The 26 essays collected in this volume explore some crucial aspects of the philosophical and scientific traditions of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Using a historical-philological approach, the volume brings to light unpublished documents and offers new reconstructions of the intellectual paths of authors such as Meister Eckhart, Nicole Oresme, John Buridan, Siger of Brabant, William of Ockham, Peter Pomponazzi, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

In the history of ideas, innumerable attempts to explain life and to define living activities have invoked the notion of the soul. Yet this theoretical entity seems to be an unfathomable thing. Difficulties beset the mere definition of it, and controversies span from whether the soul is a material body or an immaterial form, an immortal or a mortal thing, a subject of experiential or of theoretical knowledge, to the question of whether it is the subject of a specific discipline (...) or rather of a scientia de anima that, in the Aristotelian tradition, was also regarded as a part of natural philosophy—the field of philosophy that deals with natural particulars. Not only was the soul thought, from a theological angle, to define the unity and unicity of living beings, but it was also seen as the source of several bodily activities such as nutrition and growth in living beings. And since some of the beings that grow and nourish themselves also sense and think, the relation of the origin of vegetative powers to the origin of perceptual and intellectual powers has always been an object of debate. In this sense, the soul has not just been a topic of one specific field, but has rather drawn upon many disciplines, combining the work of philosophers, religious thinkers, physicians, naturalists, chymists, and so on, thereby blurring the boundaries between different fields of knowledge. Botanical treatises of the Renaissance, for example, begin with the definition of the soul of plants and its primary role in bringing forth vegetal activities. Indeed, the presence of the soul was thought to be involved also in the life of animals, human beings, and, in some cases, it was even ascribed to minerals and stones, not to speak of the world-soul, the latent idea that the entire cosmos is animated with a soul. Furthermore, the theory of the materiality of the soul was developed since Antiquity and found new momentum in early modern times, in the reappraisal of Epicurean ideas by thinkers such as Guillaume Lamy, Pierre Gassendi, and Julian Offray de La Mettrie. Yet, with the Cartesian Henricus Regius, the understanding of vegetative, sensitive, and rational souls as material importantly surfaces as a peculiar attempt to mechanize the living functions of bodies. (shrink)

The volume analyzes the natural philosophical accounts and debates concerning the vegetative powers, namely nutrition, growth, and reproduction. While principally focusing on the early modern approaches to the lower functions of the soul, readers will discover the roots of these approaches back to the Ancient times, as the volume highlights the role of three strands that help shape the study of life in the Medieval and early modern natural philosophies. From late antiquity to the early modern period, the vegetative soul (...) and its cognate concepts have played a substantial role in specifying life, living functions, and living bodies, sometimes blurring the line between living and non-living nature, and, at other moments, resulting in a strong restriction of life to a mechanical system of operations and powers. Unearthing the history of the vegetative soul as a shrub of interconnected concepts, the 24 contributions of the volume fill a crucial gap in scholarship, ultimately outlining the importance of vegetal processes of incessant proliferation, generation, and organic growth as the roots of life in natural philosophical interpretations. (shrink)

Driving behaviours and fitness to drive have been assessed using different tools over time: standardized neuropsychological, on-road and driving simulation testing. Nowadays, the great variability of topics related to driving simulation has elicited a high number of reviews. The present work aims to perform a scientometric analysis on driving simulation reviews and to propose a selective review of reviews focusing on critical issues related to validity and fidelity. A scientometric analysis of driving simulation reviews published from 1988 to 2019 was (...) conducted. Bibliographic data from 298 reviews were extracted from Scopus and WoS. Performance analysis was conducted to investigate most prolific Countries, Journals, Institutes and Authors. A cluster analysis on authors’ keywords was performed to identify relevant associations between different research topics. Based on reviews extracted from cluster analysis, a selective review of reviews was conducted to answer questions regarding validity, fidelity and critical issues. USA and Germany are the first two Countries for number of driving simulation reviews. USA is the leading Country with 5 Institutes in the top-ten. Top Authors wrote from 3 to 7 reviews each and belong to Institutes located in North America and Europe. Cluster analysis identified three clusters and eight keywords. The selective review of reviews showed a substantial agreement for supporting validity of driving simulation with respect to neuropsychological and on-road testing, while for fidelity with respect to real-world driving experience a blurred representation emerged. The most relevant critical issues were the a) lack of a common set of standards, b) phenomenon of simulation sickness, c) need for psychometric properties, lack of studies investigating d) predictive validity with respect to collision rates and e) ecological validity. Driving simulation represent a cross-cutting topic in scientific literature on driving, and there are several evidences for considering it as a valid alternative to neuropsychological and on-road testing. Further research efforts could be aimed at establishing a consensus statement for protocols assessing fitness to drive, in order to a) use standardized systems, b) compare systematically driving simulators with regard to their validity and fidelity, and c) employ shared criteria for conducting studies in a given sub-topic. (shrink)

How is the tension between conflict and deliberation resolved in shareholder engagement? We address this question by studying shareholder engagement as a deliberative process with three stages: establishing dialogue, solution development, and solution implementation. We theorize that two interactionist mechanisms, deliberative interaction and the voicing of disagreement, play different roles at different stages of the process. We test our hypotheses with a proprietary database of 169 environmental, social, and governance engagements with US public companies over 2007–12. We find that while (...) deliberative interaction does not help advance the engagement process, it positively moderates the effect of disagreement in the solution development stage. By contrast, in the solution implementation stage, deliberative interaction amplifies the negative effect of disagreement, thus hindering progress in the engagement. Our article contributes to shareholder engagement, deliberation theory, and interactionist organization theory by establishing that engagement effectiveness is an interactional achievement shaped by both deliberation and disagreement. (shrink)

The central nervous system uses feedback processes that occur at multiple time scales to control interactions with the environment. The long-latency response is the fastest process that directly involves cortical areas, with a motoneuron response measurable 50 ms following an imposed limb displacement. Several behavioral factors concerning perturbation mechanics and the active role of muscles prior or during the perturbation can modulate the long-latency response amplitude in the upper limbs, but the interactions among many of these factors had not been (...) systematically studied before. We conducted a behavioral study on thirteen healthy individuals to determine the effect and interaction of four behavioral factors – background muscle torque, perturbation direction, perturbation velocity, and task instruction – on the LLRa evoked from the flexor carpi radialis and extensor carpi ulnaris muscles after velocity-controlled wrist displacements. The effects of the four factors were quantified using both a 0D statistical analysis on the average perturbation-evoked EMG signal in the period corresponding to an LLR, and using a timeseries analysis of EMG signals. All factors significantly modulated LLRa, and their combination nonlinearly contributed to modulating the LLRa. Specifically, all the three-way interaction terms that could be computed without including the interaction between instruction and velocity significantly modulated the LLR. Analysis of the three-way interaction terms of the 0D model indicated that for the ECU muscle, the LLRa evoked when subjects are asked to maintain their muscle activation in response to the perturbations was greater than the one observed when subjects yielded to the perturbations, but this effect was not measured for muscles undergoing shortening or in absence of background muscle activation. Moreover, higher perturbation velocity increased the LLRa evoked from the stretched muscle in presence of a background torque, but no effects of velocity were measured in absence of background torque. Also, our analysis identified significant modulations of LLRa in muscles shortened by the perturbation, including an interaction between torque and velocity, and an effect of both torque and velocity. The time-series analysis indicated the significance of additional transient effects in the LLR region for muscles undergoing shortening. (shrink)

Despite the emphasis on dialogue and argumentation in educational settings, still not much is known about how best we can support learners in their interthinking, reasoning, and metadialogic understanding. The goal of this classroom intervention study is to explore the degree of students’ dialogicity and its possible increase during a learning programme implementing dialogic and argument-based teaching goals and principles. In particular, we focus on how students from 5 to 15 years old engage with each other's ideas, and whether/how this (...) engagement is influenced by lesson and classroom setting factors. The participants were 4208 students distributed in preprimary, primary, and secondary classrooms of five countries (UK, Portugal, Germany, Spain, and Cyprus). Findings suggest that there is a consistent increase with age for some high-dialogicity moves, and students behave more dialogically in whole-class discussions rather than small-group activities. (shrink)

Per trovare un'utilizzazione del problema posto in Z6 da Aristotele l'A. considera i testi di autori medievali relativi ai problemi dell'identità tra una realtà accidentale e la propria essenza. Anzitutto è ricostruito il testo aristotelico, poi sono sviluppate considerazioni sui modelli dell'interpretazione del tema nei secoli XIII e XIV. L'A. intende mostrare come le letture che in epoca moderna sono date del problema posto da Aristotele già si trovano in autori medievali e come tali soluzioni siano deducibili da un testo (...) aperto a diverse soluzioni interpretative. Infine, l'A. si interroga sulla rilevanza della problematica nella messa a punto del problema dello statuto ontologico degli accidenti. I testi esaminati sono cinque expositiones alla Metafisica, di Alberto, Tommaso d'Aquino, Antonio d'Andrea, Alessandro d'Alessandria e Paolo Veneto, oltre che questiones di Agostino Trionfo d'Ancona, Galfredo di Aspal, Pietro d'Alvernia e testi anonimi: Anonymus domus Petri, Anonymus Zimmermanni. (shrink)

In this essay, we reconsider two themes particularly discussed by the interpreters of Ockham: that of divine omnipotence and the hypothesis of the intuitive cognition of non-existent things. The purpose is to show that the hypothetical case considered by Ockham was subjected to opposite interpretations. For theological reasons, Ockham attributes not only to God but also to human beings the possibility of having acts of intuitive cognition of things that do not exist; nonetheless, he holds that it is contradictory for (...) God to give us the evident cognition of things that appear to be present when they are actually absent. Walter Chatton opposes this conclusion, arguing that no contradiction ensues from that hypothesis. Instead, he believes that it is impossible for God to give us the intuition of things that absolutely do not exist or are in no way present to us. Ockham’s arguments include some difficulties that Chatton acutely sees and discusses. In particular, Chatton calls into question Ockham’s missed distinction between the existence and the presence of the intuited thing. (shrink)

Im Mittelpunkt der vorliegenden Studie steht die Frage nach der Tragweite und Anwendungsrelevanz der Methodenlehre Émilie du Châtelets für die Physik im 18. Jahrhundert, mit der sich die Französin an der Diskussion um Energie- und Impulserhaltung und um das Prinzip der kleinsten Wirkung beteiligte. Andrea Reichenberger zeigt, dass Prinzipien und Hypothesen für Émilie du Châtelet als Fundament und Gerüst wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis gelten. Im Zusammenspiel beider Komponenten erweisen sich das Prinzip des Widerspruchs und das Prinzip des zureichenden Grundes als regulative (...) Leitlinien und Handlungsmaxime für die auf Hypothesen gestützte Theoriebildung und -begründung. Die sich daraus ergebenden Konsequenzen für den Status und Inhalt der Newtonschen Axiome werden exemplarisch aufgezeigt. (shrink)

The essay discusses Donald Davidson’s concept of anomalous monism in the framework of Husserlian phenomenology. It develops in four stages. Section 1 is devoted to a critical presentation of the argument for anomalous monism. Section 2 succinctly examines those Husserlian notions that best provide the ground for a discussion parallel to Davidson’s. In Sect. 3, the aporetic status of “mental causation” is analyzed by providing a genetic-phenomenological account of efficient causation. Section 4 draws some general conclusions concerning the kind of (...) efficaciousness that must be attributed to consciousness and discusses the sense in which anomalous monism can be defended in a phenomenological framework, but not in a naturalistic one. (shrink)

Masked priming experiments occasionally revealed surprising effects: Participants responded slower for congruent compared to incongruent primes. This negative congruency effect was ascribed to inhibition of prime-induced activation [Eimer, M., & Schlaghecken, F. . Response faciliation and inhibition in subliminal priming. Biological Psychology, 64, 7–26.] that sets in if the prime activation is sufficiently strong. The current study tests this assumption by implementing manipulations designed to vary the amount of prime-induced activation in three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 3, NCEs were (...) observed despite reduced prime-induced activation. Experiment 2 revealed no NCE with at least similar prime strength. Thus, the amount of prime activation did not predict whether or not NCEs occurred. The findings are discussed with regard to the inhibition account and the recently proposed account of mask-induced activation [cf. Lleras, A., & Enns, J. T. . Negative compatibility or object updating? A cautionary tale of mask-dependent priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 475–493; Verleger, R., Jaskowski, P., Aydemir, A., van der Lubbe, R. H. J., & Groen, M. . Qualitative differences between conscious and nonconscious processing? On inverse priming induced by masked arrows. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 494–515]. (shrink)

This book addresses two related questions that have first arisen in Toulmin’s seminal book on the uses of argument. The first question is the one of the relationship between the semantic analysis of modality and the structure of arguments. The second question is the one of the distinctive place, or role, of modality in the fundamental structure of arguments. These two questions concern how modality, as a semantic category, relates to the fundamental structure of arguments. The book addresses modality and (...) argumentation also according to another perspective by looking at how different linguistic modal expressions may be taken as argumentative indicators. It explores the role of modal expressions as argumentative indicators by using the Italian modal system as a case study. At the same time, it uses predictions/forecasts in the business-financial daily press to investigate the relation between modality and the context of argumentation. (shrink)

Harrigan and Spekkens provided a categorization of quantum ontological models classifying them as \-ontic or \-epistemic if the quantum state \ describes respectively either a physical reality or mere observers’ knowledge. Moreover, they claimed that Einstein—who was a supporter of the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics—endorsed an epistemic view of \ In this essay we critically assess such a classification and some of its consequences by proposing a twofold argumentation. Firstly, we show that Harrigan and Spekkens’ categorization implicitly assumes that (...) a complete description of a quantum system ) only concerns single, individual systems instantiating absolute, intrinsic properties. Secondly, we argue that such assumptions conflict with some current interpretations of quantum mechanics, which employ different ontic states as a complete description of quantum systems. In particular, we will show that, since in the statistical interpretation ontic states describe ensembles rather than individuals, such a view cannot be considered \-epistemic. As a consequence, the authors misinterpreted Einstein’s view concerning the nature of the quantum state. Next, we will focus on relational quantum mechanics and perspectival quantum mechanics, which in virtue of their relational and perspectival metaphysics employ ontic states \ dealing with relational properties. We conclude that Harrigan and Spekkens’ categorization is too narrow and entails an inadequate classification of the mentioned interpretations of quantum theory. Hence, any satisfactory classification of quantum ontological models ought to take into account the variations of \ across different interpretations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

The phrase “untold sorrow” evokes a sorrow that is both unnarrated (perhaps unnarratable) and of an incalculably large or unfathomable magnitude. It gestures toward experiences of loss that lie beyond the limits of ordinary comprehension. Yet there is a sense in which all loss confounds ordinary ways of relating to objects of care. In this paper I explore connections between loss, meaningfulness, and the narratability (or unnarratability) of sorrow. The point of narrating of loss is not necessarily to render the (...) loss itself meaningful, I argue, but rather to memorialize the lost object of care. Such memorialization is one way of solving the problem of how to love the dead. (shrink)

Concretism is the ontological thesis according to which possibilia are concrete entities. The paper first outlines concretism, arguing that its sole founding thesis is that individuals across possible worlds are individuated by similitude. Among other things, this means that there is no need to postulate that there is no overlap among worlds. The main virtues and vices of concretism are then reviewed, and a novel vice is put forward: a failure in the reduction of modality due to the modal character (...) of intrinsicness. (shrink)

Can genetic testing and manipulation be done ethically? -- Is the use of human embryos in stem cell research ethical? -- Chapter 3:is assisted reproductive technology ethical?

When was philosophy of science born? And why? This book aims to answer these questions. Simply put, philosophy of science was born in seventeenth-century Dutch universities, where the introduction of Cartesian ideas called for philosophical reflection upon the validity, method, and concepts of natural philosophy. The disciplines which fulfilled this role were metaphysics and logic. The process was neither short nor straightforward, nor – admittedly – easily grasped through such a generalisation. As a matter of fact, philosophy of science has (...) existed since antiquity, or for as long as philosophers have provided reflections on such topics. On the other hand, the institutional fragmentation of philosophical and scientific disciplines in the modern era has made it increasingly easy to distinguish between ‘philosophy’ and ‘science’, and for philosophers to provide reflections on the natural sciences. This book stands at the crossroads: namely, it disentangles the ways in which metaphysics and logic became functional for such reflection, and, forthwith, they began to be detached from what was labelled ‘natural philosophy’. This is the reason why this book offers a study of Dutch Cartesianism. Dutch universities were the first where Descartes’s ideas became official matter of teaching and came to reshape the function of metaphysics and logic. So that one can meaningfully ascribe the role of ‘philosophy of science’ to them, and to see this role at work in lectures, disputations, treatises. Again, this is a simplification. Philosophy of science did not appear abruptly, nor was it related only to a transformation of metaphysics, logic, and natural philosophy: its emergence coincided with a rethinking of the foundations of all philosophical disciplines. Philosophy of science appeared, first, as a reflection on philosophy itself, carried out in different disciplines. More precisely, it emerged as a renewed foundation of all philosophical disciplines, serving to guarantee the reliability of their methodologies and concepts, namely, to grant their status as indubitable scientiae. (shrink)

Citizen science models of public participation in scientific research represent a growing area of opportunity for health and biomedical research, as well as new impetus for more collaborative forms of engagement in large-scale research. However, this also surfaces a variety of ethical issues that both fall outside of and build upon the standard human subjects concerns in bioethics. This article provides background on citizen science, examples of current projects in the field, and discussion of established and emerging ethical issues for (...) citizen science in health and biomedical research. (shrink)

As Dieter Lohmar (Citation2002; Citation2012) has shown, in the Logical Investigation Husserl sketches a peculiar type of reduction, the so-called “Reduktion auf den reellen Bestand.” Husserl does not explicitly put this kind of reduction forward, though, and he does definitely not clarify how it works, and what its elements properly are. Lohmar proposes to understand it as a kind of empiricist reduction to mere sense-data. On the contrary, I believe that it should be considered as entailing also the apprehensional forms (...) of sense-data, though not the so-called apprehensional senses. In this article, I will offer some arguments and textual evidence in favour of this claim, and I will conclude by proposing that, despite Husserl’s unclarity on the issue, the reduction to the real components of experience, rather than being simply an ancestor of the transcendental-phenomenological reduction, should be seen as the regulative model of all later forms of reduction. (shrink)

Clarifying the nature of possibility is crucial for an evaluation of the phenomenological approach to ontology. From a phenomenological perspective, it is ontological possibility, and not spatiotemporal existence, that has pre-eminent ontological status. Since the sphere of phenomenological being and the sphere of experienceability turn out to be overlapping, this makes room for two perspectives. We can confer foundational priority to the acts of consciousness over possibilities, or to pre-set possibilities over the activity of consciousness. Husserl’s position on this issue (...) seems to change over time. Ultimately, the establishment of a phenomenological perspective must involve a rejection of any hypostatization of pre-set possibilities, but not all implications of this theoretical step seem to be drawn in Husserl’s texts. This paper is devoted to an illustration of how the phenomenological notion of possibility should change when we reject the hypostatization of possibility, that is, when we reject the idea that all acts of consciousness are to be conceived as realizations of pre-set “ideal forms”. We examine this question, first, by trying to clarify the conceptual constellation of “possibility” in Husserl’s texts. This leads to an overall classification of the features of constituted possibilities. Then we distinguish such constituted possibilities from their constituting conditions, which outlines a different sense of “possibility”. In the last instance two “possibilizing” dimensions are shown to lie at the root of all ontic possibilities. This leads to a final suggestion on the nature of the relation between experience and possibility. Actual experiences create the room for possibility: they are possibilizations. In this sense, experience is to be taken as a generative sphere which goes beyond the customary boundary between epistemic and ontological. From this point of view all experience is to be conceived as emergence. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 9, Page 31-33, September 2011.

This article, divided into two parts, traces and discusses two pairs of analogies invoked in Sanskrit literature to articulate the paradox of God’s oneness and multiplicity vis-à-vis the souls and the manifest world, reflecting the philosophical positions of pariṇāmavāda and vivartavāda. These are, respectively, the analogies of fire in wood and dairy products in milk, and moon/sun in pools of water and space in pots. Having introduced prevalent ideas about the status of the supreme principle vis-à-vis the souls and creation (...) in Śaivism, Sāṅkhya, and Vedānta, and having investigated instances of the first pair of analogies in multiple textual genres in Part I, here I turn to the discussion of the second set of analogies. Having proposed that the first set reflects the influence of pariṇāma-Vedānta on an early strand of the Śaiva textual corpus, I argue that the second set, attested prevalently in relatively late sources, betrays a Śaṅkarian origin, thereby suggesting a vivartavāda-Advaita Vedānta influence on the Śaiva corpus after the 9th or 10th century. (shrink)

Artists have been one of the occupational categories that has suffered the most from the economic crisis due to COVID-19. Artists’ “portfolio careers”, generally based on freelancing and self-employment not protected by regulations and welfare, are one of the main reasons of this financial emergency. Their odd forms of employment are rooted – among other things – in a peculiar understanding of artistic work, which I call artistic work exceptionalism (AWE). AWE sees artistic work as essentially different from regular jobs. (...) It finds its conceptual source in Western philosophical aesthetics, which presents the making of art in contrast with regular jobs. In this paper, I take issue with AWE and show its limits and negative implications. By placing emphasis on the heretofore neglected relationship between art and work, I argue that, in principle, creating art is (or should be regarded as) in continuity with other forms of employment, and therefore there is much to be learned from other professions at the level of artistic labor reforms. I call this view artistic work normalism (AWN). In defending AWN, my goal is not to desecrate artists’ occupation. Quite the contrary, my theoretical framework stems from a desire to recognize the social value of the arts. I propose two different approaches to the economics of art promoting artists’ well-being and the exercise of creativity: strengthened public art funding and the financialization of art. (shrink)

Algebraic Art explores the invention of a peculiarly Victorian account of the nature and value of aesthetic form, and it traces that account to a surprising source: mathematics. Drawing on literature, art, and photography, it explores how the Victorian mathematical conception of form still resonates today.

A cross-species perspective can extend and provide testable predictions for Savage et al.'s framework. Rhythm and melody, I argue, could bootstrap each other in the evolution of musicality. Isochrony may function as a temporal grid to support rehearsing and learning modulated, pitched vocalizations. Once this melodic plasticity is acquired, focus can shift back to refining rhythm processing and beat induction.