In this classic work, now appearing in English for the first time, Claudia Moatti analyses the intellectual transformation that occurred at the end of the Roman Republic in response both to the political crisis and to the city's expansion across the Mediterranean. This was a period of great cultural dynamism and creativity when Roman intellectuals, most notably Cicero and Varro, began to explore all areas of life and knowledge and to apply critical thinking to the reassessment of tradition (...) and the development of a systematic new understanding of the Roman past and present. This movement, linked to the development of writing, challenged old forms of authority and adhesion, belief and behaviour, without destroying tradition; and for this reason this rational trend can be described not as a cultural but as an epistemological revolution whose greatest achievement, Professor Moatti argues, was the development of the system of Roman law. (shrink)

L’article offre une réflexion sur la place de la langue dans l’écriture de l’histoire. La première partie rappelle l’influence récente de la linguistique sur les historiens, et évoque de manière critique les principaux travaux qui s’en sont inspirés. La deuxième partie définit le projet singulier d’une logopolitique, qui propose trois approches conjuguées : formaliste, qui consiste à travailler sur le concept initial d’une notion ; discursive, qui, mettant au jour les conflictualités d’un moment, s’attache à analyser la construction d’un discours (...) dominant ; praxéologique, qui étudie les relations entre les mots et les pratiques politiques des différents acteurs. Dans la troisième partie, l’auteure rappelle certaines conclusions obtenues, selon cette méthode, dans son livre sur la res publica : elle montre notamment que la définition de cette notion originellement indéterminée a constitué un enjeu essentiel dans les conflits politiques de la fin de la République romaine, puis, comment res publica a servi de principe de légitimation aux empereurs, notamment contre toute menace intérieure, avant d’être utilisée à partir du IIIe siècle de notre ère comme concept civilisationnel. (shrink)

Cet article a pour but de montrer comment le mouvement change le rôle de l'état dans les relations entre individus et Etat, influence le développement de l'écrit, transforme les identités et augmente les régulations internes et externes. Les conséquences du mouvement sont à la fois pratiques et formelles. La relation au temps et à l'espace s'en trouve affectée, tout comme les modes d'organisation et de pensée.

Le terme de République est un mot dont l’évidence et la présence dans notre culture politique contemporaine n’ont d’égales que ses indéterminations de longue durée. La première de ces indéterminations tient d’ailleurs à l’origine de « république » dans le syntagme latin res publica avec le sens immédiatement complexe et polysémique d’une notion que l’on retrouve abondamment utilisée sous la République romaine proprement dite mais aussi sous l’Empire. Questionner la res publica, c’est donc évidemment questionner un pan crucial de l’histoire (...) politique romaine mais c’est aussi intervenir dans l’histoire politique tout court et dans la réflexion méthodologique sur la langue de cette politique. Pas de modélisation stabilisée donc et pas plus de recherche de « l’essence de la chose », pas non plus de prétention à une définition de l’objet d’étude puisqu’une suite d’effacements et de réapparitions des noyaux de sens est le propre de la res publica. L’enquête dynamique porte sur une question qui devient, selon un syntagme présent, de façon significative, dans la dernière page de l’ouvrage de Claudia Moatti, « référence mobilisatrice », politique donc. En effet, dans ce parcours, l’acceptation de l’incertitude et de l’indétermination devient en quelque sorte le prix à payer pour retrouver la vie des mots et leur charge historique, en tant qu’ils se lient à l’action des hommes, à leur engagement dans le monde, sans s’appuyer sur les certitudes sémantiques ni sur un programme à mettre en œuvre mais en partant de questions ouvertes justement parce qu’aucune des réponses proposées ne s’est avérée satisfaisante. La comparaison avec un autre moment de crise politique et sémantique, le moment machiavélien, permettra en conclusion d’illustrer la fécondité de la perspective adoptée. (shrink)

Das ethische Prinzip des Respekts vor der Autonomie des Patienten/Probanden hat in der modernen Medizin mittlerweile weltweit Bedeutung erlangt. Die Betonung der Autonomie des Patienten und Probanden in allen in der letzten Zeit verabschiedeten internationalen Deklarationen gibt dieser Tendenz unmissverständlich Ausdruck. Doch wenngleich diese Entwicklung unstrittig positiv ist, wirft sie dennoch eine Reihe von Fragen auf, die mit der Kodifizierung, Interpretation, Reichweite und Anwendung dieses universalen Prinzips verbunden sind. Die Antworten auf diese Fragen entscheiden darüber, ob Autonomie als hilfreiches, emanzipatorisches (...) oder als überforderndes, gar hegemoniales Prinzip begriffen wird. Diese normativen Probleme werden anhand von Beispielen aus der globalen Medizinethik verdeutlicht. Was in modernen Gesellschaften als Autonomie bezeichnet und für die Praxis fruchtbar gemacht wird, ist als ein soziales Konstrukt zu verstehen, nicht im Sinne einer Schimäre, sondern im Sinne einer soziokulturellen Leistung, die auf komplexen, historisch gewachsenen und kulturell geprägten Interaktionen von Gesellschaften, Institutionen und Individuen beruht. (shrink)

The editorial introduces issue 21.1 of Technoetic Arts via a critical reflection on the artificial intelligence hype (AI hype) that emerged in 2022. Tracing the history of the critique of Large Language Models, the editorial underscores that there are substantial ethical challenges related to bias in the training data, copyright issues, as well as ecological challenges which the technology industry has consistently downplayed over the years. -/- The editorial highlights the distinction between the current AI technology’s reliance on extensive pre-existing (...) human-generated data for pattern recognition and the performative process inherent in art practice. Patterns of creative output can be replicated without a thorough understanding of underlying concepts. In contrast, the performative process of art practice, as explored through the conceptual frameworks of creativity by Noam Chomsky, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Roger T. Ames and with reference to an earlier publication of the editorial’s author, creates concepts and continually ‘strives to extend itself towards the unknown.’ -/- Following this introductory section, the editorial provides an overview of the ten articles featured in this issue of Technoetic Arts. The first four texts engage with emerging technologies from various perspectives in art and design. The subsequent six articles, part of a special section titled 'Perspectives from Chandigarh,' reflect a quest for meaningful existence within colonial, patriarchal, and biopolitical structures that frame everyday practices of exclusion and oppression. (shrink)

Das ethische Prinzip des Respekts vor der Autonomie des Patienten/Probanden hat in der modernen Medizin mittlerweile weltweit Bedeutung erlangt. Die Betonung der Autonomie des Patienten und Probanden in allen in der letzten Zeit verabschiedeten internationalen Deklarationen gibt dieser Tendenz unmissverständlich Ausdruck. Doch wenngleich diese Entwicklung unstrittig positiv ist, wirft sie dennoch eine Reihe von Fragen auf, die mit der Kodifizierung, Interpretation, Reichweite und Anwendung dieses universalen Prinzips verbunden sind. Die Antworten auf diese Fragen entscheiden darüber, ob Autonomie als hilfreiches, emanzipatorisches (...) oder als überforderndes, gar hegemoniales Prinzip begriffen wird. Diese normativen Probleme werden anhand von Beispielen aus der globalen Medizinethik verdeutlicht. Was in modernen Gesellschaften als Autonomie bezeichnet und für die Praxis fruchtbar gemacht wird, ist als ein soziales Konstrukt zu verstehen, nicht im Sinne einer Schimäre, sondern im Sinne einer soziokulturellen Leistung, die auf komplexen, historisch gewachsenen und kulturell geprägten Interaktionen von Gesellschaften, Institutionen und Individuen beruht. (shrink)

While corporate social responsibility is recognized as taking on various national meanings and practices, research has not sufficiently investigated how multinational companies simultaneously achieve global CSR integration and local CSR adaptation. Building on a qualitative case study carried out at ASICS, an MNC headquartered in Japan, we show how this organizational dilemma may be solved through hybridization work, a form of institutional work performed by CSR managers in subsidiaries to combine and adapt different institutional approaches to CSR. By developing the (...) notion of hybridization work, we contribute by revealing a set of practices that contribute to institutional change within organizations and enriching the study of CSR organizational change and international business by showing how hybridization Work leads to a greater organizational integration between core and periphery, and by identifying the triggering factors for subsidiary initiative in CSR. (shrink)

What distinguishes evils from ordinary wrongs? Are some evils unforgivable? How should we respond to evils? Card offers a secular theory of evil--representing a compromise between classic utilitarian and stoic approaches--that responds to these and other questions.

Conscious experiences in infants remain poorly understood. In this NeuroView, Passos-Ferreira discusses recent evidence for and against consciousness in newborn babies. She argues that the weight of evidence from neuroimaging and behavioral studies supports the thesis that newborn infants are conscious.

ABSTRACT Truth-conditions are systematically determined when they are the output of an algorithmic procedure that takes as input a set of semantic and contextual features. Truth-conditional sceptics have cast doubts on the thesis that truth-conditions are systematic in this sense. Against this form of scepticism, Schoubye and Stokke : 759–793) and Dobler : 451–474.) have provided systematic analyses of utterance truth-conditions. My aim is to argue that these theories are not immune to the kind of objections raised by truth-conditional sceptics. (...) In particular, I argue that the use of Questions Under Discussion and ways of being is problematic. (shrink)

Scientists engaged in global health research are increasingly faced with barriers to access and use of human tissues from the developing world communities where much of their research is targeted. In part, the problem can be traced to distrust of researchers from affluent countries, given the history of 'scientific-imperialism' and 'biocolonialism' reflected in past well publicized cases of exploitation of research participants from low to middle income countries. To a considerable extent, the failure to adequately engage host communities, the opacity (...) of informed consent, and the lack of fair benefit-sharing have played a significant role in eroding trust. These ethical considerations are central to biomedical research in low to middle income countries and failure to attend to them can inadvertently contribute to exploitation and erode trust. A 'tissue trust' may be a plausible means for enabling access to human tissues for research in a manner that is responsive to the ethical challenges considered. Preventing exploitation and restoring trust while simultaneously promoting global health research calls for innovative approaches to human tissues research. A tissue trust can reduce the risk of exploitation and promote host capacity as a key benefit. (shrink)

Slurs are derogatory terms targeting individuals and groups of individuals on the basis of race, nationality, religion, gender or sexual orientation. The aim of my paper is to propose an account of appropriated uses of slurs – i.e. uses by targeted groups of their own slurs for non-derogatory purposes, as in the appropriation of ‘nigger’ by the African-American community, or the appropriation of ‘queer’ by the homosexual community. In my proposal appropriated uses are conceived as echoic, in Relevance Theory terms: (...) in-groups echo derogatory uses in ways and contexts that make manifest the dissociation from the offensive contents. I will show that the echoic strategy has interesting advantages over alternative theories, and especially over Anderson and Lepore’s deflationary strategy. (shrink)

This essay pursues the question of vegetal respiration in Presocratics’ doctrines in contrast to Aristotle’s categorical circumscription of this vital process to the blooded animals. It finds that epithelial respiration in DK31 B100 is central to Empedocles’ conception of plants’ breathing, linked to their fructification, deciduousness, and overall life preservation. It also discusses plants’ respiration in relation to their body temperature in Menestor, then, concludes by analyzing Democritus’ psychological doctrine, arguing that the intake of fiery atoms pertained to all living (...) beings, plants included. (shrink)

Situated between pure practical reason and mere technical-practical skillfulness, prudence risks falling into the margins for Kant. This book seeks to discover a systematic place for prudence in his works and to reconfigure it as the empirical form of practical judgment, showing that prudence is essential to Kant s notion of happiness as well as for the fulfillment of moral imperatives.".

Remise en cause de la théorie d’Einstein, de celle de Darwin, créationnisme et fondamentalismes, cosmologies païennes, mouvements technofascistes, idéologies radicales anti-science… Pourquoi des personnes formées à la science en viennent-elles à adopter une attitude en opposition virulente à la science de leur époque? Comment mobilisent-elles leur capacité de raisonnement au service de dogmes et d’idéologies sans rapport avec la science? Peut-on tirer un fil historique entre ces postures depuis la naissance de la science moderne au XVIe siècle? De nos jours, (...) quel est l’impact sur les rapports entre science et société de ces attitudes, diffusées et multipliées par le canal de l’Internet? Rejet de la science contemporaine, de la spécialisation et de l’abstraction mathématique ; appel au bon sens et à une science globale ; vitupération pouvant aller jusqu’à l’invocation de la théorie du complot ; instrumentalisation de la science à des fins idéologiques ou religieuses : voilà les principales caractéristiques des mouvements ou des individus étudiés dans cet ouvrage. Alexandre Moatti, ingénieur en chef des Mines, est chercheur associé en histoire des sciences et des idées à l’université Paris-VII-Denis-Diderot. Il est notamment l’auteur deEinstein, un siècle contre lui (2007). (shrink)

Cet article a déjà été publié dans le Carnet Zilsel, en date du 16 septembre 2017. L'auteur remercie Catherine Dupuy, Pascal Engel, Éric Guichard, Gaïa Lassaube, Pierre Lévy, Pierre Mœglin, David Monniaux, Mathieu Triclot et Stéphane Vial, ainsi qu'Arnaud Saint-Martin et Jérôme Lamy, éditeurs du Carnet Zilsel, de leur relecture du projet d'article et de leurs remarques. Il va de soi que l'article lui-même n'engage que son auteur. Rhuthmos remercie Alexandre Moatti et les Carnets Zilsel d'avoir permis - Philosophie (...) – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Pragmatic modulation makes contextual information necessary for interpretation. This poses a problem for homophonic reports and inter-contextual communication in general: of co-situated interlocutors, we can expect some common ground, but non-co-situated interpreters lack access to the context of utterance. Here I argue that we can nonetheless share modulated contents via homophonic reports. First, occasion-unspecific information is often sufficient for the recovery of modulated content. Second, interpreters can recover what is said with different degrees of accuracy. Homophonic reports and inter-contextual communication (...) are often successful because the reporting context does not demand full accuracy. (shrink)

One way to silence the powerless, Langton has taught us, is to pre-emptively disable their ability to do things with words. In this paper I argue that speakers can be silenced in a different way. You can let them speak, and obscure the meaning of their words afterwards. My aim is to investigate this form of silencing, that I call retroactive distortion. In a retroactive distortion, the meaning of the words of a speaker is distorted by the effect of a (...) subsequent speech act by a different speaker. After introducing this notion, I explore some reasons why retroactive distortions can be difficult to challenge and argue that, besides constituting a communicative injustice, they can eliminate topics from public consideration and therefore erode public debate. (shrink)

The opportunities to become a good person are not the same for everyone. Modern European ethical theory, especially Kantian ethics, assumes the same virtues are accessible to all who are capable of rational choice. Character development, however, is affected by circumstances, such as those of wealth and socially constructed categories of gender, race, and sexual orientation, which introduce factors beyond the control of individuals. Implications of these influences for morality have, since the work of Williams and Nagel in the seventies, (...) raised questions in philosophy about the concept of moral luck. In The Unnatural Lottery, Claudia Card examines how luck enters into moral character and considers how some of those who are oppressed can develop responsibility. Luck is often best appreciated by those who have known relatively bad luck and have been unable to escape steady comparison of their lot with those of others. The author takes as her paradigms the luck of middle and lower classes of women who face violence and exploitation, of lesbians who face continuing pressure to hide or self-destruct, of culturally Christian whites who have ethnic privilege, and of adult survivors of child abuse. How have such people been affected by luck in who they are and can become, the good lives available to them, the evils they may be liable to embody? Other philosophers have explored the luck of those who begin from privileged positions and then suffer reversals of fortune. Claudia Card focuses on the more common cases of those who begin from socially disadvantaged positions, and she considers some who find their good luck troubling when its source is the unnatural lottery of social injustice. (shrink)

We present a geometrical analysis of the principles that lay at the basis of Categorial Grammar and of the Lambek Calculus. In Abrusci it is shown that the basic properties known as Residuation laws can be characterized in the framework of Cyclic Multiplicative Linear Logic, a purely non-commutative fragment of Linear Logic. We present a summary of this result and, pursuing this line of investigation, we analyze a well-known set of categorial grammar laws: Monotonicity, Application, Expansion, Type-raising, Composition, Geach laws (...) and Switching laws. (shrink)

This paper challenges traditional views which oppose health economics and medical ethics by arguing that economic assessment is a necessary complement to medical ethics and can help to improve public participation and democratic processes in choices about resource allocation for health care technologies. In support of this argument, four points are emphasized: (1) Most current biomedical ethical debates implicitly deal with economic issues of resource allocation. (2) Clinical decisions, which usually respect the Hippocratic code of ethics, are nevertheless influenced by (...) economic incentives and constraints. (3) Economic assessment is concerned with both efficiency and equity and potential trade-offs between the two, which means that ethical judgements are always embedded in welfare economics. (4) The real debate is not between economics on the one side and medical ethics on the other. Rather it is between different ethical conceptions of social justice and the contrasting approaches they entail to reconciling individual interests and preferences with collective goods and welfare. (shrink)

Nous voudrions ici montrer comment l’histoire des idées croise l’histoire des sciences et des techniques – plus précisément : l’histoire de la critique de la science et de la technique, ou de la critique de la modernité technique. Nous essaierons, avec plusieurs exemples, d’esquisser une typologie d’histoire des idées dans ce domaine – et dans notre pratique. Nous conclurons en indiquant que cette histoire des idées et des concepts nous paraît plus que jamais nécessaire dans le contexte contemporain de surmédiatisation (...) de certains termes, en association avec celle de certains auteurs ou de certains mouvements. (shrink)

With a novel approach to Aristotle's zoology, this study looks at animals as creatures of nature and reveals a scientific discourse that, in response to his predecessors, exiles logos as reason and pursues the logos intrinsic to animals' bodies empowering them to sense the world and live. The volume explores Aristotle's conception of animals through a discussion of his ad hoc methodology to study them, including the pertinence of the soul to such a study, and the rise of zoology as (...) a branch of natural philosophy. For Aristotle, animal life stems from the body in the space of existence and revolves around sensation, which is entwined with pleasure, pain, and desire. Lack of human reason is irrelevant to an understanding of the richness of animal life and cognition. In sum, the reader will acquire knowledge of the animal as such, which lay at the core of Aristotle's agenda and required a study of its own, separate from plants and the elements. This book is intended for students of history of science, ancient biology and philosophy and all those who, from different fields, are interested in animal studies and the human/animal relation. (shrink)

An increasing number of studies indicate that virtues affect brain structure. These studies might shed new light on some neuroethical perspectives suggesting that our brain network activity determines the acquisition and permanence of virtues. According to these perspectives, virtuous behavior could be interpreted as the product of a brain mechanism supervised by genes and environment and not as the result of free choice. In this respect, the neural correlates of virtues would confirm the deterministic theory. In contrast, I maintain that (...) these findings do not undermine the role of willpower and freedom while reinforcing an interactionist view of free will. If virtues affect our neural system, then the predictability of the virtuous behavior follows. The likelihood of our future actions is primarily virtue-dependent; therefore, the acquired naturality of virtuous behavior is a source of predictable behavioral patterns outlining expected actions, which I propose to call Hypotheses of Action. However, the predictability of an action indicates its likeliness and not its certainty or necessity. The neural traces of virtues can be interpreted as major indicators of HAs. It is always possible for the agents to depart from their more likely, virtue-induced actions, but their deviations from the virtuous behavioral pattern are rare, as it is rare for the vicious/non-virtuous person to behave well systematically. This implies a reaffirmation of the notions of veto and consent as they provide a universal practical power affecting the subject’s use of moral virtues. (shrink)

Why have so many people responded to the insecurity, exploitation, alienation, and isolation of precarity capitalism by supporting the far right? In this timely book, Claudia Leeb argues that psychoanalytic and feminist critical theory illuminates how economic and psychological factors interact to produce this extreme political shift. Contesting the Far Right examines right-wing recruitment tactics in the United States and Austria, where people discontented with the status quo have turned to far-right parties and movements that further cement capitalism’s adverse (...) effects. Leeb contends that Freudian psychoanalytic theory and early Frankfurt School Critical Theory provide analytical tools to explain this apparent contradiction in psychological terms. Living under precarity capitalism generates feelings of failure and anxiety, which people experience as non-wholeness, because it has become difficult if not impossible to live up to the fetish of economic, interpersonal, and bodily success, and the far right preys on such feelings. Its psychologically oriented propaganda tactics produce the illusion of wholeness and a positive sense of self while leaving the socioeconomic conditions that cause people’s suffering intact. At the same time, they remove the inhibitions that keep people’s repressed aggression and racist and sexist attitudes in check. To demonstrate the workings of this process, Leeb compares cases including Trump and the alt-right in the United States and the Freedom Party and the identitarian movement in Austria. At once theoretically rich and politically engaged, this book also offers ways to resist the far right and counter the psychological appeal of its propaganda techniques. (shrink)

Statements such as “X is beautiful but I don’t like how it looks” or “I like how X looks but it is not beautiful” sound contradictory. How contradictory they sound might however depend on the object X and on the aesthetic adjective being used (“beautiful”, “elegant”, “dynamic”, etc.). In our study, the first sentence was estimated to be more contradictory than the latter: If we describe something as beautiful, we often intend to evaluate its appearance, whereas it is less counterintuitive (...) to appreciate an appearance without finding it beautiful. Furthermore, statements including “beautiful” appeared more contradictory than those including “elegant” and “dynamic”, pointing to its greater evaluative component. When related to artworks, sentences could appear less contradictory due to readers’ consideration of the divergence between conventional beauty and art-related sensory pleasures that can even include negative valence. Such ambivalence might be more frequent in art-objects than in other artefacts. Indeed, in our study, sentences referring to artworks were estimated to be less contradictory compared to sentences referring to other artefacts. Meanwhile, an additional small group of graphic design students showed a less clear difference between art-related and non-art-related sentences. We discuss the potential influence of art experience and interest as well as theoretical and methodological challenges like the conceptualization of beauty. (shrink)

In his seminal _Philosophy of David Hume_, Norman Kemp Smith called for a study of Hume "in all his manifold activities: as philosopher, as political theorist, as economist, as historian, and as man of letters," indicating that "Hume's philosophy, as the attitude of mind that found for itself these various forms of expression, will then have been presented, adequately and in due perspective, for the first time." Claudia Schmidt seeks to address this long-standing need in Hume scholarship. Against the (...) charges that Hume holds no consistent philosophical position, offers no constructive account of rationality, and sees no positive relation between philosophy and other areas of inquiry, Schmidt argues for the overall coherence of Hume's thought as a study of "reason in history." She develops this interpretation by tracing Hume's constructive account of human cognition and its historical dimension as a unifying theme across the full range of his writings. Hume, she shows, provides a positive account of the ways in which our concepts, beliefs, emotions, and standards of judgment in different areas of inquiry are shaped by experience, both in the personal history of the individual and in the life of a community. This book is valuable at many levels: for students, as an introduction to Hume's writings and issues in their interpretation; for Hume specialists, as a unified and intriguing interpretation of his thought; for philosophers generally, as a synthesis of recent developments in Hume scholarship; and for scholars in other disciplines, as a guide to Hume's contributions to their own fields. (shrink)

In his seminal _Philosophy of David Hume_, Norman Kemp Smith called for a study of Hume "in all his manifold activities: as philosopher, as political theorist, as economist, as historian, and as man of letters," indicating that "Hume's philosophy, as the attitude of mind that found for itself these various forms of expression, will then have been presented, adequately and in due perspective, for the first time." Claudia Schmidt seeks to address this long-standing need in Hume scholarship. Against the (...) charges that Hume holds no consistent philosophical position, offers no constructive account of rationality, and sees no positive relation between philosophy and other areas of inquiry, Schmidt argues for the overall coherence of Hume's thought as a study of "reason in history." She develops this interpretation by tracing Hume's constructive account of human cognition and its historical dimension as a unifying theme across the full range of his writings. Hume, she shows, provides a positive account of the ways in which our concepts, beliefs, emotions, and standards of judgment in different areas of inquiry are shaped by experience, both in the personal history of the individual and in the life of a community. This book is valuable at many levels: for students, as an introduction to Hume's writings and issues in their interpretation; for Hume specialists, as a unified and intriguing interpretation of his thought; for philosophers generally, as a synthesis of recent developments in Hume scholarship; and for scholars in other disciplines, as a guide to Hume's contributions to their own fields. (shrink)

This essay reflects on issues raised by commentators regarding my book, The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (Oxford 2002). They are (1) Robin Schott's observation of the tension between my discussion of forgiveness and of castration fantasies; (2) Bat-Ami Bar On's questions regarding whether evil is ethical, political, or both; (3) Adam Morton's queries regarding the relative seriousness of evils and injustices; and (4) María Pía Lara's concerns regarding what is valuable in Kant's ethics.

The relationship between fear and courage has been discussed in terms of opposite though mutually involving notions. However, their link has not been inquired extensively. Recently, new light has been shed on the topic thanks to recent empirical evidence within emotion theories that stress the role played by perception and/or cognition in the experience of fear, as well as the role played by the “emotional virtue” of courage in fear regulation. Questions arise whether fear has a fundamentally perceptual structure or (...) is a biologically-grounded natural kind, and whether such an emotion-related virtue as courage is intrinsically or extrinsically related to fear. This paper considers the last problem first, then enlarges the picture to fear modeling, finally drives some conclusions which aim at deepening the relationship between fear and courage. As a result, it emerges that the emotion of fear has a conceptual, emotional, situational and subjective dimension. Assuming fear as a possible emotional center within the subject’s cognitive experience, the virtue of courage appears to balance the excess and lack of fear, and is consequently related to rational thoughts and consistent behavior, laying the foundations for a new Aristotelian-Thomistic account for it. (shrink)

In Aristotle's Ethics as First Philosophy Claudia Baracchi demonstrates the indissoluble links between practical and theoretical wisdom in Aristotle's thinking. Referring to a broad range of texts from the Aristotelian corpus, Baracchi shows how the theoretical is always informed by a set of practices, and specifically, how one's encounter with phenomena, the world, or nature in the broadest sense, is always a matter of ethos. Such a 'modern' intimation can, thus, be found at the heart of Greek thought. Baracchi's (...) book opens the way for a comprehensively reconfigured approach to classical Greek philosophy. (shrink)

En este texto argumento a favor de la consideración de la forma como sujeto y, por tanto, como responsable de la identidad del objeto a través del movimiento. Se consideran sucesivamente la prioridad de la forma como sustancia, su carácter particular y los distintos sentidos en los que algo puede ser sujeto, para concluir por qué en Z, 3, la forma es el mejor candidato no sólo para ser sustancia, sino para ser sujeto en sentido principal. El objeto del texto (...) es abordar la discusión en torno a por qué la forma satisface ontológicamente mejor que la materia o el compuesto el criterio de ser sujeto y las consecuencias filosóficas de esa postura. Como corolario, haré algunas observaciones en torno a la doble ontología que se sigue en Aristóteles desde Categorías o Metafísica. (shrink)

Given the negative consequences of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on public health, his study aimed at investigating: the differences between adults with and without chronic illness in buying behavior, vaccination intention, pandemic worry, and the health belief model components; the HBM components as mediators of the relationship between pandemic worry and vaccination intention. The sample consisted of 864 adults, of which 20.5% reported having a chronic illness. Associations between pandemic worry, vaccination intention, and HBM were ascertained using correlation and mediation (...) analyses. Individuals with chronic illness reported a higher level of pandemic worry, higher levels of perceived threat, greater benefits from vaccination, had lower self-efficacy and bought more medicine and sanitary/hygienic products. No significant differences were observed regarding vaccination intention, barriers against vaccination, and changes in food buying behavior. We found that the relationship between pandemic worry and vaccination intention was partially mediated by the perceived threat of disease and the benefits of vaccination. Pandemic worry predicted vaccination intention directly but also through the contribution of the perceived threat of disease and the benefits of vaccination. These findings suggest that presenting evidence of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and the benefits of having the vaccine will encourage the population to follow vaccination recommendations. (shrink)

There is widespread agreement that an adequate understanding of the nature of science (NOS) is a critical component of scientific literacy and a major goal in science education. However, we still do not know many specific details regarding how students and teachers learn particular aspects of NOS and what are the most important feature traits of instruction. In this context, the main objective of this review is to analyze articles from nine main science education journals that consider the teaching of (...) NOS to K-12 students, pre-service, and in-service science teachers in search of patterns in teaching and learning NOS. After reviewing 52 studies in nine journals that included data regarding participants’ views of NOS before and after an intervention, the main findings were as follows: (1) some aspects of NOS (empirical basis, observation and inference, and creativity) are easier to learn than others (tentativeness, theory and law, and social and cultural embeddedness), and subjective aspects of NOS and “the scientific method” seemed to be difficult for participants to understand; (2) the interventions most frequently lasted 5 to 8 weeks for students, one semester for pre-service teachers, and 1 year for experienced teachers; and (3) most of the interventions incorporated both decontextualized and contextualized activities. Given the substantial diversity in the methods and intervention designs used and the variables studied, it was not possible to infer a pattern of more-effective NOS teaching strategies from the reviewed studies. Future investigation should focus on (a) disentangling whether a difference exists between the easy and difficult aspects of learning NOS and formulating a theoretical explanation for distinguishing the two types of aspects and (b) assessing the effectiveness of different kinds of courses (e.g., history of science, NOS or informal) and strategies (e.g., hands-on vs. drama activities; SSI vs. HOS). (shrink)