Quantification is particularly seductive in times of global uncertainty. Not surprisingly, numbers, indicators, categorizations, and comparisons are central to governmental and popular response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This essay draws insights from critical data studies, sociology of quantification and decolonial thinking, with occasional excursion into the biomedical domain, to investigate the role and social consequences of counting broadly defined as a way of knowing about the virus. It takes a critical look at two domains of human activity that play a (...) central role in the fight against the virus outbreak, namely medical sciences and technological innovation. It analyzes their efforts to craft solutions for their user base and explores the unwanted social costs of these operations. The essay argues that the over-reliance of biomedical research on “whiteness” for lab testing and the techno-solutionism of the consumer infrastructure devised to curb the social costs of the pandemic are rooted in a distorted idea of a “standard human” based on a partial and exclusive vision of society and its components, which tends to overlook alterity and inequality. It contends that to design our way out of the pandemic, we ought to make space for distinct ways of being and knowing, acknowledging plurality and thinking in terms of social relations, alterity, and interdependence. (shrink)

In management literature, intellectual capital is considered the key driver of the competitive advantage of the third millennium enterprise firm; consequently, measuring, managing and reporting IC has become a critical issue. Frameworks addressed to measure and report IC have proliferated, nevertheless the adoption of these frameworks is not so widespread in practice. The strong call for critically investigating IC practices has been raised by several leading authors in the area. Doing a critical and performative IC research means empirically researching IC (...) organisational practices in specific contexts, in order to increase the understanding of the IC dynamics. By critically analysing the IC practices of ANPAS Piemonte, an Italian non-profit organisation chosen for its long-standing experience in issuing audited IC reports, the article contributes to the knowledge of how and why IC is measured and reported in a specific, outstanding NPO disclosing IC. Moreover, the case study analysis contributes to shed lights on the levers and barriers that should be faced by other managers intending to implement and effectively use an IC measurement, management and reporting system within organisation. (shrink)

The chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi was one of the first twentieth-century scientists to propose a program to resolve the internal conflict of the modern Enlightenment: scientific detachment and moral nihilism with humanist values. Stefania Jha’s intellectual biography places Polanyi in the context of his time and culture, analyzes his key philosophical ideas, and explicates the application—and at times misappropriation—of his work. Polanyi’s method was not laid out in his published works, and his vocabulary tends to make his writings (...) difficult to understand. By exposing the structure of his theory of tacit knowing, and by tracing the growth of his thinking, Jha shows how the various elements of his thought are integrated. Through examination of his philosophical roots in Kant and the complexity of his evolving thought, she counteracts the popular notion that Polanyi’s philosophy stands apart from the western philosophic tradition. Jha’s deep analysis makes Polanyi’s shift of focus from science to philosophy more intelligible, his philosophy more approachable, and the causes he championed—such as the freedom of science and cultural freedom—more understandable. Applying his notion of tacit knowing in practical directions, Jha seeks to bring the study of Polanyi’s philosophy out of the specialists’ enclave and into such fields as ethics and clinical medicine. (shrink)

Der Band versammelt neue Beiträge namhafter Husserl-Forscher und eröffnet analytische und phänomenologische Interpretationsperspektiven auf Husserls Werk. Zugleich versuchen die Autoren, die Diskussionsgrundlagen zwischen Husserl und einigen seiner wichtigsten und einflußreichsten Gesprächspartner wiederherzustellen: Bernard Bolzano, Franz Brentano, Gottlob Frege, Martin Heidegger und Ludwig Wittgenstein. Mit Beiträgen von: Christian Beyer, Stefania Centrone, Dagfinn Føllesdal, George Heffernan, Wolfgang Künne, Eduard Marbach und Markus Stepanians.

Stefania Tutino shows that post-Reformation Catholic culture was a rich laboratory for our current moral and hermeneutical anxieties.

We examined how people think about how things could have turned out differently after they made a decision to cooperate or not in three social interactions: the Prisoner’s dilemma (Experiment 1), the Stag Hunt dilemma (Experiment 2), and the Chicken game (Experiment 3). We found that participants who took part in the game imagined the outcome would have been different if a different decision had been made by the other player, not themselves; they did so whether the outcome was good (...) or bad for them, their own choice had been to cooperate or not, and the other player’s choice had been to cooperate or not. Participants who only read about a fictional protagonist’s game imagined changes outside the protagonist’s control (such as the other player’s decision) after a good outcome but within the protagonist’s control (such as the protagonist’s decision) after a bad outcome. The implications for theories of counterfactual thinking and moral decision-making are discussed. (shrink)

This article approaches the paradigm shift of datafication from the perspective of civil society. Looking at how individuals and groups engage with datafication, it complements the notion of “data politics” by exploring what we call the “contentious politics of data”. By contentious politics of data we indicate the bottom-up, transformative initiatives interfering with and/or hijacking dominant processes of datafication, contesting existing power relations or re-appropriating data practices and infrastructure for purposes distinct from the intended. Said contentious politics of data is (...) articulated in an array of practices of data activism taking a critical stance towards datafication. In data activism, data as mediators take a central role, both as part of an action repertoire or as objects of struggle in their own right. Leveraging social movement studies and science and technology studies, this theoretical essay argues that data activism can be mapped along two analytical dimensions: “data as stakes” vs. “data as repertoires”, and “individual practice vs. collective action”. Mapping action repertoires and tactics along these axes allows us to chart the potential emergence of a political data subject at the intersection of these two dimensions. This furthers our understanding of people’s engagement with data in relation to other forms of activism and existing work in social movement studies. It also helps us interpreting potential trajectories of contemporary social movements, as they increasingly interface with data, devices and platforms. (shrink)

The paper discusses inappropriate (futile) treatment by analyzing the casuistics of palliative patients in the terminal stage of illness who are hospitalized at the Department of Internal Medicine and Geriatrics of the Faculty hospital with policlinic (FNsP). Our research applies the principles of palliative care in the context of bioethics. The existing clinical conditions of healthcare in Slovakia are characteristic of making a taboo of the issues of inappropriate treatment of palliative patients. Inductive-deductive and normative clinical bioethics methods of palliative (...) care and ethical strategy are applied for defining issues found in inappropriate hemodialysis treatment. An algorithm of hemodialysis treatment requires the definition of those lege artis criteria which, in the context of a patient’s autonomy and his/her decision, precondition the avoidance of the situation in which hemodialysis treatment is inappropriate (futile). Futile treatment in a terminal condition is ethically inappropriate medical treatment that extends the suffering of patients and their relatives. Its definition is determined by the relevant legislation and the methods of bioethics. An active palliative strategy is aimed at managing the process of incurable diseases in the patient’s bio-psycho-socio-spiritual continuity in the process of special bioethics. The global bioethical objective of general bioethics for palliative care is based on the paradigm of social harmony and solidarity in the context of an authentic modus of the patient’s existence as a constitutive principle for the phenomenon of the patient’s being to finite being (death). (shrink)

We describe a first experiment on whether product complexity affects competition and consumers in retail markets. We are unable to detect a significant effect of product complexity on prices, except insofar as the demand elasticity for complex products is higher. However, there is qualified evidence that complex products have the potential to induce consumers to buy more than they would otherwise. In this sense, consumer exploitability in quantities cannot be ruled out. We also find evidence for shaping effects: consumers’ preferences (...) are shaped by past experience with prices, and firms may in principle exploit this to sell more. (shrink)

In the multi-agent setting, it is relevant to model group dynamics of agents, and logic has proved a good tool to do so. We propose an epistemic logic, L-DINF-E, that allows one to formalize what are the beliefs formed by a group of agents, where several groups exist and agents can pass from a group to another one. We introduce a new modality which allows an agent to reason about the beliefs of other agents. This allows us to model aspects (...) of the “Theory of Mind”, understood as the set of social-cognitive skills involving the ability to attribute and reason about mental states, desires, beliefs, and knowledge of agents. In this paper, we present the logic L-DINF-E and illustrate how it can be used to solve “false-belief tasks”, i.e., tests in which an agent should understand that some other agent may develop, under some circumstances, false beliefs. (shrink)

Sexual Orientation as Symbolic Capital and as the "Object" of Symbolic Violence Sexual orientation is currently understood to be an innate disposition. Heterosexually oriented people are perceived to be in the majority and homosexually oriented people as the minority. Using Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of symbolic power, symbolic violence and symbolic capital, this paper aims to show how symbolic power and symbolic violence contribute to determining which sexual orientation is associated with the majority and minority populations, and establish what role is (...) played by the symbolic capital derived from sexual orientation. (shrink)

The text approaches the phenomenon of transnational migration movements in the globalized world as a question related to the specific borders and mobilities of philosophy. The circulation of philosophical ideas and subjectivities between different countries and languages is challenged as a form of transnational citizenship. This main thesis will be examined in the light of the building process of the concept of belonging in the political theory of Hannah Arendt in relation to her German and US-American audiences. I will first (...) explain the approach of the transnational circulation of ideas as well as its presumption, the consideration of philosophy as a specific social practice. I will then explore the mutations of Arendt’s thinking on belonging along a close reading and a contextualization of some of her German and English texts. The contradictions in Arendt’s conceptualizations of the idea of belonging will be finally reexamined as practices of constructing transnational social and intellectual frames. (shrink)

Il saggio intende indagare le radici di ermeneutica politica del termine orexis così come Aristotele lo utilizza a partire dall’argomento biologico e antropologico, fino a quello sociologico e narrativo nei confronti del rapporto individuo-Città. Una teoria del desiderio come perfezione antropologica a partire da una concezione di Città democratica e dinamica, nei termini contestuali della polis greca. In quest’ambito lo scritto sviluppa il confronto con la concezione di eros di origine platonica inteso come mancanza, e la dimensione di socialità individuale (...) in Aristotele come pienezza. (shrink)

In an experiment on markets for services, we find that consumers are likely to stick to default tariffs and achieve suboptimal outcomes. We find that inattention to the task of choosing a better tariff is likely to be a substantial problem in addition to any task and tariff complexity effect. The institutional setup on which we primarily model our experiment is the UK electricity and gas markets, and our conclusion is that the new measures by the UK regulator Ofgem to (...) improve consumer outcomes are likely to be of limited impact. (shrink)

In the present paper, we discuss Husserl's deep account of the notions of ?calculation? and of arithmetical ?operation? which is found in the final chapter of the Philosophy of Arithmetic, arguing that Husserl is as far as we know the first scholar to reflect seriously on and to investigate the problem of circumscribing the totality of computable numerical operations. We pursue two complementary goals, namely: (i) to provide a formal reconstruction of Husserl's intuitions, and (ii) to demonstrate on the basis (...) of our reconstruction that the class of operations that Husserl has in mind turns out to be extensionally equivalent to the one that, in contemporary logic, is known as the class of partial recursive functions. (shrink)

In this paper, we examined how companies are employing new media to engage in dialogue with their stakeholders about corporate social responsibility -related matters. Through a qualitative theory-building study conducted in three stages over a period of 2 years, we discovered that corporations with reputations for CSR have built virtual spaces for dialogue about CSR, but that these spaces remain empty of dialogue. Our theory-building model highlights how the mix of four dialogue processes may allow companies to create open dialogue (...) about CSR initiatives and avoid leaving these spaces empty. Contributions for CSR studies are discussed. (shrink)

Lakatos is considered to be a Popperian who adapted his Hegelian-Marxist training to critical philosophy. I claim this is too narrow and misses Lakatos' goal of understanding scientific inquiry as heuristic inquiry—something he did not find in Popper, but found in Polanyi. Archival material shows that his ‘new method' struggled to overcome what he saw as the Popperian handicap, by using Polanyi.

In this paper we propose a conceptualization of ‘posthumous social status’ as a performative reality accomplished through collective actions that are materially and symbolically legitimated. We question the classical definitions of social status that lead to oversocialized theoretical models, and we argue for the necessity to reconsider the relation between social status and social roles in order to gain insight into the reality of a social presence after death. On this account, we claim that the prestige attached to one's position (...) in society is a social phenomenon produced through autopoietic systems of social influence rather than a pre-existent and stable feature embedded in hierarchical structures and actions. Therefore, we clarify the link between social status and systems of influence through a case study in which we discuss how the Christian-Orthodox tradition is socially organized as a powerful realm of doing posthumous social status. (shrink)

The essay aims to retrace the thematic issues of Alessandro Pandolfi's research through his original reinterpretation of the work of Michel Foucault. From issues of the historiographical method of the social sciences to the problematizations of disciplinary discourses up to the postmodern outcomes of neoliberal devices, a path is outlined that marks innovative hypotheses and new research perspectives on the relationship between biopolitics and antagonisms.

This edited work presents contemporary mathematical practice in the foundational mathematical theories, in particular set theory and the univalent foundations. It shares the work of significant scholars across the disciplines of mathematics, philosophy and computer science. Readers will discover systematic thought on criteria for a suitable foundation in mathematics and philosophical reflections around the mathematical perspectives. The first two sections focus on the two most prominent candidate theories for a foundation of mathematics. Readers may trace current research in set theory, (...) which has widely been assumed to serve as a framework for foundational issues, as well as new material elaborating on the univalent foundations, considering an approach based on homotopy type theory (HoTT). The further sections then build on this and are centred on philosophical questions connected to the foundations of mathematics. Here, the authors contribute to discussions on foundational criteria with more general thoughts on the foundations of mathematics which are not connected to particular theories. This book shares the work of some of the most important scholars in the fields of set theory (S. Friedman), non-classical logic (G. Priest) and the philosophy of mathematics (P. Maddy). The reader will become aware of the advantages of each theory and objections to it as a foundation, following the latest and best work across the disciplines and it is therefore a valuable read for anyone working on the foundations of mathematics or in the philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Humans perceive time with millisecond precision. However, when experiencing negative or fearful events, time appears to slow down and aversive events are judged to last longer than neutral or positive events of equal duration. Feelings of control have been shown to attenuate increases in arousal triggered by anxiety-provoking events. Here, we tested whether feelings of control can go as far as influencing people’s perception of the world, by modulating the perceived duration of aversive events. Observers judged the duration of images (...) depicting positive or negative content, and we manipulated the amount of control experienced by participants. Crucially, participants never had any real control over events. All control was illusory. Results showed that when participants experienced low levels of control, negative images were judged as lasting longer than positive images. However, when participants illusorily experienced high levels of control, they no longer experienced aversive negative images as lasting longer than positive images. (shrink)

Eroticism seems to be the essence of individuation and the freedom that brings Otherness into being. For this reason eroticism had to be disguised and softened by a mechanism of control within the society of any monolithic communist power. There- fore, one of the images that were altered was that of the woman. This was done under the pretext of a project of emancipation, initiated by the Communist party, which made claims in women’s name but utilized women’s organizations for socialist-communist (...) propaganda. The article analyzes this manipulative politics and it’s effects on the social imagery: it created the image of a New woman - the aggressive woman with the profile of a communist warrior and a masculine body in a carnival-like movement that was biased, restrictive, and gender-blind. (shrink)

By providing an interdisciplinary reading of advance directives regulation in international, European and domestic law, this book offers new insights into the most controversial legal issues surrounding the debate over dignity and autonomy ...

Four studies show that observers and readers imagine different alternatives to reality. When participants read a story about a protagonist who chose the more difficult of two tasks and failed, their counterfactual thoughts focused on the easier, unchosen task. But when they observed the performance of an individual who chose and failed the more difficult task, participants' counterfactual thoughts focused on alternative ways to solve the chosen task, as did the thoughts of individuals who acted out the event. We conclude (...) that these role effects may occur because participants' attention is engaged when they experience or observe an event more than when they read about it. (shrink)

This book presents a unique rethinking of G. W. F. Hegel's philosophy from unusual and controversial perspectives in order to liberate new energies from his philosophy. The role Hegel ascribes to women in the shaping of society and family, the reconstruction of his anthropological and psychological perspective, his approach to human nature, the relationship between mental illness and social disease, the role of the unconscious, and the relevance of intercultural and interreligious pathways: All these themes reveal new and inspiring aspects (...) of Hegel’s thought for our time. (shrink)