CHAPTER Structure and function In physical systems made by a large number of basic constituents one can observe collective properties which find their ...

Amidst expanding interest in local food and agriculture, food banks and allied organizations across the United States have increasingly engaged in diverse gleaning, gardening, and farming activities. Some of these programs reinforce food banks’ traditional role in distributing surplus commodities, and most extend food banks’ reliance on middle class volunteers and charitable donations. But some gleaning and especially gardening and farming programs seek to build poor people’s and communities’ capacity to meet more of their own food needs, signaling new roles (...) for some food banks in promoting community food security and food justice. This article reports the results of a national survey and in-depth case studies of the ways in which food banks are engaging in and with local agriculture and how this influences food banks’ roles in community and regional food systems. The patterns it reveals reflect broader tensions in debates about hunger relief and food security. (shrink)

The topic of this essay is the work of the reflection. After having focused on the «rift» between reflection and its working in Valéry’s thought, Vitiello focuses on the process which Hegel described in The Phenomenology of Spirit, namely the process of the experience of the consciousness, which elevates itself to the consciousness of the experience. The conclusion is strongly critical: Hegel misses the aim at the very point in which he achieves it. Indeed, in the absolute knowledge, in (...) the complete and perfect view of itself, of the light which sees the light, the experience of the consciousness itself fails, its becoming, its «imperfection» fail. The critique of Hegel, passing through Nietzsche, expands to a critique of language, in particular of the language of «being» and of «is», and of the Heideggerian tautologies, such as «das Ereignis ereignet», «das Ding dingt», «die Welt weltet». An important passage of the text concerns the theatrical language, in which the word seems to regain the original bond between voice and gesture, which remains divided nevertheless, because the medium itself which connects them – i.e., the «color» of the word – is «outside» the word and «outside» the gesture. Only the word of the act, of the pragmata, remains. In such a word, doing exhibits its most appropriate modality, namely the immediacy of being-affected: the cry of pain; or the reflexive mediacy of the moral imperative: Handle! The two opposite «colours» of the things. (shrink)

In her introduction to Adultery: Infidelity and the Law, Stanford Law Professor Deborah Rhode describes the absence of legal scholarship dealing with adultery although the topic is commonly treated...

With the recent expansion of child mental health research, more attention is being paid to the process of informed consent for research participation. For the consent to be truly informed, it is necessary that the relevant information be both disclosed and actually understood. Traditionally, much effort has gone to ensuring the comprehensiveness of consent/assent documents, which have progressively increased in length and complexity, whereas less attention has been paid to the comprehensibility of these documents. Available data indicate that many parent (...) and children have difficulties appreciating the research nature of treatment studies and that a higher level of formal education among the parents is associated with a greater degree of understanding. Promising approaches to achieving truly informed research participation have emerged, such as additional time for parents to meet with the researchers and using postexplanation questionnaires for identifying issues in need of further clarification. Research is needed to develop and test strategies for improving the effectiveness of the informed consent process in child mental health. (shrink)

In COVID’s immediate wake, the 2020 death toll from a different enemy of the public’s health — gun violence — ticked up by 15 percent in the United States from the previous year. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in Caniglia v. Strom that will allow people who have recently threatened suicide — with a gun — to keep unsecured guns in their home unless police take time to obtain a search warrant to remove them.

Im Verlauf des 6. Jahrhunderts fanden unter den ostgotischen Königen die ersten päpstlich-kaiserlichen Treffen in Konstantinopel statt, die die religiösen Auseinandersetzungen und die politischen und diplomatischen Beziehungen zwischen Ostgoten und Byzanz klären sollten. Der erste Papst, der auf Befehl Theoderichs als Leiter einer Gesandtschaft in die östliche Hauptstadt reiste (Ende 525 oder Anfang 526), war Johannes I.; er sollte sich dort für die arianische Kirche einsetzen. Der ‚Anonymus Valesianus‘ berichtet, daß der Kaiser Justinos I. dem ankommenden Papst Johannes als Anführer (...) einer Delegation von Senatoren ita occurrit ac si beato Petro. Mit einem ähnlichen Ausdruck hatte der Anonymus auch die Beschreibung des adventus Theoderichs in Rom (Jahr 500) eingeführt: Der ostgotische König occurrit beato Petro devotissimus ac si catholicus. Im Falle von Justinos sind mit dieser Formulierung wahrscheinlich sämtliche Ehren gemeint, welche dem Papst erwiesen wurden. Diese werden in dem wesentlich detaillierteren Bericht des ‚Liber Pontificalis‘ geschildert: … occurrerunt beato Iohanni a miliario XV [XII] omnes civitas cum cereos et cruces in honore beatorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli. Qui veteres Grecorum hoc testificabantur dicentes a tempore Constantini Augusti a beato Silvestro episcopo sedis apostolicae, Iustini Augusti temporibus meruisse parte Greciarum beati Petri apostoli vicarium suscepisse cum gloria. Tunc Iustinus Augustus, dans honorem Deo, humiliavit se pronus et adoravit beatissimum Iohannem papam. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 2 Seiten: 785-787.

L'Ora e l'attimo narra--attraverso il confronto di Vico con Platone e Kant, Hegel e Nietzsche, Gadamer e, infine, Benjamin - la storia discontinua di un passaggio epocale nella concezione del mondo storico: il passaggio dal primato dell'orizzonte universale eterno, l''Ora', in cui si inquadrano le diverse età della storia, al primato dell'attimo, in cui sono parimenti possibili sia l'inizio di una 'nuova Ora' che la fine della storia dell'uomo ad opera dell'uomo. In Vico questo 'passaggio,' variamente contrastato e sofferto, ma (...) alla fine vincente, assume la figura del transito dalla 'mathesis universalis' della storia alla visione morale del mondo umano--Back cover. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 2 Seiten: 781-785.

Lo ʻreligiosoʼ como doble relación: vertical con Dios, horizontal con el mundo. La crisis del mundo antiguo causada por el venir a menos de la primera relación: los dioses no se ocupan del mundo humano (Epicuro). El mundo ʻsalvadoʼ por el Dios de amor de la buena nueva cristiana. Sólo un Dios omnipotente puede ʻsalvarʼ(guardar) el mundo; pero la omnipotencia, ni siquiera delimitable por el amor, no es garantía de salvación más de cuanto no sea peligro de abanadono. El mundo (...) moderno busca en el sujeto el fundamento absoluto de sí (Descartes). Pero el sujeto, en cuanto fundamento absoluto, es como el Dios omnipotente, no es un ente, definible, sino una pura X (Kant). Kénosis del logos y nihilismo: el misterio horizonte último de la religión cristiana. Ninguna petición de garantía: ser en el mundo, no del mundo. (shrink)

The brain constructs within itself an understanding of its surround which constitutes its own world. This is described as its Double in the frame of the dissipative quantum model of brain, where the perception-action arc in the Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception finds its formal description. In the dialog with the Double, the continuous attempt to reach the equilibrium shows that the real goal pursued by the brain activity is the aesthetical experience, the most harmonious “to-be-in-the-world” reached through reciprocal actions, the (...) aesthetical dimension characterized by the “pleasure” of the perception. Aesthetical pleasure unavoidably implies disclosure, to manifest “signs”, artistic communication. An interpersonal, collective level of consciousness then arises, a larger stage where the actors are mutually dependent. The coherent structure of the brain background state manifests itself in the auto-similarity properties of fractal structures. These are observed to occur also in a large number of natural phenomena and systems. The conception of Nature divided in separated domains is replaced by the vision of Nature unified by laws of form implied by the underlying quantum dynamics of the coherent vacuum, an integrated ecological vision. (shrink)

The aggregation of individual judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a collective decision on the same propositions is called judgment aggregation. Literature in social choice and political theory has claimed that judgment aggregation raises serious concerns. For example, consider a set of premises and a conclusion where the latter is logically equivalent to the former. When majority voting is applied to some propositions (the premises) it may give a different outcome than majority voting applied to another set of propositions (the (...) conclusion). This problem is known as the discursive dilemma (or paradox). The discursive dilemma is a serious problem since it is not clear whether a collective outcome exists in these cases, and if it does, what it is like. Moreover, the two suggested escape-routes from the paradox—the so-called premise-based procedure and the conclusion-based procedure—are not, as I will show, satisfactory methods for group decision-making. In this paper I introduce a new aggregation procedure inspired by an operator defined in artificial intelligence in order to merge belief bases. The result is that we do not need to worry about paradoxical outcomes, since these arise only when inconsistent collective judgments are not ruled out from the set of possible solutions. (shrink)

In this paper we explore the relation between three areas: judgment aggregation, belief merging and social choice theory. Judgment aggregation studies how to aggregate individual judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a collective decision on the same propositions. When majority voting is applied to some propositions it may however give a different outcome than majority voting applied to another set of propositions. Starting from this so-called doctrinal paradox, the paper surveys the literature on judgment aggregation, and shows that the application (...) of a well known belief merging operator can dissolve the paradox. Finally, the use of distances is shown to establish a link between belief merging and preference aggregation in social choice theory. (shrink)