The rapid spread of SARS‐CoV‐2 worldwide has triggered intense activity in the field of biotechnology, leading to the development and regulatory approval of multiple COVID‐19 vaccines in less than 1 year while raising sustained scrutiny as to the ethical issues associated with this process. This article pursues a twofold objective. First, it reconstructs and provides a thorough overview of the different steps, from clinical trial design to regulatory procedures, underpinning the “fast‐tracking” of COVID‐19 vaccine R&D and approval. Second, drawing on (...) a review of published literature, the article identifies, outlines, and analyzes the most ethically challenging aspects related to such process, including concerns around vaccine safety, issues in study design, the enrollment of study participants, and the challenges in obtaining valid informed consent. By scrutinizing relevant aspects of COVID‐19 vaccine development and regulatory processes leading to market authorization, this article ultimately aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the regulatory and ethical issues underpinning the roll‐out of this key pandemic‐containment technology worldwide. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) based clinical decision support systems (CDSS) are becoming ever more widespread in healthcare and could play an important role in diagnostic and treatment processes. For this reason, AI‐based CDSS has an impact on the doctor–patient relationship, shaping their decisions with its suggestions. We may be on the verge of a paradigm shift, where the doctor–patient relationship is no longer a dual relationship, but a triad. This paper analyses the role of AI‐based CDSS for shared decision‐making to better (...) comprehend its promises and associated ethical issues. Moreover, it investigates how certain AI implementations may instead foster the inappropriate paradigm of paternalism. Understanding how AI relates to doctors and influences doctor–patient communication is essential to promote more ethical medical practice. Both doctors' and patients' autonomy need to be considered in the light of AI. (shrink)

Informed consent is at the core of the clinical relationship. With the introduction of machine learning (ML) in healthcare, the role of informed consent is challenged. This paper addresses the issue of whether patients must be informed about medical ML applications and asked for consent. It aims to expose the discrepancy between ethical and practical considerations, while arguing that this polarization is a false dichotomy: in reality, ethics is applied to specific contexts and situations. Bridging this gap and considering the (...) whole picture is essential for advancing the debate. In the light of the possible future developments of the situation and the technologies, as well as the benefits that informed consent for ML can bring to shared decision-making, the present analysis concludes that it is necessary to prepare the ground for a possible future requirement of informed consent for medical ML. (shrink)

Within a framework of rights that protects children's interests and seek to balance their developing interests in welfare and agency, I consider how contexts of war impact children's lives to argue that such contexts provide opportunities to advance or set back both the development of moral powers, namely capacities for a sense of justice and a conception of the good, and capacities for autonomy. Besides an interest in satisfying their basic needs and protection, children have an interest in developing their (...) moral powers and growing into autonomous agents. Evidence shows great variation in children's responses to traumatic circumstances, from severe psychological disorders to enhanced resiliency and moral reasoning. As moral powers and autonomy ground the permissibility for paternalistic treatment and the exclusion of children from certain rights, I argue that once the war is over children are entitled to an adequate assessment of how their interests and capacities have changed. For children whose development was set back, states should grant opportunities for recovery and further development, which suggests strengthening welfare and protection rights; while for children whose development was advanced, states should recognize such advancement and grant opportunities for the exercise of their newfound capacities, which suggests granting certain agency rights alongside welfare and protection. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn four studies, we examined the moderating impact of Interoceptive Accuracy and Interoceptive Sensibility (IS, ass...

Machine learning (ML) systems play an increasingly relevant role in medicine and healthcare. As their applications move ever closer to patient care and cure in clinical settings, ethical concerns about the responsibility of their use come to the fore. I analyse an aspect of responsible ML use that bears not only an ethical but also a significant epistemic dimension. I focus on ML systems’ role in mediating patient–physician relations. I thereby consider how ML systems may silence patients’ voices and relativise (...) the credibility of their opinions, which undermines their overall credibility status without valid moral and epistemic justification. More specifically, I argue that withholding credibilitydue tohow ML systems operate can be particularly harmful to patients and, apart from adverse outcomes, qualifies as a form of testimonial injustice. I make my case for testimonial injustice in medical ML by considering ML systems currently used in the USA to predict patients’ risk of misusing opioids (automated Prediction Drug Monitoring Programmes, PDMPs for short). I argue that the locus of testimonial injustice in ML-mediated medical encounters is found in the fact that these systems are treated asmarkers of trustworthinesson which patients’ credibility is assessed. I further show how ML-based PDMPs exacerbate and further propagate social inequalities at the expense of vulnerable social groups. (shrink)

In this paper, we challenge the vision of creating a giant knowledge graph of reusable research data from multiple projects and platforms, based on Semantic Web technologies and a shared conceptualisation in the form of a commonly used ontology ecosystem, promoted by the Semantic Data for Humanities and Social Sciences project (SDHSS). Three main issues are raised: the difficulty of proposing a cross-disciplinary ontology for humanities and social sciences given the different research agendas and constructivist approaches; the difficulty of interlinking (...) the objects present in the different information systems, due to different notions of identity; the challenge of dealing with uncertainty, inconsistencies and contradictions in information sources, when the aim is to produce ‘factual’ information. First, I propose an epistemological analysis of information, as distinct from data and knowledge, then I develop a conceptualisation of information in humanities and social sciences, based on the OntoClean methodology, and the foundational ontologies DOLCE and Descriptions and Situations, and show how it can ground a cross-disciplinary ontology ecosystem based on the CIDOC CRM and its SDHSS integration. Finally, I apply these principles to a detailed analysis of the information production process and show how the proposed conceptualisation provides possible solutions to the three challenges raised. (shrink)

1. Introduzione Perché, tra tutto ciò “che è”, scegliere di studiare proprio il denaro? Essenzialmente per due motivi. Anzitutto, col denaro abbiamo a che fare tutti i giorni, si tratta quindi di un ente che ha un ruolo rilevante nella vita dell’uomo contemporaneo, di più, direi che oggi esso abbia un ruolo centrale negli interessi degli uomini, pensiamo solo a quanti lo usano come criterio di scelta nella propria vita. Tuttavia, e qui arriviamo al secondo motivo, il denaro nella sua (...) struttur... (shrink)

The book presents an integrated model of vagueness as an implicit and persuasive strategy, pervasive in everyday language use and public discourse. It considers three macro-dimensions of the phenomenon: linguistic-theoretical, psychological, and social-discursive. It shows how vagueness can be strategically employed to elude recipients' critical evaluation of intended contents, to deresponsibilize the source and make their arguments unchallengeable. It explores the semiotic, semantic, pragmatic and psycholinguistic nature of vagueness, and looks at its use in contemporary public (with a focus on (...) Italian) discourse. It also delves into under-explored aspects of the phenomenon such as: the continuum of intentionality in the use of vague expressions; the evolutionary significance of vagueness; its implicitating and persuasive functions; the phenomenon of vagueness by implicature; the interaction between vague expressions and context precisation; the cognitive functioning of vague expressions; the use of vagueness in contemporary persuasive vs. non-persuasive texts types; gender-based differences in the use of vagueness in public discourse. (shrink)

The article tries to give the sense of the ecological perspective of Ivan Illich, a radical thinker and critic of modernity, which he considers the result of the evangelical message's perversion, operated by the Roman Church. Industrialization, conceived as the ultimate effect of that betrayal, condemns the human being to a condition of dependence and subordination to the goods produced on the market and the services offered by the categories of competent experts. In this way, according to Illich, he compromises (...) his relationship with others and with the Earth as his home, locking himself in the shell of his own individuality, a prisoner of the needs created by the market. For Illich, restoring the ecological balance is possible only through a substantial change in production rhythms, in order to restore man's mastery of the tools and his own autonomy. (shrink)

Lee and Schwarz made considerable theoretical advances in the psychology of cleansing by proposing that cleaning actions might serve as separation procedures between two psychological entities. Here, we propose that the effectiveness of the separation process may be modulated by the available amount of executive resources, and that separation may operate as a load-dependent resetting procedure.

Исследуя философские и мировоззренческие основы художественной прозы А.Ф. Лосева, Джорджия Римонди приходит к выводу о том, что эстетическое (символическое и музыкальное) познание является у А.Ф. Лосева средством постижения глубины человеческого бытия не менее значительным, чем познание рассудочное, а музыка, философия и литература различаются между собой лишь способом передачи смысла. Всвоей работе автор предпринимает попытку эксплицировать эстетическую концепцию А.Ф. Лосева через реконструкцию выраженных в прозе музыкально-философских воззрений, представляющих собой проекцию всей его философской системы.Творческое наследие А.Ф. Лосева представлено в данном исследовании как (...) сложное и многослойное явление, основанное на строгой понятийной системе. Внутреннюю цельность всего его творчества подтверждают и многочисленные ссылки в рассказах, повестях и романах на его собственные философские работы, благодаря чему изучение выразительных средств художественной прозы А.Ф. Лосева приводит к неизбежному выводу об общих корнях философии и литературы. (shrink)

The paper analyses Aleksei F. Losev’s position in respect to the notion of time, which he considers in a dialectical perspective. The Russian philosopher proceeds from the Platonic interpretation of the relationship between the one and the many, according to which each plurality carries in itself a unifying principle, as its ontological grounding. This anti-modern perspective represents a rejection of the positivist “objectification” of the world, which introduced the “metaphysical” notions of absolute space and time. According to Losev, time as (...) an indefinite continued progress of events that occur in an apparently irreversible succession does not exist as such and cannot be considered other than within the framework of the overall unity of temporal fragments, so that they acquire a common background. By placing the interpretation of time on the ontological plan, in its dialectical connection with its opposite, Losev manages to overcome the problem of the measurability of time, raised in Aristotle’s definition of time as a “measure of motion.” Losev also rejects modern subjectivist ideas about time as an experience of the present or as pure duration, both conceptions inevitably leading to the problem of identifying in the continuous flow of time a stable ground that serves as the basis for any temporal change. Besides that, Losev’s approach to the interpretation of time leads to criticism of the modern idea of progress, understood as an endless striving for the future, which always remains unattainable. The main task then is to find “mobile rest,” a unifying principle that can give meaning to human existence through the combination of past, present and future. (shrink)

The paper is intended to focus on peculiarities of nanomedicine and the importance of social concerns implicated, in order to understand if existing regulations are appropriate to maintain its safety or if a new ad hoc regulatory framework is needed. Consideration of social challenges will underline the crucial role of medical ethics in regulatory discussion.

La teoria dell'autocoscienza umana come reditio completa ossia come riflessione del soggetto su di se possiede un significato ed una portata di ampiezza e profondita tali da richiedere uno studio articolato su diversi livelli di indagine filosofica. L'autocoscienza riflessiva costituisce il vertice dell'antropologia poiche il problema critico trova soluzione in quanto viene ricondotto ai fondamenti ontologici e metafisici nei quali si radica la stessa antropologia. La ricerca e incentrata sulle Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate e sulla Summa Theologiae testi basilari per (...) la teoria dell'autocoscienza. Il confronto con Alberto Magno consente di evidenziare i presupposti e l'originalita della concezione tomista sottolineando l'autotrascendimento ed apertura all'Essere. Giorgia Salatiello, e docente di filosofia presso la Pontificia Universita Gregoriana. (shrink)

Through an analysis of the European Court of Human Rights’ decisions concerning the practice of veiling, this article problematises the semiotics-architectural structure of article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights (Freedom of thought, conscience and religion), questioning which representation of the human and the female subject is recognised and therefore protected by secular/liberal and Human Rights law. It argues that the semiotics-architectural structure of article 9, which is based on the distinction between faith and its manifestation, not only (...) relies on a particular ontological understanding of the religious subject as well as a specific notion of religion, but it also reveals a distinct relationship between the individual and sovereign power through the division between the public and the private spheres. In light of this, the western debate surrounding the women’s veiling overlooks how liberal secularism perceives and defines the religious and legal gendered subject in the modern world, and how this understanding is embedded in and reproduced through the law, which emerges as an instrument for regulating minority religious communities. (shrink)

Insurgent Universality offers a novel attempt to access history through a problematisation of the notion of universalism. Its main argument is based on three notions articulated in revolutionary events: temporalities, universality and insurgency. In this article we review their theoretical aspects, comment on their limitations, and outline potential reformulations.

Artificial intelligence-based (AI) technologies such as machine learning (ML) systems are playing an increasingly relevant role in medicine and healthcare, bringing about novel ethical and epistemological issues that need to be timely addressed. Even though ethical questions connected to epistemic concerns have been at the center of the debate, it is going unnoticed how epistemic forms of injustice can be ML-induced, specifically in healthcare. I analyze the shortcomings of an ML system currently deployed in the USA to predict patients’ likelihood (...) of opioid addiction and misuse (PDMP algorithmic platforms). Drawing on this analysis, I aim to show that the wrong inflicted on epistemic agents involved in and affected by these systems’ decision-making processes can be captured through the lenses of Miranda Fricker’s account of hermeneutical injustice. I further argue that ML-induced hermeneutical injustice is particularly harmful due to what I define as an automated hermeneutical appropriation from the side of the ML system. The latter occurs if the ML system establishes meanings and shared hermeneutical resources without allowing for human oversight, impairing understanding and communication practices among stakeholders involved in medical decision-making. Furthermore and very much crucially, an automated hermeneutical appropriation can be recognized if physicians are strongly limited in their possibilities to safeguard patients from ML-induced hermeneutical injustice. Overall, my paper should expand the analysis of ethical issues raised by ML systems that are to be considered epistemic in nature, thus contributing to bridging the gap between these two dimensions in the ongoing debate. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the family business as an organizational entity and as a proprietary form useful to transmit personal values and company assets to the next generations. This paper aims to introduce the legal instruments in Italy to transfer family businesses and to evaluate how these are useful for ensuring not only the survival of the company in the market but also that family values and characteristics pass from one generation to the next maintaining a prosocial humanistic management perspective. The (...) legal status of the family business and the fact that most small- and medium-sized companies in Italy are not listed, which considerably affects disclosure obligations and makes it more challenging to get consistent and reliable information at affordable costs, has to date limited research on this model. In recent years, given their growth in size and market share, the strategic potential of family businesses was recognized by both academics and practitioners, giving rise to further study. A primary goal of a family business is to maintain its competitive advantage in the market and pass down its values in the succession line. Hence, one of the most important themes on which scholars focused has been how this process takes place to ensure continuity. This paper argues that the trust and the family pact are both valid legal instruments to this end, albeit with different advantages depending on the circumstances surrounding the succession. (shrink)

Agli inizi dell'anno accademico 2011-2012, si raduna un gruppo di professori della Pontificia Università Gregoriana che, grazie all'iniziativa di Giorgia Salatiello (filosofia), coinvolge a Rogelio García Mateo, SJ (spiritualità), Dariusz Kowalczyk, SJ (teologia), Ferenc Patsch, SJ (teologia), Gerald Whelan, SJ (teologia), e Rossano Zas Friz De Col, SJ (spiritualità). Il presente volume raccoglie otto anni di ricerca del gruppo, centrati nel rintracciare il rapporto tra spiritualità ignaziana e metodo trascendentale in diversi pensatori gesuiti del ventesimo secolo, come Joseph Marechal (...) (1878-1944), Johannes B. Lotz (1903-1992), Karl Rahner (1904-1984), Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), Joseph de Finance (1904-2000), Juan Alfaro (1914-1993), Emerich Coreth (1919-2006). Attraverso il loro studio si è voluto scoprire le particolari caratteristiche di ognuno di loro per evidenziare una linea maestra che ispiri oggi il rinnovamento di questo orientamento, in modo di progredire nella consapevolezza del mistero dell'apertura e dell'accoglienza del Dio della rivelazione cristiana, che trova negli Esercizi Spirituali di Sant'Ignazio un metodo su cui è conveniente continuare a ragionare trascendentalmente. (shrink)

The new non-fiction picturebook for children is conceived not just as an informational book, but first and foremost as a beautiful object, characterized by a largely visual and proudly creative approach to knowledge. By blending information and artistic illustration/design, transmission of data and sophisticated aesthetic experimentation, this medium seems to bring successfully together the rational/explicit and the aesthetic/intuitive way of attending to the world, with promising consequences for the development of an integrated learning experience. Applying the findings of cognitive sciences (...) to the analysis of non-fiction picturebooks can be enlightening to understand the full potential of such books in sharing knowledge with children. Their intrinsic multimodality and ability to stimulate different parts of the reader’s brain makes them valuable in any educational context revolving around the paradigm of complexity and having connection (as opposed to disjunction) of different levels of experience as its aim. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyse the disgust of which Sartre's “nausea” is an expression, by identifying its ontological significance and its role within Sartre's thought. Particular attention is devoted to the phenomenological themes of vision and conversion of the gaze, in the strict correlation they have with disgust. My claim is that Sartre, in his early philosophical work, elaborated a response to the Heideggerian problematic of the correlation between Befindlichkeit and Faktizität. To verify such claim, my paper (...) will analyse the differences between Sartrean and Heideggerian thought with regard to these concepts, and show the extent of the influence that Husserl, Emmanuel Levinas and Aurel Kolnai had on Sartre. (shrink)

Who is a native signer? Since around 95% of deaf infants are born into a hearing family, deaf signers are exposed to a sign language at various moments of their life, and not only from birth. Moreover, the linguistic input they are exposed to is not always a fully fledged natural sign language. In this situation, is the notion of native signer as someone exposed to language from birth of any use? We review the results of the first large-scale cross-linguistic (...) investigation on the effects of age of exposure to sign language. This research involved about 45 Deaf adult signers in each of three sign languages (Catalan Sign Language, French Sign Language, and Italian Sign Language). Across the three languages, participants were divided into three groups – those exposed from birth, those between 1 and 5 years of age, and those exposed between 6 and 15 years of age – and received a battery of tests designed for each language targeting various aspects of morphosyntactic competence. In particular, the tests focused on both those morphosyntactic phenomena that are known from the spoken language literature to be good detectors of language impairment or delay (i.e.,wh-interrogatives and relative clauses) and on morphosyntactic phenomena that are sign language specific (i.e., role shift and directional verbs). The results showed a clear effect of being native, with significant differences across languages and tests between signers exposed to sign language from birth and those exposed in the 1st years of life. This confirms the life-long importance of language exposure from birth and the reliability of the notion of “nativeness”, at least for syntax. On the other hand, while in most domains the differences observed between populations might be differences in performance, for some specific constructions, signers belonging to the three groups may have different grammars. This latter finding challenges the generalized use of native signers’ grammar as the baseline for language description and language assessment. (shrink)

Questo lavoro si pone sulla via della questione dell’origine attraverso un confronto tra Hegel e Derrida. In particolare, abbiamo individuato nella Scienza della logica il punto centrale a partire dal quale le istanze teoretiche dei due filosofi esibiscono la loro vicinanza e la loro distanza; sollecitando a questo modo la trama del testo metafisico che con Hegel si compie, ci siamo posti con Derrida ai suoi margini frequentandone l'apertura ed il rilancio come consegna a un pensiero in agguato sulla soglia (...) dell'avvenire. Così avanzando, la questione dell’origine non si è innanzitutto configurata come un problema temporale: il tempo stesso e il suo ritardo sull’origine hanno lasciato il campo a una questione logico-semiotica. (shrink)

This answer to an article published in one of the preceeding issue of GREGORIANUM 83 , 287-311, has a double aim. There is, on the one hand, need to restate clearly the precise sense of my interpretation of the condemnation of Galilee and of its magisterial value, by showing that the main thesis which has been attributed to me - that of an infallible character of the declaration of heresy contained in the abjuration of Galileo - is not found in (...) my writings. On the other hand, it must be shown that the objections put forward against my real theses have no historical foundation, due to an insufficient knowledge of the style of the Roman Holy Office on the part of the authors of the article mentioned. (shrink)

One of the most challenging tasks when adopting Bayesian networks is the one of learning their structure from data. This task is complicated by the huge search space of possible solutions and by the fact that the problem isNP-hard. Hence, a full enumeration of all the possible solutions is not always feasible and approximations are often required. However, to the best of our knowledge, a quantitative analysis of the performance and characteristics of the different heuristics to solve this problem has (...) never been done before. For this reason, in this work, we provide a detailed comparison of many different state-of-the-art methods for structural learning on simulated data considering both BNs with discrete and continuous variables and with different rates of noise in the data. In particular, we investigate the performance of different widespread scores and algorithmic approaches proposed for the inference and the statistical pitfalls within them. (shrink)