Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we used a novel futures-oriented and participatory approach that asked what future envisioned knowledge systems might need to look like and how we might get there. Findings suggest that envisioned future systems will need (...) to be much more collaborative, open, diverse, egalitarian, and able to work with values and systemic issues. They will also need to go beyond producing knowledge about our world to generating wisdom about how to act within it. To get to envisioned systems we will need to rapidly scale methodological innovations, connect innovators, and creatively accelerate learning about working with intractable challenges. We will also need to create new funding schemes, a global knowledge commons, and challenge deeply held assumptions. To genuinely be a creative force in supporting longevity of human and non-human life on our planet, the shift in knowledge systems will probably need to be at the scale of the enlightenment and speed of the scientific and technological revolution accompanying the second World War. This will require bold and strategic action from governments, scientists, civic society and sustained transformational intent. (shrink)
Luigi Einaudi was a leading liberal economist, economic historian and political figure. This book provides the English-speaking world with a first critical edition of an unpublished version of Einaudi’s most important epistemological essay. The issues analysed here lie at the core of the problem concerning the nature and scope of economic sciences and the role played by economists in the public sphere, with particular emphasis on the interaction between economists and the ruling class. The earlier version of this essay has (...) also been considered the "historical epilogue" of the Italian tradition in public finance. An extensive reappraisal of this newly discovered document will help to reconsider and cast light on that tradition. This critical edition includes a comprehensive introduction and conclusion, both of which aim to place Einaudi’s essay in the context of his earlier epistemological speculation and the associated debates, and to assess the unsettled questions he left as an enduring heritage for the current generation of social scientists. (shrink)
The paper is intended to focus on peculiarities of nanomedicine and the importance of social concerns implicated, in order to understand if existing regulations are appropriate to maintain its safety or if a new ad hoc regulatory framework is needed. Consideration of social challenges will underline the crucial role of medical ethics in regulatory discussion.
The medial temporal lobe supports both navigation and declarative memory. On this basis, a theory of phylogenetic continuity has been proposed according to which episodic and semantic memories have evolved from egocentric and allocentric navigation in the physical world, respectively. Here, we explored the behavioral significance of this neurophysiological model by investigating the relationship between the performance of healthy individuals on a path integration and an episodic memory task. We investigated the path integration performance through a proprioceptive Triangle Completion Task (...) and assessed episodic memory through a picture recognition task. We evaluated the specificity of the association between performance in these two tasks by including in the study design a verbal semantic memory task. We also controlled for the effect of attention and working memory and tested the robustness of the results by including alternative versions of the path integration and semantic memory tasks. We found a significant positive correlation between the performance on the path integration the episodic, but not semantic, memory tasks. This pattern of correlation was not explained by general cognitive abilities and persisted also when considering a visual path integration task and a non-verbal semantic memory task. Importantly, a cross-validation analysis showed that participants' egocentric navigation abilities reliably predicted episodic memory performance. Altogether, our findings support the hypothesis of a phylogenetic continuity between egocentric navigation and episodic memory and pave the way for future research on the potential causal role of egocentric navigation on multiple forms of episodic memory. (shrink)
Informed consent is at the core of the clinical relationship. With the introduction of machine learning in healthcare, the role of informed consent is challenged. This paper addresses the issue of whether patients must be informed about medical ML applications and asked for consent. It aims to expose the discrepancy between ethical and practical considerations, while arguing that this polarization is a false dichotomy: in reality, ethics is applied to specific contexts and situations. Bridging this gap and considering the whole (...) picture is essential for advancing the debate. In the light of the possible future developments of the situation and the technologies, as well as the benefits that informed consent for ML can bring to shared decision-making, the present analysis concludes that it is necessary to prepare the ground for a possible future requirement of informed consent for medical ML. (shrink)
ABSTRACTSocieties in transition aiming at positive peace have the crucial task of redefining the moral relationships among their members. Once a violent conflict ends, children are both members of the society who have suffered, and those who will inherit the results of the transition. Children are victims, witnesses and at times perpetrators of crimes, but also part of the moral community and potentially key actors in peace processes: which would be the morally right attitude towards children in post-conflict scenarios? I (...) argue that exposure to violent conflict grounds a ‘special’ moral status that children are entitled to have recognized, while its impact on their lives results in severe denials of their moral worth. However, acknowledging their moral status and recognizing their past and present sufferings, through mechanisms of transitional justice in particular, has the potential to change their status within society without denying their moral worth. I thus suggest that the morally right attitude of societies in transition should be sensitive to children’s claims of moral ‘recognition’, where recognition can act as the informing principle behind the morally right attitude towards them, and ‘transitional justice’ as the set of theories and mechanisms to possibly translate that attitude into practice. (shrink)
Исследуя философские и мировоззренческие основы художественной прозы А.Ф. Лосева, Джорджия Римонди приходит к выводу о том, что эстетическое (символическое и музыкальное) познание является у А.Ф. Лосева средством постижения глубины человеческого бытия не менее значительным, чем познание рассудочное, а музыка, философия и литература различаются между собой лишь способом передачи смысла. Всвоей работе автор предпринимает попытку эксплицировать эстетическую концепцию А.Ф. Лосева через реконструкцию выраженных в прозе музыкально-философских воззрений, представляющих собой проекцию всей его философской системы.Творческое наследие А.Ф. Лосева представлено в данном исследовании как (...) сложное и многослойное явление, основанное на строгой понятийной системе. Внутреннюю цельность всего его творчества подтверждают и многочисленные ссылки в рассказах, повестях и романах на его собственные философские работы, благодаря чему изучение выразительных средств художественной прозы А.Ф. Лосева приводит к неизбежному выводу об общих корнях философии и литературы. (shrink)
Who is a native signer? Since around 95% of deaf infants are born into a hearing family, deaf signers are exposed to a sign language at various moments of their life, and not only from birth. Moreover, the linguistic input they are exposed to is not always a fully fledged natural sign language. In this situation, is the notion of native signer as someone exposed to language from birth of any use? We review the results of the first large-scale cross-linguistic (...) investigation on the effects of age of exposure to sign language. This research involved about 45 Deaf adult signers in each of three sign languages. Across the three languages, participants were divided into three groups – those exposed from birth, those between 1 and 5 years of age, and those exposed between 6 and 15 years of age – and received a battery of tests designed for each language targeting various aspects of morphosyntactic competence. In particular, the tests focused on both those morphosyntactic phenomena that are known from the spoken language literature to be good detectors of language impairment or delay and on morphosyntactic phenomena that are sign language specific. The results showed a clear effect of being native, with significant differences across languages and tests between signers exposed to sign language from birth and those exposed in the 1st years of life. This confirms the life-long importance of language exposure from birth and the reliability of the notion of “nativeness”, at least for syntax. On the other hand, while in most domains the differences observed between populations might be differences in performance, for some specific constructions, signers belonging to the three groups may have different grammars. This latter finding challenges the generalized use of native signers’ grammar as the baseline for language description and language assessment. (shrink)
This paper analyzes the family business as an organizational entity and as a proprietary form useful to transmit personal values and company assets to the next generations. This paper aims to introduce the legal instruments in Italy to transfer family businesses and to evaluate how these are useful for ensuring not only the survival of the company in the market but also that family values and characteristics pass from one generation to the next maintaining a prosocial humanistic management perspective. The (...) legal status of the family business and the fact that most small- and medium-sized companies in Italy are not listed, which considerably affects disclosure obligations and makes it more challenging to get consistent and reliable information at affordable costs, has to date limited research on this model. In recent years, given their growth in size and market share, the strategic potential of family businesses was recognized by both academics and practitioners, giving rise to further study. A primary goal of a family business is to maintain its competitive advantage in the market and pass down its values in the succession line. Hence, one of the most important themes on which scholars focused has been how this process takes place to ensure continuity. This paper argues that the trust and the family pact are both valid legal instruments to this end, albeit with different advantages depending on the circumstances surrounding the succession. (shrink)
The Fibromyalgia Survey Questionnaire was self-administered by a sample of 207 Italian individuals with obesity to screen for fibromyalgia. We aimed to investigate the inter-rater reliability and the agreement in the detection of FM symptomatology between the self-administered FSQ and the clinical interview conducted by a rheumatologist. All the patients were divided randomly into two groups : a rheumatologist first interviewed patients of group A and after 48 h, the patients completed the self-report FSQ. Patients of group B first completed (...) the FSQ and 48 h later were interviewed by a rheumatologist. The agreement between the measurements was good with the Bland-Altman analysis showing low bias scores for the two subscales of the FSQ. Results showed that 33% of the sample satisfied the criteria for a diagnosis of fibromyalgia. The FSQ is a self-reporting measure that showed substantial reliability providing fast screening for FM symptomatology. (shrink)
L'articolo cerca di restituire il senso della prospettiva ecologica di Ivan Illich, pensatore e critico radicale della modernità, che egli cosidera l'esito del pervertimento del messaggio evangelico, operato dalla Chiesa romana. L'industrializzazione, conepita come effetto ultimo di quel tradimento, condanna l'essere umano a una condizione di dipendenza e subalternità rispetto alle merci prodotte sul mercato e ai servizi offerti dalle categorie di esperti competenti. In questo modo egli compromette, secondo Illich, il proprio rapporto con gli altri e con la Terra (...) come sua dimora, rinchiudendosi nel guscio della propria individualità, prigioniero dei bisogni creati dal mercato. Ristabilire l'equilibrio ecologico per Illich è possibile solo attraverso un cambiamento sostanziale dei ritmi produttivi, per restituire all'uomo la padronanza degli strumenti e con essa la propria autonomia. (shrink)
The aim of this paper is to analyse the disgust of which Sartre's “nausea” is an expression, by identifying its ontological significance and its role within Sartre's thought. Particular attention is devoted to the phenomenological themes of vision and conversion of the gaze, in the strict correlation they have with disgust. My claim is that Sartre, in his early philosophical work, elaborated a response to the Heideggerian problematic of the correlation between Befindlichkeit and Faktizität. To verify such claim, my paper (...) will analyse the differences between Sartrean and Heideggerian thought with regard to these concepts, and show the extent of the influence that Husserl, Emmanuel Levinas and Aurel Kolnai had on Sartre. (shrink)
Paolo Silvestri interviews Deirdre Nansen McCloskey on the occasion of her latest book, Bettering Humanomics: A New, and Old, Approach to Economic Science. The interview covers her personal and intellectual life, the main turning points of her journey and her contributions. More specifically, the conversation focuses on McCloskey’s writings on the methodology and rhetoric of economics, her interdisciplinary ventures into the humanities, the Bourgeois Era trilogy with its history of the ‘Great Enrichment’, her liberal political commitments, and the value (...) and meaning of liberty, equality, and solidarity. Finally, the conversation returns to McCloskey’s ‘humanomics’ approach: an economics with the humans left in. (shrink)
Lee and Schwarz made considerable theoretical advances in the psychology of cleansing by proposing that cleaning actions might serve as separation procedures between two psychological entities. Here, we propose that the effectiveness of the separation process may be modulated by the available amount of executive resources, and that separation may operate as a load-dependent resetting procedure.
This paper aims to highlight the main characteristics of the Community of Inquiry Philosophy for Children. P4C is an educational movement and a curriculum for the education of critical, creative, and caring thinking that adopts dialogical methodologies. The main purpose of this paper is to declare the rules of Inquiry Talk in an inclusive perspective.
As the editors fully perceived, the new critical edition of the so-called commentary of Bernardus Silvestris on the Aeneid of Vergil was but a stage in the development of a basic knowledge of this important work. We could not, with the data available to us, solve certain major problems relating to author and text. We could not, for example, confidently name the author, nor could we adequately describe the genesis of the work. Recently, two studies have appeared — the first (...) by E. R. Smits, the second by Christopher Baswell — which seek to address these questions. The present article will in the main be a critique of these studies. In my view the two scholars perform a valuable service in bringing forward new material to which others may react, but the principal suggestion of Smits must be rejected and the conclusions of Baswell require modification. (shrink)
