Background and ObjectiveAbsolute angle represents the inclination of a body segment relative to a fixed reference in space. This work compares the absolute and relative angles for exploring biomechanical gait constraints.MethodsGait patterns of different neuromotor conditions were analyzed using 3D gait analysis: normal gait, Cerebral Palsy, Charcot Marie Tooth and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, representing central and peripheral nervous system and muscular disorders, respectively. Forty-two children underwent gait analysis: 10 children affected by CP, 10 children by CMT, 10 children by DMD (...) and 12 healthy children. The kinematic and kinetic parameters were collected to describe the biomechanical pattern of participants’ lower limbs. The absolute angles of thigh, leg and foot were calculated using the trigonometric relationship of the tangent. For each absolute series, the mean, range, maximum, minimum and initial contact were calculated. Kinematic and kinetic gait data were studied, and the results were compared with the literature.ResultsStatistical analysis of the absolute angles showed how, at the local level, the single segments behave differently depending on the pathology. However, if the lower limb is studied globally, a biomechanical constraint emerges.ConclusionEach segment compensates separately for the disease deficit so as to maintain a global biomechanical invariance. Using a model of inter-joint co-variation could improve the interpretation of the clinical gait pattern. (shrink)

Implanting deep brain stimulation (DBS) electrodes in patients with Parkinson’s disease often results in the appearance of a non-infectious, delayed-onset edema that disappears over time. However, the time window between the DBS electrode and DBS stimulating device implant is often used to record local field potentials (LFPs) which are used both to better understand basal ganglia pathophysiology and to improve DBS therapy. In this work, we investigated whether the presence of post-surgery edema correlates with the quality of LFP recordings in (...) eight patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease implanted with subthalamic DBS electrodes. The magnetic resonance scans of the brain after 8.5 ± 1.5 days from the implantation surgery were segmented and the peri-electrode edema volume was calculated for both brain hemispheres. We found a correlation (ρ = −0.81, p < 0.0218, Spearman’s correlation coefficient) between left side local field potentials of the low beta band (11–20 Hz) and the edema volume of the same side. No other significant differences between the hemispheres were found. Despite the limited sample size, our results suggest that the effect on LFPs may be related to the edema localization, thus indicating a mechanism involving brain networks instead of a simple change in the electrode-tissue interface. (shrink)

Ambientato nel Regno di Napoli del tardo Seicento, il saggio esplora la cultura dell'epoca attraverso la vicenda biografica dei membri dell'Accademia degli Investiganti, Tommaso Cornelio, Lucantonio Porzio, Francesco d'Andrea e Giuseppe Valletta. Attraverso l'analisi delle opere degli Investiganti, il testo mostra un quadro della loro riflessione filosofico-scientifica dovuta alla diffusione delle teorie atomistiche dei maggiori pensatori europei (Boyle, Descartes, Galilei, etc.) nei circoli partenopei--Back cover.

Nella seconda metà del Novecento la conoscenza dell'etica anglosassone in Italia è stata alquanto parziale. Si pensava che il mondo dell'etica di lingua inglese fosse stato dominato nel Novecento dallo scientismo neopositivista o pragmatista che non riusciva a concepire l'etica se non nella forma tecnicizzata dell'analisi del linguaggio o metaetica. In questo modo si è ignorata tutta una ripresa dell'etica normativa, in particolare di Kant e di Aristotele, o la ripresa del diritto naturale che ha tra i suoi principali riferimenti (...) storici il pensiero di Tommaso d'Aquino intorno alla legge. Questo volume presenta un quadro della filosofia pratica anglosassone degli ultimi cinquant'anni. (shrink)

The article analyzes the occurrences and meaning of the expression ratio practica in the works of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. A lexicographical survey shows that ratio practica appears in the philosophical vocabulary of Latin medieval philosophy starting from the second quarter of the thirteenth century. In particular, it occurs with some frequency in the early works of Albertus Magnus (before 1250), who uses ratio practica in connection with Augustine of Hippo’s theory of the double reason (ratio superior and ratio (...) inferior). Albertus seems to abandon the use of ratio practica when he begins to engage with the exegesis of Aristotle. Notably, he uses it negligibly in the two commentaries on the complete version of the Nicomachean Ethics, of which, before 1250, he only knew the fi rst three books (Ethica nova and vetus). In contrast, Thomas Aquinas frequently uses the expression ratio practica, but only in contexts related to the psychological process preceding action, which Aristotle had primarily described in the Nicomachean Ethics. In short, thanks to Thomas, ratio practica is characterized as an Aristotelian notion, while Albertus’s merit lies in introducing it into the philosophical vocabulary. (shrink)

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

Coll clearly advocates the Aristotelian notion that "moral principles are ultimately realized only in specific acts which human beings choose to carry out." He cites Washington, Lincoln, and Churchill as examples of leaders whose moral wisdom in political reasoning led to a statecraft explicitly derived from prudence.

To the extent that antibiotic resistance (ABR) is accelerated by antibiotic consumption and that it represents a serious public health emergency, it is imperative to drastically reduce antibiotic consumption, particularly in high‐income countries. I present the problem of ABR as an instance of the collective action problem known as ‘tragedy of the commons’. I propose that there is a strong ethical justification for taxing certain uses of antibiotics, namely when antibiotics are required to treat minor and self‐limiting infections, such as (...) respiratory tract infections, in otherwise healthy individuals. Taxation would allow a reduction in consumption (given certain behavioural economics assumptions) and/or ensure that individuals internalize or compensate for their contribution to the erosion of the common good of antibiotic effectiveness. I suggest that revenue from the tax could be used to fund conservation and innovation strategies. Taxation might be a coercive policy, especially for certain individuals, but the ethical case for coercive policies is very strong when the good to be preserved is important enough and when they force individuals to do something they have a moral obligation to do anyway. I argue that, in the case of mild and self‐limiting infections, individuals have a moral duty of easy rescue and a moral duty of fairness to make their contribution to the preservation of the common good of antibiotic effectiveness by foregoing antibiotics. I also suggest that taxing antibiotics in such cases is an all things considered ethically justified policy even if it would introduce inequalities in access to healthcare. (shrink)

This paper deals with structures ${\langle{\bf T}, I\rangle}$ in which T is a tree and I is a function assigning each moment a partition of the set of histories passing through it. The function I is called indistinguishability and generalizes the notion of undividedness. Belnap’s choices are particular indistinguishability functions. Structures ${\langle{\bf T}, I\rangle}$ provide a semantics for a language ${\mathcal{L}}$ with tense and modal operators. The first part of the paper investigates the set-theoretical properties of the set of indistinguishability (...) classes, which has a tree structure. The significant relations between this tree and T are established within a general theory of trees. The aim of second part is testing the expressive power of the language ${\mathcal{L}}$ . The natural environment for this kind of investigations is Belnap’s seeing to it that (stit). It will be proved that the hybrid extension of ${\mathcal{L}}$ (with a simultaneity operator) is suitable for expressing stit concepts in a purely temporal language. (shrink)

L'origine dell'anima umana secondo Dante.--La dottrina d'Alberto Magno sull'Inchoatio formae.--Alberto Magno e san Tommaso.--La posizione di Alberto Magno di fronte all'averroismo.--L'anima umana secondo Sigieri.--Anima e corpo nel pensiero di san Tommaso.--L'aristotelismo della scolastica e i francescani.--Individualità e immortalità nell'averroismo e nel tomismo.

Insofar as the so-called new theory of reference has come to be acknowleged as the leading theoretical paradigm in semantic research, it has been widely accepted that proper names directly refer to their designation. In advancing some of the most convincing arguments in favour of this view of names, S. Kripke has however left somehow undecided what the role of context is in determining which is the direct referent for a name. According to one interpretation of his thought, context has (...) only an external task in allowing one to simultaneously select a name and a given referent for it. Although this interpretation is the most faithful to Kripke's own intentions, there is another possible interpretation of what he says, according to which context more significantly permits one to determine a given referent at a time for one and the same name1. This different interpretation of the role of context is not marginal for the purpose of semantics, since it generates two distinct theoretical conceptions of what a proper name is. According to the former, the 'idiosyncratic' conception, proper names are individuated (at least) by their form and bearer. According to the latter, the 'linguistic' conception, they are individuated by their morphology only: i.e., by their being (syntactically) unstructured strings of letters. The two conceptions prove to be substantially different when homonyms are called into play. Insofar as both the Greek philosopher and the famous shipowner are called "Aristotle", we have two distinct, albeit homonymous, names for the idiosyncratic conception but only one name (as applied to two distinct individuals) for the linguistic conception2. In what follows, I will first sketch one of the most recent attempts to support for the idiosyncratic view, namely the one which traces back to Kaplan [1990] theory of words, and recall its merits over its cognate idiosyncratic theories. I will then try to give an argument in favour of the linguistic conception, by pointing out how the latter.... (shrink)

We argue that we should provide extra payment not only for extra time worked but also for the extra risks healthcare workers (and those working in healthcare settings) incur while caring for COVID‐19 patients—and more generally when caring for patients poses them at significantly higher risks than normal. We argue that the extra payment is warranted regardless of whether healthcare workers have a professional obligation to provide such risky healthcare. Payment for risk would meet four essential ethical requirements. First, assuming (...) healthcare workers do not have a professional obligation to take on themselves the risks, payments in the form of incentives would preserve autonomy in deciding what risks to take on oneself. Second, even assuming that healthcare workers do have a professional obligation to take on themselves the risks, payments for risk would create fair working conditions by avoiding exploitation. Third, payments for risk would make it more likely that public healthcare systems can discharge their institutional responsibility to provide healthcare in circumstances where healthcare workers may otherwise (perhaps legitimately) opt out. Fourth, payments for risk would guarantee an efficient healthcare system in pandemic situations. Finally, we address two likely objections that some might raise against our proposal, particularly with regard to incentives, namely that such payments or incentives can themselves be coercive and that they represent a form of undue inducement. (shrink)

We discuss whether and under what conditions people should be allowed to choose which COVID-19 vaccine to receive on the basis of personal ethical views. The problem arises primarily with regard to some religious groups’ concerns about the connection between certain COVID-19 vaccines and abortion. Vaccines currently approved in Western countries make use of foetal cell lines obtained from aborted foetuses either at the testing stage or at the development stage. The Catholic Church’s position is that, if there are alternatives, (...) Catholic people have a moral obligation to request the vaccine whose link with abortion is more remote, which at present means that they should refuse the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. We argue that any consideration regarding free choice of the vaccine should apply to religious and non-religious claims alike, in order to avoid religion-based discrimination. However, we also argue that, in a context of limited availability, considering the significant differences in costs and effectiveness profile of the vaccines available, people should only be allowed to choose the preferred vaccine if: 1) this does not risk compromising vaccination strategies; and 2) they internalize any additional cost that their choice might entail. The State should only subsidize the vaccine that is more cost-effective for any demographic group from the point of view of public health strategies. (shrink)

One is often told that sentences expressing or reporting mental states endowed with intentionality—the feature of being “directed upon” an object that some mental states possess—contain contexts that both prevent those sentences to be existentially generalized and are filled by referentially opaque occurrences of singular terms. Failure of existential generalization and referential opacity have been traditionally said to be the basic characterizations of intentionality from a linguistic point of view. I will call those contexts directional contexts. In what follows, I (...) will argue that this traditional conception is incorrect. First, the above characterizations do not provide both necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for directional contexts. Appearances notwithstanding, these characterizations are not the adequate linguistic counterparts of two elements folk-psychologically featuring intentionality, namely existence-independence and the possible apparent aspectual character of the intentional object, the target of a mental state endowed with intentionality. Indeed, they do not retain the prima facie ontological commitment to intentional objects the above elements contain. I will replace failure of existential generalization and referential opacity with other linguistic factors, namely success of mere existentially unloaded particular quantification and pseudo-opacity. I will contend that they provide both necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for directional contexts, and claim that these factors are the adequate counterparts of the above folk-psychological elements, precisely because they retain the prima facie ontological commitment to intentionalia those elements possess. (shrink)

The range of opportunities people enjoy in life largely depends on social, biological, and genetic factors for which individuals are not responsible. Philosophical debates about equality of opportunities have focussed mainly on addressing social determinants of inequalities. However, the introduction of human bioenhancement should make us reconsider what our commitment to equality entails. We propose a way of improving morally relevant equality that is centred on what we consider a fair distribution of bioenhancements. In the first part, we identify three (...) main positions in the debate on bioenhancement and equality, and we show how each of them fails to meet the demands of a serious commitment to equality. In the second part, we formulate a new proposal that we think better promotes equality of opportunities: people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds should be given access to bioenhancements while people from privileged socio-economic background should be prohibited from using them. We argue that those who are concerned about the inequality implications of bioenhancement should embrace this solution, rather than reject bioenhancement. (shrink)

In this paper we clarify some issues related to our previous article ‘After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?’.

The property of fundamental mechanical theories which allows one to treat compound objects as particles under suitable conditions is considered. It is argued that such a property, called composition invariance, is a nonreleasable property of any fundamental mechanical theory. The proof that standard quantum mechanics enjoys composition invariance is reviewed. Finally, it is shown that the requirement of composition invariance allows one to choose between two alternative forms of quantum mechanics with spontaneous localization.

Volume 20, Issue 9, September 2020, Page 62-65.

El actual discurso social sobre el mal es obsoleto e ineficaz. Vivimos bajo presupuestos cognitivos (parcialmente) fallidos que se resisten a sucumbir porque están en juego necesidades psicológicas unidas a un determinado concepto del ser humano, de Dios (o de lo que se esconde tras esta idea para los ateos) y de la realidad. Este artículo trata de desarrollar un nuevo enfoque del problema-enigma del mal que pone en cuestión diez paradigmas dominantes, planteando la necesidad de reconocer su existencia (en (...) torno al concepto de exceso) como requisito para plantarle cara como única opción moral, la de luchar con todas las armas disponibles, incluido un saber que aspira a relacionar e integrar diversos saberes en torno a un único objetivo: derrotar el mal o al menos intentarlo. (shrink)

Les Cahiers noirs de Martin Heidegger ont suscité des réactions si divergentes qu’il n’est pas illégitime de s’interroger sur la cause de cette plurivocité. Est-il possible qu’une série de textes produise des réactions si discordantes – de la minimisation à l’exaspération, du sarcasme à la caricature, du scandale à l’excommunication? Il est opportun de chercher dans les Cahiers noirs les racines de cette fragmentation. Cet article soutenir la thèse selon laquelle la structure et les contenus mêmes des Cahiers noirs porteraient (...) en eux une sorte de double contrainte entre le dessin antimétaphysique et la « rechute » dans une métaphysique puissance deux : une contradiction interne à la trame des Cahiers noirs, qui produit deux figures de pensée incompatibles entre elles mais qui représente le contenu philosophique le plus précieux de ces textes. (shrink)

Some thinkers distrust Darwinist explorations of complex human behaviors, particularly investigations into possible differences in valued skills between genders, races or classes. Such projects, it is claimed, tend to have adverse effects on people who are already disadvantaged. A recent argument by Philip Kitcher both clarifies and generalizes this charge to cover a whole genre of scientific projects. In this paper I try to spell out and analyze Kitcher's argument. The argument fails, I suggest, because some of its key premises (...) fail to convince. My analysis focuses on relevant facts about the role of inquiry in fallibilist contexts, the texture of belief in contemporary natural science, and the moral dimension of scientific research. (shrink)

A careful observation of the phenomenon of human life allows us to understand that from the beginning of the human life cycle until its destruction, the existence of each subject is deeply marked b...

Current research in Explainable AI includes post-hoc explanation methods that focus on building transparent explaining agents able to emulate opaque ones. Such agents are naturally required to be accurate and trustworthy. However, what it means for an explaining agent to be accurate and trustworthy is far from being clear. We characterize accuracy and trustworthiness as measures of the distance between the formal properties of a given opaque system and those of its transparent explanantes. To this aim, we extend Probabilistic Computation (...) Tree Logic with operators to specify degrees of accuracy and trustworthiness of explaining agents. We also provide a semantics for this logic, based on a multi-agent structure and relative model-checking algorithms. The paper concludes with a simple example of a possible application. (shrink)

In (1990), Jerry Fodor has defended a naturalized conception of meaning for Mentalese expressions which relies on the notion of asymmetric dependence. According to this conception, any naturalized theory of meaning must be able to account for the fact that meaning is robust, namely that any token of a certain Mentalese expression “x” retains the expression’s meaning, X, for any Y (≠ X) which happens to cause it. Now, this robustness of “x”‘s meaning can precisely be explained in terms of (...) the subsistence of an asymmetric dependence of any nomic connection between Ys and “x”‘s tokens on another nomic connection between Xs and “x”‘s tokens. According to Fodor, then, this relation between nomic connections can account in perfectly naturalistic terms for “x” meaning X, by providing a sufficient condition for such a meaning. In what follows, however, I will try to show, first, that the subsistence of asymmetric dependencies of the kind envisaged by Fodor is not enough for assigning meaning to a certain expression. Indeed, there are dependencies of this kind which are meaning-irrelevant. Secondly, I will claim that asymmetric dependence relations are not able even to support for the robustness of meaning. For there are cases in which according to the structure of these relations we would have to conclude that meaning is altered although robustness would require to have it unchanged. (shrink)

Some years ago, Howard Wettstein provided an original defense of the New Theory of Reference (NTR), the doctrine that singular terms such as names and indexicals are directly referential terms (DRTs), contributing only their reference to the truth-conditions of the tokened sentence they occur in. Wettstein maintained that in order to be semantically adequate, NTR does not have to account for what he calls Frege’s data on cognitive significance, those puzzling facts about language that prompt one to think that meaning (...) entails more than reference to (real) objects. He later put forward another, apparently paradoxical, thesis, namely that whatever this cognitive significance that explains Frege’s data is, it cannot be reduced to the representations one has in one’s mind. In what follows, however, I will first apply the notion of referential anaphorical transfer to mixed contexts in order to show that a New Theorist has to reject Wettstein’s initial thesis as it stands, although she may endorse a weaker version of it, one that especially tallies with his second thesis. I will further argue that, insofar as rejecting Wettstein’s initial thesis does not force the New Theorist to revert to a representional conception of cognitive significance, in particular one based on the notion of a mental file, the latter thesis is absolutely correct. It is thus fitted to become a cornerstone of the New Theory, whatever form of non-mentalistic interpretation the New Theorist might wish to give to the notion of cognitive significance. (shrink)

The introduction of the essay shows the impossibility of considering both China and Europe as univocal cultural identities schematically opposed. Starting from this, the main goal of the article is to put into comparison the specific artistic experience of Chinese and European painting. The historical moment taken into account includes some examples from European painting between the late Middle Ages and the Nineteenth Century as well as some from Chinese painting between the Ming and Qing era. From this comparison, the (...) article aims to highlight some elements of discontinuity between European ontology of art and Chinese pictorial conception. Western portrait is considered as an expression of the individual character of its creator, as well as of the subject represented and of the collective character of the historical era in which it is conceived. On the contrary, Chinese landscape painting is considered as a manifestation of the “emptiness” of the author’s “non-self” and, at the same time, as an expression of the dynamic processes of nature exceeding both the limits of the subject and those of the historical context. While in the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque, both the works of art and the handwork details condense the epochal taste (kunstwollen) and the spirit of the time (Zeitgeist), in China the historical and artistic processes are part of the process of Dao and express the flow of the supra-historical energy of qi. (shrink)

Over and above differences in terminology and cultural background, we try to show that the quantum physicist, David Bohm, and poststructuralist philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, shared a common aim in thought: to replace the classical image of reality, which is still dominant in our time, with a metaphysics finally in agreement with the concepts and results of relativity, quantum mechanics andcontemporary biology. For these two thinkers, the world of things that are well individuated in space and time, and ordered according to (...) mechanical relations of cause and effect, are nothing but the momentary expression of an “undivided wholeness in flowing movement” that constitutes its true ontological ground. By means of this new metaphysics, the world of daily experience and classical science appears as the explicit manifestation or development of implicate order that undivided wholeness contains virtually in itself at deeper and deeper levels of envelopment and imbrication. The explicit world is the result of a process of repetition, deceleration and temporal stabilization, triggered by the interaction of our measuring instruments – technical devices, sensory organs and motors, a priori forms and categories of the understanding – with moving wholeness, the thinking and observing subject of which represents a momentary and partial reflection rather than a solitaryand autonomous fragment. By criticizing the classical image of thecorrespondence/adequation of being and thought, Bohm and Deleuzeshow that the thought seeking to grasp this wholeness in flowingmovement inevitably interacts with it – by modifying, recreating andaccomplishing it in one direction rather than another. Thought thusresembles a dance that tries to harmonize with the universal flux thatgenerates and carries it away in a single movement with matter. **************************************************************************************************** ***********************Para além das diferenças de terminologia e de background cultural, tenta-se aqui mostrar que o físico quântico David Bohm e o filósofo pós-estruturalista Gilles Deleuze tiverem um objetivo comum de pensamento: substituir a imagem clássica da realidade, ainda dominante em nossa época, por uma metafísica finalmente de acordo com os conceitos e resultados da relatividade, da mecânica quântica e da biologia contemporânea. Para estes dois pensadores, o mundo das coisas bem individuadas no espaço e no tempo, e ordenadas conforme as relações mecânicas de causa e efeito, não é nada outro que a expressão momentânea de uma “Totalidade indivisa em devir” que constitui seu verdadeiro fundamento ontológico. Pelo meio desta nova metafisica, o mundo da experiência cotidiana e da ciência clássica aparece como a manifestação explicita ou desenvolvida da ordem implícita que a totalidade indivisa contém virtualmente nela mesma em níveis de envolvimento e de imbricação sempre mais profundos. O mundo explícito é o resultado de um processo de repetição, desaceleração e estabilização temporal, desencadeado pela interação de nossos instrumentos de medição -- aparelhos técnicos, órgãos sensoriais e motores, formas “a priori” e categorias do entendimento – com uma totalidade movente no qual o sujeito pensante e observante representa um reflexo momentâneo e parcial ao invés de um fragmento solitário e autônomo. Ao criticar a imagem clássica da correspondência/adequação entre o ser e o pensamento, Bohm e Deleuze mostram finalmente que o pensamento que intenta capturar esta Totalidade em devir interage inevitavelmente com ela, modificando-a, recriando-a e realizando-a em uma direção ao invés de outra. O pensamento se aparenta assim a uma dança que tenta se harmonizar com o flux universal que o gera e o leva em um movimento só com a matéria.Palavras-chave: Bohm; Deleuze; totalidade indivisa em devir; física quântica; pós-estruturalismo; ontologia. (shrink)

_Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe_ investigates the evolution of scholarly practices and the transformation of cognitive habits in the early modern age, focussing on the development of note-taking systems and data storage devices.

Coll sees in the Christian worldview three core values that can be used to discern moral political actions: the importance of history, the ubiquity of tragedy, and practical wisdom.