This paper deals with the proposal of a person‐affecting version of the principle of Procreative Beneficence. Such a principle has been stated by Savulescu & Kahane in an impersonal form and balanced with a person‐affecting principle of harm to address the moral problem of the selection of future children. The paper aims to show some differences between Person‐affecting Procreative Beneficence and Savulescu & Kahane’s hybrid position, and to distinguish the former from other pro‐selection perspectives. Moreover, it explores the extension of (...) such a principle beyond selection to other issues of reproductive ethics. (shrink)

The present paper suggests how, from a scientific perspective, the senses establish a link between mind and matter. Ongoing research in sensory science and data analysis is related to the ongoing debate about a non-reductive theory of consciousness based on psychophysical principles. Sensory science is interdisciplinary and deals with the human perception of objects by the senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing etc. Perception as information pro- cessing is here understood in terms of interactions between external physical stimuli and (...) internal mental states resulting in behavioral responses. To deal with the complex and dynamic transformation between external physical energies and internal psychological experiences multivariate methods of data analysis are shown to be useful Examples will be given from food science where cognition and emotion, activated by sense perception are vital for the survival health and well-being of humans. These approaches may contribute to bridging the explanatory gap between the subjectively experienced and the objectively observed world. Future challenges towards deeper interdisciplinary discourses addressing mind-matter research in real-world situations are at stake. (shrink)

Cet article vise à éclairer le développement des visions méta-éthiques proposées par les deux fondateurs de l’approche des capabilités, Amartya Sen et Martha Nussbaum. Les deux auteurs fondent leurs différentes conceptions de la justice sur certaines versions de l’objectivisme et se confrontent aux questions d’argumentation rationnelle dans le cas de désaccords pratiques. La réponse est différente chez Sen et chez Nussbaum. Leurs justifications méta-éthique de la théorie et leurs visions du raisonnement pratique et de l’argumentation morale présentent des similitudes et (...) des différences. (shrink)

Recent discussions about global justice have focused on arguments that favor the inclusion of political and social rights within the set of human rights. By doing so, these discussions raise the issue of the existence of specific rights enjoyed exclusively by citizens of a given community. This article deals with the problem of distinguishing between human and citizen rights. Specifically, it proposes a new concept of citizen rights that is based on what I call ‘the stockholder principle’: a principle of (...) solidarity that holds within a specific country. This concept, the paper goes on to argue, is compatible with a broad idea of human rights defined by international law and enforced according to territorial authority. The stockholder principle is further compatible with the psychological concept of citizenship based on a specific collective identity and it leads to fair consequences at the domestic and global levels. (shrink)

Welfare capitalism is going through a deep crisis, and alternative models to welfare state capitalism such as liberal socialism and property-owning democracy are once again becoming prominent in public debates. The aim in this article is to compare the merits and the limits of liberal socialism and of property-owning democracy through the specific case of the distribution of educational capital, by comparing two educational systems: the Pay It Forward (PIF) system and the Tax-subsidy scheme (TS) system. Based on the analysis (...) of these two educational systems, we provide three arguments in favor of liberal socialist institutions in general and the PIF educational system in particular: (1) the individual common assets argument, (2) the principle of reciprocity argument, and (3) the predistribution argument. (shrink)

_Recensione di: __Failla, Mariannina, Sánchez Madrid, Nuria (eds.), _Le radici del senso. Un commentario sistematico della «Critica del Giudizio». Las raíces del sentido. Un comentario sistemático de la «Crítica del Juicio»_, Madrid, Ediciones Alamanda, 2019, pp. 580. ISBN: 978-84-949436-2-1_.

This article deals with a discussion of Savulescu’s impersonal version of the Principle of Procreative Beneficence and its relationship with a person-affecting Principle of Harm in order to evaluate the cases of selection of which child to have. It aims to show some problems in Savulescu’s attempt to arrange the two principles (the conflict between beneficence and harm, the limitation of beneficence to pre-conception selection, the extension of beneficence to different quantity people choice), and to propose an alternative version of (...) Procreative Beneficence (a narrow person-affecting version), in order to avoid these problems. (shrink)

A relevant problem in reproductive ethics is the moral evaluation of selection of the possible children that the parents can have. This article discusses one of the main attempts to solve this problem, the principle of Procreative Beneficence proposed by Julian Savulescu to define a strong pro-selection perspective. According to Savulescu, such a principle has an impersonal form and is balanced with a person-affecting principle of harm. The article proposes a new person-affecting interpretation of Procreative Beneficence, distinguishing it from other (...) pro-selection views and exploring its extension beyond selection to other problems of reproductive ethics. (shrink)

This desk-based-study explores, on the basis of a Critical Realist perspective, the possibility to integrate the concept of Learning Cultures within the scope of Critical Discourse Analysis. It proposes a theoretical framework to support and guide the use of textual analysis in the study of Learning Cultures and highlights new opportunities to study technology enhanced learning communities and communities of practice, leveraging on Corpora Analysis and Metaphor Individuation Procedures.

Digital tools offer new dimensions and additional contexts both in teaching and in researching Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, providing users with visual insights into his carefully planned work. This essay investigates interactive and visual representations of material and spatial systems of the Fragmenta and the deep interaction between the digital code created to build the Petrarchive’s visual indexes and the original Medieval forms.

A decomposition model of Net Final Values (NFV), named Systemic Value Added (SVA), is proposed for decision-making purposes, based on a systemic approach introduced in Magni [Magni, C. A. (2003), Bulletin of Economic Research 55(2), 149–176; Magni, C. A. (2004) Economic Modelling 21, 595–617]. The model translates the notion of excess profit giving formal expression to a counterfactual alternative available to the decision maker. Relations with other decomposition models are studied, among which Stewart’s [Stewart, G.B. (1991), The (...) Quest for Value: The EVA™ Management Guide, Harper Collins, Publishers Inc]. The index here introduced differs from Stewart’s Economic Value Added (EVA) in that it rests on a different interpretation of the notion of excess profit and is formally connected with the EVA model by means of a shadow project. The SVA is formally and conceptually threefold, in that it is economic, financial, accounting-flavoured. Some results are offered, providing sufficient and necessary conditions for decomposing NFV. Relations between a project’s SVA and its shadow project’s EVA are shown, all results of Pressacco and Stucchi [Pressacco, F. and Stucchi, P. (1997), Rivista di Matematica per le Scienze Economiche e Sociali 20, 165–185] are proved by making use of the systemic approach and the shadow counterparts of those results are also shown. (shrink)

Recently the complexity of discursive practices has been widely acknowledged by the humanities and social sciences. In fact, to know anything is to know in terms of one or more discourse. The "discursive turn" in psychology may be considered as a new paradigm oriented to a correct study of (wo)man only if it is able to grasp the semiotical ground of psychic experience both as an "effort after meaning" and as a "struggle over meaning." In this sense the notion of (...) "diatext" has been proposed as a contribution in working out a psychosemiotical approach to understand how the discursive practices assign subject-positions to the agents of each interlocution scenario. (shrink)

The current investigation assessed linguistic and narrative abilities in a cohort of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The linguistic assessment was performed with both traditional tests and a multilevel procedure for discourse analysis. The results showed difficulties at different stages of message planning, organization, and microlinguistic processing (i.e., lexical selection and grammatical processing). Their macrolinguistic impairments were likely related to more general difficulties in the prelinguistic conceptual phase of message planning and mental model generation. Such weaknesses included a difficulty (...) in the non-verbal conceptualization of the story and the generation of an internal representation of the addressee’s mental model. (shrink)

We reflect upon quantification in biology in two ways. First, from a sensory scientific perspective, we address theories and methods for studying sensation, perception, and cognition. Sensory science concerns action of the human senses, which are not passive receivers but operate in an active and fundamental way for human beings in various social and environmental contexts. In the past one could only handle one-to-one relationships within a univariate framework. Today we have tools to capture complexity closer to real world situations. (...) Thus, the second perspective is rooted in multivariate thinking and modeling tools. Relying mainly on soft modeling-exploratory methods, such as partial least squares regression, we claim that quantification in sensory biology in the future should be met with a dialectic view that simultaneously exploits the two perspectives. (shrink)

Giuseppe Fornari’s groundbreaking inquiry shows that Friedrich Nietzsche’s neglected importance as a religious thinker and his “untimeliness” place him at the forefront of modern thought. Capable of exploiting his own failures as a cognitive tool to discover what other philosophers never wanted to see, Nietzsche ultimately drove himself to mental collapse. Fornari analyzes the tragic reports of Nietzsche’s madness and seeks out the cause of this self-destructive destiny, which, he argues, began earlier than his rivalry with the composer and (...) polemicist Richard Wagner, dating back to the premature loss of Nietzsche’s father. Dramatic experience enabled Nietzsche to detect a more general tendency of European culture, leading to his archaeological and prophetic discovery of the death of God, which he understood as a primordial assassination from which all humankind took its origin. Fornari concludes that Nietzsche’s fatal rebellion against a Christian awareness, which he identified as the greatest threat to his plan, led him to become one and the same not only with Dionysus but also with the crucified Christ. His effort, Fornari argues, was a dramatic way to recognize the silent, inner meaning of Christ’s figure, and perhaps to be forgiven. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LABYRINTHINE STRATEGIES OF SACRIFICE: THE CRETANS BY EURIPIDES Giuseppe Fornari The application of René Girard's mimetic hypothesis demands drastic re-interpretation of the history of our culture. The denunciation of sacrificial violence performed first by the Hebrew Bible and then by the Gospels figures as an objective watershed in the evaluation ofcivilizations and historical periods. This new methodological and theoretical situation brings Girard's ideas into conflict with current trends (...) toward relativism. The victim is the reality at the root ofhistory, an extra-historical element that disrupts the circle of interpretation and confronts us as an absolute value demanding our commitment one way or another. The epistemological problems thus become one and the same with a frankly religious need. In an elegant and paradoxical way Girard's thought gives new, vital emphasis to the Christocentric interpretation of human history typical of patristic and medieval thought. In this light, comparison ofour Christian Western civilization with its Classical predecessor becomes crucial. For the Middle Ages Antiquity was not separate from Christianity but itsfigura (préfiguration), in a positive or negative way. Modern culture, however, starting from humanism and the Renaissance, discovered the historical dimension of Classical civilization with ever-increasing admiration until, finally, Neoclassicism set it as the great alternative to modern civilization. This tendency became openly anti-Christian first with the French revolution and then with thinkers like Nietzsche and Heidegger. The very identity of Western culture is determined by its varying attitudes toward Classical Antiquity and Christianity, to such an extent that the different periods in history could be subdivided accordingly. The comparison is like asking ourselves 164Giuseppe Fornari what we would be without Christianity, or who we are and what Christianity is. The radical nature of these questions and the overall development of our culture therefore confirm Girard's radical, metahistorical model. Classical civilization is the inevitable touchstone for this trans-historical question of identity. The comparison is fascinating and complex, and it cannot be dismissed simply by juxtaposing victimary awareness and blindness. Girard himself in Violence and the Sacred notes the profound investigation of mimetic violence in Greek tragedy and pre-Socratic philosophy.1 Further research of my own into these aspects of Greek civilization confirms and widens the analysis, revealing a surprisingly varied and dramatic picture.2 The most interesting discovery may be that the Greeks had already faced this question of meta-historical identity in relation to the victim. I have chosen Euripides' lost tragedy,the Cretans, to illustrate this: its highly original subject within the corpus of Greek tragedy and its symbolic richness fully justify its choice. The few remaining fragments, which are almost entirely reproduced here, provide enough material for analyses that are necessarily more limited but more complete in themselves and thus more suitable for a single essay. Besides, they possess high literary quality and do not deserve to remain the sole preserve of specialists. The tragedy of the labyrinth Euripides probably wrote the Cretans before 430 B.C. The premisses of the plot are supplied by traditional mythical material. To demonstrate to his brothers that he has a divine right to the kingdom of Crete, Minos asks Poseidon to send a white bull from the sea for sacrifice. The god satisfies his request and Minos's power is confirmed, but he decided the bull is too beautiful to sacrifice. The wrath of the god is not slow to strike the king's family. Minos's wife, Pasiphae, falls in love with the bull and copulates with it. From this bestial union comes the Minotaur, the being, half-man half-bull, which is shut up in the labyrinth. Minos's nonperformance of the sacrifice therefore causes a grave crisis on the island, 1It could be said that the exciting comparison with Classical civilization is one of the inspiring forces of Violence and the Sacred. An analogous direction, as regards Virgil and sacrifice, is followed by Bandera in The Sacred Game (13IfI). See also note 1 1. 2G. Fornari, The Esoteric Knowledge of the Greeks: From Orphism to Tragedy, A SacrificialReading (forthcoming). Labyrinthine Strategies ofSacrifice165 jeopardizing the boundaries between man and animal. The monstrousness ofthe Minotaur represents the breaking-down ofthose differences that... (shrink)

The constructive reformulation of the semantic theory suggests two basic principles to be assumed: first, the distinction between proper knowledge, expressed in judgemental form, and the assertion conditions for such knowledge; second, ...