CONTENTS: -/- SEZIONE I IL TUTTO E' UNO? IL RISVEGLIO DI UN PROBLEMA TRA SCOLASTICA E RINASCIMENTO Il principio omne causatum est compositum fra Tommaso e Cajetano Igor Agostini, p. 25 Parti e tutto in Montaigne. La natura e l'individuo tra frammentazione e integrazione Raffaele Carbone 45 Le minuzzarie e il tutto. Giordano bruno e la conoscenza universale Maurizio Cambi 75 -/- SEZIONE II A PARTIRE DA CARTESIO. COME PUO' ESSERE UN TUTTO L'UOMO? -/- Mente/Corpo in Cartesio. Spunti per un'interpretazione (...) mereologica Stefano Di Bella 93 Nos sumus ex Deo et pertinemus ad Deum. Appartenenza, dipendenza e relazione nel pensiero e nel lessico di Arnold Guelincx Cristina Santinelli 115 L'integrità di corpo e mente nell'"invenire" terapeutico di E. W. von Tschirnhaus Manuela Sanna 133 L'indivisibilità della natura umana e della società in Francesco Longano. Un episodio della ricezione di Locke in Italia Roberto Evangelista 147 -/- SEZIONE III L'IRROMPERE DELL'ORGANICO. LA BIOLOGIA FILOSOFICA TRA SEI E SETTECENTO -/- Convenienza e discrepanza. Parti e tutto nella Lettera 32 di Baruch Spinoza Francesco Toto 169 Mereologia della sostanza e mereologia del vivente in Leibniz Enrico Pasini 197 Teleologia e mereologia dell’organismo da Leibniz a Bonnet Francesco Piro 209 Il nesso delle parti: mereologia e scienza secondo Christian Wolff Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero 239 Il problema del tutto e delle parti. il caso del vitalismo di Montpellier Charles T. Wolfe 257 -/- SEZIONE 4 TOTALITA' CRITICHE: DALLA CRISI DEL NATURALISMO ILLUMINISTICO ALLA FILOSOFIA DELLE CULTURE -/- La logica del tutto (e delle parti di tutto, vale a dire niente) in Dom Deschamps Jean-Claude Bourdin 273 l’(in)afferabile forma. Totalità e contingenza nel pensiero di Kant tra Critica della ragion pura e Critica del giudizio Luigi Imperato 303 la relazione Parte-Tutto nel primo Schelling Giuseppe D’Anna 327 Hegel o della totalizzazione dello spazio di interiorità Vittorio Morfino 343 A partire da Kant: Begriffsbiìldung teleologica e relazione Parti-Tutto nelle indagini di Rickert sulla logica delle scienze storiche della cultura Edoardo Massimilla 359 . (shrink)

The time marked by the clock hands, the so-called “objective time,” is deeply different from the one perceived by the individual. Starting from this hypothesis, directly connected to the subjective modality of “living” the time and defined as time perspective, we will try to understand how much it affects the various domains of people's lives, attitudes, and experiences. Therefore, the research investigates whether all our decisions can be influenced by one or more time perspectives beyond our awareness. Last, but not (...) least, we will try to understand if some time perspectives in specific contexts are more functional and adaptive than others. (shrink)

The philosophy of Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) is an unusual,highly original, and influential reaction to the transition of Western cultureto the modern age. According to Spinoza, modern scientific thinking, if thoughtthrough, leads to a denial of humanity as the center of creation, willed by apersonal God. It is Spinoza who first formulated a philosophy which shows thatmodern scientific thinking, and the modern metaphysical view of humanity andthe world that it gives rise to, does not have to lead to despair. He (...) understoodthat engaging seriously in detached philosophical thinking could lead to anunexpected form of intellectual salvation. De Dijn's comprehensive introduction to Spinoza's philosophyis based on two key texts. He first provides an in-depth analysis of Spinoza's Treatise on the Improvement of theUnderstanding, which De Dijn characterizes as his introduction tophilosophy. This notoriously difficult text is here made accessible, even inits details. This analysis is followed by a comprehensive survey of Spinoza'smetaphysics as presented in his famous Ethics. De Dijn demonstrates howSpinoza's central philosophical project as introduced in the Treatise - thelinkage of knowledge and salvation - is perfectly realized in the Ethics. In thisway the unity of Spinoza's thought is shown to consist in his preoccupationwith the ethical question of salvation. The book also containsintroductory chapters on Spinoza's life and work, the original Latin text ofthe Treatise and its new English translation by Edwin Curley, and an annotatedbibliography on the secondary literature. (shrink)

For many years, psychological–clinical research has been aiming at studying the Mafia from different viewpoints: the man of honor's inner world, relational and psychopathological structures of his family matrices, connections between inner and social worlds, interiorized and social rules. Today, however, a complex phenomenon has come to light, which concerns the great connection between the Mafia and financial crime, and for us as researchers it is very interesting and complicated to analyze, because it involves the study of psychological peculiarities that (...) can be specifically found in the numerous illegalities. The crossbreeding of the various criminalities, which are always more interacting and merging and less isolated, makes this picture even more complex. (shrink)

A traditional ethic of medicine asserts that physicians have special obligations to individual patients with whom they have a clinical relationship. Contemporary trends in US healthcare financing like bundled payments seem to threaten traditional conceptions of special obligations of individual physicians to individual patients because their population-based focus sets a tone that seems to emphasise responsibilities for groups of patients by groups of physicians in an organisation. Prior to undertaking a cogent debate about the fate and normative weight of special (...) obligations and a traditional ethic for contemporary healthcare, we need a deeper examination of what the traditional ethic of special obligations really means. Here we offer a conception of ‘doubly distributed’ special obligations. Physicians and similarly minded healing professionals abiding by a traditional ethic have always spread their devotion and attention across multiple patients and have shared responsibilities with physician and non-physician colleagues in much the same way devoted parents have frequently distributed their special obligations across multiple children and across multiple parents. By taking up the extended analogy of parent we argue that doubly distributing special obligations need not contradict the possibility of special obligations in restructured collective forms of healthcare delivery and financing. (shrink)

The human being can be divided into body and mind, two inextricably linked aspects influencing each other. From birth, the body is the site of emotional experiences thanks to cellular memory. The t...

A traditional ethic of medicine asserts that physicians have special obligations to individual patients with whom they have a clinical relationship. Contemporary trends in US healthcare financing like bundled payments seem to threaten traditional conceptions of special obligations of individual physicians to individual patients because their population-based focus sets a tone that seems to emphasise responsibilities for groups of patients by groups of physicians in an organisation. Prior to undertaking a cogent debate about the fate and normative weight of special (...) obligations and a traditional ethic for contemporary healthcare, we need a deeper examination of what the traditional ethic of special obligations really means. Here we offer a conception of ‘doubly distributed’ special obligations. Physicians and similarly minded healing professionals abiding by a traditional ethic have always spread their devotion and attention across multiple patients and have shared responsibilities with physician and non-physician colleagues in much the same way devoted parents have frequently distributed their special obligations across multiple children and across multiple parents. By taking up the extended analogy of parent we argue that doubly distributing special obligations need not contradict the possibility of special obligations in restructured collective forms of healthcare delivery and financing. (shrink)

In his classic introduction to the subject, Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders, Aaron Beck observes that “the philosophical underpinnings” of cognitive therapy’s (CT) approach to the emotional disorders “go back thousands of years, certainly to the time of the Stoics, who considered man’s conceptions (or misconceptions) of events rather than the events themselves as the key to his emotional upsets” (Beck 1976, 3). But beyond acknowledging that the stoics anticipated the central insight of CT, Beck has very little to (...) say about the philosophical underpinnings of CT, content it would seem for it to be an empirically grounded system of psychological principles and therapeutic methods. Yet even this little .. (shrink)

The recent in vitro derivation of gamete‐like cells from mouse embryonic stem (mES) cells is a major breakthrough and lays down several challenges, both for the further scientific investigation and for the bioethical and biolegal discourse. We refer here to these cells as gamete‐like (sperm‐like or oocyte‐like, respectively), because at present there is still no evidence that these cells behave fully like bona fide sperm or oocytes, lacking the fundamental proof, i.e. combination with a normally derived gamete of the opposite (...) sex to yield a normal individual. However, the results published so far do show that these cells share some defining features of gametes. We discuss these results in the light of the bioethical and legal questions that are likely to arise would the same process become possible with human embryonic stem (hES) cells. (shrink)

Dans mon article, je vais essayer de développer une analyse de deux des plus importants chapitres du De anima d'Aristote : les chapitres 4 et 5 du livre III, où Aristote propose son traitement de la question de l'intellect. Sans entrer dans les détails de l'histoire de l'interprétation de ce texte, je propose d'identifier l'intellect dit ‘passif’ avec quelques traits distinctifs de la puissance de la phantasia ou imagination, et ce que l'on appelle ‘l'intelligence productive’ avec l'environnement cosmique, qui, en (...) vertu de ses régularités, produit les habitats qui vont agir sur la puissance sensorielle de l'être humain et qui, dans la production des expériences sensorielles de l'être humain, fera passer son esprit du statut d'intellect passif à celui d'intellectus in habitu. (shrink)

Contrary to the fairly standard view of Aquinas on temperance according to which this virtue habituates the concupiscible appetite to move in ways that accord with reason spontaneously, that is, independently of any immediate command from reason, the author of this paper argues that temperance is a virtue which "(1) disposes the concupiscible appetite to remain more or less still in the absence of any command from reason to move, thus preventing vehement, spontaneous passions of any sort, ordinate or inordinate, (...) from arising in the concupiscible appetite prior to reason's immediate command; and (2) also disposes the concupiscible appetite to obey reason's command so that a person may incite, increase, decrease, or curb a passion as needed." The paper ends by noting a lacuna in Aquinas's teaching on temperance. (shrink)

Agency has two meanings in psychology and neuroscience. It can refer to one's capacity to affect the world and act in line with one's goals and desires--this is the objective aspect of agency. But agency can also refer to the subjective experience of controlling one's actions, or how it feels to achieve one's goals or affect the world. This subjective aspect is known as the sense of agency, and it is an important part of what makes us human. Interest in (...) the sense of agency has exploded since the early 2000s, largely because scientists have learned that it can be studied objectively through analyses of human judgment, behavior, and the brain. This book brings together some of the world's leading researchers to give structure to this nascent but rapidly growing field. The contributors address questions such as: What role does agency play in the sense of self? Is agency based on predicting outcomes of actions? And what are the links between agency and motivation? Recent work on the sense of agency has been markedly interdisciplinary. The chapters collected here combine ideas and methods from fields as diverse as engineering, psychology, neurology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind, making the book a valuable resource for any student or researcher interested in action, volition, and exploring how mind and brain are organized. (shrink)

Francisco Suárez’s thought has often been interpreted as paving the way for early modern philosophy, and causation is one of the themes in which his name is regularly associated with modern ideas. This is, however, an extrinsic relation – despite our lamentably poor knowledge of early modern scholasticism, Suárez’s doctrines can only be properly understood in relation to their proximate scholastic context. This article attempts a reevaluation of the importance of this context through an analysis of the definition of ‘cause’ (...) in early modern scholasticism, focusing on the influence of Jesuit authors such as Toledo, Perera, and Fonseca on Suárez’s famous definition of ‘cause’, often considered as an anticipation of Descartes’ reduction of causality to efficiency. As it turns out, the proximate context of this definition provides not only the debate to which Suárez responds, but also the common conception of causality that Suárez tries to define more properly than his predecessors. (shrink)

We review here some recent data about glucose‐6‐phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD), the first and key regulatory enzyme of the pentose phosphate pathway. New evidence has been presented to suggest that malaria is a selective agent for G6PD deficiency, which is the most common enzymopathy in man, and that G6PD deficiency, generally considered to be a mild and benign condition, is significantly disadvantageous in certain environmental conditions. At the molecular level, the enzyme structure has recently been elucidated and mechanisms regulating G6PD gene (...) expression have been determined. A G6PD knock‐out mutation introduced in mouse cells makes them exquisitely sensitive to oxidative stress, indicating that this ubiquitous metabolic enzyme has a major role in the defence against oxidative stress, even in eukaryotic nucleated cells, which have several alternative routes for providing the same protection. Because of the high prevalence of G6PD deficiency in many populations, it is expected that these findings will prompt further studies to ascertain the putative role of G6PD deficiency in conditions such as carcinogenesis and ageing. (shrink)

Through the analysis of the contents of the most recent and popular teen dramas, of the diffusion of online pornography and of data from surveys on adolescent sexuality, we hypothesise how today's adolescents live an increasingly carefree sexual behaviour with respect to the choice of sexual objects, more free from ethical and social norms, in a completely changed relationship with an adult world no longer seen as a more or less controversial reference point. This panorama urges us to renew the (...) theoretical lenses through which we look at an adolescence that is completely different from previous ones with regard to its relationship with sexuality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Second Harvest: Further Reflections on the Promise of the Thomistic PsychologyGiuseppe Butera (bio)Keywordsmethod, emotion, developmental psychology, rationalism, holismSamuel Johnson was once accosted by a lady demanding to know why he had defined “pastern” as “the knee of a horse.” Seeing perhaps that escape was impossible, the great man simply confessed, “Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance” (Fadiman 1985, 312). In preparing to write my response to the gracious and stimulating commentaries (...) of Eugene DeRobertis and Christopher Megone, I came gradually to feel how apposite such a reply would be to some of their own critical observations and remarks. Although I had known from the start that the work of bringing Aquinas’s philosophical psychology (APP) into dialogue with modern psychology would be difficult, it was only in reflecting on their commentaries that I came to appreciate just how difficult it would be and how far short of the mark my own first attempt had fallen. But there was also much in their commentaries to encourage me in this work. For their penetrating observations and criticisms, as well as their supportive comments, I am truly grateful.Rather than responding to their critical remarks one at a time and in the order in which they appear in their respective commentaries, I would like to treat them thematically. Taken together, DeRobertis and Megone seem to have three major concerns, each of which will be treated separately in the following sections. Very briefly, these concerns have to do with: (1) Claims I make about the difference between the methods of inquiry employed by philosophy and psychology; (2) the absence of a discussion of the importance of developmental psychology for an adequate philosophical understanding of judgment (of both the rational and the cogitative kinds) and its relation to emotion; and (3) a subtle rationalist/cognitivist tendency in my treatment of Aquinas’s understanding of human rationality that comes dangerously close to muting, almost to the point of denying, its decidedly un-Cartesian embodiment.On MethodAlthough I did not undertake to argue for the legitimacy of philosophical inquiry into matters nowadays viewed by many to be the exclusive domain of the sciences—among which psychology is often numbered—I did make a few passing comments in that direction. Unfortunately, in the process of doing so, I ended up reducing the variegated field of psychology, with its wide range of explanatory stances and research methodologies,1 to the highly restrictive quantitative methodology [End Page 377] employed by the hard sciences.2 There is no question in my mind that DeRobertis would be right to call my “characterization of psychology as a strictly quantitative science” “damning” (DeRobertis 2010, 370) were I unwilling to disavow it.Admitting DeRobertis’ point that psychology is not limited to using a strictly quantitative research methodology is not, however, to deny that there is a real difference between the approaches taken by philosophy and modern psychology in their separate attempts to understand the human psyche. Although it is no simple task to say in what this difference consists, some indication of its nature may be grasped by answering questions in Megone’s commentary that invite a careful examination of “the linked roles of reason and experience in both science and philosophy” (Megone 2010, 374).Although Megone asks three distinct questions, the answers to the first two may be subsumed under the answer to the third, which asks how the “interaction of the two different modes of inquiry [employed by APP and CT]” may “be explained, given their different methods” (Megone 2010, 374). How, in other words, is it possible for cognitive therapy (CT) to be queried by APP, and vice versa, given their methodological differences? To answer this question, we must clarify what it is about modern psychology that makes it different from philosophical psychology (the first question); we must also say something about the “linked roles of reason and experience in both science and philosophy” (the second question).Generally speaking, philosophical psychology, at least as it is found in the writings of Aristotle, Aquinas, and other philosophical realists, differs from modern psychology not so much in the kinds of questions it asks as in the kinds of answers it seeks... (shrink)

Alexandra Pârvan's appropriation of Augustine's metaphysical distinction between self and action is both creative and laudable. It surely has the potential to add an important element to the treatment of both victims and perpetrators of violence by helping them to change negative self-models that puts them at risk "for both receipt and perpetration of relationship violence". What I would like to do is suggest ways that this potential might be increased i) through a more refined understanding of Augustine's distinction between (...) self and action, and ii) through the appropriation of later medieval developments in philosophical psychology, developments that find their classic formulation in the... (shrink)

All processes of measurement imply symmetry?breaking. Ambiguity is the coexistence of mutually incompatible aspects of the same structure. There are many examples of analogy and symmetry breaking in nature and in culture.