The environmental crisis is undoubtedly one of the most critical and urgent problems of our times. Many people are raising their voices in support of nature to build a better future for humanity and for our planet. In this article, the authors explore the specific contribution that Christianity and Islam can offer in this debate and how religions can help bring back into the ecological discourse the element of the sacred that abandoned the reflection about nature since the advent of (...) the Enlightenment. Moving from the spiritual dimension of nature in the light of Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical on ecology Laudato Si’, the authors argue that the current ecological crisis can represent an opportunity for a renewed encounter among religions, bringing together the ethical and the spiritual, recovering the element of communion between human beings and nature that points to something beyond themselves. The authors present the Laudato Si’ as a universal invitation and a space for encounter between world religions that puts at its heart love as a guiding principle and animating force of a much-needed ecological, spiritual and anthropological conversion. Contribution: This article focuses on the spiritual dimension of nature in Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical letter Laudato Si ’. The authors argue that the document with its emphasis on love represents a platform for dialogue between Christianity and Islam by bringing back the element of the sacred in the current ecological debate. (shrink)

. Each predicate of the Aristotelian square of opposition includes the word “is”. Through a twofold interpretation of this word the square includes both classical logic and non-classical logic. All theses embodied by the square of opposition are preserved by the new interpretation, except for contradictories, which are substituted by incommensurabilities. Indeed, the new interpretation of the square of opposition concerns the relationships among entire theories, each represented by means of a characteristic predicate. A generalization of the square of opposition (...) is achieved by not adjoining, according to two Leibniz’ suggestions about human mind, one more choice about the kind of infinity; i.e., a choice which was unknown by Greek’s culture, but which played a decisive role for the birth and then the development of modern science. This essential innovation of modern scientific culture explains why in modern times the Aristotelian square of opposition was disregarded. (shrink)

In this paper, we will focus on the implications of, and relationships between, the concepts of mediation and media. We will focus in particular on the notion of body and linguistic practice as complex actors of mediation between the world and subjective engagements. In the post-phenomenological traditions, the critical theory of Harmut Rosa, and Citton's media studies, it has been pointed out that body and language represent the very prototypes of the construction of media as sensible, affective and formal environments. (...) Thus, the body and language as mediums obey two criteria that seem typical of any anthropologically located technology: they are prostheses that amplify experience and, at the same time, create specific environments which inaugurate ecological diversification. (shrink)

The social research about group decision-making in the human societies has received recent contributions from studies reached in the field of ethology and Game theory. Comparative data revealed the adoption of symbolic systems for vote expression and the consensus achievement in other social species. The wide diffusion of the voting procedure—as a sign of an ecological rationality– in species with different social organizations and cognitive levels, requires a new interpretation of the consensus issue assuming a new evolutionary biopolitical perspective, for (...) the survey of the sociality and in particular of the effects of linguistic rationality on the human group decision-making. (shrink)

Nella storia della metafisica è stato un grande problema come chiarire l’idea della coincidentia oppositorum (la coincidenza degli opposti) di Cusano, il quale è riconosciuto comunque da Cassirer come il primo epistemologo del pensiero moderno, in particolare come colui che ha saputo conquistare l’infinito alla mente umana. Dopo alcuni secoli, ha avuto una grande importanza una idea simile a quella di Cusano, la dialettica di Hegel, la quale aggiunge una negazione ad una prima frase negata per ottenere una sintesi in (...) termini generali. Ma poi queste idee sono state sempre meno seguite, eccetto che nel XX secolo da un filosofo non accademico, Lanza del Vasto che ha criticato Hegel e si è ricondotto a Cusano. Nello scritto esamino questa tematica mediante gli strumenti recentemente forniti dalla logica matematica, già verificati sugli scritti di altri scienziati; essi sono capaci di distinguere con precisione che cosa, negli scritti di uno studioso, è un passaggio logico formale e che cosa è una semplice illazione, derivata dalla conoscenza comune o dalla sua creatività; e se è un passaggio logico, decidere di che tipo di logica è. Per mezzo di questo metodo formale, i) presento alcune caratteristiche del ragionare di Cusano; ii) critico il metodo di Hegel; il risultato si accorda con la analisi critica di Hegel che Lanza del Vasto ha compiuto in maniera intuitva; iii) dimostro che la relazione tra Cusano e Lanza del Vasto è più forte di quanto dichiara quest’ultimo; iv) suggerisco una spiegazione della coincidentia oppositorum, chiarendo che la novità di ragionare in logica non classica è stata così innovativa che il tentativo di Cusano di precisarne il metodo è risultato in una scorciatoia, non errata ma valida solo in alcune situazioni; mentre è stato deviante il tentativo di Hegel; Lanza del Vasto, che ha portato un contributo al metodo di Cusano, si è comunque reso conto che occorreva arrivare a formalizzare un nuovo tipo di logica, che oggi risulta essere quella non classica. In definitiva, occorre attribuire a Cusano il merito di aver suggerito una nuova maniera di razionalità logica, quella capace di ragionare in logica non classica e di averne dato, sia pure in maniera imprecisa ed oscura, una prima formalizzazione. (shrink)

The term “corporate transparency” is frequently used in scholarly discussions of business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR); however, it remains a volatile and imprecise term, often defined incompletely as “information disclosure” accomplished through standardized reporting. Based on the results of empirical studies of organizational behaviors, this paper identifies a new set of managerial practices based on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and particularly Internet-based tools. These practices are resulting in what can be termed “dynamic transparency.” ICT (...) allows for an informational environment characterized by two-way exchange between corporations and their stakeholders, which fosters a more collaborative marketplace. It is proposed that such dynamic information sharing, conducted by means of ICT, drives organizations to display greater openness and accountability, and more transparent operations, which benefit both the corporations and their constituents. One of the most important outcomes that will accrue to consumers and other individuals is the “right to know,” especially about corporate strategies and activities that might directly affect their quality of life. This paper demonstrates that dynamic transparency is more desirable and more effective than the more common “static transparency” where firms’ information disclosure is one-way, usually in response to government regulation. We present three ethical arguments to justify the implementation by business firms of dynamic transparency and demonstrate that their doing so is related to CSR and to augment and complement stakeholder engagement and dialogue. The paper concludes with a summary of the possible limits to and the problems involved in the implementation of dynamic transparency for corporations, and suggests some strategies to counter them. (shrink)

This article presents the results of the longitudinal study of Addiopizzo, a successful anti-bribery organization founded in Sicily in 2004. It analyzes how this organization has used information disclosure as a strategy to fight adverse environmental conditions and the immoral activities of the Sicilian Mafia. This article extends the business ethics and corporate social responsibility literature by showing how multi-level strategic information disclosure processes can help gain organizational legitimacy in adverse social environments and successfully fight against social resistance to change, (...) low levels of moral imagination and attacks from criminal organizations. This article provides an additional contribution to the literature by linking the three research streams on corporate transparency, the fight against corruption, and organizational legitimacy. The results of this research also contribute to the special issue of the EBEN AC 2010, “Which values for which organizations”, since it provides a unique example of an organization capable of spreading the values of social justice and honesty in a difficult social environment plagued by Mafia. (shrink)

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 135 770 111111 6 1 945 12.0 0 false 14 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false Normal.dotm 0 0 1 161 922 111111 7 1 1132 12.0 0 false 14 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false Eles são há muito conhecidas algumas suposições sobre a relação entre a assimetria do cérebro e/ou indecisão hemisférica funcional que, por vezes, caracteriza os indivíduos canhotos e distúrbios de aprendizagem específicas. Até hoje, no entanto, (...) essas teorias não encontrei muitas confirmações em estudos da neurociência e da psicologia experimental. Em outros aspectos, se olharmos para as evidências experimentais em distúrbio específico de linguagem, ou observação em sala de aula de crianças com distúrbio específico de aprendizagem, ou seja, as experiências empíricas descritas por professores do ensino fundamental, Essa relação parece ser bastante óbvio. Através da aplicação de um questionário estruturado a uma amostra de professores do ensino fundamental italianos, neste estudo, tentamos documentar se há uma maior incidência de dislexia, discalculia e disgrafia em crianças canhotos. Palavras-chave : dislexia, discalculia, disgrafia, assimetria cerebral, canhotismo. (shrink)

This study comes from a series of research carried out in some Italian Psychiatric Hospitals. Specifically, the investigation concerns emotional, cognitive and linguistic aspects of psychotic forms of expression. So, we will discuss psychotic expressive language by analysis of an exemplary case report: i.e. commenting on the iconographic and textual productions by a subject in several decades of psychopathological experiences. In this paper, we examine some psychotic expressive codes, and the emotional mode characterizing them. These psychotic expressive codes are linguistic, (...) communicative, referential and they are of importance for artistic creativity. But we especially try to highlight the role of emotional, liberating, cathartic and compensatory functions that the “language of madness” enables patients to express. More in general, we try to regard their specific relational mode, and their being or being-at-world. Keywords: Psychotic languages. Fantastic or imagination delusion. Artistic creativity. Emotive expressive forms. (shrink)

In this paper, my aim is to furnish a possible interpretation of “independence” in terms of “self-dependence or dependence on our proper self” in the context of Kant’s philosophy. In order to do this, I will primarily focus on the concept of independence as based on the human being’s noumenal personality and as expression of the human being’s “proper self” (_eigentliches Selbst_). This concept will be contrasted with the one of dependence upon the human being’s animality (_Tierheit_). In this way, (...) I will present independence in terms of the human being’s independence from its sensible, animal nature, but nonetheless as a form of _dependence_: namely, the human being’s dependence on its rational nature. (shrink)

One of the most important phenomenological problems that influenced Merleau-Ponty’s work is the idea of a comeback to the lifeworld like primordial ground as much of the individual philosophical reflection as of the intersubjective experience of knowledge. The aim of this paper is to highlight the character, in the same breath paradoxical and founding, of the otherness experience that, according to Merleau-Ponty, the phenomenological concept of intersubjectivity involves. Therefore, Merleau-Ponty radicalizes this husserlian concept with the notion of intercorporeity. In this (...) manner, what the French philosopher wants to carry out is not as much an external criticism to the phenomenology, but rather the radical phenomenological purpose to take phenomenology to its extremes limits. Questioning the dualism of empirical and transcendental, of sensible passivity and reflexive activity, of material exteriority and inner spiritual reality, the concept of intercorporeity refers to a kind of being that prevents from the pretension of a definitive foundation on the base of one of the two sides of this metaphysical polarity. In contrast with this dualism, and according to the Merleau-Ponty’s “new ontology”, the concept of intercorporeity has an outstanding relevance because announces the ontological co-existence of the human being with the Nature’s and Earth’s being. (shrink)

This article uses the Historia Lausiaca of Palladius (cc. 33-34) to identify in a monastic and ecclesiastical community some verbal, psychological and physical violence that reflects what today would be framed as bullying.

The A. compares the psalmus contra partem Donati, written by Augustin about 394, with the anonymous psalmus responsorius from a papyrus preserved in the Benedictine abbey in Montserrat, near Barcelona, under the shelf mark P.Monts.Roca inv. 128-178, dating maybe to the mid-IV century AD, from which only the strophes from A to L are complete. Particularly, he focuses on four lines before the acrostic strophes, whose reading is very controversial, and whose prosody he presents as different from the common one, (...) restoring it fully to its function of hypopsalma: Páter qui ómnia régis péto / Chrísti nós sciás herédes / Chrístus uérbo nátus pér quem pópulús est líberátus. (shrink)

Nous pourrions, d?une formule générale, avancer que selon le médecin psychiatre et philosophe Ludwig Binswanger, l?action de la psychothérapie vise à aider le malade à recouvrer quelque chose de la mobilité de son existence au sein des structures, volontiers qualifiées d?existentiales ou de transcendantales, ou encore a priori , de l?être-au-monde et de l?être-avec-autrui. Je m?attacherai à montrer ici que la capacité à endurer l?indéter­mination inhérente à l?ouverture des possibles, à se porter depuis l?au-delà des préfigurations de l?avenir, est comme (...) la condition de l?historicisation de l? ipse , d?une traversée des conditions destinales de l?existence, une traversée de la passivité, commerce dialectique avec elle mais sans telos glorieux. Pâtir l?indétermination pour élaborer sa passivité. Chacun sait que du côté de la philosophie, l??uvre de Binswanger a reçu ses principales impulsions, après l?étude précoce de Kant 1 , de la phéno­ménologie, en particulier celle de Husserl, et de l?analytique existen­tiale de Heidegger. Chez chacun de ceux-ci, Binswanger a cherché les moyens de décrire la mondanéisation du monde dans l?expérience normale et, sur la base des résultats acquis avec ces seuls moyens descriptifs, de mettre au jour les Umwandlungen , les modifications, les « flexions » de l?existence au cours des expériences morbides de ses patients. Encore faut-il voir, si nous. (shrink)

The essays collected in this volume explore the ethical issues raised by the process and substance of policy-making, and discuss whether it is reasonable to expect ethical standards in public affairs.

In this article we propose to overlap aesthetic experience with medial experience, starting from the assumption that every aesthetic experience is always a medial experience. Adopting a naturalistic approach, in which we explain what we mean with the term naturalization, we suggest a partial review of the issue. First, we state that human natural language is a kind of technology, made possible by certain physical, cognitive and social features; this sort of biological technology must be considered as an underlying condition (...) for aesthetic experience. Secondly, we suggest the importance of social relationships among various species, demonstrating the role played by this relationships in natural selection: a new perspective will emerge. Thirdly, we explain in more detail why aesthetic experience can be likened to medial experience; in doing so, we offer an epistemological comparison between evolutionary theory and Marshall McLuhan’s approach to media studies. Resulting comparison will offer an original definition of aesthetic experience which rises through the interaction engaged by our natural technologies interacting prosthetically with environment. (shrink)

This chapter offers a concise and elementary introduction to fundamental concepts in deductive and deontic reasoning.

This special issue on network ethics offers 15 scholarly articles from a variety of disciplines and fields of study, all aimed at exploring some important aspect of how networks develop, enact, and enforce ethical norms. The articles are ordered according to the levels of analysis each deals with, ranging from the cognitive/intra-personal to the systemic/societal. Taken together, these articles provide a fresh look at how networks are changing the way business is done and the way we think about ethics.

Mindfulness can be understood as the mental ability to focus on the direct and immediate perception or monitoring of the present moment with a state of open and nonjudgmental awareness. Descriptions of mindfulness and methods for cultivating it originated in eastern spiritual traditions. These suggest that mindfulness can be developed through meditation practice to increase positive qualities such as awareness, insight, wisdom, and compassion. In this article we focus on the relationships between mindfulness, with associated meditation practices, and the cognitive (...) neuroscience of attention and awareness. Mindful awareness is related to distributed attention, phenomenal consciousness, and momentary self-awareness, as characterized by recent findings in cognitive psychology and neuroscience as well as in influential consciousness models. Finally, we outline an integrated neurocognitive model of mindfulness, attention, and awareness, with a key role of prefrontal cortex. (shrink)

Neuromodulatory effects of non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) have been extensively studied in chronic pain. A hypothetic mechanism of action would be to prevent or revert the ongoing maladaptive plasticity within the pain matrix. In this review, the authors discuss the mechanisms underlying the development of an abnormal plasticity in patients with chronic pain and the putative mechanisms of NIBS in modulating synaptic plasticity in neuropathic pain conditions.