The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented event entailing long-term consequences on population health and welfare. Those who contracted the coronavirus may have suffered from both physical and mental health issues that unfold the need for tailored intervention strategies. Hence, our study aims to investigate the psychological and social consequences of COVID-19 on a sample of 86 participants, encompassing 43 patients recruited from Bari University Hospital, 19 of whom were hospitalized due to the disease. The remaining 43 were individuals not fallen (...) ill with COVID-19 to date. The investigation yielded significant gender differences in post-traumatic stress symptoms, depression, and representation of interpersonal distance, evaluated through the IES-R, the BDI-II, and the IVAS task, respectively. This pattern of results was not replicated in the control group. In general, participants who reported having experienced the most intense post-traumatic symptoms also presented a greater mood deflection and, more specifically, within the clinical group women obtained the highest scores on both scales. Women reported higher IES-R and BDI-II scores compared to men, that could indicate that women who have contracted COVID-19 are more exposed to post-traumatic and depressive symptoms. Our results also showed a significant effect of COVID-19 on IPD with a tendency of disease-experienced individuals to increase their preferred IPD from adults, children, and elderly people. Regarding gender differences in mood and proxemic behavior, a correlation between depressive symptoms and probable PTSD and a further correlation between probable PTSD and greater IPD were found in women from both clinical and control group. Overall, these findings might contribute to a better understanding of gender-based implications of the current pandemic on mental health, also leading to the development of integrated yet personalized intervention strategies. (shrink)

Featuring original essays from leading scholars in philosophy and psychology, this volume investigates and rethinks the role of practical wisdom in light of the most recent developments in virtue theory and moral, social and developmental psychology. The concept of phronesis has long held a prominent place in the development of Aristotelian virtue ethics and moral education. However, the nature and development of phronesis is still in need of investigation, especially because of the new insights that in recent years have come (...) from both philosophy and science. The essays in this volume contribute to the debate about practical wisdom by elucidating its role in empirical psychology and advancing important new research questions. They address various topics related to practical wisdom and its development, including honesty, ecocentric phronesis, social cognitive theory, practical wisdom in limited-information contexts, Whole Trait Theory, skill models, the reciprocity of virtue, and challenges from situationism. Practical Wisdom will interest researchers and advanced students working in virtue ethics, moral psychology, and moral education. (shrink)

This paper has a twofold aim. On the one hand, we will discuss the much debated question of the source of normativity (which traditionally has nature and practical reason as the two main contenders to this role) and propose a new answer to it. Second, in answering this question, we will present a new account of practical wisdom, which conceives of the ethical virtues as ultimately unified in the chief virtue of phronesis, understood as ethical expertise. To do so, we (...) will first criticize the main current view of phronesis and its bearer (the phronimos), then offer another view of the nature of phronesis and of its relation to the other ethical virtues. Our proposal should not be intended as an interpretation of Aristotle’s own view; rather, it should be seen as a broadly Aristotelian theoretical proposal, which we believe can satisfyingly address most of the problems that afflict the more traditional accounts of practical wisdom. In section 2 of this paper, after criticizing first-nature naturalistic views of moral virtue, we take practical reason to be the cornerstone of second-nature naturalistic views; in section 3, we will outline criticisms to which, in our view, the traditional views of phronesis are ill-suited to respond, and, in section 4, we will outline our view of phronesis as ethical expertise – a view which in our view is immune to the above-mentioned criticisms – by spelling out the three main tenets of phronesis as ethical expertise: a conceptual thesis, an epistemic thesis, and the educational implications of the two. Finally, we will support our proposal with some empirical evidence taken from cognitive science. (shrink)

Practical wisdom eliminativism has recently been proposed in both philosophy and psychology, on the grounds of the alleged redundancy of practical wisdom (Miller 2021 ) and its purported developmental/psychological implausibility (Lapsley 2021 ). Here we respond to these challenges by drawing on an improved version of a view of practical wisdom, the “Aretai model”, that we have presented elsewhere (De Caro et al. 2021 ; Vaccarezza et al. 2023 ; De Caro et al. forthcoming ). According to this (...) model, practical wisdom is conceptualized: (i) as virtuousness _tout court_, i.e., as the _ratio essendi_ of the virtues, and (ii) as a form of ethical expertise. By appealing to the first thesis, we counter the charge of psychological implausibility, while we rely on the second thesis to address the accusation of redundancy. In conclusion we argue that the Aretai model implies a significant paradigm shift in virtue ethics. Practical wisdom emerges as both necessary and sufficient for virtuousness, thereby downsizing – without eliminating entirely – the role that individual virtues play in our ethical lives. (shrink)

The recent discussions on the unity of virtue suffer from a lack of reference to the processes through which we interpret each other as moral agents. In the present paper it is argued that much light can be thrown on that crucial issue by appealing to a version of Donald Davidson’s Principle of Charity, which we call “Principle of Phronetic Charity”. The idea is that in order to treat somebody as a moral agent, one has first to attribute to them, (...) at least pro tempore, a significant degree of practical wisdom and, then, to assess and rationally adjust such attribution of competence via actual engagement with them – a process that may lead to different responses on the part of the interpreter. After expounding and defending the Principle of Phronetic Charity and the interpretive practices connected with it, we discuss the repercussions of our account on the issue of the epistemic access to virtue. We will show, in particular, that some important components of both disunitarianism and unitarianism have to be retained: in accordance with the former, we stress the role of concrete experience over pure speculation and, up to a point, the idea that virtues tend to form variegated ensembles; in accordance with the latter, we accept the claim that virtues are not attributed to moral agents in isolation. Ultimately, however, the account developed here rejects both the atomism of the disunitarian view and the holism of the “Unity of the Virtues”, since it is in fact a form of molecularism, according to which virtues come neither individually nor as a whole, but rather as clusters. (shrink)

In this chapter, we will offer a sketch of the state of the art as concerns existing accounts of virtue acquisition in relation to automaticity. In particular, we will focus on the so-called “skill model,” which we aim to improve by questioning its rather common underlying dualistic picture of the mind. Then we will propose an account of skillful emotions by identifying the features that make them both automatic and embedded in an intelligent practice. Finally, we will show how this (...) view can help the skill model by offering a better description of emotion shaping in virtue acquisition. By doing so, we will contend that emotions contribute autonomously and actively to the skillfulness of the habits in which they are embedded. (shrink)

O presente estudo tem por objetivo a análise da prevalência de mobbing numa amostra de trabalhadores de centros de apoio a pessoas com deficiências. Utilizando uma amostra de 67 profissionais, e mediante um questionário formado por 30 itens, elaborado a partir do Leymann Inventory Psychological Terr..

Este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar e discutir a sugestão de Fred Dretske para analisar o problema dos qualia. Tal problema, caro à Filosofia da Mente, ficou conhecido pela discussão desenvolvida por Thomas Nagel em seu clássico artigo What is it like to be a bat. Nesse artigo, Nagel postulou a impossibilidade de se conhecer, em perspectiva de terceira-pessoa, os aspectos da experiência humana. Ele considera que, mesmo após as descrições objetivas da experiência de um sujeito, escapariam ainda aspectos (...) qualitativos, fundamentais para se caracterizar os qualia. A partir de sua Tese Representacionista da mente, Dretske argumenta que seria possível dissolver esse problema se admitirmos que a mente é a face representacional do cérebro, a natureza dos qualia seria, assim, representacional. Nesse contexto, os fatos mentais relacionados às experiências seriam fatos representacionais: se conhecermos a natureza desses fatos representacionais conheceremos também a experiência do sistema que a representa. Diante de tal entendimento, discutimos em que medida a proposta dretskeana constitui uma alternativa ao problema dos qualia. (shrink)

Resumen: La novela epistolar Caro Michele [1973], de Natalia Ginzburg, aborda, como varias de las obras tardías de la autora, la decadencia de la pequeña burguesía y de la estructura tradicional de familia. Desarrollaremos la presencia de la melancolía en la novela ligada a su componente crítico. También nos proponemos analizar una reflexión acerca del lugar que ocupa la militancia del protagonista y la política como un objeto de deseo perdido en la obra.: Natalia Ginzburg’s epistolary novel Caro (...) Michele [1973] addresses, like several of the late works of the author, the decadence of the petty bourgeoisie and the crisis of the traditional institution of the family. We will develop the presence of melancholy in the novel linked to its critical component. We also propose to analyze the place that occupies the protagonist's militancy and politics as an object of lost desire in the novel. (shrink)

O trabalho analisou as propostas legislativas do novo marco legal do setor mineral de 2013 a 2020 para descrever os seus avanços, retrocessos e tendências. No âmbito da vertente jurídico-descritiva de pesquisa, o estudo tem caráter diagnóstico, razão pela qual procedeu-se ao levantamento e análise de dados primários e secundários sobre o assunto sob a ótica da legística. Mesmo tendo sido aprovadas legislações sobre o tema, o novo marco legal do setor mineral não foi editado. Como tendência, observou-se que os (...) novos PLs apresentados para votação referem-se à questão socioambiental da mineração, que fará parte dos debates do PL 5807/2013. (shrink)

Normativity concerns what we ought to think or do and the evaluations we make. For example, we say that we ought to think consistently, we ought to keep our promises, or that Mozart is a better composer than Salieri. Yet what philosophical moral can we draw from the apparent absence of normativity in the scientific image of the world? For scientific naturalists, the moral is that the normative must be reduced to the nonnormative, while for nonnaturalists, the moral is that (...) there must be a transcendent realm of norms. _Naturalism and Normativity_ engages with both sides of this debate. Essays explore philosophical options for understanding normativity in the space between scientific naturalism and Platonic supernaturalism. They articulate a liberal conception of philosophy that is neither reducible to the sciences nor completely independent of them—yet one that maintains the right to call itself naturalism. Contributors think in new ways about the relations among the scientific worldview, our experience of norms and values, and our movements in the space of reason. Detailed discussions include the relationship between philosophy and science, physicalism and ontological pluralism, the realm of the ordinary, objectivity and subjectivity, truth and justification, and the liberal naturalisms of Donald Davidson, John Dewey, John McDowell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Today most philosophers in the English-speaking world adhere to “naturalist” credos that philosophy is continuous with science, and that the natural sciences provide a complete account of all that exists. This volume presents a group of leading thinkers who criticize scientific naturalism in order to defend a more inclusive or liberal naturalism.

This volume presents a group of leading thinkers who criticize scientific naturalism not in the name of some form of supernaturalism, but in order to defend a ...

This is the first collection to present a comprehensive overview of liberal naturalism. Essential reading for students and researchers in all areas of philosophy it will be of particular interest for those studying philosophical naturalism, philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and ethics.

The critical concern of the present volume is contemporary naturalism, both in its scientific version and as represented by newly emerging hopes for another, philosophically more liberal, naturalism.1 The papers collected here are state-of-the-art discussions that question the appeal, rational motivations, and presuppositions of scientific naturalism across a broad range of philosophical topics. As an alternative to scientific naturalism, we offer the outlines of a new non- reductive form of naturalism and a more inclusive conception of nature than any provided (...) by the natural sciences. Our authors collectively believe that holding scientific naturalism up for philosophical scrutiny and challenging its misconceptions is of the first importance both for understanding ourselves and our place in the world; and, also, for the future direction of philosophy itself. (shrink)

In the last few decades, the relevance of quantum mechanics to the free-will debate has been discussed at length, especially in relation to the prospects of libertarianism. Basing his interpretation on Anscombe’s seminal work, Putnam argued in 1979 that, given that quantum mechanical indeterminacy is holistic at the macrolevel—i.e., it is not traceable to atomistic events such as quantum jumps of single atoms—it can provide libertarians with the kind of freedom they seek. As shown in this article, however, Putnam ultimately (...) reached the conclusion—together with the other author of this article—that his argument was wrong due to problems with the way it appealed to the Uncertainty Principle.**. (shrink)

Feasting on a plethora of social media platforms, news aggregators, and online marketplaces, recommender systems (RSs) are spreading pervasively throughout our daily online activities. Over the years, a host of ethical issues have been associated with the diffusion of RSs and the tracking and monitoring of users’ data. Here, we focus on the impact RSs may have on personal autonomy as the most elusive among the often-cited sources of grievance and public outcry. On the grounds of a philosophically nuanced notion (...) of autonomy, we illustrate three specific reasons why RSs may limit or compromise it: the threat of manipulation and deception associated with RSs; the RSs’ power to reshape users’ personal identity; the impact of RSs on knowledge and critical thinking. In our view, however, notwithstanding these legitimate concerns, RSs may effectively help users to navigate an otherwise overwhelming landscape. Our perspective, therefore, is not to be intended as a bulwark to protect the _status quo_ but as an invitation to carefully weigh these aspects in the design of ethically oriented RSs. (shrink)

Scientific naturalism—the conception according to which the natural sciences, and possibly physics alone, set the limits of ontology and epistemology—is characterized by a strong monistic tendency. For this reason, all versions of scientific naturalism face the so-called “placement problem”, which concerns the features of the ordinary view of the world that, at least prima facie, do not fit into the scientific view of the world (think of consciousness, moral properties, free will, and intentionality). To address this problem, scientific naturalists use (...) three strategies: reductionism, eliminativism, and mysterianism—none of which, it is argued, produces satisfying results. Liberal naturalism opts instead for a pluralistic attitude in both ontology and epistemology but accepts a constraint according to which one should accept no entity or explanation that is incompatible with the scientific worldview. Liberal naturalism faces the “reconciliation problem”, which concerns the relationship between the scientific and the ordinary views of the world once one denies ontological and epistemological priority to either of them. Three strategies for addressing this problem are presented: according to the first, the ordinary worldview and the scientific world are categorically distinct; according to the second, the former emerges from the latter; according to the third, between them there is a relation of global supervenience. Other objections to liberal naturalism are finally presented and addressed. (shrink)

According to a widespread view, a complete explanatory reduction of all aspects of the human mind to the electro-chemical functioning of the brain is at hand and will certainly produce vast and positive cultural, political and social consequences. However, notwithstanding the astonishing advances generated by the neurosciences in recent years for our understanding of the mechanisms and functions of the brain, the application of these findings to the specific but crucial issue of human agency can be considered a “pre-paradigmatic science” (...) (in Thomas Kuhn’s sense). This implies that the situation is, at the same time, intellectually stimulating and methodologically confused. More specifically—because of the lack of a solid, unitary and coherent methodological framework as to how to connect neurophysiology and agency—it frequently happens that tentative approaches, bold but very preliminary claims and even clearly flawed interpretations of experimental data are taken for granted. In this article some examples of such conceptual confusions and intellectual hubris will be presented, which derive from the most recent literature at the intersection between neurosciences, on the one hand, and philosophy, politics and social sciences, on the other hand. It will also be argued that, in some of these cases, hasty and over-ambitious conclusions may produce negative social and political consequences. The general upshot will be that very much has still to be clarified as to what and how neurosciences can tell us about human agency and that, in the meantime, intellectual and methodological caution is to be recommended. (shrink)

The article discusses the origin of the split between common sense and the scientific view of the world, which took lace at the beginning of the modern age. More specifically, it shows how Galileo...

It is very contentious whether the features of the manifest image have a place in the world as it is described by natural science. For the advocates of strict naturalism, this is a serious problem, which has been labelled ‘placement problem’. In this light, some of them try to show that those features are reducible to scientifically acceptable ones. Others, instead, argue that the features of the manifest image are mere illusions and, consequently, have to be eliminated from our ontology. (...) In brief, the two options that are open to strict naturalists for solving the placement problem are ontological reductionism and eliminativism. Other advocates of naturalist philosophy, however, claim that both these strategies fail and, consequently, opt for ‘mysterianism’, the view according to which we cannot give up the recalcitrant features of the manifest image even if we are not able to understand the ways in which they could be reduced to the scientific features. Mysterianism has the merit of facing the difficulties that whoever wants to explain reductively, or explain away, the features of the manifest image encounters. It is also a defeatist philosophical view, though, since it considers the most important philosophical problems as unsolvable mysteries. For this reason, I argue that mysterianism can also be taken as a reductio of strict naturalism, given its presumption that all phenomena are either explainable by the natural sciences or to be rejected as illusory. In this article, it is argued that the failures of reductionism, eliminativism and mysterianism should teach us that both the scientific image and the manifest image of the world are essential and mutually irreducible but not incompatible with each other. To support this claim, in the second part of the article, the case of free will is discussed. (shrink)

In this paper the problem of free will is examined.

The most common taxonomy of free will theories of free will hinges on the distinction between compatibilism and incompatibilism, which respectively assert and deny the compatibility of free will with causal determinism. This is a useful distinction, but it does not throw light on a fundamental aspect of the debate, regarding how the different views conceive of the role that philosophy and science should play in tackling with the free will issue. In this perspective, another taxonomy will be presented and (...) three families of theories will be distinguished: scientific isolationism, interactionism, and philosophical isolationism. In conclusion, it will be argued that interactionism is the right approach. (shrink)

_:_ This metacomment on Dennett’s comment on Sam Harris’s book on free will examines two issues. First, how one should conceive of the relationship between philosophy and science, in particular considering the dismissive attitude many highly regarded scientists show towards philosophy today. Second, a critical assessment of Harris’s replies to Dennett’s criticisms. _Keywords:_ Daniel Dennett; Sam Harris; Free Will; Science; Philosophy _In difesa dei vincoli avuncolari. Dennett e Harris sul rapporto tra filosofia e scienza_ _Riassunto:_ Questo metacommento sulle osservazioni avanzate (...) da Dennett sul libro di Sam Harris sul libero arbitrio verte su due questioni. In primo luogo, discute come si dovrebbe concepire il rapporto tra filosofia e scienza, in particolar modo considerando l’atteggiamento sprezzante mostrato oggi nei confronti della filosofia da diversi scienziati molto in vista. In secondo luogo saranno oggetto di valutazione critica le risposte di Harris alle critiche di Dennett. _Parole chiave: _Daniel Dennett; Sam Harris; Libero arbitrio; Scienza; Filosofia. (shrink)

In Interpretations and Causes, some of the leading contemporary analytic philosophers discuss Davidson's new ideas in a lively, relevant, useful, and not always ...

The study of responsibility in ethics focuses on the nature of agency, accountability, blame, punishment and, crucially, the distribution of responsibility for complex ethical problems. Work in social ontology examines the nature of entities such as groups, organizations, corporations, and institutions, and what it is for these entities to have intentional states and to act. Until recently, these fields of research have mostly been treated separately. The goal of this issue is to examine emerging research at their intersection. The papers (...) gathered here explore both normative dimensions of work in social ontology and metaphysical assumptions and implications of ethical theorizing about collective responsibility. (shrink)

What aesthetic interest do we have in watching films? In a much debated paper, Roger Scruton argued that this interest typically comes down to the interest in the dramatic representations recorded by such films. Berys Gaut and Catharine Abell criticized Scruton’s argument by claiming that films can elicit an aesthetic interest also by virtue of their pictorial representation. In this article, we develop a different criticism of Scruton’s argument. In our view, a film can elicit an aesthetic interest that does (...) not come down to an interest in the dramatic representation or in the pictorial representation. We will argue that this is a distinctively cinematic interest. In section I we outline Scruton’s argument. In section II we point out an interest in how the cinematic medium presents the portrayed subject as detached from the spectator’s environment. In section III, by referring to Wittgenstein’s account of the contemplation from outside, we contend that the interest in films introduced in section II can count as an aesthetic interest. In section IV we argue that both documentaries and fiction films can elicit this kind of interest. In section V we compare the three different kinds of aesthetic interest that, in our view, a film can elicit. In section VI we describe the corresponding kinds of cinematic achievements. (shrink)

In her recent volume Habitual Ethics?,1 Sylvie Delacroix writes that habits are the ‘black holes of social sciences’. These phenomena are not studied enough, she argues, and (for the little they ar...