In European culture the sacred and the secular have existed in a dialectical relationship. Prodi sees the fifteenth-century crisis of Christianity as opening up three paths that eroded this dualism and tended towards modernity: civic-republican religion, sacred monarchy, and the territorial churches. Important counter-forces, which sought to maintain dualism, included the Roman-Tridentine Compromise, and those forms of Radical Christianity which rejected confessionalisation outright. During the Eighteenth Century, all these phenomena tended to contribute to one of two tendencies: towards civic religion, (...) or towards political religion. The former preserved a distinction between conscience and law; the latter comprised a state religion which sought to perfect all of human nature. It was civic religion which become embodied in the early USA, alienating God from worldly power, but leaving him as the guarantor of agreements between humans. Back in Europe, Prodi tracks the relationship between the Catholic Church and the new national states. He then turns to the political religions of the Twentieth Century. Prodi concludes by emphasising that this dualism of sacred and secular power lay at the centre of Western modernity, and expresses his fears about the collapse of civic religion into political religion, especially in the USA. (shrink)

In the last decades, Systems Biology (including cancer research) has been driven by technology, statistical modelling and bioinformatics. In this paper we try to bring biological and philosophical thinking back. We thus aim at making diferent traditions of thought compatible: (a) causality in epidemiology and in philosophical theorizing—notably, the “sufcient-component-cause framework” and the “mark transmission” approach; (b) new acquisitions about disease pathogenesis, e.g. the “branched model” in cancer, and the role of biomarkers in this process; (c) the burgeoning of omics (...) research, with a large number of “signals” and of associations that need to be interpreted. In the paper we summarize frst the current views on carcinogenesis, and then explore the relevance of current philosophical interpretations of “cancer causes”. We try to ofer a unifying framework to incorporate biomarkers and omic data into causal models, referring to a position called “evidential pluralism”. According to this view, causal reasoning is based on both “evidence of diference-making” (e.g. associations) and on “evidence of underlying biological mechanisms”. We conceptualize the way scientists detect and trace signals in terms of information transmission, which is a generalization of the mark transmission theory developed by philosopher Wesley Salmon. Our approach is capable of helping us conceptualize how heterogeneous factors such as micro and macro-biological and psycho-social—are causally linked. This is important not only to understand cancer etiology, but also to design public health policies that target the right causal factors at the macro-level. (shrink)

A growing body of literature documents the important role played by moral outrage or moral anger in stakeholders’ reactions to cases of corporate social irresponsibility. Existing research focuses more on the consequences of moral outrage than a systematic analysis of how appraisals of irresponsible corporate behavior can lead to this emotional experience. In this paper, we develop and test, in two field studies, an extended model of moral outrage that identifies the cognitions that lead to, and are associated with, this (...) emotional experience. This research contributes to the existing literature on reactions to corporate social irresponsibility by explaining how observers’ evaluation of irresponsible corporate behavior leads to reactions of moral anger. The paper also helps clarify the difference between moral outrage and other types of anger and offers useful insights for managers who have to confront public outrage following cases of irresponsible corporate behavior. Finally, the analysis of the causes of stakeholders’ anger at irresponsible corporations opens important avenues for future research that are presented in the paper. (shrink)

Social factors have so far been neglected in embodied theories of perception despite the wealth of phenomenological insights and empirical evidence indicating their importance. I examine evidence from developmental psychology and neuroscience and attempt an initial classification according to whether social factors play a contextual, enabling, or constitutive role in the ability to perceive objects in a detached manner, i.e. beyond their immediate instrumental use. While evidence of cross-cultural variations in perceptual styles and the influence of social cues on visual (...) attention could not be said to play more than a contextual role, other factors such as the intricate developmental links between dyadic and triadic interactions in infancy, as well as episodes of peer-learning in children, play enabling roles. A common element in these factors is the presence and resolution of interpersonal conflict. Detached object perception could not develop without these social factors. I argue, in addition, that social skills such as managing partial social acts which are addressed to and completed by others, linguistic mediation, makebelieve play, and the ability to control perspectival switches are constitutive -- i.e. are of the essence -- of the ability to see objects as present with a detached attitude. I discuss the prospects of incorporating such social elements into dynamical interpretations of the sensorimotor approach through the enactive notion of participatory sense-making. (shrink)

Mascolo successfully defends a relational, developmental approach to emotions. I draw parallels between his perspective and the enactive approach, in particular with the concept of participa...

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 209 Seiten: 357-370.

Among the various attempts to re-humanize economics, the ‘humanomics’ proposed by Vernon Smith and Bart Wilson stands out. We contribute to the “humanomics project” by mapping its territory – core, periphery and frontiers – with an eye, also, on future explorations. First, we critically study the core: Smith and Wilson’s interpretation and experimental application of Adam Smith’s ideas on beneficence and injustice. Using the distinction between reciprocal cooperation and reciprocal kindness, we provide a different interpretation of Smith which helps to (...) better understand the difference between exchange and trust, based on mutual advantage, and (reciprocal) beneficence proper. Secondly, we turn to the periphery, going beyond the ‘dichotomous representation of the human personality’ – personal-social/impersonal-economic – and showing other possible worlds: nuances of humans equally worthy of study, such as the personal-economic and the impersonal-social. Thirdly, we argue that the humanomics project should keep its frontiers as open as possible to human diversities and frailties. (shrink)

"The fact is, man is an etymologizing animal."Etymologizing—the practice of connecting one word with one or more other similar-sounding words that are believed to elucidate its meaning1—is a complex and putatively universal phenomenon.2 Thus, to take two representative examples far apart in time and space, etymologizing practices figure prominently in some episodes of the Hebrew Bible,3 but also provide some modern influential thinkers with an important mode of argument.4 Perhaps etymologizing is so pervasive because it offers a pliable and powerful (...) tool for addressing a key question, namely, why is something called what it is?While this question has universal appeal, only a few cultures seem to have addressed it... (shrink)

El alcance y la intensidad de las reflexiones filosóficas de Giovanni Piana sobre las artes, y especialmente sobre las vicisitudes del arte del siglo XX en el conjunto de su producción teó-rica no se limitan al proyecto de delinear una filosofía de la música que efectivamente se ha convertido, desde la década de 1990, en el centro de sus intereses teóricos. El arte del siglo XX y sus vanguardias representaron para Piana un argumento lleno de sugestión e interés. El objetivo (...) del artículo es indicar la razón por la cual en el curso de sus estudios Piana siente una creciente necesidad de discutir sobre el arte contemporáneo. Reflexionar sobre el arte del siglo XX, no solo significa arrojar luz sobre los valores expresivos propios de las formas elemen-tales de la experiencia, sino que para Piana también ha significado volver a cuestionar el nexo que junta la estructura material del sonido y, en general, de los materiales de la experiencia con las formas en las que están codificados lingüísticamente. (shrink)

One of the complications of a clear evaluation of different positions called “realism” in metaphysics and ontology is discrepancy in terminology and variance of basic intuitions inherent this notion. I recommend a taxonomy that distinguishes three kinds of variance: variance in the sets of conditions for a philosophical position to be acknowledged as actual realism, variance in strength and variance in conceptual frameworks. Within this last case, I propose to differentiate realism in epistemology, in ontology, and in metaphysics, intersecting these (...) three variants with the local/global realism dichotomy. The taxonomy here provided aims at being meta-philosophical; expressive enough for a fine-grained articulation of different philosophical positions in the recent debate, including the question of metaphysical grounding; and impartial, with no need to be connected to the defense of one form or another of the philosophical positions called “realism.”. (shrink)

La grammaire de la multitude en définit les traits saillants : le premier est la fin de la séparation du public et du privé. En découle un nouveau rapport entre l’individuel et le collectif : on ne converge pas dans l’Un, on agit différemment à partir d’un fond commun. La multitude est ambivalente, servile et révoltée à la fois. Elle aime avoir peur, mais en étant à l’abri, elle demande de la sécurité. Elle est animée par le sentiment de ne (...) pas se sentir chez soi, et adopte par rapport à cela des stratégies différentes, voire opposées. Les « lieux communs » caractérisent ses discours qui prennent des formes très générales. Ce recours aux « lieux communs » vient directement du sentiment de ne pas se sentir chez soi, et de devoir penser de quelle manière on y est. Mais l’aspect public de l’intellect éprouvé en commun, loin de laisser libre, crée une dépendance personnelle par rapport à des hiérarchies diverses. Chacun se comporte en public en virtuose, en artiste interprète, dans la coopération productive en quoi consiste tout travail contemporain. (shrink)

The paper aims to describe the stakes of a Nietzschean influence on Deleuze's reflections on the transcendental and conversely to highlight the Deleuzian operation of politicising Nietzsche by ‘minorising’ him. In order to further understand such a complex relationship of becoming between Deleuze and Nietzsche, the first objective of the paper is to focus on active and reactive forces, which seem to be the core of this very relation. Thus, the paper suggests that micropolitics has its conditions of possibility in (...) the Nietzschean corpus and, in particular, in the symptomatology of decadence, resentment and nihilism. In this sense, now the title of the paper reveals its meaning: the whole Deleuzian operation could be summarised as the passage from the criticism and questioning of an image of Nietzsche ‘forbidden to minors’, typical of the interpretations of the first half of the twentieth century, to a becoming-minor of these very same Nietzschean concepts. It is precisely through such a becoming-minor that Nietzsche's diagnosis and concepts are translated in a political and emancipatory key, in order to give power to minorities. (shrink)

According to the quantificational Quinean model in meta-ontology, the question of ontology boils down to the question of whether a sortal property is exemplified. I address some complications that arise when we try to build a philosophical reconstruction of the link between individuals and kinds displayed in the exemplification relation from the point of view of conceptualism about kinds and having in mind this stand in ontology. I distinguish two notions of resemblance, object-to- object and object-to- kind, and show the (...) problems with both of them. Finally, I argue for a better awareness of the implicit "bias" involved in the very notion of "resemblance," without indulging in Quine's veto toward this notion. (shrink)

Unilateral neglect stems from a relatively selective impairment of exogenous, or stimulus-related, orienting of attention. This neuropsychological evidence parallels “change blindness” experiments, in which normal individuals lack awareness of salient details in the visual scene as a consequence of their attention being exogenously attracted by a competing event, suggesting that visual consciousness requires the integrity of exogenous orienting of attention.

The homeopathic principle of similitude is not based on the principle of vaccination but on the more general principle of inversion of effects, a widespread medical phenomenon. Based on the systemic networks which play an important role in response to stress, this principle concerns the reorganization of regulation systems, through a coherent response to the medicine. This model is backed by a large number of published studies from our laboratory and others, by toxicological evidence such as the emerging fields of (...) ‘hormesis’, of neuropharmacology, and of systems biology. The immune system is just one example of the possible application of this law of similitude, which constitutes the true ‘heart’ of the homeopathic idea, and again ethically justifies the attempt to apply it to experimental pharmacology. (shrink)

A bibliography of the writings on Pietro Piovani . A continuation of the Bibliografia degli scritti su Pietro Piovani , Liguori, Napoli, 2000, edited by the same author, which numbered 337 entries.

L’opera del giovane scrittore, poeta, critico d’arte e filosofo americano Michael Angelo Tata si presenta, fin dall’inizio, come un testo ambizioso. Come sottolinea l’autore stesso, l’obiettivo del libro è di andare oltre le tesi del filosofo Arthur C. Danto riguardanti Andy Warhol e la sua arte(p. 1). Ironia della sorte, l’autore di Beyond Brillo Box viene chiamato in causa in uno scritto che potrebbe benissimo intitolarsi Beyond Arthur Danto. Ma nello specifico quali aspetti della teoria de...

The specific complexity of the question of genres depends on the plurality of the problems to which genre is pertinent and relevant. When Croce proclaimed, at the beginning of the century, the non-existence of the genre, he reduced the entire range of problems to the sole question relative to a work's belonging to a genre. In more recent times, there has been an attempt to reduce genre to the property of the linguistic act, in a methodological framework that understands poetics (...) exclusively as the science of literature. Against such reductionism, it is important to keep in mind a wider, more articulated idea of poetics as a pragmatic meditation, to investigate genres according to the multiple lines of systematization that are pertinent to them. (shrink)

Right brain-damaged patients with unilateral neglect, who ignore left-sided visual events, may also omit left-sided details when describing known places from memory. Modulating the orienting of visual attention may ameliorate imaginal neglect. A first step toward explaining these phenomena might be to postulate that space-related imagery is a cognitive activity involving attentional and intentional aspects.