Obsessive–compulsive disorder is a debilitating mental health disorder that can easily become a treatment-resistant condition. Although effective therapies exist, only about half of the patients seem to benefit from them when we consider treatment refusal, dropout rates, and residual symptoms. Thus, providing effective augmentation to standard therapies could improve existing treatments. Group compassion-focused interventions have shown promise for reducing depression, anxiety, and avoidance related to various clinical problems, but this approach has never been evaluated for OCD individuals. However, cultivating compassion (...) for self and others seems crucial for OCD patients, given the accumulating research suggesting that fear of guilt, along with isolation and self-criticism, can strongly contribute to the development and maintenance of OCD. The primary aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the acceptability, tolerability, and effectiveness of an 8-week group compassion-focused intervention for reducing OCD symptoms, depression, fear of guilt and self-criticism, and increasing common humanity and compassionate self-reassuring skills in treatment-resistant OCD patients. Using a multiple baseline experimental design, the intervention was evaluated in a sample of OCD patients who had completed at least 6 months of CBT treatment for OCD, but who continued to suffer from significant symptoms. Participants were randomized to different baseline assessment lengths; they then received 8 weekly, 120-min group sessions of compassion-focused therapy for OCD, and then were tested again at post-treatment and at 1 month follow up. Despite the adverse external circumstances, by the end of treatment, all participants demonstrated reliable decreases in OCD symptoms, and these improvements were maintained at 4-week follow-up for seven of eight participants. The intervention was also associated with improvements in fear of guilt, self-criticism, and self-reassurance, but less consistent improvements in depression and common humanity. Participants reported high levels of acceptability of and satisfaction with the intervention. Results suggest that the intervention may be beneficial as either a stand-alone treatment or as an augmentation to other treatments. (shrink)

We construct two recursive models of fragments of set theory. We also show that the fragments of Kripke-Platek set theory that prove -induction for -formulas have no recursive models but the standard model of the hereditarily finite sets.

SummaryThis study focuses on the cultural and political context from which stemmed the French translation of the British Merchant. The paratextual and macrostructural interventions that characterised Le négotiant anglois clearly demonstrate that the translator, Véron de Forbonnais, used his work to set out his own epistemological method and his way of looking at inter-state relations. With the book, Forbonnais had distanced himself from Gournay by rejecting the idea that in order for France to prosper in a situation of international competition (...) the government needed to adopt a muscular strategy that included the adoption of a navigation act modelled on the one enacted by Britain in 1660. At the same time, Forbonnais warned French decision-makers that signing commercial treaties with the maritime powers might also be prejudicial to national economic interests. Forbonnais supplied qualified French readers not only with an annotated edition of the British Merchant but also with a translation of Davenant's Of the Use of Political Arithmetick. In so doing, he proposed to his audience a type of governance based on a competent use of statistics. In conclusion, I will argue that in Le négotiant anglois Forbonnais anticipated the key political and economical tenets of his project of ‘monarchie commerçante’, which he later set out in the Principes et observations æconomiques in order to counter the rise of the epistemology and plans for a ‘royaume agricole’ put forward by the physiocratic movement. (shrink)

La nota desarrolla un examen teórico del significado y alcance de las reformas constitucionales aprobadas por el Congreso mexicano en junio de 2011. En opinión de los autores, si estas reformas son tomadas en serio suponen el comienzo de otra transición, en la medida en que hacen de los derechos fundamentales y sus garantías el marco supraordenado al que deberán sujetarse tanto las leyes ordinarias como el funcionamiento mismo del Estado mexicano.

In our essay we discuss the significance of the words aliquo modo (en quelque façon) in Leibniz's famous definition of truth. We show that the addition of those words does not indicate a lack of clarity on Leibniz's side or a variety of meaning in his definition of truth but that its aim is to guarantee this truth-definition's universal validity. We therefore give an overview of Leibniz's theory of individual substance and show that the expression aliquo modo derives from the (...) question whether knowledge of individual substances is possible or not. (shrink)

Herbert Spencer can be regarded as the precursor of current scientists and moral philosophers who try to naturalize ethics by providing for it biological and/or psychological foundations. Both Spencer and his contemporary followers are, however, faced with the problem whether naturalistic ethics is capable of a logically correct justification. The aim of this paper is to discuss this metaethical problem. I examine first different interpretations of Spencer's thought, and I maintain that on the basis of none of these interpretations Spencer (...) commits a logical fallacy in a narrow sense. Rather, the British philosopher and contemporary naturalistic ethicists commit an epistemological naturalistic fallacy consisting in connecting the normativity of justification to the descriptivity of explanation. In the last part of the paper I therefore conduct a critical discussion of the role that the reliabilist perspective plays in the current context of naturalized moral epistemology. (shrink)

This is a book that attempts to propose itself as a new trigger in the wide world of anorexia nervosa. The originality of its proposal consists in approaching anorexia nervosa, not only by endocrinological and psychological perspectives, but also by anthropological, philosophical and ethical point of view. In this way it's not only an update of specific literature, but also an integration with a new method to study this condition. The purpose of the book is to approach anorexia nervosa from (...) different points of view, to reach a new interpretation which involves notions from biological and human sciences interpreted in a unique model and which could allow a new method of treatment. (shrink)

the scholion to Lucan, “Bellum Civile” 8, 618 that is found in the “Adnotationes super Lucanum” is at first sight pointless, but it becomes immediately meaningful if we accept the idea that the scholiast commented the text by systematically comparing it with Livy’s narrative on those same events. This approach casts a new light on how these ancient commentators read Lucan and can be also useful to solve exegetical issues.

This book aims to introduce the Armenian version of Philo's writings also to those scholars not acquainted with Armenian Studies. The subject is approached from different perspectives - historical, hermeneutical, philological, linguistic - with special attention given to the reception of Philo in Armenian Christianity.

Epstein et al.'s “full access to Universal Grammar” position is conceptually and empirically problematic. Its shortcomings are illustrated through a brief discussion of the following issues: (1) initial versus final states of grammatical knowledge in a second language, (2) knowledge of gradience of grainmaticality, (3) optionality and retention in non-native grammars, and (4) the empirical measurement of syntactic knowledge.

Dopo aver brevemente ripercorso la storia della filosofia della religione, Italo Mancini organizza la sua trattazione secondo i seguenti capitoli: Forme spurie, La forma pura, Ermeneutica o strutturalismo, L'essenza della religione, La fede come evento, Teoria della parola di Dio, Teoria degli eventi fondatori, Il principio della creazione, Quale fondamento, L'utopia della filosofia della religione.

Analisi di più aspetti dell’argomentazione giuridica, esposti in quattro saggi. 1. La ricerca della verità nella testimonianza della vittima dei processi per stupro, partendo dalla vicenda biblica di Susanna e i vecchioni, dal processo seicentesco per lo stupro di Artemisia Gentileschi, passando per il romanzo “A Passage to India”, fino all’esame della più recente giurisprudenza (Susanna, Artemisa, Adela … ovvero la semplice verità, di Emanuele Filograna). 2. La giustificazione dialogica e monologica delle argomentazioni: confronto tra le tesi di E. Tugendhat (...) e R. Alexy in merito alla teoria del consenso come giustificazione ultima non solo dell’argomentazione, ma anche della decisione giuridica (Giustificazione, argomentazione e decisione giuridica. Teorie dialogiche e fonologiche: Alexy e Tugendhat, di Massimo Mancini). 3. Analisi del particolare status argomentativo della giustificazione dei diritti umani, con particolare riferimento alla loro natura assoluta o storica, esaminando le argomentazioni relative ai diritti alla vita, alla libertà ed all’integrità fisica, cui corrispondono le rispettive violazioni: l’uccisione, la schiavitù e la tortura (Problemi di argomentazione e giustificazione dei diritti umani, di Massimo. Mancini). 4. Illustrazione degli elementi di continuità tra il processo accusatorio antico (greco e romano) e moderno e, segnatamente, della terzietà del giudice e della cross-examination, attraverso l’esame dei processi ad Oreste, Socrate ed Apuleio (La Verità nel contraddittorio, di Roberto Paradisi). (shrink)

Pour décrire son approche dans cette étude, Delphine Antoine-Mahut utilise un apologue : lorsque nous retrouvons un objet du passé, par exemple la statue de Glaucus, nous reconnaissons les traits du personnage qu’elle représente, mais en même temps nous percevons ce que le temps et l’action de la mer ont déposé sur sa surface. Ce qui intéresse l’auteure n’est pas de mesurer l’écart entre ce que nous avons sous les yeux et la statue originale, mais de comprendre les événements qui (...) l’ont rendue... (shrink)

Currently, anomalous lived temporality is not included in the main diagnostic criteria or standard symptom checklists. In this article, we present the Transdiagnostic Assessment of Temporal Experience, a structured interview that can be used by researchers and clinicians without a comprehensive phenomenological background to explore abnormal time experiences in persons with abnormal mental conditions regardless of their diagnosis. When extensive data gathered by this scale are available, it will be possible to delineate well-defined anomalous lived temporality profiles for each psychopathological (...) disorder. This instrument may also prove useful for clinicians by providing a more refined assessment of relevant psychopathological symptoms and an in-depth understanding of the patient’s abnormal behaviour as related to specific types of time experience. In the first part of the article, we provide a brief overview of the phenomenological concept of temporality, including pre-phenomenal and phenomenal time, synthesis, conation and synchronization, and of abnormal time experiences in persons affected by psychopathological conditions. In the following part, we describe the basic structure of the interview that comprises seven categories corresponding to the abnormal features of lived temporality: anomalies of synchrony, of time structure, of implicit time flow, of explicit time flow, and anomalous experiences of the past, the present and the future. The paper also includes a section on administration and scoring of the TATE scale, the complete interview and a Likert table for quantifying the frequency, intensity and interference with daily life of the phenomena explored. (shrink)

Epigenetics investigates the dynamics of gene expression in various cells, and the signals from the internal and external environment affecting these dynamics. Neuroepigenetics extends this research into neurons and glia cells. Environmental-induced changes in gene expression are not only associated with the emerging structure and function of the nervous system during ontogeny, but are also fundamental to the wiring of neural circuitries responsible for learning and memory. Yet philosophers of science and neuroscience have so far paid little attention to these (...) findings. In this article, we describe some recent experimental work on the neuroepigenetics of fear and stress responses in rodents, its ingenious experimental translation into humans, and how this work seems not to be accurately described by popular “mechanist” accounts. Our final goal is to motivate broader philosophical attention to neuroepigenetics practices and findings, especially for how it considers environmentally driven and developmental plasticity in psychological explanations. (shrink)

Desde el horizonte de la política internacional contemporánea y adaptando las preguntas canónicas del filósofo de Könisberg queremos precisar qué podemos saber de la política y qué podemos esperar de ella a partir de Kant. La pregunta por la posibilidad de una reconciliación entre lo pasional y lo racional en la historia futura, planteada en su teoría política, es ocasión para subrayar el realismo y la relevancia de su lección, para pensar con él las posibilidades de una política dentro los (...) límites de la razón en nuestros días. (shrink)

Language between God and the Poets: Maʿnā in the Eleventh Century. By Alexander Key. Berkeley Series in Postclassical Islamic Scholarship. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. Pp. xvi + 267. $34.95.

the scholion of the “Commenta Bernensia” to Lucan 8, 824–826 about the Sibylline oracle concerning the prohibition for the Romans to send a military contingent to Egypt reveals both the influence of late antique commentaries cum notis variorum and the presence of allegedly genuine details about the history of the late Roman republic from sources now lost.

In a passage of the Life of Nero concerning the emperor’s indecision over what to do after the revolt of the provincial armies, it can clearly be seen that there is an influence from an argumentative structure particular to a certain type of deliberative oratory, the suasoria triplex. This influence may be due simply to Suetonius’ familiarity with the declamatory exercises in vogue at the rhetorical schools, but some hints allow us to suppose the existence of a suasoria theme that (...) took as its subject this very episode in the life of the emperor. (shrink)

The author starts by noting a discourse that is widespread but more or less diffuse in the media and certain contemporary political and intellectual quarters, and which has to do with ‘the permanence of the religious’: according to an idea now current, the religious might be resistant to the process of secularization of civil society, because of its psychological and existential implications, or if seen as a universal, irreducible component of human culture. The author analyses the different aspects of this (...) discourse, puts them into perspective in order to draw out their intellectual and political elements and attempts to reconstruct their historical and cultural origins and show how the refusal to historicize ‘religion’ is expressed today through various types of scientific argument coming out of the human and social sciences (arguments which appeal, for example, to the Latin concept of ‘civilization’, or the Germanic one of ( ‘Kultur’). (shrink)

This article analyses how the philosopher Piero Martinetti conceptualizes the survival of a person’s soul after death. Martinetti’s stance is strongly influenced by the philosophy of Plotinus. Martinetti shows that the relation between singularity and multiplicity is expressed in human beings as two different and complimentary perspectives: a fundamental identity in the atemporal dimension of the intelligible life of the spirit and a dynamic tension in the empiric order of the spatio-temporal becoming. Both dimensions express themselves in a finalistic way, (...) attracted from the One who operates in them as a force of harmonization and concentration. The One as Omnitudo realitatis is the cornerstone of Martinetti’s position in regards to the survival of the individual soul after death: a concentration that happens mysteriously, because it transcends the ability of the human mind to understand it – yet, it certainly happens. ≪One thing only we know: what is worth living will live.≫. (shrink)

O artigo versa sobre duas passagens cruciais em que toma forma o tema da comunicação entre vida humana e vida não humana: o século XVI, com Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) e Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), e o século XVIII, com Jean-Jacques Rous-seau (1712-1778), o qual se inspira directamente nos Essais. O artigo mostra até que ponto a ética de Montaigne se concentra sobre a escuta da natureza imanente a cada indivíduo, comportando em si a ideia da solidariedade que une todos os (...) seres vivos, reconhecendo na comunicação entre a subjectividade humana e a natureza animal a primeira modalidade de identificação com a vida débil, oprimida e sofredora, a qual é condição de explicação de uma ideia de justiça "natural e universal". A piedade constitui já uma disposição para a alteridade que brota do sentimento de identificação com a vida, na sua contingência e capacidade de sofrer. O artigo mostra também até que ponto a reflexão moral de Bruno chega a uma conclusão similar, na medida em que se afasta de uma antropologia que se recusa a conceber o ser humano como centro privilegiado de sentido no universo, antes colocando o homem e o animal numa relação de reciprocidade e de copertença. Será precisamente na medida em que retoma esta elaboração antidualista que Rousseau transformará a piedade no principal eixo da moral. /// The article focuses on the two crucial moments in which the theme of communication between human life and non-human life takes form: the XVI century, with Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) and Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), and the XVIII century, with Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who directly takes inspiration from the Essais. The article shows how the ethics of Montaigne is centred upon the auscultation of the nature immanent to each individual, and at the same time embraces the idea of the solidarity which connects all living beings, acknowledging in the communication between human subjectivity and the animal nature the first modality of an identification with forms of life which are weak, oppressed and suffering, as condition of explanation for an idea of justice that is both natural and universal Piety constitutes thus a disposition for the alterity which grows from the feeling of identification with life in its contingency and capacity for suffering. The article also shows to what extent Bruno's moral reflexion comes to a similar conclusion, to the extent that it distances itself from an anthropology that refuses to take the human being as a privileged centre of meaning in the universe, placing rather the human being and the animal in a relation of reciprocity and mutual belonging. It shall precisely be to the degree that he takes up this antidualistic formulation that Rousseau will transform piety into the main axis of the moral life. (shrink)