The author returns to a much debated topic, the so-called “Episode of Helen”, which has come to us only through indirect transmission, and endeavors to dismantle the prejudice against Virgilian authorship. G. P. Goold’s pugnacious intervention, dating back to more than half a century ago, contributed decisively – in fact, more than it should have – to the thesis that the text is spurious. A critical analysis of the text will demonstrate this claim to be groundless while offering arguments that (...) support the authenticity of the episode. (shrink)

A novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that extends and deepens enactive theory, bridging the gap between sensorimotor skills and language. -/- Linguistic Bodies offers a fully embodied and fully social treatment of human language without positing mental representations. The authors present the first coherent, overarching theory that connects dynamical explanations of action and perception with language. Arguing from the assumption of a deep continuity between life and mind, they show that this continuity extends to language. (...) Expanding and deepening enactive theory, they offer a constitutive account of language and the co-emergent phenomena of personhood, reflexivity, social normativity, and ideality. Language, they argue, is not something we add to a range of existing cognitive capacities but a new way of being embodied. Each of us is a linguistic body in a community of other linguistic bodies. The book describes three distinct yet entangled kinds of human embodiment, organic, sensorimotor, and intersubjective; it traces the emergence of linguistic sensitivities and introduces the novel concept of linguistic bodies; and it explores the implications of living as linguistic bodies in perpetual becoming, applying the concept of linguistic bodies to questions of language acquisition, parenting, autism, grammar, symbol, narrative, and gesture, and to such ethical concerns as microaggression, institutional speech, and pedagogy. (shrink)

The enactive approach to cognition distinctively emphasizes autonomy, adaptivity, agency, meaning, experience, and interaction. Taken together, these principles can provide the new sciences of language with a comprehensive philosophical framework: languaging as adaptive social sense-making. This is a refinement and advancement on Maturana’s idea of languaging as a manner of living. Overcoming limitations in Maturana’s initial formulation of languaging is one of three motivations for this paper. Another is to give a response to skeptics who challenge enactivism to connect “lower-level” (...) sense-making with “higher-order” sophisticated moves like those commonly ascribed to language. Our primary goal is to contribute a positive story developed from the enactive account of social cognition, participatory sense-making. This concept is put into play in two different philosophical models, which respectively chronicle the logical and ontogenetic development of languaging as a particular form of social agency. Languaging emerges from the interplay of coordination and exploration inherent in the primordial tensions of participatory sense-making between individual and interactive norms; it is a practice that transcends the self-other boundary and enables agents to regulate self and other as well as interaction couplings. Linguistic sense-makers are those who negotiate interactive and internalized ways of meta-regulating the moment-to-moment activities of living and cognizing. Sense-makers in enlanguaged environments incorporate sensitivities, roles, and powers into their unique yet intelligible linguistic bodies. We dissolve the problematic dichotomies of high/low, online/offline, and linguistic/nonlinguistic cognition, and we provide new boundary criteria for specifying languaging as a prevalent kind of human social sense-making. (shrink)

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)

Prompted by our commentators, we take this response as an opportunity to clarify the premises, attitudes, and methods of our enactive approach to human languaging. We high-light the need to recognize that any investigation, particularly one into language, is always a concretely situated and self-grounding activity; our attitude as researchers is one of knowing as engagement with our subject matter. Our task, formulating the missing categories that can bridge embodied cognitive science with language research, requires avoiding premature abstractions and clarifying (...) the multiple circularities at play. Our chosen method is dialectical, which has prompted several interesting observations that we respond to, particularly with respect to what this method means for enactive epistemology and ontology. We also clarify the important question of how best to conceive of the variety of social skills we progressively identify with our method and are at play in human languaging. Are these skills socially constituted or just socially learned? The difference, again, leads to a clarification that acts, skills, actors, and interactions are to be conceived as co-emerging categories. We illustrate some of these points with a discussion of an example of aspects of the model at play in a study of gift giving in China.Keywords: Enactive epistemology, Enactive ontology, Dialectics, languaging, Shared know-how. (shrink)

Research Ethics Committees have the responsibility to protect the participants involved in researches and to guarantee the ethical behavior of researchers. In some institutions, such committees also review scientific projects of non-pharmaceutical areas, Public Health and Health Economics. Within this framework, the article analyzes what it means to be part of a Research Ethics Committee in a hospital or university based on personal experience as a community representative. By means of the convenience sampling technique, implemented in four Colombian cities that (...) have GCP-certified committees by INVIMA –National Institute for the Control of Medications and Food–, and by means of content analysis, based on fixed and emergent categories; the experience, perception, participation, representation, and ethical aspects are described as well as the learning process and personal contributions. Findings prove that representatives interviewed have been benefited by learning clinic and epidemiological aspects without necessarily being “experts in the community”. However, they seem not to recognize clearly the population they represent, which might lead these communities to being affected by certain particular studies. The article suggests to work on the minimal common elements that a community representative should possess to appropriately protect participants. (shrink)

L’hymne aux Philippiens est souvent mis en perspective de textes du premier Testament, que ce soit des pages où il est question de la préexistence de la sagesse ou avec celles qui évoquent la destinée du juste souffrant. Sur la base d’une étude de la structure et du mouvement du poème, le présent article étaye une hypothèse parfois avancée, mais peu développée jusqu’ici: l’hymne peut être lu sur l’arrière-plan de la présentation de l’homme comme «image de Dieu» et de l’histoire (...) malheureuse de l’Éden articulée avec la figure du Serviteur d’Isaïe . Ce qui est dit de Jésus alors, c’est qu’il refuse d’entrer dans la logique dans laquelle le serpent entraîne Ève et Adam, pour imiter le Dieu qui donne, dans un geste de dépouillement de lui-même qui sera aussi celui du Serviteur. Aussi, Jésus réussit à accomplir en lui à l’image de Dieu, là où Adam a échoué; aussi reçoit-il de Dieu ce qu’Adam avait voulu arracher de force: l’élévation. En effet, par son choix, le Christ Jésus offre à Dieu de se reconnaître comme père en donnant son propre nom à celui qui a réalisé en lui la ressemblance de son image. (shrink)

In the Bible, particularly in the Prophets, hospitality is closely linked to foreignness. The dynamics are complex, as prophetic literature shows in its own way. This presentation aims to bring to the fore — thematically and mainly synchronically — how this biblical corpus considers hospitality reserved to foreigners. This will be done along the following three lines : 1) following the Torah’s position on the subject, a foreigner must be welcomed and respected ; 2) the foreigner — whom Israel sometimes (...) wishes to resemble — appears as an enemy who manages to bring Israel down but who will eventually be brought down by Israel ; 3) the contrast between Israel’s exclusive status in the eyes of its god, Yhwh, and the kind of welcome Yhwh gives the Nations. (shrink)

This is a draft of the introduction to the collective volume "The birth of string theory", including the book's index and preface. The book explores the history of the theory’s early stages of development, as told by its main protagonists. It journeys from the first version of the theory in the late 1960s, as an attempt to describe the physics of strong interactions outside the framework of quantum field theory, to its reinterpretation around the mid-1970s as a quantum theory of (...) gravity unified with the other interactions, and its successive developments up to the superstring revolution in 1984. The introductive Chapter summarizes the main developments and contains a chronological synopsis with a list of key results and publications. (shrink)

Achille Varzi è uno dei maggiori metafisici viventi. Nel corso degli anni ha scritto testi fondamentali di logica, metafisica, mereologia, filosofia del linguaggio. Ha sconfinato nella topologia, nella geografia, nella matematica, ha ragionato di mostri e confini, percezione e buchi, viaggi nel tempo, nicchie, eventi e ciambelle; e non ha disdegnato di dialogare con gli abitanti di Flatlandia, con Neo e con Terminator. Tra le sue opere principali: Holes and Other Superficialities e Parts and Places. The Structures of Spatial Representation, (...) entrambi scritti insieme a R. Casati per MIT Press; Il mondo messo a fuoco, Laterza; e il suo libro più recente: Le tribolazioni del filosofare, con C. Calosi, per Laterza. -/- Da una giornata all’Università di Urbino nasce questa conversazione a molte voci sulla e con la filosofia di Achille C. Varzi. In un dialogo critico al quale l’Autore si presta con generosità e onestà intellettuale, Andrea Borghini, Francesco Calemi, Claudio Calosi, Elena Casetta, Valeria Giardino, Pierluigi Graziani, Patrizia Pedrini, Daniele Santoro e Giuliano Torrengo lo interrogano e mettono alla prova sui temi affrontati, nel corso degli anni, in campi diversi. Il risultato è un percorso che si snoda attraverso molti mondi, dalla logica alla metafisica, dalla filosofia del linguaggio alla filosofia della matematica, dalla mereologia alla filosofia del tempo, spingendosi in qualche caso oltre i confini del saggio filosofico. (shrink)

Mouvement et corporéité chez Patočka.Les origines aristotéliciennes du concept de mouvement ontologiquePatočka reconnaît dans le mouvement vital de l’existence humaine le fondement ontolotique de l’ouverture-au-monde et à l’Être entier comme totalité de ce qui est: par rapport à Heidegger par contre, Patočka entrevoit dans la corporéité une dimension ontologique fondamentale pour la donation même de l’existence actuelle. C’est dans ce sens que le mouvement de l’existence prend chez Patočka une dimension ontologique fondamentale: il représente, en dernière instance, un facteur déterminant (...) pour l’apparaître et la donation et le devenir actuel de l’existence, qui trouve précisément dans la corporéité le fondement ultime de sa manifestation.Le phénoménologue aveugle aperçoit chez Aristote la découverte très innovante (par rapport à la tradition philosophique qui l’avait précédé) d’un rapport dynamique et coessentiel entre l’Être et le mouvement: au cours du développement, je chercherai à montrer de quelle manière cette découverte assume pour Patočka une pertinence philosophique fondamentale, contribuant à la théorisation de l’idée de mouvement au sens ontologique. Il s’agira donc de montrer comment, à partir de l’analyse de la conception aristotélicienne du mouvement de sa relation avec la notion de substance,Patočka a élaboré sa propre idée de mouvement ontologique et de corporéité.Movement and Corporeality in Patočka.The Aristotelian Origins of the Concept of Ontological MovementPatočka recognized in the vital movement of human existence the ontological ground of the openness-to-the-world and to Being as a whole as the totality of thatwhich is. Unlike Heidegger, however, Patočka caught a glimpse in corporeality of a ontological dimension fundamental for the givenness of actual existence. It is in this sense that the movement of existence takes on a fundamental ontological dimension in Patočka: it represents, in a final analysis, a determining factor for the appearing and the givenness and the actual becoming of existence, which finds precisely in corporeality the ultimate ground of its manifestation.The blind phenomenologist glimpsed in Aristotle the very innovative discovery (with respect to the philosophical tradition that had preceded him) of a dynamic and coessential relationship between Being and movement. In the course of my argument, I will seek to show in what way this discovery assumes a fundamental philosophical pertinence for Patočka, contributing to the theorization of the idea of movement in an ontological sense. I will show how, following from the analysis of the Aristotelian conception of movement and of its relation with the notion of substance, Patočka elaborated his own idea of ontological movement and corporeality. (shrink)

An exchange of letters among proper names and natural-kind terms, dealing with various identity and individuation problems (rigid designation, use-mention ambiguities, translation) from their point of view.

Nella tradizione agostiniana del XII secolo compaiono temi e linguaggi che suggeriscono la presenza, accanto al discorso teologico, di un discorso dell'uomo sull'uomo. Si analizza la figura di Maria Maddalena in alcuni autori del XII secolo e l'allegoria nuziale nei Sermones super Cantica di Bernardo di Clairvaux. La lettura viene condotta sulla base di categorie concettuali di carattere psicoanalitico, in quanto tali categorie trovano la propria origine, prima ancora che nel pensiero, nella più concreta e profonda esperienza umana. Ed è (...) proprio il collocarsi all'interno di questa viva esperienza umana che consente di cogliere in modo più diretto la dimensione antropologica che pare emergere dagli scrittori monastici di questo periodo. (shrink)

Mouvement et corporéité chez Patočka.Les origines aristotéliciennes du concept de mouvement ontologiquePatočka reconnaît dans le mouvement vital de l’existence humaine le fondement ontolotique de l’ouverture-au-monde et à l’Être entier comme totalité de ce qui est: par rapport à Heidegger par contre, Patočka entrevoit dans la corporéité une dimension ontologique fondamentale pour la donation même de l’existence actuelle. C’est dans ce sens que le mouvement de l’existence prend chez Patočka une dimension ontologique fondamentale: il représente, en dernière instance, un facteur déterminant (...) pour l’apparaître et la donation et le devenir actuel de l’existence, qui trouve précisément dans la corporéité le fondement ultime de sa manifestation.Le phénoménologue aveugle aperçoit chez Aristote la découverte très innovante (par rapport à la tradition philosophique qui l’avait précédé) d’un rapport dynamique et coessentiel entre l’Être et le mouvement: au cours du développement, je chercherai à montrer de quelle manière cette découverte assume pour Patočka une pertinence philosophique fondamentale, contribuant à la théorisation de l’idée de mouvement au sens ontologique. Il s’agira donc de montrer comment, à partir de l’analyse de la conception aristotélicienne du mouvement de sa relation avec la notion de substance,Patočka a élaboré sa propre idée de mouvement ontologique et de corporéité.Movement and Corporeality in Patočka.The Aristotelian Origins of the Concept of Ontological MovementPatočka recognized in the vital movement of human existence the ontological ground of the openness-to-the-world and to Being as a whole as the totality of thatwhich is. Unlike Heidegger, however, Patočka caught a glimpse in corporeality of a ontological dimension fundamental for the givenness of actual existence. It is in this sense that the movement of existence takes on a fundamental ontological dimension in Patočka: it represents, in a final analysis, a determining factor for the appearing and the givenness and the actual becoming of existence, which finds precisely in corporeality the ultimate ground of its manifestation.The blind phenomenologist glimpsed in Aristotle the very innovative discovery (with respect to the philosophical tradition that had preceded him) of a dynamic and coessential relationship between Being and movement. In the course of my argument, I will seek to show in what way this discovery assumes a fundamental philosophical pertinence for Patočka, contributing to the theorization of the idea of movement in an ontological sense. I will show how, following from the analysis of the Aristotelian conception of movement and of its relation with the notion of substance, Patočka elaborated his own idea of ontological movement and corporeality. (shrink)