Resumen En este ensayo examinamos la concepción de interculturalidad a partir de las asimetrías epistémicas entre los conocimientos indígenas y los conocimientos de la escuela. El análisis considera una perspectiva crítica del concepto de interculturalidad y un enfoque epistémico-pedagógico indígena de generación de conocimientos educativos interculturales, basado en lo social y cultural. Argumentamos que el sistema escolar niega las racionalidades epistémicas que sustentan el sistema de conocimiento indígena y dificulta la articulación intercultural cuando se enfatizan solo los aspectos culturales propios. (...) Concluimos que el desafío para una interculturalidad crítica, en contexto indígena, es epistemológico estructural.In this paper, we analyze the notion of interculturality through the epistemic asymmetries between indigenous and school knowledge. The analysis considers a critical perspective of the concept of interculturality and an indigenous epistemic-pedagogical approach for the development of intercultural educational knowledge, based on social and cultural aspects. We argue that the school system denies the epistemic rationalities supported by the indigenous knowledge system and hinders intercultural articulation when only the own cultural aspects are emphasized. Finally, we conclude that the challenge for critical interculturality, in indigenous context, is structural-epistemological. (shrink)

My chapter deals with an important part of how Wolff pursued the normative ambitions of his ethics in giving practical guidance with regard to specific moral issues. I first consider how Wolff’s ethics tackles the duties to others, which traditionally represent a difficult issue for moral perfectionism. In this regard, I argue that Wolff’s strategy combines two aspects: (a) he includes in perfection non-active aspects and (b) operates with an agent-neutral notion of perfection, in spite of important passages that might (...) suggest differently. I then focus on Wolff’s treatment of the duties concerning veracity and lying, and show how it follows that general strategy. Combining its two aspects, Wolff examines specific moral issues by adopting a non-welfarist notion of benefit and harm as the standard that can give guidance about practical cases. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse the relation between the use of environmental data in contemporary health sciences and related conceptualisations and operationalisations of the notion of environment. We consider three case studies that exemplify a different selection of environmental data and mode of data integration in data-intensive epidemiology. We argue that the diversification of data sources, their increase in scale and scope, and the application of novel analytic tools have brought about three significant conceptual shifts. First, we discuss the EXPOsOMICS (...) project, an attempt to integrate genomic and environmental data which suggests a reframing of the boundaries between external and internal environments. Second, we explore the MEDMI platform, whose efforts to combine health, environmental and climate data instantiate a reframing and expansion of environmental exposure. Third, we illustrate how extracting epidemiological insights from extensive social data collected by the CIDACS institute yields innovative attributions of causal power to environmental factors. Identifying these shifts highlights the benefits and opportunities of new environmental data, as well as the challenges that such tools bring to understanding and fostering health. It also emphasises the constraints that data selection and accessibility pose to scientific imagination, including how researchers frame key concepts in health-related research. (shrink)

Recent animal research suggests that it may soon be possible to support the human fetus in an artificial uterine environment for part of a pregnancy. A technique of extending gestation in this way (“ectogestation”) could be offered to parents of extremely premature infants (EPIs) to improve outcomes for their child. The use of artificial uteruses for ectogestation could generate ethical questions because of the technology’s potential impact on the point of “viability”—loosely defined as the stage of pregnancy beyond which the (...) fetus may survive external to the womb. Several medical decisions during the perinatal period are based on the gestation at which infants are considered viable, for example decisions about newborn resuscitation and abortion, and ectogestation has the potential to impact on these. Despite these possible implications, there is little existing evidence or analysis of how this technology would affect medical practice. In this paper, we combine empirical data with ethical analysis. We report a survey of 91 practicing Australian obstetricians and neonatologists; we aimed to assess their conceptual understanding of “viability,” and what ethical consequences they envisage arising from improved survival of EPIs. We also assess what the ethical implications of extending gestation should be for newborn and obstetric care. We analyze the concept of viability and argue that while ectogestation might have implications for the permissibility of neonatal life‐prolonging treatment at extremely early gestation, it should not necessarily have implications for abortion policy. We compare our ethical findings with the results of the survey. (shrink)

Visual content captures attention, is easy to understand, and is more likely to be remembered. However, it is not limited to conveying informative content; it can also be used to propagate hate. While existing research has predominantly focused on textual hate speech, this study aims to address a research gap by analyzing the characteristics of visual hate, including its channels, intensity, sources, and targets, through a standardized manual content analysis. The hate images were collected through the citizen science approach of (...) data donation. Findings highlight that transgender individuals and migrants are the primary targets of visual hate. It reveals a presence of hate images not only on communication platforms but also in various intermediaries and journalistic media. Half of these images use factual or humorous methods to discriminate against individuals or groups, while an equal number adopt a highly aggressive tone. The study suggests governance measures to combat this issue effectively. (shrink)

The idea of autonomy, presented as Kant’s main achievement in the Groundwork and the second Critique, is hardly present in the ethics of the “Doctrine of Virtue”. Against Pauline Kleingeld’s recent interpretation, I argue that this does not amount to a disappearance of the Principle of Autonomy, but to an important development of the notion of autonomy. I first show that Kant still advocated the Principle of Autonomy in the 1790s along with the thought of lawgiving through one’s maxims. I (...) then argue that the role of autonomy in Kant’s later ethics has a different focus than in the previous works, which requires to connect autonomy with autocracy. Conversely, in the “Doctrine of Virtue”, autocracy, which Kant had employed before as an independent notion, is construed as a new layer of autonomy. What Kant there calls subjective autonomy is thereby considered as reason’s self-government in the maxims of each rational agent. -/- . (shrink)

Calls for evidence-based approaches to COVID-19 have sparked up discussions on the use of evidence for policy. In this note, we expand these discussions: while the debate has mostly focused on the types of evidence to be used for policy, we argue that the assessment of judgments involved in data practices and evidence production should play a central role in evaluating policy.

In various official documents, the European Union has declared its goal to pursue a citizen-centric governance of digital transformation. Through a critical review of several of these documents, here we show how “citizen-centric” is more a glamouring than a driving concept. De facto, the EU is enabling a federated data system that is corporate-driven, economic-oriented, and GDPR-compliant; in other words, a Digital Single Market (DSM). This leaves out societal and collective-level dimensions of digital transformation—such as social inclusion, digital sovereignty, and (...) environmental sustainability—which are acknowledged, but not operationalized, by the EU as pillars of a citizen-centric governance. Hence, the door is open to a complementary approach to the governance of digital transformation. We argue that, while a federated data model can constitute the tech-legal backbone of the emerging DSM, a commoning of data, as an ecosystemic approach that maintains a societal and collective outlook by default, can represent a complement to enact a truly citizen-centric governance. (shrink)

According to the so-called Lockean thesis, a rational agent believes a proposition just in case its probability is sufficiently high, i.e., greater than some suitably fixed threshold. The Preface paradox is usually taken to show that the Lockean thesis is untenable, if one also assumes that rational agents should believe the conjunction of their own beliefs: high probability and rational belief are in a sense incompatible. In this paper, we show that this is not the case in general. More precisely, (...) we consider two methods of computing how probable must each of a series of propositions be in order to rationally believe their conjunction under the Lockean thesis. The price one has to pay for the proposed solutions to the paradox is what we call “quasi-dogmatism”: the view that a rational agent should believe only those propositions which are “nearly certain” in a suitably defined sense. (shrink)

The aesthetic experience may be defined as people's interactions with, and reactions to, objects, places, but also to the environment. Most psychological perspectives on the aesthetic experience argue that it results from the coordination of different mental processes such as perception, attention, memory, imagination, thought, and emotion. Physiological and neurological responses are also involved. Aesthetic experiences can take place while we observe works of art in museums and galleries as well as in other contexts such as natural and built environments. (...) Looking at a landscape, walking in a park, meeting people in a square, and walking into a building that is architecturally appealing are examples of natural and built environments where we can experience beauty, pleasure, attraction, and interest, among other aesthetic reactions.Research on aesthetic experiences has a long history, and in recent decades, the field has experienced tremendous growth in the number of empirical studies conducted. One of the areas that researchers have yet to fully address is the influence of the context (natural and built environments) on aesthetic experiences. We refer to context according to three broad categories: Context as natural environments, context as built environments, and environments for aesthetic experiences.Context as natural environments: People show a basic tendency to associate the natural environment with positive evaluations. According to an evolutionary explanation know... (shrink)

Drawing from narratology and design studies, this article makes use of the notions of the ‘implied designer’ and ‘ludic unreliability’ to understand deceptive game design as a specific sub-set of transgressive game design. More specifically, in this text we present deceptive game design as the deliberate attempt to misguide players’ inferences about the designers’ intentions. Furthermore, we argue that deceptive design should not merely be taken as a set of design choices aimed at misleading players in their efforts to understand (...) the game, but also as decisions devised to give rise to experiential and emotional effects that are in the interest of players. Finally, we propose to introduce a distinction between two varieties of deceptive design approaches based on whether they operate in an overt or a covert fashion in relation to player experience. Our analysis casts light on expressive possibilities that are not customarily part of the dominant paradigm of user-centered design, and can inform game designers in their pursuit of wider and more nuanced creative aspirations. (shrink)

Da uno dei padri fondatori dell’Italia come nazione, un veloce e agile compendio su filosofia, politica risorgimentale e musica, centrato sulle idee e i gusti artistici mazziniani e ambientato nel panorama melodrammatico della prima metà dell’Ottocento, governato dalla maestosa figura di Gioacchino Rossini. Il volume è arricchito anche da un altro breve estratto mazziniano riguardante la musica, proveniente da Dell’Arte in Italia – A proposito del “Marco Visconti” di Tommaso Grossi (1835).

Orazio Ricasoli Rucellai is one of the leading eruditi of the second half of 17th-century Florence; he tried to keep alive Galileo’s contribution to science. Most of his Dialoghi filosofici have been published at the end of 19th century; among the unpublished dialogues dedicated to Timaeus we find a partial defence of Descartes’ metaphysics, which is edited in the Appendix. In particular, the topics at stake are the demonstration of God’s existence and of the immateriality of the soul in Descartes’s (...) Meditationes. The opponent of Descartes’s doctrine relies on Gassendi’s Obiectiones. Descartes’s doctrine of ideas completely detached from sense perception is dismissed as useless on a cognitive basis, and only a generic innatism is maintained, only as far as it can provide a proof of God’s imprint on human soul. (shrink)

‘Simulation Hypotheses’ are imaginative scenarios that are typically employed in philosophy to speculate on how likely it is that we are currently living within a simulated universe as well as on our possibility for ever discerning whether we do in fact inhabit one. These philosophical questions in particular overshadowed other aspects and potential uses of simulation hypotheses, some of which are foregrounded in this article. More specifically, “A Theodicy for Artificial Universes” focuses on the moral implications of simulation hypotheses with (...) the objective of speculatively answering questions concerning computer simulations such as: If we are indeed living in a computer simulation, what might be its purpose? What aspirations and values could be inferentially attributed to its alleged creators? And would living in a simulated universe affect the value and meaning we attribute to our existence? (shrink)

One of the main positions in the contemporary debate on joint attention is John Campbell’s relationalist account. This account has been welcomed as extremely promising in some strands of philosophy and cognitive science, but it has recently been subject to renewed criticism. In this paper, I take a sympathetic approach toward Campbell’s relationalism and I provide support for it by means of a naturalistic theory of the individuation of joint-attentional states. I start from examining some recent objections raised against Campbell’s (...) account. I suggest that, although these objections do not undermine the account, they point to questions that current relationalism leaves unanswered. Specifically, current relationalism does not provide an explanation of the psychological processes through which a joint-attentional experience is individuated, i.e., assembled and experienced, in such a way that it can constitute an immediate justification for a coordinated action. I propose that such an explanation can be found in a phenomenological-interactionist approach to shared intentionality. (shrink)

En este artículo se pretenden reconstruir las premisas fundamentales del pensamiento político de Dante, que plantea una nueva concepción de la relación entre Iglesia e Imperio. En particular, se señalan tres ideas fundamentales: la ciencia como perfección última del alma humana; la operación propia del género humano en la actuación de toda la potencia del intelecto posible; y, por último, la cuestión del fin natural y sobrenatural del hombre. A continuación, se analiza la presencia de la interpretación del aristotelismo de (...) la Facultad de Artes de la Universidad de París y del averroísmo presente en el planteamiento dantesco, en particular haciendo referencia a las diferentes interpretaciones de Gilson y Nardi. Finalmente, se proponen como clave de interpretación global del pensamiento político dantesco la cuestión del traspaso de las llaves de Jesús a Pedro y la relación entre naturaleza y gracia en disonancia con la interpretación de Tomás de Aquino. (shrink)

SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are indispensable allies in the fight against COVID-19. Behavioral and cognitive scientists have argued for taking advantage of insights from their fields of investigations in shaping anti-COVID policies. B&C scientists extensively discussed the methodological and practical issues that arise in translating B&C research results into policy interventions aimed to boost vaccination, Nevertheless, the same cannot be said for the ethical aspects. In the present work, we discuss the ethics of nudging vaccination in light of the “alien control” objection, (...) a kind of control whereby an agent has the power to influence the choice of another agent, and the latter cannot control such power. We proceed as follows. We begin by presenting several cases of mandatory policies avaiable to policymakers to boost the vaccine rate. Next, we point out that insights from B&C sciences can inform mandatory policies and open up ways to enhance them. In section 3, we focus on untraditional policy tools, viz. nudges. In the second part of the article, we introduce the debate on the ethics of nudges, focusing on the “alien control” objection and its relevance for the citizens’ freedom and autonomy. We therefore discuss the original point of the paper. We argue that, referring to nudging vaccination, a somehow neglected ethical issue posed by nudges emerges. Our point is that nudges do not exert exclusively an influence over a targeted behavior. Indeed, nudges impose as well a political influence by which citizens are treated as means to succeed in achieving a peculiar, and potentially controversial, political aim. We argue that, due to what we propose to call the “political multi-justifiability" of nudges, their political influence cannot be detected by citizens. This leads to the threat of alien control. In the last section, we draw some tentative conclusions, suggest a possible solution and its practical advantages. (shrink)

The evidence about asymmetries between the two hemispheres in human and non-human species may contribute to the current debate about language evolution. Here I present a selective review of the available data, limited to the macroscopic and microscopic anatomy of the main language areas. Both post-mortem and imaging studies confirm the presence of a leftward asymmetry in the Planum Temporale region in humans; in the case of Broca’s area the evidence is less consistent. The data about non-human primates also support (...) the presence of a leftward asymmetry of the PT area in apes and monkeys. Studies on large populations, combining quantitative structural imaging of cortex and white matter, functional imaging measures during language tasks, and detailed assessments of handedness are needed to assess the relevance of comparative brain anatomy data to the investigation of language evolution. (shrink)

This book offers a broad and timely perspective on research on olfaction and its current technological challenges. It specifically emphasizes the interdisciplinary context in which olfaction is investigated in contemporary research. From aesthetics to sociology, from bioengineering to anthropology, the different chapters discuss a wide variety of issues arising from olfaction research and its application in different contexts. By highlighting the overlaps between different areas of research, the book fosters a better communication between disciplines and leads towards a better understanding (...) of the role of olfaction in human perception and cognition. This inspiring read is of interest to students, researchers and practitioners in psychology, philosophy, bioengineering, and cultural studies. (shrink)

The relation between critical theory of society and philosophical anthropology is a very interesting and exciting but also problematic one. On the one hand, since Hork- heimer’s seminal essay Remarks on Philosophical Anthropology critical theorists have always expressed a clear distaste for anthropological speculation. On the other hand, notwithstanding Adorno’s aim in Negative Dialectics to “vetoe any anthropol- ogy” and criticize “the question of man [as] ideological”, he frequently mentioned the project of a “negative anthropology” or “dialectical anthropology” as an (...) important one. In this context, it is especially noteworthy that Adorno developed a significant philosophical and also human relation during the 1960s with Arnold Gehlen, one of the founders of 20th-century philosophical anthropology. In my contribution I will fo- cus on some aspects of the Adorno/Gehlen relation, mostly approaching this topic at a historical-philosophical level rather than at a strictly theoretical level, and offering some remarks on certain affinities between their aesthetic theories and also on cer- tain philosophical elements that emerge in a powerful and significant way from the public debates between Adorno and Gehlen that took place in the 1960s on radio and TV. (shrink)

Although Eco was deeply interested in music, his bibliography does not include a work entirely and exclusively dedicated to this theme. However, references to the problems of musical production, listening, interpretation and transmission are scattered in numerous essays, and are often implicitly or explicitly linked to the theoretical and compositional work of his friend and composer Luciano Berio, who in turn dialogued with the developments of Eco’s thought. This article reconstructs the intellectual relationship and friendship between Eco and Berio, originated (...) in the fifties at the Rai studios in Milan; then it examines the passages in Eco’s work dedicated to music, from The Open Work (1962) to Kant and the Platypus (1997). Finally, the article focuses on the controversies raised by the concept of open work, conceived by Eco starting from some musical works including Berio’s Sequenza I for solo flute (1958). With respect to the freedom left to the performer in the 1958 score, Berio’s rewriting in traditional notation in the Nineties seems to undermine at its roots the idea of openness which, according to Eco, distinguishes contemporary poetics. This circumstance provoked some musicological, philological and philosophical controversies, which allowed Eco (2012) to return to reflect on the concept of open work, specifying and clarifying the aesthetic conception underlying it. (shrink)

In this article, I attempt to set out and discuss the main trajectories of Umberto Eco’s thinking on the media and mass communication, based on a review of the author’s writings on these subjects. What emerges from the study is Eco’s attention to the public and to forms of reception; his attention to the relationship between media communication and reality, which involves investigating the concept of “truth” in an area such as that of mass communication; his cross-media view of information, (...) seen from a pluralistic and polyphonic viewpoint; the ethical tension that is always present in Eco’s work; his unfailing propensity for teaching. What emerges above all is the way in which the theoretical and practical tools used by Eco were developed in the context of reflections on the media and mass communication: an indication that alongside its “philosophical vocation,” Eco’s semiotics was always characterized also by an essential “empirical vocation.”. (shrink)

Summary Music has been primarily conceived as a temporal art. However, over the last two centuries or so, researchers across different disciplines including musicology, psychology, and philosophy, have been intrigued by the spatial nature of music and sounds, using spatial concepts to define music. This paper aims to demonstrate that an understanding of music perception from a temporal perspective inherently implies a certain spatial dimension. To do this, first, I briefly examine some key arguments that lead to conceiving sound perception (...) in temporal terms. At the same time, I highlight some of the limitations of a purely temporal account of sound perception which necessitate the incorporation of spatial considerations into the conceptualization of sound perception. Consequently, I move on to consider prominent spatial accounts of musical sounds that have been elaborated by psychologists, musicologists, and music composers. In conclusion, I discuss some of the challenges arising from the analogy between music and space, whether conceived in perceptual or cognitive terms. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a semantic analysis of non-specific uses of indexical expressions, such as "you" in typical utterances of "you just can't tell". My treatment employs independently motivated conceptual tools, such as the treatment of generics within Discourse Representation Theory, and the distinction between context of utterance and context of interpretation.

The oncological disease experience is counted as a wound in the body and mind attributable to a traumatic experience that fragments and disorients the person’s biography. The neoplasia leaves marks and scars in both somatic and existential level. The illness experience suggests to patient to look for meaning that cannot be unheard. The literature associating the concept of liminality in oncological disease to understand the process of meaning making. The definition of new horizons of meaning, generated by crossing the limen, (...) opens up a new self-awareness and worldview. The autopoietic dimension present in oncological disease reveals new scenarios of generativity and existential planning in the direction of self-realization in the cipher of the possible. The contribution presents the story of Anastasia, a 41-years-old nurse. A few months after her new marriage and close to a professional promotion, she receives the diagnosis of cholangiocarcinoma: a very aggressive, low-incidence, neoplasia, without specific therapeutic lines and with a negative prognosis. Anastasia’s words, thoughts and emotions, collected in the course of some testimonies in a university classroom, are analyzed and deciphered within the pedagogical paradigm, refering to the perspective of pedagogical problematicism and phenomenological pedagogy. (shrink)

When the first Conte government began converting the Five Star Movement and Lega’s manifestos into expenditure items for the 2019 budget law, it quickly became obvious that Italy’s macroeconomic po...

'L'arte è una consacrazione e un luogo protetto, in cui l'esistente dona all'uomo ogni volta in modo nuovo il proprio sino a quel momento recondito splendore, affinché in tale chiarore egli possa vedere più nitidamente e ascoltare in modo più distinto ciò che si destina al suo essere.' Così si esprimeva Martin Heidegger nelle battute iniziali di un suo saggio degli anni Cinquanta, in cui il filosofo tedesco si proponeva di risvegliare l'attenzione dell'uomo occidentale nei confronti della differenza abissale che (...) sussiste tra il sapere scientifico e quello spirito meditativo che sta a fondamento del pensiero, nonché dell'esperienza poetica dell'arte. In anticipo rispetto a ogni calcolo e alla sua capacità di pianificare il reale, ecco schiudersi una dimensione in cui il mondo si fa incontro, inaugurando la possibilità per l'uomo di un soggiorno improntato all'ascolto e al ringraziamento. Entro un simile spazio e tempo di apparizione il pensatore e l'artista sono allora chiamati a dare un nome e una forma a un evento che segna l'istante d'inizio di un cammino con cui ciascuno fa fronte al proprio destino all'interno di un orizzonte di senso a tutti comune. Al fenomeno dell'essere che il pensatore si incarica di mostrare, risponde la "parola" con cui il poeta nomina quell'elemento di integrità che pone l'uomo dinanzi agli dei entro il reciproco richiamarsi di terra e cielo. A loro modo il pensiero e il canto rendono omaggio a ciò che tutto concede, rendendo trasparente il dono primigenio dell'essere e interpretandolo in modo inaudito secondo affinità sempre più segrete. Ora, che cosa si prepara in questa 'seconda' origine che è l'arte?"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In the present contribution, dealing with the intellectual legacy of Michel Foucault forty years after his death, I offer an analysis of some possible relations between certain aspects of Foucault’s project of a history of sexuality, Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetic investigation of the experience of lovemaking, and some recent attempts to critically rethink sexuality in the context of feminist scholarship. My approach towards Foucault’s thinking in this contribution is not philological or attentively reconstructive but rather selective and interpretive. In the first (...) section, I briefly examine Foucault’s general view of sexuality as a “limit-experience”; then, in the second section, I specifically focus my attention on his (critical) analysis of “the penetration model”—an expression coined by Foucault in the context of his inquiry into Greco-Latin sexual culture. In the third section, I take into examination the important influence of Foucault’s aesthetics of existence on Shusterman’s somaesthetics and, in particular, on his book Ars Erotica. Finally, in the fourth section, I make reference—without any ambition of completeness or systematicity—to the question of the relation between Foucault’s thinking and contemporary feminism, focusing my attention on some recent proposals for a critical rethinking of sexuality by feminist scholars such as Bini Adamczak, Ilka Quindeau, Amia Srinivasan, Tamara Tenenbaum, and bell hooks. (shrink)

Le chapitre 13 de l’Épître aux Romains pose les bases sur lesquelles repose toute la conception du pouvoir dans la pensée politique médiévale. L’objectif de cet article est de reconstruire le processus de longue durée par lequel l’Occident latin a progressivement admis et théorisé la possibilité de désobéir aux autorités temporelles, bien que dans le cadre d’une théorie du pouvoir (à savoir la théorie paulino-augustinienne du pouvoir), qui semble ne laisser aucune place à la dissidence, conférant à chaque potestas une (...) origine divine et une nature providentielle. L’auteur retrace les principales étapes de ce processus : de l’idée que pour obtenir l’obéissance inconditionnelle de ses sujets, il faut se montrer « rex christianissimus » (protéger les personnes et les biens des ministres du Christ), à la difficile légitimation du tyrannicide chez Jean de Salisbury ; des pages de Thomas d’Aquin sur la déposition d’un souverain qui ne se soucie pas de la communis utilitas, à la reconnaissance explicite du pouvoir de destitution des seigneurs séculiers par certains théoriciens politiques des xiv e et xv e siècles. (shrink)