BackgroundHeavy media use has been linked to sleep problems in children, which may also extend to the infancy period. While international parent-advisory agencies, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, advise no screen time before 18 months, parents often do not follow this recommendation. Research on Italian infants’ early access to media is sparse, and only very few studies have investigated links with sleeping habits.MethodTo address this gap, we examined concurrent associations between parent-reported surveys of child technology use and sleeping (...) patterns. The Italian version of the 60 item Comprehensive Assessment of Family Media Exposure Survey, developed as part of a larger international study,, the Brief Screening Questionnaire for Infant Sleep Problems Sadeh, 2004) were completed online by 264 Italian parents of 8- to 36-month-olds and a subset completed the Parenting Stress Index Abidin, 1995) between April 2017 and April 2018.ResultsMore devices located in the child’s room and the more time spent watching TV or using an iPad were associated with less hours of sleep at night. Furthermore, more time spent watching TV or using a smartphone, as well as the number of devices in the room was associated with going to sleep later at night. Instrumental media use was associated with less sleep.ConclusionLike other countries, Italian infants have high levels of exposure to media, and differences in media patterns were associated with sleep patterns. Cultural factors influence both instrumental reasons for media use and sleep practices. Further research should explore how media use may serve to regulate emotion as a function of both contextual factors and individual differences. (shrink)

words compose a significant part of speech. Despite this, learning them is complicated. Abstract concepts collect more heterogeneous exemplars and are more detached from sensory modalities than concrete concepts. Recent views propose that, because of their complexity, other people are pivotal for abstract concepts’ acquisition and use, e.g., to explain their meaning. We tested this hypothesis using a combined behavioral and thermal imaging paradigm. Twenty-one Italian children determined whether acoustic stimuli were or not correct Italian words. Concrete terms yielded faster (...) responses than abstract ones: for the first time, this effect appears with response times in very young children. More crucially, the higher increase in temperature of the nasal tip suggests that, with abstract concepts, children might be more socially and cognitively engaged. (shrink)

Pierre Macherey’sHegel or Spinoza?suggests that Hegel was driven to his now legendary misinterpretations of Spinoza because he could not accept Spinozism without compromising his own philosophy. Macherey shows us a Spinoza that pre-emptively resists and challenges Hegel’s understanding of Spirit as Subject realising itself through self-negation and contradiction. This review draws out the central arguments in the book, and those arguments most salient for contemporary theories of capitalism and revolution, and points towards possible implications for Marxist theory.

Recent work has demonstrated how data-driven AI methods can leverage consumer protection by supporting the automated analysis of legal documents. However, a shortcoming of data-driven approaches is poor explainability. We posit that in this domain useful explanations of classifier outcomes can be provided by resorting to legal rationales. We thus consider several configurations of memory-augmented neural networks where rationales are given a special role in the modeling of context knowledge. Our results show that rationales not only contribute to improve the (...) classification accuracy, but are also able to offer meaningful, natural language explanations of otherwise opaque classifier outcomes. (shrink)

The present work deals with the quality issue in social ontology: the fact that social entities not only can exist or not exist, but can also be more or less achieved and be subject to degrees of existence, and the fact that social entities can be bearers of varieties of ways of existence, that is, there are several ways in which a social entity of a certain type can be realized. In accordance with phenomenological eidetics, I show that modifications of (...) essential connections involve lacks or variations of essential parts of entities, which, respectively, imply degrees of existence and varieties of ways of existence which “enhance” the existence of social entities, and I argue that the modification issue hits the core of the quality of existence issue. Lastly, I focus on the essential connection of tendency as another case in which eidetics provides meaningful insights into the existential quality issue in social ontology. (shrink)

While much ink has been spilt over the political importance of speech, much less has been dedicated to the political importance of silence. This article seeks to fill that gap. We propose the need for a robust, democratic right to silence in public life and argue that there are politically salient epistemic reasons for recognising that right. We begin by defining what silence is and what a robust right to silence entails. We then argue that the right to silence offers (...) two politically salient epistemic benefits. The first is that, if the right to silence is maintained, we can avoid the epistemic harm that may be caused when an individual is compelled to lie in public. The second is that the right to silence can protect marginalised individuals against the epistemic injustices that may arise when others are likely to misconstrue their speech. (shrink)

Entanglement theory posits that the interrelationship of humans and objects is a delimiting characteristic of human history and culture. This edited volume of original studies by leading archaeological theorists applies this concept to a broad range of topics, including archaeological science, heritage, and theory itself. In the theoretical explications and ten case studies, the editors and contributing authors: build on the intersections between science, humanities and ecology to provide a more fine-grained, multi-scalar treatment emanating from the long-term perspective that characterizes (...) archaeological research; bring to light the subtle and unacknowledged paths that configure historical circumstances and bind human intentionality; examine the constructions of personhood, the rigidity of path dependencies, the unpredictable connections between humans and objects and the intricate paths of past events in varied geographic and historical contexts that channel future actions. This broad focus is inclusive of early complex developments in Asia and Europe, imperial and state strategies in the Andes and Mesoamerica, continuities of postcolonialism in North America, and the unforeseen and complex consequences that derive from archaeological practices. This volume will appeal to archaeologists and their advanced students. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate ways to comply with justice in a liberal democracy. In order to do that, we sketch Rawls’s account of moral-consensus stability and discuss the alternative idea of stability reached through a modus vivendi. We defend modus vivendi as a way to achieve stability backed by a variety of reasons and even by ‘non-reasons’. By ‘non-reasons’ we mean alternative sources of motivation for compliance as a precondition of a stable coexistence. We focus on such sources, which (...) differ from reasons and beliefs, that are practices, shared values, and value experiences, in light of both a theoretical-political and a qualitative social-ontological perspective. We argue that individuals who experience the same values become collectives and even stable ones: the sharing of values creates social unity and makes collectives solid and resistant to individualistically centrifugal tendencies. (shrink)

I focus on empathy from an eidetic perspective, that provided by Edith Stein in her work On the Problem of Empathy and which I call eidetics of empathy. I suggest that the eidetics of empathy allows us to inquire efficaciously into the structure of empathy, and therefore into the relation between empathy on the one hand, and embodied personal identity and intersubjectivity on the other. I argue that the eidetics of empathy sheds light on the complexity, heterogeneity and also fragility (...) of the acts of empathy that we perform in our everyday life with respect to others, and provides us with the conceptual tools to address crucial questions such as: What is the specific and distinctive structure of empathy? What are the conditions of possibility of the performance of acts of empathy? Are there different fulfilment degrees of empathy? What role do living bodies play in the performance of acts of empathy? How is it possible to prevent and correct mistakes of empathy? I deal with these issues in making three points on the eidetics of empathy. My first point is that the eidetics of empathy allows us to understand empathy as one type of acts of perceiving others and their experiences directly and as a whole that is subject to variations of its parts – the limits of possible co-variations of its parts correspond to the essential structure of empathy. Secondly, I focus on the eidetic issue of the possible co-variations of parts of the empathy-type: the content and the degree of fulfilment and accomplishment of empathy acts, the layer of the person they address, the varieties of living beings with whom we can empathize. Thirdly, I argue that the eidetics of empathy exemplifies very well the ontologically qualitative issue of degrees of existence of any entity in relation to its eidetic paradigm, and it is a prime example of how phenomenological eidetics can be a qualitative ontology dealing with qualitative issues that are crucial in our everyday life. (shrink)

Due to the environmental and health impact of the private transport sector, social scientists have largely focused on psychosocial and contextual factors associated with people's choice over transport means. This study aims to contribute to this line of research by applying a user-centered approach, with the objective of taking into account the specific environmental and social context of the metropolitan area of Cagliari city. To accomplish this aim, four groups of people were matched according to their shared starting point: car (...) users vs. public transport users, and light-rail users vs. non-light-rail users. Groups were interviewed using a focus group method. Participants were invited to discuss their everyday travel experiences and to exchange their ideas on different sustainable and less sustainable means of transport. Both consolidated drivers/barriers in the field of environmental psychology and public transportation design features have been investigated. Other than highlighting the importance of socio-psychological factors to promote more sustainable transport choices like in previous studies, the present research offers an insight into how these aspects and factors are shaped and experienced in the narratives of residents. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to investigate around the life in the contemporary society, characterized by risks and catastrophes. What does mean to live fearing that in any moment a catastrophe could happen (a tsunami, an earthquake, a nuclear explosion)? Despite of the failure of science and public institutions in the prevention of the catastrophes, the question is the following: Can we use the catastrophe as a paradigm of the contemporary uncertain life, trying to mean it as a theme (...) of mediation? Can we use the catastrophe for developing a philosophy of the recognition of the other who has been involved in the same tragedy? (shrink)

Films, compared with emotional static pictures, represent true-to-life dynamic stimuli that are both ecological and effective in inducing an emotional response given the involvement of multimodal stimulation (i.e., visual and auditory systems). We hypothesized that a direct comparison between the two methods would have shown greater efficacy of movies, compared to standardized slides, in eliciting emotions at both subjective and neurophysiological levels. To this end, we compared these two methods of emotional stimulation in a group of 40 young adults (20 (...) females). Electroencephalographic (EEG) Alpha rhythm (8–12 Hz) was recorded from 64 scalp sites while participants watched (in counterbalanced order across participants) two separate blocks of 45 slides and 45 clips. Each block included three groups of 15 validated stimuli classified as Erotic, Neutral and Fear content. Greater self-perceived arousal was found after the presentation of Fear and Erotic video clips compared with the same slide categories. sLORETA analysis showed a different lateralization pattern: slides induced decreased Alpha power (greater activation) in the left secondary visual area (Brodmann Area, BA, 18) to Erotic and Fear compared with the Neutral stimuli. Instead, video clips elicited reduced Alpha in the homologous right secondary visual area (BA 18) again to both Erotic and Fear contents compared with Neutral ones. Comparison of emotional stimuli showed smaller Alpha power to Erotic than to Fear stimuli in the left precuneus/posterior cingulate cortex (BA 7/31) for the slide condition, and in the left superior parietal lobule (BA 7) for the clip condition. This result matched the parallel analysis of the overlapped Mu rhythm (corresponding to the upper Alpha band) and can be interpreted as Mu/Alpha EEG suppression elicited by greater motor action tendency to Erotic (approach motivation) compared to Fear (withdrawal motivation) stimuli. Correlation analysis found lower Alpha in the left middle temporal gyrus (BA 21) associated with greater pleasantness to Erotic slides (r38= –0.62,p= 0.009), whereas lower Alpha in the right supramarginal/angular gyrus (BA 40/39) was associated with greater pleasantness to Neutral clips (r38= –0.69,p= 0.012). Results point to stronger emotion elicitation of movies vs. slides, but also to a specific involvement of the two hemispheres during emotional processing of slides vs. video clips, with a shift from the left to the right associative visual areas. (shrink)

While a large body of research has provided quantitative data on children’s levels of happiness, positive emotions and life satisfaction, the literature reflects a dearth of studies that analyze these dimensions from a narrative and qualitative point of view. Folk and fairy tales may serve as ideal tools for this purpose, since they are concerned with several concepts scientifically investigated by research in the field of positive psychology, such as resilience, self-realization, personal growth and meaning in life. The aim of (...) the present study was to explore children’s well-being and positive emotions using an innovative narrative approach, which involved interviews and group discussions, as well as the analysis of fairy tales written and discussed in a group context. The sample included 95 school children who were asked to report and discuss in a group setting situations or experiences which triggered positive emotions and happiness in them. Guided by their teachers and a school psychologist, they were then asked to write their own original fairy tale drawing on the positive emotions that had previously emerged. Positive emotions were found to be triggered mainly by interpersonal relationships with peers as well as with family members. Hobbies and leisure time were also strongly associated with happiness and hedonic well-being, while personal fulfilment, self-esteem and goal achievement emerged as highly significant for children. In sum, the findings suggest that this school psycho-educative intervention based on narrative strategies provided useful information on children’s well-being and yielded positive feedback, the implications and possible further applications of which are discussed. (shrink)

A cavallo tra i due concili di Costanza e Basilea, che hanno fortemente influito sul giudizio della Chiesa in relazione alle donne visionarie, si staglia la figura di Francesca Bussa dei Ponziani. Le visioni politiche di Francesca rappresentano un fulgido esempio di come i modelli brigidini e cateriniani siano stati ripresi e rimodellati su un nuovo, mutato contesto storico. La sua consolidata autorità le consentì di ammonire a più riprese papa Eugenio IV riguardo alla sua partecipazione al concilio (...) di Basilea, intervenendo attivamente nello scenario religioso e politico romano. (shrink)

In this paper, I interview Francesca De Vecchi (Full Professor of Theoretical Philosophy in Vita-Salute San Raffaele University) about her qualitative ontology and its social and normative implications. If at the foundation of our lifeworld there are significantly qualitative experiences, phenomenology can investigate the most important contemporary issues, such as gender disparity, socio-virtuality depersonalizations and political urgencies.

At Columbia University in 1906, William James gave a highly confrontational speech to the American Philosophical Association (APA). He ignored the technical philosophical questions the audience had gathered to discuss and instead addressed the topic of human energy. Tramping on the rules of academic decorum, James invoked the work of amateurs, read testimonials on the benefits of yoga and alcohol, and concluded by urging his listeners to take up this psychological and physiological problem. What was the goal of this unusual (...) speech? Rather than an oddity, Francesca Bordogna asserts that the APA address was emblematic—it was just one of many gestures that James employed as he plowed through the barriers between academic, popular, and pseudoscience, as well as the newly emergent borders between the study of philosophy, psychology, and the “science of man.” Bordogna reveals that James’s trespassing of boundaries was an essential element of a broader intellectual and social project. By crisscrossing divides, she argues, James imagined a new social configuration of knowledge, a better society, and a new vision of the human self. As the academy moves toward an increasingly interdisciplinary future, William James at the Boundaries reintroduces readers to a seminal influence on the way knowledge is pursued. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate Nishida Kitarō’s way of philosophizing in the light of the concept of “transition” in order to deepen our understanding of both Nishida’s philosophy and our thinking about and in transitions, using the concept of “boundary” or “border” (Grenze) as a catalyst. For that purpose, we focus on Nishida’s essay “Place” (「場所」), passing through different parts of the text as if through successive gates on a path of transition between one place and the (...) next, until we reach the final place of “absolute nothingness.” Dwelling on this place, we turn our attention to its internal structure and try to depict it along the outlines of a boundary, following the movements taking place in Nishida’s essay. The second part proposes an interpretation of the place of nothingness as an interminable practice of boundary-crossing that doesn’t come to a halt in a final, all-encompassing place, but dynamically situates itself on countless intersecting planes. After a more or less abstract analysis of the concept of “boundary,” we will apply and concretize this approach by using the example of the skin. To this end, we expose five main features of the skin as boundary: permeability, enclosure, excessiveness, interstitiality and reciprocal self-formation. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a simple sequent calculus for the modal propositional logic S5. We prove that this sequent calculus is theoremwise equivalent to the Hilbert-style system S5, that it is contraction-free and cut-free, and finally that it is decidable. All results are proved in a purely syntactic way.

The future is not a new idea. The philosophers of the Enlightenment freed it of the historic wrappings of Christian eschatology and the notion of Providence itself by rationalising the idea of progress, the possible improvement of Mankind and the terrestrial city that stemmed from it. Making use of the Renaissance, the utopian authors transformed spiritual preparation for the end of time into a view of material, earthly delight made possible by science and scientific research. This ideal was certainly embodied (...) in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, although Thomas More was the first of all. In passing from work on consciousness to that of the spirit, the utopians of the eighteenth century espoused Reason and soon turned the future into something much more than critical discourse: It became social opportunity, a new political framework. Audaciously shifting the utopia of “elsewhere” to “the future” in the manner of Louis-Sébastien Mercier or Marquis de Condorcet, the utopians pursued a programme relying on scientific promise: Identify the technological processes of the transformation of reality and spread the word, an aim which would give birth to a new, less discursive, more popular genre—science fiction. (shrink)

In recent years, bioethical discourse around the topic of ‘genetic enhancement’ has become increasingly politicized. We fear there is too much focus on the semantic question of whether we should call particular practices and emerging bio-technologies such as CRISPR ‘eugenics’, rather than the more important question of how we should view them from the perspective of ethics and policy. Here, we address the question of whether ‘eugenics’ can be defended and how proponents and critics of enhancement should engage with each (...) other. (shrink)