonnard-Roche. (shrink)

Este texto é a primeira parte do terceiro capítulo de minha tese de doutoramento - MÁRIO DE ANDRADE, PLURAL . Aí, tenta-se a produção de um biografema à maneira de Roland Barthes, de quem é a epígrafe do capítulo. O biografema é uma livre-produção textual na medida em que não deriva de significado , mas, enfatizando imagens, cenas, gestos, fragmentos textuais, pulsões, opera significancias. O biografema não dispensa a biografia - usa-a, desmembra-a, desgasta-a. Disseminação, o biografema não hesita em lançar (...) mão de todos os operadores de linguagem à disposição. Se a biografia opera com dados, instituindo a verossimilhança no biografado, o biografema retém o arbitrário na produção do ser-de-tinta que imprime no papel.Ce texte est une partie du troisième chapitre de mon Doctorat de 3 ème Cycle - Mário de Andrade: Pluriel . Il s'agit d'un essai de production d'un biographème, à la façon de Roland Barthes. Le biographème c'est de la production textuelle à la dérive des signifiants. Ne s'inquiétant point de la vérité, le biographème joue à la vraisemblance tout en la déjouant. Dissémination, un biographème n'hesite pas à mètre en oeuvre tous les opérateurs de langage a sa portée. Agissant de la sorte, il fait usage de la biographie, Técartelle en la rendant autre à l'écart Si la biographie travaille avec des faits en vue de l'établissement du vraisemblable du biographe, le biographème retient l'arbitraire de la production de cet "être-en-encre" qu'il imprime sur le papier. Son enjeu c'est donc le jeu des images, des scènes, des gestes, des fragments textuels, des pulsions, c'est-à-dire, des signifiances. (shrink)

Neste e-book, apresentamos parte deste desenvolvimento, organizado conforme as três áreas de investigação do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos Linguísticos (PosLin), da Faculdade de Letras (FALE), na Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). Os 23 textos que compõem este volume são resultado de pesquisas de mestrado e de doutorado desenvolvidas no PosLin e são apresentados por textos breves de professores-pesquisadores convidados e/ou que atuaram como debatedores no XII SETED.

We commonly recognize vague predicates when we do not find boundaries to their extension. Would an omniscient being find it equally impossible to establish such boundaries? I will argue that if a semantic theory of vagueness like supervaluationism is correct, we cannot answer the question. The reason is that, under this assumption, cooperative behaviour is not possible for an omniscient being.

In this paper, I put forward a philosophical analysis of some works by Martin Creed. I suggest that all the works under consideration are works of conceptual art as well as of installation art, and that they display significant expressive properties. The paper is structured as follows: in the first section, I claim that the works are ontologically similar and that they all appear problematic, because it is not very clear how they should be appreciated as artworks; in the second (...) section, I argue that the works belong to the genre conceptual art, that they are presented for intellectual appreciation, and that this is compatible with the fact that they also have expressive properties; in the third section, I submit that the works also belong to the category installation art and I explain what expressive properties they display. In the conclusion, I remark briefly on the interaction between the intellectual and aesthetic appreciation of Creed’s works. (shrink)

The authors make an attempt to comparatively analyse some stances of the Old Indian philosophy of language, exemplified by the Medieval Indian author Jayanta, along with the Western tradition of the analytical philosophy of language, and to highlight the differences as well as the similarities. The main focus is on Jayanta's discussion of the meaning vs. reference problem.

In this paper, I hope to show how a recent theory in the philosophy of mind concerning how we ‘read’ the minds of others – namely, Heal’s version of simulation theory – is consistent with the view that the kind of understanding we bring to bear on the irrational is different in kind from the way we understand one another in the course of everyday life. I shall attempt to show that Heal’s version of simulation theory (co-cognition) is to be (...) favoured over its rival ‘theory theories’ in the light of its accommodation of deeply irrational mental states. I claim that simulation theory preserves an asymmetry of psychological explanation which is not similarly preserved by a theory theory account, and I argue that this preservation of asymmetry is an advantage of Heal’s account. (shrink)

Phenomenology is one of the leading movements in twentieth-century philosophy and continues to exert a strong influence on many contemporary philosophical traditions and investigations. In recent years, phenomenological insights have been increasingly developed in relation to philosophy of illness, disability, race, gender, sexuality, and politics, leading to the emergence of critical phenomenology as a new, prominent field for interdisciplinary research. Magrì and McQueen's Critical Phenomenology: An Introduction is the first book of its kind, addressing the critical questions at the core (...) of both classical and contemporary phenomenology. This book provides a concise, accessible introduction to key areas of phenomenological research, such as intersubjectivity, bodily experience, race, gender, social experience, and political action. In doing so, it demonstrates both the rich history of phenomenology and its continuing philosophical and ethical importance. (shrink)

Olympe de Gouges (Montauban 1748 – Parigi 1793) è generalmente nota come autrice della Dichiarazione dei diritti della donna e della cittadina. Il documento, scritto nel 1791 in risposta alla Dichiarazione dei diritti dell’uomo e del cittadino, mette in luce la parzialità di quest’ultima, che, nonostante le rivendicazioni formalmente universalistiche, fu proclamata esclusivamente “da” e “per” esseri umani di sesso maschile. Nella sua dichiarazione, de Gouges rivendica il riconoscimento dei diritti civili e politici delle donne e anticipa così alcune delle (...) istanze centrali del femminismo. L’approccio di de Gouges, inoltre, pur aderendo al paradigma teorico del giusnaturalismo, si distingue all’interno di quest’ultimo per modernità e coerenza. L’impegno politico e intellettuale di de Gouges non rimase confinato alla rivendicazione dei diritti delle donne. Ella si espresse infatti su molti dei temi centrali del dibattito pubblico francese negli anni della Rivoluzione, tra cui la sanità pubblica e le politiche sociali, la questione del voto per testa o per ordine, l’esecuzione di Luigi Capeto, il divorzio, la schiavitù e la tratta degli schiavi. De Gouges denunciò inoltre le ingiustizie che caratterizzavano la situazione delle donne, degli schiavi, dei meno abbienti, dei malati, delle partorienti, dei figli illegittimi, mostrando le cause strutturali e sociali della loro vulnerabilità. Alcune delle sue proposte furono fatte proprie e realizzate dal governo rivoluzionario, come quella riguardante l’introduzione di una tassa volontaria per risanare le casse statali. La produzione intellettuale di de Gouges include romanzi e racconti, opere teatrali, saggi filosofici, pamphlet, lettere aperte e altri scritti brevi, e consta di circa 150 opere. Il suo impegno politico, che in lei si saldò sempre strettamente al lavoro intellettuale, le costò infine la vita. Nell’estate del 1793 fu arrestata mentre cercava di affiggere un manifesto dal titolo Le Tre Urne, in cui suggeriva di far decidere al popolo francese quale fosse la forma migliore di governo per la Francia. Dopo alcuni mesi di prigionia e un processo sommario, fu condannata a morte. La sentenza fu eseguita il 3 novembre del 1793. (shrink)

The relationship between stress and unethical behaviour amongst non-tenured research staff in academia is a relatively unexplored phenomenon. The research reported herein was therefore carried out with the aim of exploring the relationship between stress, the socio-organisational factors which contribute to it, job satisfaction, perceptions of job instability, and the occurrence of unethical behaviour in research. 793 Italian researchers participated in the research—all of whom were working on fixed-term contracts—after being individually requested to complete an online questionnaire. The data indicate (...) that unethical behaviours occur with alarming frequency. The stress level reported is quite high, as is the level of perceived job insecurity, both of which impact upon levels of job satisfaction. Perceived stress levels also seem to play a role in the commission of unethical behaviours, but this relationship is irrelevant when one considers the role of social and organisational factors that are known to induce it. Indeed, it seems that there are various socio-organisational determinants of stress that have an obvious direct negative influence on the commission of unethical behaviours more than the stress level per se. This research paints a worrying picture in relation to the psycho-physical state of non-tenured researchers as a result of the working conditions in which they find themselves in Italian universities. (shrink)

This article deals with various responses to the phenomenon of Orientalism. Since the publication of Edward Said s book _Orientalism_, there has been an ongoing discussion about the influence of Orientalism on contemporary social sciences in the East. In the West, Orientalism was an original theory, but in the East its acceptance was tantamount to an assimilation of foreign point of view on social reality. I argue that it is a symptom of provincialism among scientists from the East. Even though (...) most of them tried to overcome Orientalism, they used the same categories and methodology. In this sense they repeated its mistakes and misunderstandings. This article analyzes different attempts of overcoming Orientalism and shows why they are provincial. (shrink)

To date, 1.7 million US military service personnel have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Of those, one in five are suffering from diagnosable combat-stress related psychological injuries including Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). All indications are that the mental health toll of the current conflicts on US troops and the medical systems that care for them will only increase. Against this backdrop, research suggesting that the common class of drugs known as beta-blockers might prevent the onset of PTSD is drawing (...) much interest. I urge caution against accepting too quickly the use of beta-blockers for dealing with the psychological injuries that combat experiences can wreak. Beta-blockers are thought to work by disrupting the formation of emotionally disturbing memories that typically occur in the wake of traumatic events and that in some people manifest as PTSD. Focusing on a single dimension of soldiers' experience in combat, namely, their perpetration of other-directed violence, I argue that some of the emotional memories blunted by beta-blockers play important roles in the recovery of moral aspects of soldiers' selves damaged by experiences of combat violence — specifically, in the achievement of a state of grace— and, therefore, that the use of beta-blockers may come with distinct moral costs. (shrink)

The critical examination of current hypotheses is one of the key ways in which scientific fields develop and grow. Therefore, any critique, including Haidle and Schlaudt’s article, “Where Does Cumulative Culture Begin? A Plea for a Sociologically Informed Perspective,” represents a welcome addition to the literature. However, critiques must also be evaluated. In their article, Haidle and Schlaudt review some approaches to culture and cumulative culture in both human and nonhuman primates. H&S discuss the “zone of latent solutions” hypothesis as (...) applied to nonhuman primates and stone-toolmaking premodern hominins. Here, we will evaluate whether H&S’s critique addresses its target. (shrink)

Gaze direction is an important social cue for understanding the intentions of other people. Indeed, interacting with others requires the ability to encode their current focus of attention in order to predict their future actions. Previous studies have showed that when asked to detect or identify a target, people are faster if shown a gaze oriented toward rather than away from that target. Most importantly, there is evidence that the emotion conveyed by the face with the averted gaze matters. We (...) further tested the interplay between gaze and face emotion in the context of manipulable objects to understand whether and to what extent other people's gaze influences our own actions toward objects. Participants judged whether a target graspable object was upright or inverted after viewing a face cue with a central or averted gaze. Importantly, the target's handle could be oriented toward the gazed-at location or the opposite side such that gaze and handle were corresponding or non-corresponding in space. Furthermore, we manipulated the expression of the cue by using neutral and fearful faces. Results showed a handle-response compatibility effect only with fearful cues with a central gaze. (shrink)