The article considers approaches in order to study large municipal entities and their economic potential. The authors specify that large municipal entities in modern conditions have a multifunctional structure, so they propose an interdisciplinary approach to their study. The article discusses such approaches to analyzing large municipalities as: philosophical; research from the perspective of social sciences and the humanities (political science, sociological, psychological, historiographic and ethnographic approaches). The authors analyze large municipalities from the perspective of the geographical approach; urban theory; (...) urban planning and architecture. The problem of studying large municipalities in the legal sciences is separately investigated. With the help of the economic approach the authors show that at the core of urbanization and the emergence of large municipalities there are three effects: comparative advantage, concentration effect, and localization effect. The authors give classification of large municipalities. The authors propose a systematic approach to analyzing large cities, representing the unity of the functional approach, open systems methodology and the factor approach. Under the latter, it is proposed to understand the economic potential of the city, which presupposes the possibility of efficient use of available resources and their maximum inclusion in social reproduction in order to meet the needs of the municipality population. The authors substantiate the classification of the economic potential of a large municipal formation, which consists of: the resource (basic and used), innovative and infrastructural potentials. (shrink)

A model is computable if its domain is a computable set and its relations and functions are uniformly computable. Let be a computable model and let R be an extra relation on the domain of . That is, R is not named in the language of . We define to be the set of Turing degrees of the images f under all isomorphisms f from to computable models. We investigate conditions on and R which are sufficient and necessary for to (...) contain every Turing degree. These conditions imply that if every Turing degree 0″ can be realized in via an isomorphism of the same Turing degree as its image of R, then contains every Turing degree. We also discuss an example of and R whose coincides with the Turing degrees which are 0′. (shrink)

v. 1. Commentaria in Aristotelem Armeniaca-Davidis Opera.

The purpose of this article is to identify how modern Russia can build good relationships between multiple Russian religions and the state. At present there are many obstacles standing in the way of achieving this goal. The article includes a great many statistics, and discusses political, social, and religious views of the issue.The working Russian Constitution provides major legal provisions for democratic relationships between religions and the state. The law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations” (1997) clarified constitutional provisions. (...) It should not forgotten that Russia is a secular state claiming to respect all religions. No doubt the supremacy of Orthodoxy in Russia after 1721 and the extreme atheism that arose in the Soviet Union after 1917 influenced people’s minds greatly. While the countries in Western Europe were moving from religiosity to secularism, Russia was developing the other way around. But while respecting all religions, Russia should not forget to be mindful of extremism. Religious associations themselves are likewise uneasy about the danger presented by certain mystic, neo-pagan, and destructive sects. The author argues that the best compromise between religions and the modern Russian state canonly be achieved on the basis of equality and freedom. (shrink)

Ontologies represent the standard way to model the knowledge about specific domains. This holds also for the legal domain where several ontologies have been put forward to model specific kinds of legal knowledge. Both for standard users and for law scholars, it is often difficult to have an overall view on the existing alternatives, their main features and their interlinking with the other ontologies. To answer this need, in this paper, we address an analysis of the state-of-the-art in legal ontologies (...) and we characterise them along with some distinctive features. This paper aims to guide generic users and law experts in selecting the legal ontology that better fits their needs and in understanding its specificity so that proper extensions to the selected model could be investigated. (shrink)

Bortolotti argues that we cannot distinguish delusions from other irrational beliefs in virtue of their epistemic features alone. Although her arguments are convincing, her analysis leaves an important question unanswered: What makes delusions pathological? In this paper I set out to answer this question by arguing that the pathological character of delusions arises from an executive dysfunction in a subject’s ability to detect relevance in the environment. I further suggest that this dysfunction derives from an underlying emotional imbalance—one that leads (...) delusional subjects to regard some contextual elements as deeply puzzling or highly significant. (shrink)

Traditionally, Gender Studies differentiates between the term “sex”, indicating sex differences from the biological point of view, and the term “gender”, indicating that sex differences are social and cultural constructions. In this paper I discuss some recent neuroscientific theses concerning sexual differences to sketch a path of inquiry that goes beyond the logic of the separation of biological and cultural studies.

Poverty and inequality are not the sole sources of (global) injustices. And the latter are not only a matter of fair distribution. Identity and cultural asymmetries, often articulated along political and economic lines, relocate and reshape the struggle against subordination to include new areas of contestation, such as gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, culture, religion and nationality.

The question of liberty has given rise to so many reflections over the millennia that it would be like counting leaves in Vallombrosa to try to give an account of it. We have therefore proposed to consider a specific declination of it, interwoven with that constellation which includes concepts such as autonomy, agency, self-determination, will, and desire. We speak of so-called ‘positive’ liberty. All the essays proposed here elaborate on this theme with different tones, producing a surprising polyphony of texts (...) that seem to evoke each other. (shrink)

According to several researchers, core affect lies at the foundation of our affective lives and may be characterized as a consciously accessible state combining arousal (activated-deactivated) and valence (pleasure-displeasure). The interaction between these two dimensions is still a matter of debate. In this paper we provide a novel hypothesis concerning their interaction, by arguing that subjective arousal levels modulate the experience of a stimulus’ affective quality. All things being equal, the higher the arousal, the more a given stimulus would be (...) experienced as pleasant (or unpleasant). While marshaling some preliminary evidence in favor of this hypothesis, we also show how it might be relevant in reframing our conception of depressive disorders (i.e., major and bipolar depression). (shrink)

In this contribution we focus on one phenomenon that has a special role in pragmatic theorizing, namely metaphor, and select two issues deriving from theoretical models and prone to be tested experimentally. The first issue concerns the comprehension procedure, that is whether access to metaphorical meaning goes through a mandatory literal stage and thus is indirect, as predicted by a Gricean inspired account, or rather is retrieved directly. The question will be discussed by referring to behavioral and neurophysiological studies, which (...) advanced our understanding of the time course of metaphorical interpretation but proved not fully suitable to answer the question. The second issue revolves around the cognitive architecture of the pragmatic system as it operates in the case of metaphor comprehension. We will illustrate the contribution that functional neuroimaging, coupled with clinical investigations can provide to fine-tune the architecture of the system responsible for metaphor processing. Some outstanding questions are highlighted in the final part, aiming at sketching our interpretation of the experimental pragmatic enterprise. (shrink)

Regulatory schema has shifted from government to governance-based systems. One particular form that has emerged at the international level is the multi-stakeholder voluntary code of conduct (MSVC). We argue that such codes are not only simply mechanisms by which various stakeholders attempt to govern the action of the corporation but also systems by which each stakeholder attempts to gain or retain some legitimacy goal. Each stakeholder is motivated by strategic legitimacy goal to join the code, and once a member, is (...) also required to assist in maintaining the institutional legitimacy of the code, resulting in “networked legitimacy.” We begin our analysis of these systems by first exploring the growth and structure of such MSVCs, and then building an analytical framework using strategic and institutional legitimacy as they apply to such MSVCs. We contribute to the codes of conduct literature by developing the construct of networked legitimacy from strategic and institutional legitimacy. We then apply our framework to the United Nations Global Compact, one of the predominant MSVCs today. In doing so, we: (1) demonstrate how different stakeholders are pursuing different types of legitimacy through their participation in the code, (2) examine the specific opportunities and risks in terms of what we have called “networked legitimacy” posed by the institutional design of actual MSVCs, and (3) create an argument for three pillars supporting the legitimacy of MSVCs. (shrink)

With every new recursive relation R on a recursive model , we consider the images of R under all isomorphisms from to other recursive models. We call the set of Turing degrees of these images the degree spectrum of R on , and say that R is intrinsically r.e. if all the images are r.e. C. Ash and A. Nerode introduce an extra decidability condition on , expressed in terms of R. Assuming this decidability condition, they prove that R is (...) intrinsically r.e. if and only if a natural recursive-syntactic condition is satisfied. We show that, while a recursive non-intrinsically r.e. relation may have a two element degree spectrum, a non-intrinsically r.e. relation which satisfies the Ash–Nerode decidability condition has an infinite degree spectrum. We also study several related decidability conditions and their effects on the degree spectra, including some conditions which are sufficient to obtain every r.e. degree in a spectrum. (shrink)

Existing evidence suggests that children from around the age of 8 years strategically alter their public image in accordance with known values and preferences of peers, through the self-descriptive information they convey. However, an important but neglected aspect of this 'self-presentation' is the medium through which such information is communicated: the voice itself. The present study explored peer audience effects on children's vocal productions. Fifty-six children (26 females, aged 8-10 years) were presented with vignettes where a fictional child, matched to (...) the participant's age and sex, is trying to make friends with a group of same-sex peers with stereotypically masculine or feminine interests (rugby and ballet, respectively). Participants were asked to impersonate the child in that situation and, as the child, to read out loud masculine, feminine and gender-neutral self-descriptive statements to these hypothetical audiences. They also had to decide which of those self-descriptive statements would be most helpful for making friends. In line with previous research, boys and girls preferentially selected masculine or feminine self-descriptive statements depending on the audience interests. Crucially, acoustic analyses of fundamental frequency and formant frequency spacing revealed that children also spontaneously altered their vocal productions: they feminized their voices when speaking to members of the ballet club, while they masculinized their voices when speaking to members of the rugby club. Both sexes also feminized their voices when uttering feminine sentences, compared to when uttering masculine and gender-neutral sentences. Implications for the hitherto neglected role of acoustic qualities of children's vocal behaviour in peer interactions are discussed. This article is part of the theme issue 'Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part II)'. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive analysis of the idea of libertas and its conflicting uses in the political struggles of the late Roman Republic. By reconstructing Roman political thinking about liberty against the background of Classical and Hellenistic thought, it excavates two distinct intellectual traditions on the means allowing for the preservation and the loss of libertas. Considering the interplay of these traditions in the political debates of the first century BC, Dr Arena offers a significant reinterpretation of the political struggles (...) of the time as well as a radical reappraisal of the role played by the idea of liberty in the practice of politics. She argues that, as a result of its uses in rhetorical debates, libertas underwent a form of conceptual change at the end of the Republic and came to legitimise a new course of politics, which led progressively to the transformation of the whole political system. (shrink)

The notions of at-risk and subthreshold conditions are increasingly discussed in psychiatry to describe mild, brief, or otherwise atypical syndromes that fail to meet the criteria for clinical relevance. However, the concept of vulnerability is still underexplored in philosophy of psychiatry. This article discusses psychiatric vulnerability to clarify some conceptual issues about the various factors contributing to vulnerability, the notions of risk and protection, and the idea that there are multiple ways of crossing the threshold to clinical relevance. My goal (...) is to lay the groundwork for a finer-grained discussion on psychiatric vulnerability that reflects the complex nature of mental conditions and illustrates the kind of thinking needed in clinical practice. (shrink)

We tested the plausibility of a cognitive-emotional model to understand the effects of messages framed in terms of gain, non-loss, non-gain, and loss, and related to the health consequences of red/processed meat consumption. A total of 544 Italian participants reported their attitude toward reduced red/processed meat consumption and intention to eat red/processed meat. One week later, participants were randomly assigned to four different message conditions: gain messages focused on the positive health outcomes associated with low meat consumption; non-loss messages focused (...) on the avoided negative health outcomes associated with low meat consumption; non-gain messages focused on the missed positive health outcomes associated with high meat consumption; loss messages focused on the negative health outcomes associated with high meat consumption. After reading the messages, participants answered a series of questions regarding their emotional and cognitive reactions to the messages, their evaluation of the messages, and again their attitude and intention toward red/processed meat consumption. Comparing different multivariate linear models under the Bayesian approach, we selected the model with the highest plausibility conditioned to observed data. In this model, message-induced fear influenced systematic processing, which in turn positively influenced message evaluation and attitude, leading to reduced intention to consume red/processed meat. Vice versa, message-induced anger reduced systematic processing, which in turn negatively influenced message evaluation, and led to no effect on attitude and intention. The comparison among message conditions showed that gain and non-loss messages activated integrated emotional and cognitive processing of the health recommendation, while loss and non-gain messages mainly activated emotional shortcuts toward attitude and intention. Overall, these results advance our comprehension of the effects of message framing on receivers' attitudes and intentions. (shrink)

Objetivo: Analizar los riesgos psicosociales sufridos durante la pandemia por docentes. Método: Análisis descriptivo correlaciones y de comparación de medias. Muestra: 265 docentes no universitarios. Instrumentos: Cuestionario validado extraído de UNIPSICO Battery, Evaluación del Burnout- BAT y Escala de Inseguridad Laboral y cuestionario ad-hoc para medir recursos, información, medidas e impacto. Resultados: Inequidad seguido de sobrecarga son los mayores riesgos. Perciben falta de justicia organizacional, conflicto de rol e interpersonal, mayor carga de trabajo. Apoyo social alto. Recursos, información y medidas (...) insuficientes y un impacto moderado-alto en su desempeño profesional. Valores no significativos en cuanto a burnout y salud. (shrink)

ABSTRACTProviding an introduction to this special issue on the ancient notions of liberty and its modern perspectives, this essay contains, first, some reflections about the relation between the fields of ancient history and contemporary political theory. Building on the comments of the final roundtable with Kinch Hoekstra and Quentin Skinner, it then makes an attempt at extrapolating some theoretical understandings of liberty from a wide range of geographical and historical contexts covered in the contributions. Moving away from a strictly classical (...) Graeco-Roman focus, these include investigations from the second millennium BCE polities in the Levant to the Byzantine empire in the fifth-century CE. (shrink)

In his 2011 article “Global Bifurcation: The Decision Window” Ervin Laszlo notes that “we have reached a watershed in our social and cultural evolution. The sciences of systems tell us that when complex open systems … approach a condition of critical instability, they face a moment of truth: they either transform or break down.” In this article we provide our own vision of this Global Bifurcation. This work stems naturally from the research highlighted in the article titled “Transition to Crisis-Free (...) Development: A Myth or Reality?” that was published in World Futures in 2014. In our new article, we move forward suggesting that crises-free development is not only possible but is also very likely, and paradoxically the world is now going through the most challenging transition from one paradigm of development to another. Based on our previous research as well as the findings of the Fifth Report to the Club of Rome, we suggest reasons for the development and implementation of a megaproject featuring a new model of life so as to make the paradigm shift possible, exclude negative implications of the upcoming technological “singularity,” and foster the achievement of an objectively defined goal of development, and this should reasonably require support from and direct involvement of the United Nations. The mechanism for implementation of this model suggests coordinating interests of the government, society, and business communities on each level with interests of particular individuals. (shrink)

Le problème du temps tourmente et nourrit la philosophie depuis sa naissance. Dans ce cadre, une lecture métaphysique des textes de S. Leśniewski permet de développer un point de vue original sur certaines propriétés fondamentales du temps logique. En particulier, après une analyse minutieuse des œuvres philosophiques de jeunesse, et notamment de l’article « La vérité est-elle éternelle ou éternelle et sempiternelle? », nous montrons que le temps logique est, chez Leśniewski, inévitablement double : les propositions, dont la vérité doit (...) pouvoir être _éternelle_, sont des entités qui se développent dans un espace et dans un temps déterminés. De même, cette double temporalité apparaît dans l’Ontologie, un calcul logique des noms dont l’axiomatique est établie à partir du foncteur ε, connecteur logique à la fois inscrit dans un espace et dans un temps et néanmoins sans ancrage temporel. Ainsi, plusie... (shrink)

This article focuses on cultural misunderstanding in care relations, starting from the analysis of the effects misunderstanding causes in the relation between doctor and migrant patient. The Western medical model tends to be based on objective data, which can be diagnosed through more and more precise and detailed techniques, but it excludes human and cultural aspects of subjectivity and relation from care. This exclusion creates distance, which increases when doctor and patient do not share a cultural homogeneity but differ for (...) their language and the way they conceive their body, health, and disease. By showing some clinical examples, this contribution points out how specialized competence can cause dark areas of obscurity, disagreement, and misunderstanding, although being successful in many distressing situations. The interpretation of misunderstanding in the field of healthcare delimits our observation to disease, treatment, and the relation between doctor and patient, but the identification and comprehension of misunderstanding are possible also, focusing our attention on the organizational and institutional environment where misunderstanding takes place. (shrink)