This volume sheds new light on modern theories of natural law through the lens of the fragmented political contexts of Italy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the dramatic changes of the times. From the age of reforms, through revolution and the 'Risorgimento', the unification movement which ended with the creation of the unified Kingdom of Italy in 1861, we see a move from natural law and the law of nations to international law, whose teaching was introduced in Italian (...) universities of the newly created Kingdom. The essays collected here show that natural law was not only the subject of a highly codified academic teaching, but also provided a broader conceptual and philosophical framework for the 'science of man'. Natural law was also a language in which reform programmes of education and politics were formulated and were acted upon. (shrink)

In 1894, the Institut Colonial International was founded in Brussels, with the aim to engage and promote transnational exchanges between jurists, scholars, politicians, colonial administrators and experts, comparing different colonial experiences. As the Institut Colonial International’s founders had hoped, its publications promoted legal debates, discussions and the prospects of specific legislation, decrees or norms to be adapted and used in entirely different colonial systems. This paper will show that the Institut Colonial International encouraged the exchange of ideas about the various (...) colonial experiences in order to create common and universal principles. International law and domestic law, or national law concerning land register systems and land law were part of the colonial discourse as it endeavoured to create and adopt universal principles of law, trying to establish a platform of common dialogue, with common premises, concerning different colonies, different colonial experiences and ultimately different cultural, social and political contexts. (shrink)

This book presents a philosophical analysis of the rising interest in the notion of 'noise'. The term 'noise' no longer pertains only to aesthetic judgement, for instance of acoustic or visual 'noise', but also to domains as varied as communication theory, physics and biology. This book investigates if there can be a coherent understanding of 'noise' that is effectively shared among the natural-and human sciences, technology and the arts, revealing 'noise' to be a properly philosophical problem. Drawing the philosophical consequences (...) of `noise' for the theory of knowledge, a philosophical revaluation of C. Shannon and W. Weaver's theory of 'information entropy' here serves as a basis upon which to problematize the common idea that 'noise' can be reduced to notions of error, disorder or disorganization. The wider consequences of this analysis relate the technological and scientific aspect of 'noise' with its cultural and psycho-social aspects. The heart of Malaspina's argument is the contestation of the ground upon which we judge and distinguish noise from information, finally exploring its emancipatory potential. (shrink)

Quando si usa il termine laico, occorre sempre rispondere ad alcune domande implicite: laico rispetto a chi? Quando? Un percorso tra le varie classificazioni che si possono trovare nei testi medievali. Nella convinzione che la struttura stessa della classificazione sia importante, l'articolo procede sulla base di un criterio quantitativo, facendo riferimento al numero di classi o generi identificati, a partire dalla divisione più semplice. Una passaggio dal semplice al complesso alla luce della centralità del binomio concettuale di unità-differenza.When we use (...) the term laico, we must ever answer to some implicit questions: laico compared to whom? When? A path among the various classifications that we can find in medieval texts. Persuaded that the very structure of the classification is important, the paper goes on, according to a quantitative criterion, by reference to the number of identified classes or genres, starting from the simplest partition. A transition from the simple to the complex in the light of the centrality of two-faced concept of unit-difference. (shrink)

Necessità pratiche e riflessioni teoriche accompagnano il lavoro di Oresme, nella consapevolezza che la traduzione delle grandi opere è uno strumento fondamentale per la grandezza di un popolo.

Con il presente lavoro l'A. si propone di dimostrare che l'introduzione nel lessico tecnico latino di materia, come traduzione di hyle, è antecedente al De inventione ciceroniano e al De rerum natura di Lucrezio, i primi testi a presentare questa innovazione nei campi rispettivamente della retorica e della filosofia. Dall'esame dei passi più significativi delle due opere, tra quelli in cui compare materia, e da considerazioni esterne ai testi stessi, si ricava, a giudizio dell'A., che il termine venne utilizzato come (...) parte integrante de/lessico tecnico preesistente, poiché mancano quegli elementi che accompagnano una neoformazione semantica alla sua prima comparsa certificandone, esplicitamente o implicitamente, la valenza traslata. (shrink)

« La tradition a longtemps considéré l’homme comme une exception au sein de la nature, lui concédant le pouvoir de la dominer et le droit de l’exploiter à son avantage. Aujourd’hui, à l’inverse, l’homme n’occupe plus tant le sommet de l’ordre de la création que l’épicentre d’une catastrophe en cours. Une nouvelle innocence semble requise pour habiter plus harmonieusement la nature. Seulement, nous rencontrons ici un paradoxe, car c’est aussi l’ingénuité technique qui est chargée de surmonter la crise écologique. Dans (...) le présent texte, nous tenterons de dénouer ce paradoxe par le biais des Deux leçons sur l’animal et l’homme de Gilbert Simondon, en revenant sur deux motifs qui s’opposent seulement en apparence : d’un côté, la vision démiurgique de l’homme comme grand artisan, ancrée dans le mythe platonicien du Timée, et de l’autre, la vision axiologique et éthique de l’homme, rendue emblématique par le sermon aux oiseaux de Saint François d’Assise. L’importance de la légende de Saint François d’Assise pour le canon apocalyptique du xiii ème siècle nous permettra de relier cette vision éthique au mythe platonicien, nous amenant, au final, à suggérer une alternative aux visions apocalyptiques de l’Anthropocène, appuyée sur l’originalité de la conception de la nature dans la pensée simondonienne. ». (shrink)

Few notions are more central than noise to the transformation of modern life. Noise has become synonymous with the complexity of our world and its global digitised information networks, for as the...

« Dans la première préface à la Critique de la raison pure Kant se réfère aux Métamorphoses d’Ovide pour comparer une métaphysique hors bornes à la reine Hécube. Or, ce qui semble être tu dans cette métaphore, c’est qu’Ovide fait culminer la douleur d’Hécube dans sa métamorphose en chienne enragée. Le cliché de la reine des sciences est ainsi poussée à son paroxysme : la métaphysique sauvage serait une chienne enragée! Cet article revient, par le biais de l’œuvre sonore de (...) l’artiste power noise Rosaceae (Leyla Yenirce), à une Hécube qui hante la philosophie. Hécube pose, selon l’argument exposé ici, le problème d’une aísthēsis (αἴσθησις) pure, qui hanterait la notion de raison pure comme son complément logique mais refoulé. Refoulé car, si l’idée d’une raison pure semble parfaitement innocente, celle d’une aísthēsis (αἴσθησις) pure évoque à l’inverse un scandale pour la pensée philosophique, puisque l’idée d’un objet à penser en est exclue, et puisque son spectre renvoie à tout ce qui terrorise les philosophes : la fantaisie et la folie, le désir et la culpabilité, l’enthousiasme et l’irrationalité. ». (shrink)

« Dans la première préface à la Critique de la raison pure Kant se réfère aux Métamorphoses d’Ovide pour comparer une métaphysique hors bornes à la reine Hécube. Or, ce qui semble être tu dans cette métaphore, c’est qu’Ovide fait culminer la douleur d’Hécube dans sa métamorphose en chienne enragée. Le cliché de la reine des sciences est ainsi poussée à son paroxysme : la métaphysique sauvage serait une chienne enragée! Cet article revient, par le biais de l’œuvre sonore de (...) l’artiste power noise Rosaceae (Leyla Yenirce), à une Hécube qui hante la philosophie. Hécube pose, selon l’argument exposé ici, le problème d’une aísthēsis (αἴσθησις) pure, qui hanterait la notion de raison pure comme son complément logique mais refoulé. Refoulé car, si l’idée d’une raison pure semble parfaitement innocente, celle d’une aísthēsis (αἴσθησις) pure évoque à l’inverse un scandale pour la pensée philosophique, puisque l’idée d’un objet à penser en est exclue, et puisque son spectre renvoie à tout ce qui terrorise les philosophes : la fantaisie et la folie, le désir et la culpabilité, l’enthousiasme et l’irrationalité. ». (shrink)

The aim of the book is to encourage discussion among experts on De ira, a text of philosophical nature, by reading it page by page, from a philosophical, philological, and literary perspective (a multidisciplinary choice which is the conditio sine qua non of all judicious research on Seneca). Moreover, the way in which each of these close readings is conducted adds an additional value: they each deal with a section of the text, presenting all the data necessary for its understanding. (...) All together, they cover the whole work. Each of them is also an attempt at a global interpretation of the treatise, examined through the particular framing of the textual passage around which the “Lectures plurielles” are conceived. Around this “polyphonic” analysis of the text, we have built a structure that aims to offer the reader a complete reference work on all the issues of the De ira. Sources, manuscript tradition, images, political and philosophical concepts, posterity – in short, all the aspects that a traditional commentary of the text would not have allowed us to distinguish so clearly – find their place here. This book is therefore aimed at specialists as well as students or anyone interested in the thought of emotions in antiquity. (shrink)

In the 1950s, long before his ascent to international renown, Michel Foucault published a scant few works. His early writings on psychology, psychopathology, and anthropology have been dismissed as immature. However, recently discovered manuscripts from the mid-1950s, when Foucault was a lecturer at the University of Lille, testify to the significance of the work that the philosopher produced in the years leading up to the “archaeological” project he launched with History of Madness. Elisabetta Basso offers a groundbreaking and in-depth (...) analysis of Foucault’s Lille manuscripts that sheds new light on the origins of his philosophical project. She considers the epistemological style and methodology of these writings as well as their philosophical context and the scholarly networks in which Foucault was active, foregrounding his relationship to existential psychiatry. Young Foucault blurs the boundaries between biography and theory, exploring the transformations—and, at times, contradictions—that characterize the intellectual trajectory of a philosopher who, as Foucault himself put it, “turned to psychology, and from psychology to history.” Retracing the first steps of the philosopher’s intellectual journey, Basso shows how Foucault’s early writings provide key insights into his archaeological work of the 1960s. Assembling a vast array of archival sources—including manuscripts, reading notes, notes for lectures and conferences, and correspondence—this book develops a new and deeper understanding of Foucault’s body of work. (shrink)

Adverse developmental exposures and pathologies of the social environment make vastly greater contributions to the leading health burdens in society than currently known genotypic information. Yet, while patients now commonly bring information on single alleles to the attention of their healthcare team, the former conditions are only rarely considered with respect to future health outcomes. This manuscript aims to integrate social environmental influences in genetic predictive models of disease risk. Healthcare providers must be educated to better understand genetic risks for (...) complex diseases and the specific health consequences of societal adversities, to facilitate patient education, disease prevention, and the optimal care in order to achieve positive health outcomes for those with early trauma or other social disadvantage. (shrink)

This paper examines an argument by Schaffer (2017) that aims to prove how, contrary to what many philosophers hold, there is no special explanatory gap occurring in the connection between the physical and the phenomenal. This is because a gap of the same kind can be found in every connection between a more fundamental and a less fundamental level of reality. These gaps lurk everywhere in nature. For Schaffer, they can be bridged by means of substantive metaphysical principles such as (...) grounding principles. He thus puts forward a version of grounding-based physicalism, which is supposed to provide this kind of substantive bridge principle. My main contention is as follows: even if Schaffer’s argument indeed proves the existence of a gap in every connection between fundamental and derivative entities, and such gaps can be bridged by means of grounding principles, a different gap remains open in the psycho-physical connection. (shrink)

There is a lot of conceptual engineering going on in medical research. I substantiate this claim with two examples, the medical debate about cancer classification and about obesity as a disease I also argue that the proper target of conceptual engineering in medical research are experts’ conceptions. These are explicitly written down in documents and guidelines, and they bear on research and policies. In the second part of the chapter, I propose an externalist framework in which conceptions have both the (...) explanatory power of psychological concepts and that of semantic concepts. It is likely, however, that human activities and practices distinct from medical research, and regulated by different practices and epistemic rules, call for different targets for conceptual engineering. I conclude with indicating an open agenda of problems for philosophers of medicine interested in conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Advanced medical imaging, such as CT, fMRI and PET, has undergone enormous progress in recent years, both in accuracy and utilization. Such techniques often bring with them an illusion of immediacy, the idea that the body and its diseases can be directly inspected. In this paper we target this illusion and address the issue of the reliability of advanced imaging tests as knowledge procedures, taking positron emission tomography in oncology as paradigmatic case study. After individuating a suitable notion of reliability, (...) we argue that PET is a highly theory-laden and non-immediate knowledge procedure, in spite of the photographic-like quality of the images it delivers; the diagnostic conclusions based on the interpretation of PET images are population-dependent; PET images require interpretation, which is inherently observer-dependent and therefore variable. We conclude with a three-step methodological proposal for enhancing the reliability of advanced medical imaging. (shrink)

Philosophical Psychology is dedicating this issue on trust and trustworthiness to Katherine Hawley (1971–2021) for two reasons. First, she was an expert in the area. Hawley was one of the most rele...

Bibliography focusing on L. Annaeus Seneca as a philosopher. Sorry about the image, which, of course, doesn't depict Seneca. We didn't select it.

The distinction between concept and conception has been widely debated in political philosophy, whereas in the philosophy of psychology is frequently used, but rarely focused on. This paper aims at filling in this lacuna. I claim that far from being explanatorily idle, the distinction makes it possible to provide an adequate description of phenomena such as genuine disagreement, and concept contestation, which would otherwise remain implausibly puzzling. I illustrate and assess three accounts of the concept-conception distinction. Finally I propose a (...) social externalist account, which relies on deference to experts, and builds on Tyler Burge’s ideas of many decades ago. The debate on concepts and conceptions thus shows a connection with the increasing research work on experts and expertise in psychology and social epistemology. (shrink)

Numerous studies suggest that both emotion knowledge and language abilities are powerfully related to young children’s theory of mind. Nonetheless, the magnitude and direction of the associations between language, emotion knowledge, and theory-of-mind performance in the first years of life are still debated. Hence, the aim of this study was to assess the direct effects of emotion knowledge and language on theory-of-mind scores in 2- and 3-year-old children. A sample of 139 children, aged between 24 and 47 months ( M (...) = 35.5 months; SD = 6.73), were directly administered measures of emotion knowledge, theory of mind, and language. We conducted structural equation modeling (SEM) to evaluate the effects of these variables within a single comprehensive framework, while also controlling for any effects of age and gender. The proposed structural equation model provided an excellent fit for the data, indicating that both children’s emotion knowledge, and their language ability had direct positive effects on theory of mind scores. In addition, age was found to wield statistically significant effects on all the variables under study, whereas gender was not significantly associated with any of them. These findings suggest the importance of fostering young children’s emotion knowledge and language ability with a view to enhancing their comprehension of mental states. (shrink)

This commentary focuses on Machery's eliminativist claim, that ought to be eliminated from the theoretical vocabulary of psychology because it fails to denote a natural kind. I argue for the more traditional view that concepts are a functional kind, which provides the simplest account of the empirical evidence discussed by Machery.

In this paper I focus on the emergence of the concept of the “historical a priori” at the origin of Foucault’s archeology. I emphasize the methodological function of this concept within Foucault’s archaeology, and I maintain that despite the different thesis it entails as compared to its philosophical sources, it pertains to one of the main issues of phenomenology, that is, the problematization of the relation between reality as it appears in its historicity, and transcendentality. I start from the interest (...) of the young Foucault in existential psychiatry, and I focus on the French philosophical context in which Foucault’s Introduction to Ludwig Binswanger’s “Dream and Existence” (1954) was conceived. My aim is to show that the first “phenomenological” phase of Foucault’s work is coherent, from a methodological point of view, with the development of archaeology intended as “historical epistemology.” I conclude by arguing that Foucault’s archaeology is methodologically linked to Canguilhem’s epistemology, in that the latter presents itself as an important attempt at linking together historicity and transcendentality. (shrink)

The concept of moralisation of health behaviours was introduced in social psychology to describe the attribution of moral properties to habits and conditions like smoking or being a vegetarian. Moral properties are powerful motivators for people and institutions, as they may trigger blame, stigma, and appraisal, as well as the polarisation of interest and scientific hype. Here I extend the concept and illustrate how medicines and treatments can be seen as if they had moral properties, too, when they come to (...) be regarded as good or bad in the moral sense, and not just in the instrumental sense of benefiting or harming health. I propose the hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) controversy of 2020 as an example of moralisation of a medicine. HCQ and chloroquine are anti-malarial drugs, whose off-label use for Covid-19 was hotly discussed in the early months of the pandemic, both in the media and within the scientific community, and eventually dismissed when robust evidence came out. The point of the paper is to show that moralisation of health products and treatments may influence individual and institutional decisions in significant ways, and also affect research. For these reasons, it should be carefully monitored and critically assessed. (shrink)

At present, psychiatric disorders are characterized descriptively, as the standard within the scientific community for communication and, to a certain extent, for diagnosis, is the DSM, now at its fifth edition. The main reasons for descriptivism are the aim of achieving reliability of diagnosis and improving communication in a situation of theoretical disagreement, and the Ignorance argument, which starts with acknowledgment of the relative failure of the project of finding biomarkers for most mental disorders. Descriptivism has also the advantage of (...) capturing the phenomenology of mental disorders, which appears to be essential for diagnosis, though not exhaustive of the nature of the disease. I argue that if we rely on the distinction between conceptions (procedures of identification) and concepts (reference-fixing representations), which was introduced in the philosophical debate on the nature of concepts, we may understand a limited but valid role for descriptive characterizations, and reply to common objections addressed by those who advocate a theoretically informed approach to nosology. (shrink)

This paper is based on the archives of Michel Foucault collected (since 2013) at the manuscripts department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. Our investigation focuses in particular on the documents of the 1950s, in order to study the role of the reflection on anthropology and phenomenology at the beginning of Foucault’s philosophical path. This archival material allows us to discover the tremendous work that is at the basis of the relatively few works that Foucault published in the 1950s. (...) The access to the 1950s documents enables us at last to investigate the reasons for the seemingly sharp break that divides these works from the works published by Foucault in the 1960s and the 1970s, in which emerges the archaeological refusal of phenomenology and anthropology, as well as the strong criticism against any form of psychopathological discourse. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to investigate the factors promoting students’ engagement at school and supporting their well-being experience. According to the Positive Education there is a strong relationship between school environment and student’s well-being. Moreover, the quality of the school climate perceived by the students was found to influence engagement in school activities, as well. In this study, 153 students ( M = 67) attending 10th grade were presented with tests and questionnaires to assess individual assets (personality traits, (...) literacy skills), emerging appraisals (school-climate, well-being experience) and emerging actions (school engagement), according to the Student Well-Being Model. Path analysis showed that the best model does include neither individual assets nor direct effect of school climate on engagement, as the effect of school climate on engagement is mediated by well-being experience. The main result is that school climate has been confirmed as an important factor to be considered to improve engagement in school activities, but it is effective only when its influence can modify the well-being experience of the students. Moreover, the lack of significant effects of individual assets in the model suggests that improving school climate means to support well-being experience and, indirectly school engagement, irrespective to learning abilities and personality traits. This work encourages working in/with schools to implement positive education programs that support and sustain a positive school climate and culture for school-community wellbeing. (shrink)

Health care systems can positively influence our personal decision-making and health-related behavior only if we trust them. I propose a conceptual analysis of the trust relation between the public and a healthcare system, drawing from healthcare studies and philosophical proposals. In my account, the trust relation is based on an epistemic component, epistemic authority, and on a value component, the benevolence of the healthcare system. I argue that it is also modified by the vulnerability of the public on healthcare matters, (...) and by the system’s credibility. I apply my proposed analysis of public trust in health care systems to the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy, a tendency to question vaccine policies, and to seek alternative vaccine schedules or to refuse vaccination. Understanding the role of trust and its components can be key to understanding the phenomenon. (shrink)

This paper focuses on one of the original moments of the development of the “phenomenological” current of psychiatry, namely, the psychopathological research of Ludwig Binswanger. By means of the clinical and conceptual problem of schizophrenia as it was conceived and developed at the beginning of the twentieth century, I will try to outline and analyze Binswanger’s perspective from a both historical and epistemological point of view. Binswanger’s own way means of approaching and conceiving schizophrenia within the scientific, medical, and psychiatric (...) context of that time will lead us to grasp the epistemological stakes at the origins of his project of reforming psychiatry by means of phenomenology. I will finally attempt to upgrade and update Binswanger’s project in light of the current reappraisal of phenomenology within the ongoing debate on psychopathology engaged by studies in the field of science and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This is the first book to explore the epistemology and ethics of advanced imaging tests, in order to improve the critical understanding of the nature of knowledge they provide and the practical consequences of their utilization in healthcare. Advanced medical imaging tests, such as PET and MRI, have gained center stage in medical research and in patients’ care. They also increasingly raise questions that pertain to philosophy: What is required to be an expert in reading images? How are standards for (...) interpretation to be fixed? Is there a problem of overutilization of such tests? How should uncertainty be communicated to patients? How to cope with incidental findings? This book is of interest and importance to scholars of philosophy of medicine at all levels, from undergraduates to researchers, to medical researchers and practitioners (radiologists and nuclear physicians) interested in a critical appraisal of the methodology of their discipline and in the ethical principles and consequences of their work. -/- . (shrink)

We raise a problem of applicability of RCTs to validate nuclear diagnostic imaging tests. In spite of the wide application of PET and other similar techniques that use radiopharmaceuticals for diagnostic purposes, RCT-based evidence on their validity is sparse. We claim that this is due to a general conceptual problem that we call Prevalence of Treatment, which arises in connection with designing RCTs for testing any diagnostic procedure in the present context of medical research, and is particularly apparent in this (...) case. We also identify three practical reasons why RCTs do not qualify as the best option for PET validation, which have to do with specific characteristics of nuclear diagnostic imaging, and of radiopharmaceuticals. The paper is meant to contribute both to the philosophical discussion on the EBM hierarchy of evidence, and on the specific debate on radiopharmaceuticals in nuclear medicine. (shrink)