Cet ouvrage explore l'itinéraire intellectuel d'André-François Boureau-Deslandes (1689-1757), commissaire général de la Marine, philosophe, savant, moraliste, historien des techniques. Cette étude comporte une analyse détaillée de tous les travaux de l'auteur, en privilégiant ses textes inédits, erronément attribués, ignorés ou à peine recensés. Le but de cette étude est d'attirer l'attention sur une figure complexe d'écrivain et de penseur, dont l'œuvre devrait finalement trouver sa place dans la discipline de l'Histoire de la philosophie et mériterait d'être considérée dans son intégralité, (...) non seulement pour sa valeur intrinsèque, mais aussi parce qu'elle permet, par sa singularité, de mettre en évidence le clair-obscur d'un contexte philosophique, aussi bien culturel que moral : celui de la rencontre et de l'enchevêtrement de l'esprit libertin et l'esprit des Lumières dans la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle. (shrink)

Numerous studies suggest that both emotion knowledge and language abilities are powerfully related to young children’s theory of mind. Nonetheless, the magnitude and direction of the associations between language, emotion knowledge, and theory-of-mind performance in the first years of life are still debated. Hence, the aim of this study was to assess the direct effects of emotion knowledge and language on theory-of-mind scores in 2- and 3-year-old children. A sample of 139 children, aged between 24 and 47 months (M = (...) 35.5 months; SD = 6.73), were directly administered measures of emotion knowledge, theory of mind, and language. We conducted structural equation modeling (SEM) to evaluate the effects of these variables within a single comprehensive framework, while also controlling for any effects of age and gender. The proposed structural equation model provided an excellent fit for the data, indicating that both children’s emotion knowledge and their language ability had direct positive effects on theory of mind scores. In addition, age was found to wield statistically significant effects on all the variables under study, whereas gender was not significantly associated with any of them. These findings suggest the importance of fostering young children’s emotion knowledge and language with a view to enhancing their comprehension of mental states. (shrink)

This paper examines an argument by Schaffer (2017) that aims to prove how, contrary to what many philosophers hold, there is no special explanatory gap occurring in the connection between the physical and the phenomenal. This is because a gap of the same kind can be found in every connection between a more fundamental and a less fundamental level of reality. These gaps lurk everywhere in nature. For Schaffer, they can be bridged by means of substantive metaphysical principles such as (...) grounding principles. He thus puts forward a version of grounding-based physicalism, which is supposed to provide this kind of substantive bridge principle. My main contention is as follows: even if Schaffer’s argument indeed proves the existence of a gap in every connection between fundamental and derivative entities, and such gaps can be bridged by means of grounding principles, a different gap remains open in the psycho-physical connection. (shrink)

Introduction: A general trend in the psychological literature suggests that guilt contributes to morality more than shame does. Unlike shame-prone individuals, guilt-prone individuals internalize the causality of negative events, attribute responsibility in the first person, and engage in responsible behavior. However, it is not known how guilt- and shame-proneness interact with the attribution of responsibility to others. -/- Methods: In two Web-based experiments, participants reported their attributions of moral culpability (i.e., responsibility, causality, punishment and decision-making) about morally ambiguous acts of (...) killing in different conditions. In Study 1 the vignettes were presented in the 1st person, while in Study 2 in the 3rd person. To test proneness to guilt and shame, we utilized the GASP scale, which differentiates between the affective and behavioral components of each emotion. Statistical analyses were performed in Matlab and R. -/- Results: We found that guilt- and shame-proneness were associated with the severity of attributions in both the first and the third person, but the effect was strong only in the guilt case (both subtypes) and shame-affect case, and not in the shame-behavior case. We call this the Moralizing Effect. -/- Discussion: We wonder whether our finding that guilt-prone people tend to attribute a higher degree of culpability to others is really consistent with the view that guilt motivates people to choose the “moral paths in life”. This echoes views about the harmful aspects of guilt, which have been expressed historically in philosophy, for example, by Friedrich Nietzsche. (shrink)

This book provides an introduction to the study of words, and how we use words to create meaning. It offers an accessible description of the main properties of words and the organizational principles of the lexicon, based on theoretical accounts and extensive empirical data.

A growing body of scholarship has documented the experiences of different groups of migrants involved in the maintenance and development of transnational families worldwide showing that proximity is not a prerequisite of family life and that families can successfully be done from a distance. While most work deals with the experiences of labour migrants less attention has been paid to forced migrants. Still little is known about families that fail to operate transnationally and are broken by the migration experience. For (...) instance, when can we say that this type of family cannot be sustained? This article, drawing on the transnational motherhood literature and on Zontini previous study on Filipino labour migrants in Southern Europe, highlights the factors that shape transnational parenting. The authors then use this framework to explore the experiences of a group of Zimbabwean asylum seeking mothers in the UK. In doing so, the authors point out some of the specificities of this particular group; highlighting the differentiated impact of transnationalism and contributing to refining the literature on transnational parenthood. (shrink)

Baccarini and Malatesti (2017) defend the idea that we must use coercively biomedical means to enhance the morality of a specific group of individuals: psychopaths, diagnosed through the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) standards (Hare, 2003). Their argument is theoretical, thus it goes independently from the actual effectiveness of existent treatments, and it is based on a logical reasoning. Moral bioenhancement (MB) means include psychotropic drugs, brain stimulations, neurosurgeries, genetic editing, etc. -/- In short, the authors apply Gerald Gaus' account of open (...) justification (Gaus, 1996, 2011), according to which “a prescription addressed to an agent is a reasoning that includes premises that consider the system of reasons (such as beliefs, preferences, etc.) of that agent” (Baccarini and Malatesti, 2017, p. 1). In their view, coercive MB of psychopaths is morally sound and deducible by reasons within the psychopath's cognitive-affective system—even if the psychopath needs not to be able to consciously or sincerely endorse them. We believe that this argument is flawed. In sum, we argue that the psychopath's cognitive-affective system would consistently justify reasons against mandatory MB to herself, even if she wishes differently for others, and that the prescription cannot be extended. (shrink)

Despite the belief that autism is an empathy disorder, autistics declare their ability to empathize. To explore this experiential vision, we present the alternative explanation for social impairments in autism offered by the Intense World Theory (IWT) and substantiate it through the phenomenological analysis of empathy as an experienced phenomenon. According to IWT, autistics are characterized by hyper-emotionality and therefore their detachment is not the sign of a disrupted empathy, but a strategy to face a world of overwhelming stimuli. Taking (...) the phenomenological account of empathy as a tendency to minimize the emotional and conceptual space dividing embodied and conscious subjects, our purpose is to explain that although autistics seem to expand this space, they may still be considered empathetic. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe a framework for studying social agents’ individual decision making, that takes account of the environment and social dynamics. We describe a study in which we explored the efficiency of foraging strategies within a group of individuals faced with a resource-limited environment. We investigated to what extent cooperative and non-cooperative behaviors impacted on the survival rates of a population of individuals. In the experiment presented here, we considered two different types of individuals: selfish individuals who gather (...) energy for their own use, and cooperative individuals who share the energy they gather with others, thus reducing their own individual chances of survival. In order to study the trade-off between non-cooperative and cooperative behaviors in a pseudo-realistic two-dimensional environment, we introduced an agent-based modeling and simulation tool called ACACIA-ES, which simulated local interactions and spatial behavior for large numbers of individuals in complex environments. The main result from our simulation was that a group of cooperative individuals displayed better survival strategies than groups of selfish individuals when faced with a variety of environmental pressures; however, it was very unlikely that such cooperative strategies could resist competition from selfish individuals, if the outcome of past social interactions was memorized, even when a very small group of selfish individuals was introduced. (shrink)

There is a lot of conceptual engineering going on in medical research. I substantiate this claim with two examples, the medical debate about cancer classification and about obesity as a disease I also argue that the proper target of conceptual engineering in medical research are experts’ conceptions. These are explicitly written down in documents and guidelines, and they bear on research and policies. In the second part of the chapter, I propose an externalist framework in which conceptions have both the (...) explanatory power of psychological concepts and that of semantic concepts. It is likely, however, that human activities and practices distinct from medical research, and regulated by different practices and epistemic rules, call for different targets for conceptual engineering. I conclude with indicating an open agenda of problems for philosophers of medicine interested in conceptual engineering. (shrink)

This book provides an introduction to the study of words, their main properties and how we use them to create meaning. It offers a detailed description of the organizational principles of the lexicon, and of the categories used to classify various lexical phenomena, including polysemy, meaning variation, behaviour in composition, and the interface with pragmatics. Elisabetta Ježek uses empirical data from digitalized corpora and speakers' judgements, combined with the formalisms developed in the field of general and theoretical linguistics, to (...) propose representations for each of these phenomena. The book's clear structure and accessible approach make it an ideal textbook for all students of linguistics and a valuable resource for scholars and students of language in the fields of cognitive science and philosophy. (shrink)

Mentalization is a useful ability for social functioning and a crucial aspect of mentalizing is emotion regulation. Literature suggests programmes for children and adults to increase mentalizing abilities useful both for emotional and social competences. For this reason, the issue of how to prompt children’s mentalization has started to attract researchers’ attention, supporting the importance of the interpersonal dimension for the individual differences in the developmental of mentalization. The TiM (Thoughts in Mind) Project, a training programme based on the explanation (...) of mentalization mechanisms and designed for adults, deals with emotion regulation. Starting from the TiM Project, this study tests the effects of the TiM Child (TiM-C) training programme, over a control training programme, a conversational training designed for the school context, in children attending Year 2 of primary school. We designed a training based on narratives, followed by multiple-choice questions and conversations about mental states. Our results revealed significant improvements over the training period only in the TiM-C Project group for Metacognition, Emotion Regulation Strategies and a Theory of Mind task. As far as the educational implications, our findings suggest that it is possible to enhance mentalization through activities at school by promoting not only the understanding of the relations between mind and emotion, but also metacognitive skills. (shrink)

È possibile perseguire intenzionalmente la speranza o si tratta di una postura interiore che sfugge alla volontà? E se scaturisce da una ricerca, può essere trasmessa, sollecitata?Declinata in una pratica da perseguire nella relazione di aiuto? È realistico considerare la capacità di schiudere nuove possibilità per abitare con senso la vita, una competenza professionale del lavoro di cura? Nell’intento di dare risposta a questi interrogativi la riflessione attraversa il pensiero di alcuni tra i maggiori filosofi del Novecento, secondo un orientamento (...) fenomenologico che prende le mosse dall’esperienza vissuta.Is it possible to “intentionally” pursue the hope or is it an inner attitude beyond anyone’s will? And if it derives from a research, can it be transmitted, aroused? Can it be declined as a practice to be followed in a helping relationship? Is it realistic to consider the capacity of disclosing new possibilities of living a meaningful as a professional skill in care job?The intention of giving an answer to these questions crosses the beliefs of some of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, in compliance with a phenomenological orientation taking its moves from lived experience. (shrink)

A Kuhnian reformulation of the recent debate in psychiatric nosography suggested that the current psychiatric classification system (the DSM) is in crisis and that a sort of paradigm shift is awaited (Aragona, 2009). Among possible revolutionary alternatives, the proposed fi ve-axes etiopathogenetic taxonomy (Charney et al., 2002) emphasizes the primacy of the genotype over the phenomenological level as the relevant basis for psychiatric nosography. Such a position is along the lines of the micro-reductionist perspective of E. Kandel (1998, 1999), which (...) sees mental disorders reducible to explanations at a fundamental epistemic level of genes and neurotransmitters. This form of micro-reductionism has been criticized as a form of genetic-molecular fundamentalism (e.g. Murphy, 2006) and a multi-level approach, in the form of the burgeoning Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, was proposed. This article focuses on multi-level mechanistic explanations, coming from Cognitive Science, as a possible alternative etiopathogenetic basis for psychiatric classification. The idea of a mechanistic approach to psychiatric taxonomy is here defended on the basis of a better conception of levels and causality. Nevertheless some critical remarks of Mechanism as a psychiatric general view are also offered. (shrink)

Italy is in the forefront of forensic neuroscience practice among European nations. In recent years, the country presented two major criminal cases, the Trieste Case in 2009 and the Como Case in 2011, which were the first cases employing neurogenetic and functional neuroimaging methods in European courts. In this paper we will discuss the consequences that an understanding of the neural and genetic determinants of human (mis)behavior will have on law, especially on the Italian legal context. Some claim that such (...) consequences will actually be revolutionary, while others argue that legal doctrine assumptions won’t be undermined by neuroscientific findings. In the first section of the paper, we introduce the general debate and follow with a section devoted to the two Italian cases. In the third and final section, we discuss epistemological and ethical issues regarding Italian neurolaw. We defend a position which diverges from those prevailing in the debate. While negative outcomes and concerns were usually evidenced, we focus on positive changes coming with the new paradigm of interaction between neuroscience and the law. Our view is that these cases are clearly pioneering ones, anticipating what will happen in the courtrooms of the European Union in the whole, in the near future. (shrink)

Advanced medical imaging, such as CT, fMRI and PET, has undergone enormous progress in recent years, both in accuracy and utilization. Such techniques often bring with them an illusion of immediacy, the idea that the body and its diseases can be directly inspected. In this paper we target this illusion and address the issue of the reliability of advanced imaging tests as knowledge procedures, taking positron emission tomography in oncology as paradigmatic case study. After individuating a suitable notion of reliability, (...) we argue that PET is a highly theory-laden and non-immediate knowledge procedure, in spite of the photographic-like quality of the images it delivers; the diagnostic conclusions based on the interpretation of PET images are population-dependent; PET images require interpretation, which is inherently observer-dependent and therefore variable. We conclude with a three-step methodological proposal for enhancing the reliability of advanced medical imaging. (shrink)

This paper stresses the circumstance that Ferraris’ Documentalità shows that what is often improperly called “communication society” actually consists in a “recording society”. Recording is either a condition of the persistence of thought, and of the existence and the recognition of the social world, which expresses and settles itself in a configuration of documents. This perspective gets the notion of “spirit” out from its abstraction: without a letter, the spirit wouldn’t have any ontological consistence. What we call “spiritual” is the (...) result of registrations: as such, it has a foundational value and implies the responsibility for the acts that result from it. (shrink)

In his recent book, Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra considers the uncoordinated bursts of violence that have punctuated the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall as tangible manifestations of the latest wave of crisis in liberal modernity. Rather than fostering peace and prosperity across the globe, he argues, the economic globalization of the last half century has created a claustrophobic and unequal world populated by frustrated individuals prone to anger and revenge. "The result is, as Hannah Arendt feared, (...) 'a tremendous increase in mutual hatred and a somewhat universal irritability of everybody against everybody else,' or ressentiment, … an existential resentment of other people's being, caused by an intense mix... (shrink)

Les pratiques du commerce équitable, décrites dans cet article, montrent comment a pu se développer, tout au long de ses quarante années d'existence, un mouvement capable de relier autour des mêmes préoccupations, des citoyens du nord et du sud du monde. De ce fait, on peut affirmer que, en dépit des clivages et des divergences, le commerce équitable participe à la définition d'un espace public d'envergure internationale autour des questions de la consommation et des modes d'organisation du commerce international. La (...) première partie a pour but de clarifier la démarche technique et les valeurs qui animent le mouvement. La deuxième partie pose la question de savoir dans quelle mesure les impacts générés à la fois sur le marché conventionnel et sur le développement du sud du monde ont du sens pour l'avenir.The practices of fair trade described in this article show how this movement has been able to create links between citizens with shared concerns in the southern and northern hemispheres in the 40 years it has existed. In this way, we are able to affirm that despite certain differences and divisions, fair trade has contributed towards the definition of international public discussion on question such as consumption and the organization of international trade. The first part of this article aims to clarify the technical process and the values underpinning this civic movement through a description of its practices. The second part aims to assess the extent to which the impact fair trade has had on conventional trade and on local development in the southern hemisphere indicates a direction for the future. (shrink)

Aristotle's discussion of legal change in Politics II.8 is the subject of this article. The aim is to show that Aristotle viewed legal change positively, when changes to the law are required, and that his discussion was mainly concerned with the two rather distinct roles of the demos and of the legislator. The analysis involves a re-examination of 1268b 25ss in book II of Aristotle’s Politics and its connection with book III. The analysis is also extended to Aristotle’s Rhetoric and (...) Nicomachean Ethics, and to Plato’s Politicus and Laws. (shrink)

La idea aristotélica de la politeia como característica distintiva de la experiencia histórica de la polis constituye un aspecto clave de su estudio de la política. Parte de esta discusión tiene que ver con el intento de Aristóteles de establecer y definir las calidades de la politeia como el criterio más válido para elaborar un relato histórico de la ciudad. En la sección 1 tomo en consideración el papel de la politeia dentro del relato de la historia de la polis (...) desde que esta última se aleja de la forma monárquica. En la sección 2 me ocupo del problema de la inteligibilidad de la politeia en el contexto de la ciudad entendida como “comunidad de interpretación”. Por último, en la sección 3 analizo la politeia como expresión de la unidad de la ciudad y discuto su condición de elemento unificador de las acciones que miran a un objetivo común. Aquí argumento la “calidad unificadora” de la politeia que destaca las conexiones causales que subyacen a las acciones vinculadas con la polis. Dentro del contexto de la politeia el relato histórico de la polis pone en relación acciones que fuera del marco de la politeia no aparecen tan vinculadas entre sí. Palabras-clave: inteligibilidad de la politeia, historia de la polis, justicia política, Aristóteles acerca de la unidad de la ciudad, reforma de Clístenes, Aristóteles acerca de la historia y la poesía. (shrink)