IntroductionDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers in Italy have been exposed to an unprecedented pressure and traumatic events. However, no direct comparison with the general population is available so far. The aim of this study is to detail mental health outcomes in healthcare workers compared to the general population.Methods24050 respondents completed an on-line questionnaire during the contagion peak, 21342 general population, 1295 second-line healthcare workers, and 1411 front-line healthcare workers. Depressive, anxious, post-traumatic symptoms and insomnia were assessed. Specific COVID-19 related (...) potential risk factors were also considered in healthcare workers.ResultsDepressive symptoms were more frequent in the general population and front-line healthcare workers compared to the second-line healthcare workers groups. Anxiety symptoms showed a prevalence of 21.25% in the general population, 18.05% for second-line healthcare workers, and 20.55% for front-line healthcare workers. Insomnia showed a prevalence of 7.82, 6.58, and 9.92% for the general population, second-line healthcare workers, and front-line healthcare workers, respectively. Compared to the general population, front-line healthcare workers had higher odds of endorsing total trauma-related symptoms. Both second-line healthcare workers and front-line healthcare workers had higher odds of endorsing core post-traumatic symptoms compared to the general population, while second-line healthcare workers had lower odds of endorsing negative affect and dissociative symptoms. Higher total traumatic symptom score was associated with being a front-line healthcare worker, having a colleague infected, hospitalized, or deceased, being a nurse, female gender, and younger age.ConclusionThis study suggests a significant psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Italian general population and healthcare workers. Front-line healthcare workers represent a specific at-risk population for post-traumatic symptoms. These findings underline the importance of monitoring and intervention strategies. (shrink)

Hypocrisy is widely thought to be morally objectionable in a way that undermines the hypocrite’s moral standing to blame others. To wit, we seem to intuitively accept the “Nonhypocrisy Condition:” R has the standing to blame S for some violation of a moral norm N only if R’s blaming S is not hypocritical. This claim has been the subject of intensifying philosophical investigation in recent years. However, we can only understand why hypocrisy is morally objectionable and has an effect on (...) standing to blame if we can correctly characterize hypocrisy itself. Unfortunately, some recent discussions fail to do this, which fatally undermines subsequent arguments concerning the effect of hypocrisy on the standing to blame. This paper’s central aim is to develop and defend a better account of hypocrisy. The hope is that with such an account in hand, we can explain and perhaps justify our moral aversion to hypocrisy in general as well as the Nonhypocrisy Condition in particular. (shrink)

Could the notion of compromise help us overcoming – or at least negotiating – the frequent tension, in normative political theory, between the realistic desideratum of peaceful coexistence and the idealistic desideratum of justice? That is to say, an analysis of compromise may help us moving beyond the contrast between two widespread contrasting attitudes in contemporary political philosophy: ‘fiat iustitia, pereat mundus’ on the one side, ‘salus populi suprema lex’ on the other side. More specifically, compromise may provide the backbone (...) of a conception of legitimacy that mediates between idealistic (or moralistic) and realistic (or pragmatic) desiderata of political theory, i.e. between the aspiration to peace and the aspiration to justice. In other words, this paper considers whether an account of compromise could feature in a viable realistic conception of political legitimacy, in much the same way in which consensus features in more idealistic conceptions of legitimacy (a move that may be attributed to some realist theorists, especially Bernard Williams). My conclusions, however, are largely sceptical: I argue that grounding legitimacy in any kind of normatively salient agreement does require the trappings of idealistic political philosophy, for better or – in my view – worse. (shrink)

The present work outlines a logical and philosophical conception of propositions in relation to a group of puzzles that arise by quantifying over them: the Russell-Myhill paradox, the Prior-Kaplan paradox, and Prior's Theorem. I begin by motivating an interpretation of Russell-Myhill as depending on aboutness, which constrains the notion of propositional identity. I discuss two formalizations of of the paradox, showing that it does not depend on the syntax of propositional variables. I then extend to propositions a modal predicative response (...) to the paradoxes articulated by an abstraction principle for propositions. On this conception, propositions are “shadows” of the sentences that express them. Modal operators are used to uncover the implicit relation of dependence that characterizes propositions that are about propositions. The benefits of this approach are shown by application to other intensional puzzles. The resulting view is an alternative to the plenitudinous metaphysics of impredicative comprehension principles. (shrink)

Kyle Fritz and Daniel Miller’s reply to my article helpfully clarifies their position and our main points of disagreement. Their view is that those who blame hypocritically lack the right to blame for a violation of some moral norm N in virtue of having an unfair disposition to blame others, but not themselves, for violations of N. This view raises two key questions. First, are there instances of hypocritical blame that do not involve an unfair differential blaming disposition? Second, if (...) the answer to the first question is Yes, do hypocritical blamers of this kind lack the right to blame? In this paper, I argue that the answer to the first question is Yes. Given this, Fritz and Miller’s account faces serious problems regardless of whether the answer to the second question is Yes or No. (shrink)

This paper challenges a widespread reading of Aristotle’s use of dialectic in the treatment of aporiai. According to this reading, the search for a resolution of an aporia is supposed to proceed by arguing against conflicting theses to refute one of them. I argue that this reading is not satisfactory and propose an alternative, based on an often overlooked distinction between two dialectical procedures, the refutation (elenchos) of a thesis and the resolution (lysis) of an argument. These two terms are (...) employed fairly consistently by Aristotle in the treatises as well. Since an aporia requires not merely conflicting theses, but conflicting arguments for those theses, I contend that the ideal way out of aporiai involves a critical analysis of those arguments, akin to that involved in the dialectical resolution. A relevant implication of this reading is that it expands the critical use of dialectic for philosophy, and points to the specific philosophical utility of the Sophistical Refutations. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that equal respect-based accounts of the normative basis of tolerance are self-defeating, insofar as they are unable to specify the limits of tolerance in a way that is consistent with their own commitment to the equal treatment of all conceptions of the good. I show how this argument is a variant of the long-standing ‘conflict of freedoms’ objection to Kantian-inspired, freedom-based accounts of the justification of systems of norms. I criticize Thomas Scanlon’s defence of ‘pure (...) tolerance’, Anna Elisabetta Galeotti’s work on the relationship between tolerance, equal respect and recognition, and Arthur Ripstein’s recent response to the ‘conflict of freedoms’ objection. The upshot of my argument is that, while valuing tolerance for its own sake may be an appealing ideal, it is not a feasible way of grounding a system of norms. I close with a thumbnail sketch of two alternative, instrumental (i.e. non-Kantian) approaches to the normative foundations of tolerance. (shrink)

In his 1990s studies of visual humor, Noël Carroll left to “future researchers” the laborious task of developing a “comprehensive and rigorous classification of the phenomena” pertaining to “the sight gag.” Carroll contributed five possible items belonging to such a taxonomy, i. e., “the mutual interference gag”, “mimed metaphors”, “the object analog”, “the switch image” and “the solution gag”. Following the implicit reference to rhetoric built in the very names of some of these items, this article shows how the well-established (...) tropes of classical rhetoric, indeed three hundred of them, can be employed, with a modicum of analogical creativity, in order to address the visual component of comedic sketches, as exemplified by Monty Python’s famous Flying Circus. (shrink)

This interview covers topics related to Everyday Aesthetics and confirms the multi-faceted, rich and inclusive environment surrounding Nino Migliori,1 both as a human being and as a photographer. In particular, the experience from some of his workshops reveal how such concepts as space and time, playing and experiencing, amplify and broaden the classic definition of Everyday Aesthetics provided by field literature.2 More generally, this approach also provides a cue to conduct an aesthetic analysis that is free from judgments in taste. (...) This means considering Migliori’s photographic gesture within an everyday life aesthetic perspective and proposing that it is analyzed along a pragmatic course. Therefore, pragmatism-related observations are here brought forward to provide research insights within the nature of Everyday Aesthetics. (shrink)

We present recent results on the model companions of set theory, placing them in the context of a current debate in the philosophy of mathematics. We start by describing the dependence of the notion of model companionship on the signature, and then we analyze this dependence in the specific case of set theory. We argue that the most natural model companions of set theory describe (as the signature in which we axiomatize set theory varies) theories of $H_{\kappa ^+}$, as $\kappa (...) $ ranges among the infinite cardinals. We also single out $2^{\aleph _0}=\aleph _2$ as the unique solution of the continuum problem which can (and does) belong to some model companion of set theory (enriched with large cardinal axioms). While doing so we bring to light that set theory enriched by large cardinal axioms in the range of supercompactness has as its model companion (with respect to its first order axiomatization in certain natural signatures) the theory of $H_{\aleph _2}$ as given by a strong form of Woodin’s axiom $(*)$ (which holds assuming $\mathsf {MM}^{++}$ ). Finally this model-theoretic approach to set-theoretic validities is explained and justified in terms of a form of maximality inspired by Hilbert’s axiom of completeness. (shrink)

I shall commence with an eminently subjective statement: reading this book was a pleasant experience. Let me explain why, then, hence providing a somewhat more objective set of reasons for the posi...

The present book addresses the background, rationale, general structure, and particular aims and arguments characterizing our third and last volume about "humor" and "cruelty". A guiding foray is provided into the vast expert literature that can be retrieved in the Western humanities and social sciences on these two terms. Pivotal thinkers and crucial notions are duly identified, highlighted, and examined. Apposite subsidiary references are also included, especially with regard to psychodynamics and clinical psychology, existentialism, feminism, liberalism, Marxism, and representative recent (...) studies in the philosophy of humor and its cognates. The stage is thus set for the exploration and assessment of the conflicts between humor and cruelty unfolding in Part 2 of Volume 3. Being the philosophical terminus of our entire research project, Volume 3 counterbalances, complements, and, occasionally, complexifies the numerous forms of mutual cooperation between humor and cruelty that the preceding Volume 2 had unearthed and discussed. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine P. F. Strawson's "Freedom and Resentment" [6] in an effort to clarify the essential features of attitudes that Strawson believes may be understood as reactive. I propose a definition of the reactive attitudes that outlines the various conditions that must be met in order to give rise to a given reactive attitude. I then expand upon Strawson's work by introducing two additional categories of reactive attitudes: self-reflexive reactive attitudes and second-personal reflexive reactive attitudes. In addition (...) to explaining the new categories of reactive attitudes that I seek to introduce, I also set forth reasons that lead me to accept such attitudes as reactive. Finally, I outline why I believe the self-reflexive reactive attitudes provide the foundation upon which all the other reactive attitudes rest. (shrink)