As part of a European Erasmus Plus project entitled Death Education for Palliative Psychology, this study assessed the ways in which Master’s Degree students in psychology and the creative arts therapies self-rated their confidence and interest in death education and palliative and bereavement care. In five countries (Austria, Israel, Italy, Poland, Romania), 344 students completed an online questionnaire, and 37 students were interviewed to better understand their views, interest, and confidence. The results revealed some significant differences between countries, and showed (...) that older respondents with previous experience as formal caregivers for end-of-life clients showed greater interest in obtaining practical clinical competence in these fields. A mediation analysis indicated that students’ previous care experiences and past loss experiences were related to students’ current interest in death education and palliative and bereavement care through the mediation of their sense of confidence in this field. The qualitative findings identified five shared themes: life and death, learning about death, the psychological burden, personal experience and robust training, and four key training needs. Overall, students’ interest in studying and working with terminal illness and death are rooted in internal resources, a preliminary sense of confidence, but also external requirements. (shrink)

L'éducation scolaire et universitaire de Leibniz en matière de langue et rhétorique se déroule conformément aux coutumes du XVII e siècle en Allemagne et s'assimile à la tradition sans notable écart. On conserve à Hanovre deux cahiers de 1662, «Liber Observationum» et «Loci Rhetorici»; ce sont les premières documents qui montrent l'intérêt du jeune Leibniz pour les études linguistiques et font le point sur l'enseignement reçu par lui. Pour en comprendre la genèse, il est d'extrême importance de reconstituer le milieu (...) culturel dont ils sont issus. Mais auparavant deux éléments doivent être considérés: les doctrines concernant la langue du maître de Leibniz Jakob Thomasius et l'héritage grammatical d'origine melanthonienne. Tous les deux constituent le point de départ pour le jeune Leibniz qui révèle néanmoins déjà un fort esprit d'indépendance et une attitude scientifique marquée par un caractère humaniste envers le langage savant. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explain why knot diagrams are an effective notation in topology. Their cognitive features and epistemic roles will be assessed. First, it will be argued that different interpretations of a figure give rise to different diagrams and as a consequence various levels of representation for knots will be identified. Second, it will be shown that knot diagrams are dynamic by pointing at the moves which are commonly applied to them. For this reason, experts must (...) develop a specific form of enhanced manipulative imagination, in order to draw inferences from knot diagrams by performing epistemic actions. Moreover, it will be argued that knot diagrams not only can promote discovery, but also provide evidence. This case study is an experimentation ground to evaluate the role of space and action in making inferences by reasoning diagrammatically. (shrink)

The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification is well-known among epistemologists. Propositional justification is often conceived as fundamental and characterized in an entirely apsychological way. In this chapter, I focus on beliefs based on deductive arguments. I argue that such an apsychological notion of propositional justification can hardly be reconciled with the idea that justification is a central component of knowledge. In order to propose an alternative notion, I start with the analysis of doxastic justification. I then offer a notion (...) of propositional justification, intersubjective propositional justification, that is neither entirely apsychological nor idiosyncratic. To do so, I argue that to be able to attribute propositional justification to a subject, we have to consider her social context as well as broad features of our human cognitive architecture. (shrink)

The objective of this article is twofold. First, a methodological issue is addressed. It is pointed out that even if philosophers of mathematics have been recently more and more concerned with the practice of mathematics, there is still a need for a sharp definition of what the targets of a philosophy of mathematical practice should be. Three possible objects of inquiry are put forward: (1) the collective dimension of the practice of mathematics; (2) the cognitives capacities requested to the practitioners; (...) and (3) the specific forms of representation and notation shared and selected by the practitioners. Moreover, it is claimed that a broadening of the notion of ‘permissible action’ as introduced by Larvor (2012) with respect to mathematical arguments, allows for a consideration of all these three elements simultaneously. Second, a case from topology – the proof of Alexander’s theorem – is presented to illustrate a concrete analysis of a mathematical practice and to exemplify the proposed method. It is discussed that the attention to the three elements of the practice identified above brings to the emergence of philosophically relevant features in the practice of topology: the need for a revision in the definition of criteria of validity, the interest in tracking the operations that are performed on the notation, and the constant and fruitful back-and-forth from one representation to another in dealing with mathematical content. Finally, some suggestions for further research are given in the conclusions. (shrink)

Transparency is a quality of corporate social responsibility communication that enhances the relationship between the investors and the company. The objective of this paper is to analyze if the transparency of the sustainability reports is affected by the relationship of companies in different industries with their stakeholders. If this were the case, it would indicate that the pressure of significant stakeholders determines the required level of transparency of the reports. We find that the pressure of some groups of stakeholders improves (...) the quality of transparency of the reports. We extend previous research by studying the effect of stakeholder group pressure on transparency when reporting sustainability. Our results show that transparency is affected by ownership, along with size and global region. (shrink)

The current “exemplarist turn” within virtue ethics is increasingly shedding light on the importance of exemplars both as enabling one to identify the virtues and for the importance they bear for orienting one’s conduct, as well as for educating the novice. However, even if categorizations of exemplars have already been proposed, there seems to be a lack of discussion on the kind of imitation different exemplars are supposed to elicit. In order to offer a preliminary answer to this question, in (...) this paper I present three paths to flourishing via imitation of exemplary individuals: The Platonic, the Stoic, and the Aristotelian. Then, I sketch an attempt to reconcile these models. In conclusion, I suggest that, when it comes to education, this reconciliation becomes necessary. Along these lines, I recommend that a multi-step educational program is elaborated. (shrink)

Background: Undergraduate nursing students have been documented to experience ethical distress during their clinical training and felt poorly supported in discussing the ethical issues they encountered. Research aims: This study was aimed at exploring nursing students’ perceived opportunity to discuss ethical issues that emerged during their clinical learning experience and associated factors. Research design: An Italian national cross-sectional study design was performed in 2015–2016. Participants were invited to answer a questionnaire composed of four sections regarding: (1) socio-demographic data, (2) previous (...) clinical learning experiences, (3) current clinical learning experience quality and outcomes, and (4) the opportunity to discuss ethical issues with nurses in the last clinical learning experience (from 0 – ‘never’ to 3 – ‘very much’). Participants and research context: Participants were 9607 undergraduate nursing students who were attending 95 different three-year Italian baccalaureate nursing programmes, located at 27 universities in 15 Italian regions. Ethical considerations: This study was conducted in accordance with the Human Subject Research Ethics Committee guidelines after the research protocol was approved by an ethics committee. Findings: Overall, 4707 (49%) perceived to have discussed ethical issues ‘much’ or ‘very much’; among the remaining, 3683 (38.3%) and 1217 (12.7%) students reported the perception of having discussed, respectively, ‘enough’ or ‘never’ ethical issues emerged in the clinical practice. At the multivariate logistic regression analysis explaining 38.1% of the overall variance, the factors promoting ethical discussion were mainly set at the clinical learning environment levels (i.e. increased learning opportunities, self-directed learning, safety and nursing care quality, quality of the tutorial strategies, competences learned and supervision by a clinical nurse). In contrast, being male was associated with a perception of less opportunity to discuss ethical issues. Conclusion: Nursing faculties should assess the clinical environment prerequisites of the settings as a context of student experience before deciding on their accreditation. Moreover, the nursing faculty and nurse managers should also enhance competence with regard to discussing ethical issues with students among clinical nurses by identifying factors that hinder this learning opportunity in daily practice. (shrink)

The classification of algebraic surfaces by the Italian School of algebraic geometry is universally recognized as a breakthrough in 20th-century mathematics. The methods by which it was achieved do not, however, meet the modern standard of rigor and therefore appear dubious from a contemporary viewpoint. In this article, we offer a glimpse into the mathematical practice of the three leading exponents of the Italian School of algebraic geometry: Castelnuovo, Enriques, and Severi. We then bring into focus their distinctive conception of (...) rigor and intuition. Unlike what is often assumed today, from their perspective, rigor is neither opposed to intuition nor understood as a unitary phenomenon – Enriques distinguishes between small-scale rigor and large-scale rigor and Severi between formal rigor and substantial rigor. Finally, we turn to the notion of mathematical objectivity. We draw from our case study in order to advance a multi-dimensional analysis of objectivity. Specifically, we suggest that various types of rigor may be associated with different conceptions of objectivity: namely, objectivity as faithfulness to facts and objectivity as intersubjectivity. (shrink)

In this article, we tackle the epistemological and ethical issues related to the use of race concepts in the genomics of sport performance and sport-related concussion (SRC). In the first part of the article, we show how the concept of race is ubiquitous in scientific literature, besides the fact that ‘race’ as other analogous population descriptors like ‘ancestry’ and ‘continent’ carry ancestral genetic heterogeneity and therefore they cannot be used to infer any kind of genetic or physiological property. Then, we (...) investigate the question of whether genomics research focusing on racial categories and race-specific genes of sport performance and of risk of health outcomes due to repetitive head impacts (RHI) is justified from an epistemological point of view, arguing that it is not; we show that the evidence supporting the existence of genetic variants determining an elite athlete status or a predisposition to health outcomes after SRC is scarce, and the use of racial categories (e.g. African or Black, Caucasian or White, Asian, etc.) as proxies for genetic variants associated with an elite athlete status/a predisposition to health outcomes after SRC is ill-conceived. In the second part of the article, we analyze the main ethical issues concerning the reification of race concepts in sport genomics, also considering the more general issue of the ethical and social impact of the use of a genetic framework in the explanation of individual differences in sport performance and SRC. (shrink)

Background The 2020-2021 coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is just the latest epidemic event that requires us to rethink and change our understanding of health. Health should no longer be conceived only in relation to human beings, but in unitary terms, as a dimension that connects humans, animals, plants, and the environment (holistic view, One Health). In general, alterations occurring in this articulated chain of life trigger a domino effect. Methodology In this paper, we review the One Health paradigm in the light (...) of the Covid-19 pandemic and distinguish two approaches within it that might be dubbed the Prudent one and the Radical one. Each approach is structured in three levels – epistemological, medical, and ethical. Results In this way, we show how we humans can better address the pandemic today and how, in the future, we can treat the whole living system better, by renouncing our anthropocentric perspective on health. Conclusion We hold that the Prudent approach can be very helpful, and we discuss the medical and ethical issues related to it. We also consider the Radical view and the epistemological turn it requires compared to the Prudent one. (shrink)

This work aims to analyze complex noun phrases of the qualitative binominal kind (an N of an N) in a Southern Italo–Romance language, namely Apulian. The principle of compositionality – even if it represents a good working hypothesis for syntactic analysis – faces several challenges with linguistic expressions such as idioms (with which binominal qualitatives share several properties), whose meaning is not yielded compositionally (Szabò, 2004). The data under analysis here are particularly interesting for two main reasons. The first pertains (...) to the nature of the preposition, and whether it is an a priori specified element depending on the syntactic embedding; two main working hypotheses are found: Den Dikken (2006) posits two different derivations, one for binominal qualitative of and one for genitive of. On the other hand, Kayne (1994) posits a unitary derivation for both instances of the preposition. The second reason pertains to the problem of the overall interpretation of the phrase, i.e., an intersectional interpretation of the predicate and the subject of the predication, and the focus/topic subdivision in the phrase (Villalba, 2007): the interpretation depends on the marked order of the predicate with respect to the subject. Given that N1 is a predicate and usually an adjectivized noun or a nominalized adjective and that in southern Italo–Romance only few adjectives can precede a noun, cases in which the predicate precedes the noun can be considered as displaying a marked order. Even though the case of the preposition might seem a challenge for compositionality, it will be shown that a proper characterization of such an element confirms that compositionality can still account for instances such as those of binominal qualitatives. (shrink)

Number facts are commonly assumed to be verbally stored in an associative multiplication fact retrieval network. Prominent evidence for this assumption comes from so-called operand-related errors (e.g. 4 × 6 = 28). However, little is known about the development of this network in children and its relation to verbal and non-verbal memories. In a longitudinal design, we explored elementary school children from grades 3 and 4 in a multiplication verification task with the operand-related and -unrelated distractors. We examined the contribution (...) of multiplicative fact retrieval by verbal and visuo-spatial short-term and working memory. Children in grade 4 showed smaller reaction times in all conditions. However, there was no significant difference in errors between grades. Contribution of verbal and visuo-spatial working memory also changed with grade. Multiplication correlated with verbal working memory and performance in grade 3 but with visuo-spatial working memory and performance in grade 4. We suggest that the relation to verbal working memory in grade 3 indicates primary linguistic learning of and access to multiplication in grade 3 which is probably based on verbal repetition of the multiplication table heavily practiced in grades 2 and 3. However, the relation to visuo-spatial semantic working memory in grade 4 suggests that there is a shift from verbal to visual and semantic learning in grade 4. This shifting may be induced because later in elementary school, multiplication problems are rather carried out via more written, i.e., visual tasks, which also involve executive functions. More generally, the current data indicates that mathematical development is not generally characterized by a steady progress in performance; rather verbal and non-verbal memory contributions of performance shift over time, probably due to different learning contents. (shrink)

Due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, global economies have suffered an exogenous shock never seen before with a strong economic and psychosocial impact on organizations. Italy, in the context of the research, has been severely affected. The economic crisis has mainly affected women. In this scenario, entrepreneurial perceived success (objective and subjective) is influenced by increasingly burdensome job demands that entrepreneurs have to face up. Using the job demand-resources model, the study aims to broaden the knowledge of the (...) determinants of entrepreneurial perceived success in the current emergency moment. In particular, as regards of the demands, alongside the specific entrepreneurial demands (time demands, uncertainty and risk, and responsibility), we also decided to include the negative interface family–work in both directions from-family-to-work (NEGWIF) and from-work-to-family (NEGFIW). Regarding the resources, we considered entrepreneurial self-efficacy (researching, planning, marshaling, implementing people, and implementing financial), proactive and elaborate social strategies (SS), and both directions of the positive interface: from-family-to-work (POSWIF) and from-work-to-family (POSFIW). All participants are women entrepreneurs (N= 137) who have completed a self-report questionnaire. We explored the associations between demands, resources, and the dimensions of success through hierarchical regressions. As for the demands, time demands, uncertainty and risk, NEGWIF, and NEGFIW negatively influenced the perceived entrepreneurial success. Regarding resources, planning, implementing financial, proactive and elaborate SS positively influenced the perceived entrepreneurial success. (shrink)

Giacomo Leopardi, a major Italian poet of the nineteenth century, was also an expert in evil to whom Schopenhauer referred as a “spiritual brother.” Leopardi wrote: “Everything is evil. That is to say, everything that is, is evil; that each thing exists is an evil; each thing exists only for an evil end; existence is an evil.” These and other thoughts are collected in the Zibaldone, a massive collage of heterogeneous writings published posthumously. Leopardi’s pessimism assumes a polished form in (...) his literary writings, such as Dialogue between Nature and an Islander (1824)—an invective against nature and the suffering of creatures within it. In his last lyric, Broom, or the flower of the desert (1836), Leopardi points to the redeeming power of poetry and to human solidarity as placing at least temporary limits on the scope of evil. (shrink)

In this paper, we present one of the main starting points of naturalism in ethics: Geach’s challenge against non-cognitivism. We try to find an answer to Geach’s challenge in the notion of family resemblance applied to ethics. In doing so we recover a not much-discussed influence of Moore on Wittgenstein’s conception of family resemblance, which leads us to define Wittgenstein as non-non-cognitivist in ethics. -/- Pre print (some changes in the published edition).

The aim of this paper is to single out four main kinds of moralism, which might be associated to virtue ethics, and to offer a virtue-ethical response to each. By doing so, I aim at defending virtue ethics, properly understood, from the intrinsic danger of a moralistic drift. I begin by proposing a definition of moralism and a list of its main forms. Then, I list the main features of the virtue-ethical perspective I embrace, and finally, I argue that such (...) normative approach can prevent a moralistic drift. Thus, I conclude that a virtue-ethical approach, thanks to its capacity of reconciling reasons and motives, and to its proposing an agent-related perspective on morality, has an advantage in presenting moral requirements in a non-moralistic fashion. (shrink)

In EN II, 1108 9-1108 b10 e più estesamente in EN IV, 1126b 10-1128b 9 Aristotele analizza tre virtù (amichevolezza, sincerità e arguzia) che, coinvolgendo il linguaggio e il senso dell’umorismo, riguardano quell’aspetto fondamentale della natura umana che è la socialità, al punto che pare giustificato l’utilizzo dell’etichetta “virtù sociali” per riferirsi ad esse. Tali virtù, infatti, rappresentano le eccellenze nell’ambito dei rapporti sociali non connotati da affetto e amicizia, ma caratterizzati da un legame ben definito, sufficiente a giustificare l’emergere (...) di virtù peculiari. Questo legame è la cittadinanza: la comune appartenenza a una stessa città genera una frequentazione che, per quanto formale o comunque non sentimentalmente connotata, è opposta all’estraneità. C’è un fine comune che regge la polis, in forza del quale ogni estraneità è vinta, e di cui l’amichevolezza reciproca, l’esigenza di una veridicità nei rapporti, e persino la moderazione ironica nello scherzare e nel fare battute sono segno inequivocabile. Aristotele pertanto tematizza una sfera ben precisa dei rapporti sociali, e ne stabilisce le eccellenze: ciò significa che questa sfera ha una sua specificità e consistenza e di conseguenza anche che questo gruppo di virtù ha una sua autonomia. (shrink)

Going beyond Enlightenment critiques of ancien régime justice, historians are now exploring its distinctive procedures; courtrooms have become a fundamental site for recapturing early modern political and social dynamics. Historians of science and medicine can benefit too. Serving as expert witnesses was prominent among the activities of medical practitioners; and, especially in Continental Europe, natural and medical knowledge was routinely presented and contested in tribunals. This essay aims to promote further research on the resulting wealth of manuscript and printed sources (...) that give access to crucial social and epistemological issues. The voices of different actors, preserved in trial records, can extend our histories of the body. The relations among medical practitioners, and with the legal authorities, provide a hitherto neglected context within which to understand contemporary epistemological debates, from claims and challenges to expertise to the definition and production of evidence, including the status of signs, personal observation, and tests. (shrink)

After a brief introduction about the problem of leopardian sources, I wish to introduce here a description of the diffusion of Addison’s theories about the Imagination in Italy at the time of Leopardi, trying to highlight their influence on his thinking and his philosophy. The third chapter is dedicated to the analysis of an important excerpt of the Zibaldone where Leopardi quotes Addison and his Catone to introduce an interesting reflection about the pleasure of beauty and the role of imagination, (...) almost as a way to face Addison issues.This excerpt represents an occasion to compare the theories of Addison and Leopardi about Aesthetics and also the similarities and the differences between them. The last part of the paper is dedicated to the results of the analysis and the conclusions. (shrink)

The phenomenon of moral transformation, though important, has received little attention in virtue ethics. In this paper we propose a virtue-ethical model of moral transformation as character transformation by tracking the development of new identity-defining (‘core’) character traits, their expressions, and their priority structure, through the change in what appears as possible or impossible to the moral agent. We propose that character transformation culminates when what previously appeared as morally possible to the agent now appears impossible, i.e. unconceived and unthinkable, (...) moving through stages of transformation where some possibilities gradually disappear while others open up. While we show an example of moral transformation towards virtue, we allow that such transformation can occur in the opposite direction, hence we make claims about ‘character traits’ rather than virtues of vices. Through the example of former slave-trader Rodrigo’s transformation in the film The Mission, we follow the parallel development of new objects of value and ways of valuing (with respect to a group of indigenous people of South America) with the closing down of the possibility of disrespecting and harming them, to the end-point of transformation, where allowing their capture is for Rodrigo both unconceived and, when conceived, unthinkable. (shrink)

Can literature help us in a time of crisis? Yes, in many and unexpected ways, as Simone Weil’s literary work shows. Reading Weil’s unfinished tragedy Venice Saved in the context of her poetry, philosophy and politics, we argue that it is an example of literary work that can engender transformation, for three reasons: its presentation and encouragement of attention to beauty; its tragic tension, forcing a deeper vision of the world; and its use of the poetic word. These elements, we (...) conclude, make literature a prime tool for inner and outer transformation, especially when everything seems to be lost. (shrink)

The purpose is to study the strength of Ramsey’s Theorem for pairs restricted to recursive assignments ofk-many colors, with respect to Intuitionistic Heyting Arithmetic. We prove that for every natural number$k \ge 2$, Ramsey’s Theorem for pairs and recursive assignments ofkcolors is equivalent to the Limited Lesser Principle of Omniscience for${\rm{\Sigma }}_3^0$formulas over Heyting Arithmetic. Alternatively, the same theorem over intuitionistic arithmetic is equivalent to: for every recursively enumerable infinitek-ary tree there is some$i < k$and some branch with infinitely many (...) children of indexi. (shrink)

Occupational Health Nursing (OHN) has followed a complex path to build and strengthen its theoretical basis. Starting with Public Health core principles, theories were shaped by the dualism of person worker and working environment, where sometimes the centre of the thought was given to the latter and other times to the former. The problem was not much on such conflict but on the definition of the correct OHN focus and whether genuine nursing knowledge was being applied. We are worried that (...) other disciplines radically influenced the theoretical path taken by OHN theorists. To approach this problem, a unitary‐transformative perspective can help us describe and analyse this phenomenon and engage scholars to reflect upon the accurate epistemological focus of OHN. We aimed to deepen this reflection and uncover a new OHN theoretical focus. (shrink)

BackgroundStudies and meta-analyses found individual, meso and micro-social factors that are associated with individual well-being, as well as a positive socio-emotional climate or collective well-being.AimThis article simultaneously studies and examines these factors of well-being.MethodWell-Being is measured as a dependent variable at the individual and collective level, as well as the predictors, in three cross-sectional and one longitudinal studies. Education and social intervention workers from Chile, Spain and Uruguay participate; a subsample of educators from the south central Chile and from Chile, (...) Uruguay and Spain ; workers from organizations in Latin America and Southern Europe, military cadets from Argentina ; and teams from Spanish companies.ResultsIndividual and collective well-being indicators were related, suggesting that the emotional climate as a context improves personal well-being. Individual factors, psychosocial factors were positively associated with personal well-being in education and social intervention context. Organizational dynamic or transformational culture is directly and indirectly associated with individual well-being through previously described psychosocial factors. Group processes such as internal communication and safe participation, task orientation or climate of excellence as well as leadership style that reinforces participation and belonging, were positively associated with collective well-being in labor and military context and predict team work socio-emotional climate in a longitudinal study- but were unrelated to individual well-being. Transformational leadership plays a mediating role between functional factors and social-emotional climate in work teams. Organizational role autonomy, functional organizational leadership, integration and resources were associated with collective well-being in organizations. Organizational leadership moderates the relationship between task orientation and collective well-being in military context.ConclusionIndividual and microsocial factors influence personal well-being. Meso level factors favorable to well-being through processes which reinforce social belonging, influence directly collective well-being and indirectly personal well-being. Leadership that reinforces participation and belonging play a central role for emotional climate. Stress and emotional climate playing an important pivotal role for psychological well-being. (shrink)

This article examines two recent examples of feminist dystopias: Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God and Leni Zumas’s Red Clocks. True to their genre, these novels act as w...