In 'How Should We Aggregate Competing Claims', Alex Voorhoeve suggests accommodating intuitions about duties in rescue cases by combining aggregative and non-aggregative elements into one theory. In this paper, I discuss two problems Voorhoeve’s theory faces as a result of requiring a cyclic pattern of choice, and argue that his attempt to solve them does not succeed.

The current study provides data about the immediate risk perceptions and psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic among Italian participants. A sample of 1034 volunteers answered a web-based survey which aimed to investigate the many facets of risk perceptions connected to COVID-19 (health, work, economy, social and psychological), and risk-related variables such as knowledge, news seeking, perceived control, efficacy of containment measures, and affective states. Socio-demographic characteristics were also collected. Results showed that although levels of general concern are relatively high (...) among Italians, risk perceptions are highest with regards to the economy and work, and lowest concerning health. Cognitive and affective risk-related variables affected the several risk perception domains differently. COVID-19 knowledge did not affect any risk perception while the perceived control decreased health risk likelihood. The other risk-related variables amplified risk perceptions: News seeking increased work-economy risk; efficacy of containment measures increased all perceived risks; negative affective states of fear, anger and sadness increased health and psycho-social risks; anxiety increased only health risk, and uncertainty increased work-economy and psycho-social risk perceptions. Finally, positive affective states increased health risk perception. Socio-psychological implications are discussed. (shrink)

This paper aims to demonstrate how museum collection sustainability is grounded in a range of concrete care practices that are social and material. It explores the unstable nature of heritage materials, drawing on the ecological approach of infrastructure and maintenance studies in the field of art and museums. To do this, I analyse the role of mundane operations in the daily functioning of an exhibition area, presenting data from fieldwork I conducted from 2015–2016 at the Musée du quai Branly in (...) Paris, which preserves collections of art and ethnology from outside Europe. I observed the museum's preventive conservation practices, which work to minimise the risks of material deterioration of heritage objects, focusing attention on stabilising the relationship between objects and their environments. These practices contribute to the construction of the temporalities of museum objects. In exploring the means and devices of preserving these heritage objects, the very assumption of perpetuation is destabilised. Environments continually unfold with the silent material metamorphosis of objects. The exhibition becomes a place of flows, where a multitude of entities circulate and cohabit at different scales, such as insects, dust, and powdery fragments. The daily human work of vacuuming, cleaning, trapping, and measuring provide a set of actions united with other entities engaged in the material life of the exhibited object. As we zoom in on the exhibition space, different timelines emerge that are inextricably linked to the different lives of the museum. (shrink)

Temi di dialogo intraecclesiale. Etica, ecumenismo, dialogo -- Temi di dialogo interecclesiale. L'interruzione della gravidanza nella Chiesa d'Oriente -- Temi di dialogo interteo-filosofico. Sul rapporto fra morale stoica e morale evangelica per una metodologia del confronto -- Temi di dialogo interculturale. Sulla laicita -- Temi di dialogo internazionale. Sulla pace -- Temi di dialogo interdisciplinare. Sulla bioetica -- Temi di dialogo narrativo. Da itinerario estetico ad itinerario etico : rilettura metodologica dell'opera pirandelliana. Da itinerario metodologico ad itinerario contenutistico : rilettura (...) etica dell'opera pirandelliana. (shrink)

The ability to resist distracting stimuli whilst voluntarily focusing on a task is fundamental to our everyday cognitive functioning. Here, we investigated how this ability develops, and thereafter declines, across the lifespan using a single task/experiment. Young children (5–7 years), older children (10–11 years), young adults (20–27 years), and older adults (62–86 years) were presented with complex visual scenes. Endogenous (voluntary) attention was engaged by having the participants search for a visual target presented on either the left or right side (...) of the display. The onset of the visual scenes was preceded – at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 50, 200, or 500 ms – by a task-irrelevant sound (an exogenous crossmodal spatial distractor) delivered either on the same or opposite side as the visual target, or simultaneously on both sides (cued, uncued, or neutral trials, respectively). Age-related differences were revealed, especially in the extreme age-groups, which showed a greater impact of crossmodal spatial distractors. Young children were highly susceptible to exogenous spatial distraction at the shortest SOA (50 ms), whereas older adults were distracted at all SOAs, showing significant exogenous capture effects during the visual search task. By contrast, older children and young adults' search performance was not significantly affected by crossmodal spatial distraction. Overall, these findings present a detailed picture of the developmental trajectory of endogenous resistance to crossmodal spatial distraction from childhood to old age and demonstrate a different efficiency in coping with distraction across the four age-groups studied. (shrink)

The ability of a group of adults with high functioning autism (HFA) or Asperger Syndrome (AS) to distinguish moral, conventional and disgust transgressions was investigated using a set of six transgression scenarios, each of which was followed by questions about permissibility, seriousness, authority contingency and justification. The results showed that although individuals with HFA or AS (HFA/AS) were able to distinguish affect-backed norms from conventional affect-neutral norms along the dimensions of permissibility, seriousness and authority-dependence, they failed to distinguish moral and (...) disgust transgressions along the seriousness dimension and were unable to provide appropriate welfare-based moral justifications. Moreover, they judged conventional and disgust transgressions to be more serious than did the comparison group, and the correlation analysis revealed that the seriousness rating was related to their ToM impairment. We concluded that difficulties providing appropriate moral justifications and evaluating the seriousness of transgressions in individuals with HFA/AS may be explained by an impaired cognitive appraisal system that, while responsive to rule violations, fails to use relevant information about the agent’s intentions and the affective impact of the action outcome in conscious moral reasoning. (shrink)

Background During the first wave of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the sudden increase in hospitalised patients put medical facilities in southern Switzerland under severe pressure. During this time, bachelor’s degree programs in nursing, physiotherapy and occupational therapy were disrupted, and students in their second year were displaced. Students experienced the continuous reorganisation of their traineeship as healthcare facilities adapted to a climate of uncertainty. Purpose The aim of this study was to investigate the degree of moral distress and the (...) ethical issues most often encountered by physiotherapy, nursing and occupational therapy students enrolled in a traineeship during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in southern Switzerland. Participants and research context The sample consisted of 102 participants, and the response rate was 81.6%. Research design Based on a pragmatic approach, a mixed-method with a convergent design was adopted. Data were collected between 30 April 2020 and 14 May 2020, via a survey administered to all occupational therapy, physiotherapy and nursing students in their fourth semester. Ethical considerations Given that no vulnerable persons were involved, the Ethics Committee of Southern Switzerland waived authorisation. However, all measures were put into place to protect participants by guaranteeing their anonymity and confidentiality. Results and discussion The data analysis showed that the main source for moral distress was ‘poor teamwork’ and that the moral issues encountered most often by students were related to the appropriateness of care and working conditions, with a clear reference to students’ own safety and that of their loved ones; the other concerns reported included the loss of learning opportunities and the perceived lack of technical knowledge and skills. Conclusions This survey offers a faithful overview of physiotherapy, nursing and occupational therapy students’ experience during the first pandemic wave. This study also identifies some key recommendations for healthcare professions’ education. (shrink)

Brazilian women rely on sterilization as the main source of birth control. Sterilization has been one of the causes of the steep decline in fertility in Brazil, at least since the second half of 1970. It is hypothesized that understanding couples’ relationships might be key to explaining this high rate of female sterilizations. Possible reasons for the higher level of fertility among women in unstable unions than among women in stable ones could be the less effective use of contraceptive methods, (...) or that women in unstable unions tend to use less effective or reversible contraceptive methods. In this paper discrete time modelling of the timing of sterilization according to union histories is presented. The analysis uses the calendar data of the 1996 Brazilian DHS. It is shown that women in second or higher order unions have a lower risk of sterilization. This result should be taken into account in the analysis of the determinants of female sterilization in Brazil. (shrink)

Dans cet ouvrage remarquable, Davesh Soneji, revisite deux siècles d’histoire artistique et sociale des danseuses indiennes, mieux connues sous le terme générique sanskrit de devadāsīs (deva, « divinité », et dāsīs, « servantes », « servantes des dieux »). Depuis la fin du xiiie siècle, la majorité des voyageurs européens en Inde ont évoqué ces femmes, à la fois danseuses, poétesses et musiciennes accomplies, dont la présence dans les temples les surprenait. Ces artistes étant aussi courtisan...

This paper explores the possibility of applying the theory of Documentality to the photograph, examining it in the context of the photo archive. To this end, I maintain that a photograph’s document value is not determined by its nature, but by its relationship to inscription practices. And I regard the space of the archive as a paradigmatic device that produces cognitive strategies on the word pairing “photograph/photographs” inextricably linked to the inscriptions connected with it, in the form of “archiwritings” and (...) registrations, in essence: with the words of the archive itself. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of applying the theory of Documentality to the photograph, examining it in the context of the photo archive. To this end, I maintain that a photograph’s document value is not determined by its nature, but by its relationship to inscription practices. And I regard the space of the archive as a paradigmatic device that produces cognitive strategies on the word pairing “photograph/photographs” inextricably linked to the inscriptions connected with it, in the form of “archiwritings” and (...) registrations, in essence: with the words of the archive itself. (shrink)

If societies, like institutions, are built to endure, then the bond that exists between generations must be considered. Constructing a framework to establish a philosophy of future generations, Tiziana Andina explores the factors that make it possible for a society to reproduce over time. Andina's study of the diachronic structure of societies considers the never-ending passage of generations, as each new generation comes to form a part of the new social fabric and political model. Her model draws on the (...) anthropologies offered by classical political philosophies such as Hobbes and Macchiavelli and the philosophies of power as discussed by Nietzsche. She confronts the ethics and function of this fundamental relationship, examines the role of transgenerationality in the formation and endurance of Western democracies and recognizes an often overlooked problem: each new generation must form part of social and political arrangements designed for them by the generations that came before. (shrink)

In this study, we investigated the relationships between judgments of intentionality and moral evaluation in individuals with High Functioning Autism (HFA) or Asperger Syndrome (AS). HFA or AS are neurodevelopmental disorders characterised by severe deficits in communication and social functioning. Impairments in Theory of Mind (ToM), i.e., the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and to others, are thought to be the core features of autism. Of all mental states, the concept of ‘intentional action’ is particularly important. People normally (...) distinguish between actions that are performed intentionally and those that are performed unintentionally and this distinction plays a crucial role in social understanding and moral judgment. Recently, Knobe (Analysis 63: 190–193, 2003a ), (Philosophical Psychology 16: 309–324, 2003b ) showed that people’s moral evaluations might serve as input to the process by which people intuitively arrive at the intentionality judgments. Here, by using two pairs of vignettes, the Knobe’s Harm/Help cases and Murder/Bull’s-eye cases, we showed that, as already observed in typical population, in individuals with HFA/AS judgment of intentional action is informed by the moral appreciation of the action outcome. However, the two groups differed on praise judgments and moral justifications, suggesting that these processes were poorly influenced by the agent’s psychological states. We concluded that, although under certain circumstances, individuals with HFA/AS and people with typical development have similar intuitive judgments of intentionality, over-assignment of praise judgments and the reduced use of folk-psychological concepts in moral judgment likely reflect difficulties using intentionality information for moral reasoning. (shrink)

Did Leibniz exploit infinitesimals and infinities à la rigueur or only as shorthand for quantified propositions that refer to ordinary Archimedean magnitudes? Hidé Ishiguro defends the latter position, which she reformulates in terms of Russellian logical fictions. Ishiguro does not explain how to reconcile this interpretation with Leibniz’s repeated assertions that infinitesimals violate the Archimedean property (i.e., Euclid’s Elements, V.4). We present textual evidence from Leibniz, as well as historical evidence from the early decades of the calculus, to undermine Ishiguro’s (...) interpretation. Leibniz frequently writes that his infinitesimals are useful fictions, and we agree, but we show that it is best not to understand them as logical fictions; instead, they are better understood as pure fictions. (shrink)

The nature of space and time is one of the most fascinating and fundamental areas of the philosophy of physics. This study aims to provide a complete account of current debates in the application of spacetime to string theory. String theory has been an important discipline within physics for many years but is only now being applied to the problems faced by philosophers of science. This emerging area of physics is discussed in relation to a number of theories including general (...) relativity, T-duality and moduli space, and set in the context of current and future research. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to literally explore the declinations of the status of the “monstruous thing”, investigating if and when monsters are abnormal phenomena, not of nature but of culture. Which features, of both expression and content, must a non-living artificial subject present in order to be perceived and judged as a “monster”? In the West, the image of the monster is traditionally associated with an abominable creature belonging to the universe of nature whose touchstone is a standard (...) unit of measurement associated with a human or animal body. Here, we are interested in seeing what happens when these value judgments about monsters are applied to non-organic entities. Our case study of the large cruise ships, starting with ocean liners and moving toward the modern behemoths that now enter our historic cities, discloses a new semiosis of monstrosity caused by the war of movement produced by globalization. (shrink)

This paper intends to present briefly Aristotle’s direct tradition as found in the papyri already published, first in those containing Aristotle’s preserved works, then in those tentatively attributed to his lost works. Some papyrological and philological contributions are offered regarding the text of the first group, in particular by collation of the most recent editions and consideration of the latest studies. As for the second group, the arguments pro and contra Aristotelian authorship are analysed.

Physical time plays a different role in general relativity than in quantum mechanics and the particle physics based on it. The first section of this chapter provides a brief survey of the main approaches to quantum gravity and then proceeds to consider the lessons that can be drawn from two distinct strategies for discovering a theory of quantum gravity. In the next section, the chapter first explicates the fate of time in approaches to quantum gravity that start with general relativity (...) (GR) and attempt to quantize it. Second, it investigates approaches to quantum gravity that start from quantum particle physics. The third and fourth sections respectively offer an assessment of time as understood in string theory and 'non‐commutative' field theory. One of the important possibilities for time in quantum gravity is that it might fail to commute with space. (shrink)

This introduction frames the articles collected in the special section as the outcome of a process of ‘self-education’ taking place in the Italian free university network UniNomade 2.0 between 2010 and 2013. The open seminars and conferences organized by UniNomade 2.0 took as their object of inquiry the concept of the Common, while the articles selected focus in particular on the sovereign debt crisis of the European Union following the global financial crisis of 2008. The introduction thus summarizes the overall (...) approach of contemporary ‘post-operaist’ authors such as Toni Negri, Christian Marazzi, Maurizio Lazzarato, Andrea Fumagalli and Stefano Lucarelli, and Carlo Vercellone to the new role of financial capital, the transformation of money, the material constitution of Europe, the role played by the relationship between debtors and creditors, and the possibilities opened by the concept of Commonfare for struggles against austerity. (shrink)

This article advances some considerations on the current production of hegemonic effects, starting with some problems posed by the work of one of the most influential writers in cultural studies – the American Palestinian critic Edward Said. Said's commentary on the coverage of Islam in the US media in the late 1970s allows for some challenging considerations on how hegemonic strategies directed at the formation of publics and public opinion are increasingly integrated within a global noopolitics of communication whose understanding (...) of the public is not derived from the notion of civil society but from the biopolitical element of the population – and the bio-racist segmentation that constitutes it. As outlined in Michel Foucault's analysis of liberal and neoliberal governmentality, such understanding of the public locates the latter straight within a new dispositif of power which is biopolitical and noopolitical at the same time, that is, which addresses itself at the same time to the biological, economic and spiritual life of the population. Such understanding involves a reconsideration of the constitution of publics and public opinion in times of netwars and information warfare as both subjects and objects of power/knowledge. In as much as such noopolitics affects what Maurizio Lazzarato calls a second bios, the life of the brain, it has the potential to give expression to the virtual power of immaterial events of subjectification which materialize in the bodies which actualize them and the possible, shared worlds that they are capable of producing. (shrink)

This paper aims at presenting the work of Dutch architecture Hans van der Laan through a comparison with the Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti by stating the similarity of the role assigned to proportion in architectural design by both architects. In particular, the study will show how both Van der Laan and Alberti understood proportion and the perceptive and aesthetic values of proportioned forms as the result of an intellectual appreciation.

In relation to a thesis put forward by Marx Wartofsky, we seek to show that a historiography of mathematics requires an analysis of the ontology of the part of mathematics under scrutiny. Following Ian Hacking, we point out that in the history of mathematics the amount of contingency is larger than is usually thought. As a case study, we analyze the historians’ approach to interpreting James Gregory’s expression ultimate terms in his paper attempting to prove the irrationality of \. Here (...) Gregory referred to the last or ultimate terms of a series. More broadly, we analyze the following questions: which modern framework is more appropriate for interpreting the procedures at work in texts from the early history of infinitesimal analysis? As well as the related question: what is a logical theory that is close to something early modern mathematicians could have used when studying infinite series and quadrature problems? We argue that what has been routinely viewed from the viewpoint of classical analysis as an example of an “unrigorous” practice, in fact finds close procedural proxies in modern infinitesimal theories. We analyze a mix of social and religious reasons that had led to the suppression of both the religious order of Gregory’s teacher degli Angeli, and Gregory’s books at Venice, in the late 1660s. (shrink)

The article focuses on the relation established by Foucault in the two lecture courses Security, Territory, Population and The Birth of Biopolitics between life, nature and political economy. It explores the ways in which liberalism constructs a notion of economic nature as a phenomenon of circulation of aleatory series of events and poses the latter as an internal limit to sovereign power. It argues that the entwinement of vital and economic processes provides the means of internal redefinition of the raison (...) d’État and uses such an explanation to understand the emergence of the network topos as a technology of regulation of the unstable co-causality of milieus of circulation. The article also follows Foucault’s argument that the neoliberal market is significantly different from the liberal market inasmuch as, unlike the latter, it is not defined as an abstract logic of exchange among equals but as an ideal logic of competition between formal inequalities. Finally it asks whether new theories of social production and sympathetic cooperation, in the work of authors such as Yochai Benkler and Maurizio Lazzarato, can offer an alternative to the neoliberal logic of market-based competition as the basis for the production of new forms of life. (shrink)

In the wake of Brexit and Trump, the debate surrounding post-truth fills the newspapers and is at the center of the public debate. Democratic institutions and the rule of law have always been constructed and legitimized by discourses of truth. And so the issue of "post-truth" or "fake truth" can be regarded as a contemporary degeneration of that legitimacy. But what, precisely, is post-truth from a theoretical point of view? Can it actually change perceptions of law, of institutions and political (...) power? And can it affect our understanding of society and social relations? What are its ideological premises? What are the technical conditions that foster it? And most importantly, does it have anything to teach lovers of the truth? Pursuing an interdisciplinary perspective, this book gathers both well-known and newer scholars from a range of subject areas, to engage in a philosophical interrogation of the relationship between truth and law. (shrink)

The notion of transgenerational community is usually based on two diachronic interactions. The first interaction consists of present generations taking up the legacy (not only economic, but also institutional, artistic, cultural, and so forth) of past generations and giving it continuity, exercising a form of active agency. The second interaction occurs when present generations pass on their legacy to future generations. This is supposed to expand the boundaries of the community in a transgenerational sense (both backward- and forward-looking). In this (...) article we argue that the transgenerational community can be grounded on a different ontological insight: future generations play the role of fictional actors for present generations, i.e., present generations entertain a present-time interaction with future generations, insofar as future generations are functional for the realization of transgenerational actions. This lays the foundations for more solid community-based bonds of intergenerational justice. (shrink)

The present contribution intends to outline diagrams in the process of their becoming and as the result of live-action gestures between people. It aims to demonstrate that diagrams are images produced in form of “texts”, that is in form of any interweaving of relations. After a re- reading of the notions of “image” and “text”, our article highlights the continuities of Peirce's views on the diagram, as a not only verbal function, into Deleuze and Guattari's theory, and provides a closer (...) look at Wittgenstein's idea that diagrams are indissociable from their use. A semiotic analysis of Maria Lai's work of art Legarsi alla montagna will show this recurrent dimension of performativity in diagrams, revealing the extent to which they create not general relations, but social and intersubjective ones. (shrink)

In the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, nomadism works as an approach to the creation of concepts that favour space: geophilosophy. Nomadism is the way in which one crosses the plane of immanence and the many becomings; in fact, nomadism exceeds the ancient rhetoric of the subject because its disposition belongs to the multiple and to the environment in which it can unfold. In this sense, the disorientation in the present appears less disturbing; it is rather a shift in perspective, (...) certainly difficult to understand in the time in which the mega-machine of power is becoming more and more persecutory. Lines of flight, movements of slippage, becoming-woman, becoming-child, becoming-minor refer not only to the exercise of criticism, but also to the production of assemblages that intend to resist the present. (shrink)