The Research Domani Criteria framework (RdoC) encourages research on specific impairments present across traditional nosological categories and suggests a list of biological and behavioral measures for assessing them. After a description of RdoC, in this article we focus on impairments of the ability of understanding others, specifically in Theory of Mind and empathy. We illustrate recent evidence on brain anomalies correlating with these deficits in Schizophrenia, Addiction Disorders and Mood Disorders populations. In the last section, we zoom out and consider (...) this kind of research vis-à-vis the objection of being reductionistic that is, in favoring mechanistic accounts of mental disorders. We argue that metaphysical reductionism and explanatory reductionism are not conceptually entailed by the RdoC framework. (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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

The subjective feeling of free choice is an important feature of human experience. Experimental tasks have typically studied free choice by contrasting free and instructed selection of response alternatives. These tasks have been criticised, and it remains unclear how they relate to the subjective feeling of freely choosing. We replicated previous findings of the fMRI correlates of free choice, defined objectively. We introduced a novel task in which participants could experience and report a graded sense of free choice. BOLD responses (...) for conditions subjectively experienced as free identified a postcentral area distinct from the areas typically considered to be involved in free action. Thus, the brain correlates of subjective feeling of free action were not directly related to any established brain correlates of objectively-defined free action. Our results call into question traditional assumptions about the relation between subjective experience of choosing and activity in the brain’s so-called voluntary motor areas. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease pandemic fundamentally disrupted humans’ social life and behavior. Public health measures may have inadvertently impacted how people care for each other. This study investigated prosocial behavior, its association well-being, and predictors of prosocial behavior during the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and sought to understand whether region-specific differences exist. Participants from eight regions clustering multiple countries around the world responded to a cross-sectional online-survey investigating the psychological consequences of the first upsurge of lockdowns in spring 2020. Prosocial behavior (...) was reported to occur frequently. Multiple regression analyses showed that prosocial behavior was associated with better well-being consistently across regions. With regard to predictors of prosocial behavior, high levels of perceived social support were most strongly associated with prosocial behavior, followed by high levels of perceived stress, positive affect and psychological flexibility. Sociodemographic and psychosocial predictors of prosocial behavior were similar across regions. (shrink)

It is now a commonplace that emotions are not mere sensations but, rather, conceptually contentful states. In trying to expand on this insight, however, most theoretical approaches to emotions neglect central intuitions about what emotions are like. We therefore need a methodological shift in our thinking about emotions away from the standard accounts' attempts to reduce them to other mental states and toward an exploration of the distinctive work emotions do. I show that emotions' distinctive function is to engage us (...) with both objective and personal values. Attention to emotions' work reveals that it is precisely their “unruliness” that allows them to play meaningful roles in our lives. (shrink)

This introductory chapter summarises key findings of the twenty-two book chapters in terms of five propositions. These propositions, each building on relevant findings linked to forward-looking suggestions for research, policy and practice, reflect the architecture of the book, whose sections proceed from setting the stage to critical issues, followed by a section on methods and tools, to chapters that provide geographic perspectives, and finally to a section that identifies potential policy options. The propositions comprise (1) Risk management can be an (...) effective entry point for aligning perspectives and debates, if framed comprehensively, coupled with climate justice considerations and linked to established risk management and adaptation practice; (2) Attribution science is advancing rapidly and fundamental to informing actions to minimise, avert, and address losses and damages; (3) Climate change research, in addition to identifying physical/hard limits to adaptation, needs to more systematically examine soft limits to adaptation, for which we find some evidence across several geographies globally; (4) Climate risk insurance mechanisms can serve the prevention and cure aspects emphasised in the L&D debate but solidarity and accountability aspects need further attention, for which we find tentative indication in applications around the world; (5) Policy deliberations may need to overcome the perception that L&D constitutes a win-lose negotiation “game” by developing a more inclusive narrative that highlights collective ambition for tackling risks, mutual benefits and the role of transformation. [Open access]. (shrink)

New genetic technologies promise to generate valuable insights into the aetiology of several psychiatric conditions, as well as a wider range of human and animal behaviours. Advances in the neurosciences and the application of new brain imaging techniques offer a way of integrating DNA analysis with studies that are looking at other biological markers of behaviour. While candidate 'genes for' certain conditions, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, are said to be 'un-discovered' at a faster rate than they are discovered, many (...) studies are being conducted on personality traits such as aggressiveness and anti-social traits. The clinical applicability and implications of these studies are often discussed within the scientific community. However, little attention has so far been paid to their possible policy implications in relation to criminality management and to Criminal Law itself. Similarly, the related ethical issues arising in the field of crime control, and the tensions between enhancing security for society and protecting civil liberties, are currently under-explored. This paper investigates these ethical issues by focusing on the views of those professionals – including judges, lawyers, probation officers and social workers – who work with individuals 'deemed at risk' of violent and aggressive behaviours. It also discusses and problematizes mainstream rhetoric and arguments around the notion of 'risky individuals'. (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)

This paper aims to investigate the significance of mood for a philosophical approach to emotion. Are moods problematic because they constrain us in an affective cage? Or do they rather give us access to the world? The starting point for this investigation is the work of Martin Heidegger: I analyze what he defines as vorweltlich arguing that this term refers to the emotional dimension of human existence, in particular, to mood, or, in Heideggerian terms, Stimmung. Human existence is not just (...) a neutral being-there but a being-affected, a being-in-a-mood. I then move on to consider the role of mood in relation to the concept of transcendence, providing an analysis of two main source of inspiration in Heidegger’s thought: Augustine and Aristotle. This allows us to distinguish three aspects of Stimmung : Stimmung as openness to the world, Stimmung as teleological movement, and Stimmung as event of ontological difference. In the final section, I discuss the contribution of these aspects of Heidegger’s thought to the contemporary debate on emotions. (shrink)