Only recently research in social psychology has started to systematically investigate intergroup attitudes among members of stigmatized minority groups. In particular, the study of the way people with mental health problems perceive the social groups around them is so far very scarce. In this work, we focused on people with schizophrenia, analyzing their attitudes toward another stigmatized group, namely Black individuals. In Study 1, the attitudes toward White and Black people were assessed in a sample of respondents with a diagnosis (...) of schizophrenia and in a sample of non-clinical individuals. Results showed the presence of less negative attitudes toward the minority outgroup among the clinical sample. In Study 2, we aimed at investigating what members belonging to the majority group believe about the attitudes toward Black people held by individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. In general, results suggested a general awareness in lay persons that people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, as compared to people with no history of mental disorders, hold reduced negative attitudes toward Black individuals. Overall, these results may help to enrich our knowledge about social cognition among members of stigmatized groups in general and, more specifically, among individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. (shrink)

In this piece we explore the COVID pandemic as an opportunity for the articulation and realization of digital health futures. Our discussion draws on an engagement with emergent discourse around COVID-19 and ongoing work on imaginaries of future care associated with digital tools for the detection of cognitive decline and the risk of dementia. We describe how the post-COVID futures of digital health are narrated in terms of the timing and speed with which they are being brought into being, as (...) market actors attempt to establish the scale and durability of the COVID transformation. However, we also point to the particularly spatial changes to medical practice they envisage. In a time of distancing and isolation, the ability to operate effectively at a distance has become integral to the future of medical assessment, diagnosis and care. However, spatialized promises of digital health and the ability to act remotely are unevenly spread – some organizations and entities inevitably have greater reach. (shrink)

La rinascita negli ultimi decenni di un nutrito dibattito intorno alla nozione di analiticità dopo le critiche a suo tempo mosse da Quine alla batteria di nozioni utilizzate da Rudolf Carnap (ad esempio, postulati di significato, regole semantiche, definizioni implicite, convenzioni e stipulazioni esplicite) prende le mosse da una riflessione critica sulle argomentazioni di Quine e tenta, da un lato, di approfondire meglio il legame fra analiticità e conoscenza a priori, e, dall’altro, di capire meglio il ruolo che la definizione (...) può svolgere nella costituzione del significato e nella formulazione di verità concettuali. Questa nuova concezione è detta “epistemica” ed ha fra i suoi più autorevoli fautori Crispin Wright, Bob Hale e Paul Boghossian. Boghossian, al pari di molti filosofi critici della nuova concezione epistemica, come Timothy Williamson, conviene però con Quine nel sostenere che gli enunciati analitici hanno portata fattuale e vertono anch’essi sul mondo, oltre che sul linguaggio. Anche per questa ragione essi possono rendere possibile una genuina estensione delle nostre conoscenze. Tuttavia una seconda linea di obiezioni facenti capo dapprima a Paul Horwich, e in seguito agli stessi Wright e Hale, mette in evidenza rispettivamente due difficoltà corrispondenti alle questioni dell’arroganza e dell’accettazione. In questa discussione una parte importante è svolta dalla ripresa e della discussione del condizionale di Carnap, impiegato per rendere conto del ruolo che i termini teorici svolgono nel quadro dell’intera teoria cui appartengono, senza con ciò sposare le conseguenze dell’olismo quineano. La tesi centrale che questo lavoro cerca di rendere plausibile è che una lettura attenta degli ultimi scritti di Carnap mostri come il carattere aperto che egli attribuisce ai termini teorici in ragione, sia dello loro intrinseca indeterminatezza, sia delle revisioni imposte dalle scoperte scientifiche, è perfettamente compatibile con la fattorizzazione del contenuto di una teoria scientifica data in una parte linguistica, il condizionale di Carnap, riguardante la costituzione del significato di un certo termine teorico, e nella sua controparte empirica, che consente di registrare l’impatto dell’esperienza sulla teoria in questione. Se praticabile, questa concezione può a buon diritto entrare nel novero delle teorie epistemiche dell’analiticità, senza accampare alcuna pretesa di far rivivere i fasti della conoscenza a priori classica. (shrink)

Studies on age-related differences in risk perception in a real-world situation, such as the recent COVID-19 outbreak, showed that the risk perception of getting COVID-19 tends to decrease as age increases. This finding raised the question on what factors could explain risk perception in older adults. The present study examined age-related differences in risk perception in the early stages of COVID-19 lockdown, analyzing variables that can explain the differences in perception of risk at different ages. A total of 1,765 adults (...) aged between 18 and 87 years old completed an online survey assessing perceived risk severity and risk vulnerability of getting COVID-19, sociodemographic status, emotional state, experience relating to COVID-19, and physical health status. Results showed that the older the participants, the lower the perceived vulnerability to getting COVID-19, but the higher the perceived severity. Different predictors explain the perception of risk severity and vulnerability at different ages. Overall, self-reported anxiety over the pandemic is a crucial predictor in explaining risk perceptions in all age groups. Theoretical and practical implications of the empirical findings are discussed. (shrink)

In this article, I will respond to questions regarding the ontological status of relations by exploring Whitehead's pivotal notion of solidarity, especially focusing on the recently published Harvard lectures. Particularly, I shall investigate how solidarity become a metaphysical law in the development of Whitehead's thought, also exploiting other Whiteheadian works of the same period, such as Science and the Modern World and Religion in the Making. I will attempt to show that the comprehension of an immediate brute fact necessarily requires (...) its metaphysical interpretation as an item in a world with some systematic relation to it. I will thus provide my interpretation on solidarity through a comparison with Hegel's notion of Wirklichkeit. (shrink)

On March 29,2000, in U.S. v. Wood, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that a physician cannot be convicted of murder simply for adopting, in an emergency setting, a risky course of treatment intended to prolong life that, when carried out, effectively hastened death. Finding the government's evidence flawed, based on several evidentiary errors and an erroneous denial of a motion for judgment of acquittal on murder charges, the court reversed the conviction of involuntary manslaughter and (...) ordered a new trial.Virgil Dykes, an 86-year-old man, was suffering from severe abdominal pain when he arrived at the Veterans Administration hospital in Muskogee, Oklahoma, on February 5, 1994. (shrink)

John Tradescant the Elder was probably born in England in the 1570s. The earliest known historical record of his life documents his marriage to Elizabeth Day, at Meopham on 18 June 1607.1 A long career working as gardener in the service of England’s nobility—among his employers were Robert and William Cecil, Edward Wotton, and George Villiers —provided numerous opportunities for travel abroad in pursuit of the exotic species for which his eminent employers clamored. As a result of his voyages, Tradescant (...) not only imported hundreds of plant varieties for his clients, but also amassed thousands of artefacts and other.. (shrink)

We focus on issues of learning assessment from the point of view of an investigation of philosophical elements in teaching. We contend that assessment of concept possession at school based on ordinary multiple-choice tests might be ineffective because it overlooks aspects of human rationality illuminated by Robert Brandom’s inferentialism––the view that conceptual content largely coincides with the inferential role of linguistic expressions used in public discourse. More particularly, we argue that multiple-choice tests at schools might fail to accurately assess the (...) possession of a concept or the lack of it, for they only check the written outputs of the pupils who take them, without detecting the inferences actually endorsed or used by them. We suggest that school tests would acquire reliability if they enabled pupils to make the reasons of their answers or the inferences they use explicit, so as to contribute to what Brandom calls the game of giving and asking for reasons. We explore the possibility to put this suggestion into practice by deploying two-tier multiple-choice tests. (shrink)

Philosophers have claimed that education aims at fostering disparate epistemic goals. In this paper we focus on an important segment of this debate involving conversation between Alvin Goldman and Harvey Siegel. Goldman claims that education is essentially aimed at producing true beliefs. Siegel contends that education is essentially aimed at fostering both true beliefs and, independently, critical thinking and rational belief. Although we find Siegel’s position intuitively more plausible than Goldman’s, we also find Siegel’s defence of it wanting. We suggest (...) novel argumentative strategies that draw on Siegel’s own arguments but look to us more promising. (shrink)

Questo saggio esplora la critica a Marx e al “marxismo” sviluppata da Simone Weil nel corso della sua opera. Vengono identificati tre nuclei principali della critica weiliana al marxismo: la validità del metodo materialistico per lo studio delle scienze sociali; il presunto “messianesimo” di Marx, inteso come la concezione della storia come un progresso intelligente verso il meglio; e l’identificazione del marxismo tout court con una filosofia determinista e meccanicista. Si cerca di definire a quale “Marx” effettivamente sia rivolta la (...) critica di Weil: si sostiene infatti che alcune delle sue argomentazioni siano riferibili alla “vulgata” marxiana, ossia a una lettura semplificata e schematica del marxismo, o alla “tendenza deteriore” del marxismo caratterizzata dall’economicismo e dal meccanicismo, dibattuta anche all’interno della Seconda Internazionale, o a posizioni di Engels e Lenin, o ancora all’operato del PCF o delle organizzazioni operaie, piuttosto che all’effettiva opera di Marx. (shrink)

On March 29,2000, in U.S. v. Wood, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that a physician cannot be convicted of murder simply for adopting, in an emergency setting, a risky course of treatment intended to prolong life that, when carried out, effectively hastened death. Finding the government's evidence flawed, based on several evidentiary errors and an erroneous denial of a motion for judgment of acquittal on murder charges, the court reversed the conviction of involuntary manslaughter and (...) ordered a new trial.Virgil Dykes, an 86-year-old man, was suffering from severe abdominal pain when he arrived at the Veterans Administration hospital in Muskogee, Oklahoma, on February 5, 1994. (shrink)

While populism has accumulated an extensive research, its gender dimension has remained largely understudied. Only recently has a literature emerged that focuses on the gender dimension of radical right populist parties in Europe, where they have risen from marginal to government positions. In this article, I provide a guide to the topics and results of this recent development and delineate future research lines. In doing so, I will illustrate the relevance of adopting a gender perspective in studying the phenomenon of (...) populism. (shrink)

This paper reports an experiment designed to test whether prior consultation within a group affects subsequent individual decision-making in tasks where demonstrability of correct solutions is low. In our experiment, subjects considered two paintings created by two different artists and were asked to guess which artist made each painting. We observed answers given by individuals under two treatments: In one, subjects were allowed the opportunity to consult with other participants before making their private decisions; in the other, there was no (...) such opportunity. Our primary findings are that subjects in the first treatment evaluate the opportunity to consult positively, but they perform significantly worse and earn significantly less. (shrink)

Les quinze sections de cet ouvrage proposent un parcours de réflexion à partir du démantèlement sadien de la normativité et de la déconstruction kierkegaardienne de la vie "bonne", qui engage des auteurs tels qu'Adorno, Arendt, Otto Gross, Agnes Heller, Kalivoda, Lacan, Cavell, Nussbaum, parmi d'autres, dans une analyse inusitée de la subjectivité révolutionnaire et des individualités révoltées. Ces critiques de l'aliénation comme "métaphysique de l'essence humaine" relancent, d'après l'autrice, la continuité artistique et l'aspiration politique du romantisme révolutionnaire, réinstallant ainsi la (...) dialectique permanente du libertinisme et du romanticisme au coeur même de l'échafaudage communiste comme scène réelle, symbolique et imaginaire de l'émancipation humaine."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Among Leibniz’s contributions to the philosophy of mind, two topics bear relevance to contemporary discussions in cognitive sciences: the mind-body problem, and the universal language. Leibniz’s deterministic view rejects inter-substance causality between mental and bodily states, as well as between mental or bodily states of different individuals. In addition, Leibniz believed in the need to enhance communication through a universal language based on symbolic representations. Here I reconsider Leibniz’s ideas in the light of experimental evidence coming from mirror neurons. These (...) recently discovered brain cells, responsive to both action execution and observation, are thought to enable the interpretation of the action performer’s intentions through their representation in the observer’s own brain, thus storing embodied shared representations. I propose that mirror neurons’ cross-modal responsiveness, whereby seeing an action being performed by somebody else triggers similar neural response to that of performing that action oneself, can be interpreted as an instantiation of intersubstance causality. I suggest that mirror neurons’ properties speak not only to the non-dualistic equation, supported by brain science in general, whereby in a given individual, mental states arise from bodily states but also introduce the possibility that bodily states may arise from someone else’s bodily states. In addition, I propose that this automatic embodied flow of information between individuals (from performer to observer) bears relevance to Leibniz’s intuitions on symbols. Specifically, I suggest that the shared representations stored in mirror neurons, thought to enable the interpretation of the action performer’s intentions, may be seen as a biological instantiation of Leibniz’s planned, but never realized, universal characteristic. (shrink)

Precision medicine (PM) and genomics are increasingly scrutinized through the lens of health inequities. This is a welcome development for a field that, while concerned with health-related differen...

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 2, February 2022.

Priority of the “self” is thought to be evolutionarily advantageous. However, evidence for this priority has been sparse. In this study, subjects performed a gender categorization task on self- and non-self target faces preceded by either congruent or incongruent periliminal or subliminal primes. We found that subliminal primes induced a priming effect only on self target faces. This discovery of a self-specific priming effect suggests that functional specificity for faces may include timing as well as spatial adaptations.

Little is known about the impact of success and failure events on age-related changes in affect states and, particularly, in self-esteem levels. To fill this gap in the literature, in the present study changes in affect and self-esteem in 100 young (19 - 30 years) and 102 older adults (65-81 years) were assessed after participants experienced success and failure in a demanding cognitive task. Overall, the success-failure manipulation induced changes on affect states and on state self-esteem, not on trait self-esteem. (...) Regarding age differences, older and young adults were affected to the same extent by experiences of successes and failures. Theoretical considerations of the empirical findings are provided in the general discussion. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to emphasize the theoretical and aesthetical meanings of Plessner’s aesthesiology. His theory on the unity of the senses allows to legitimate the normative sense of sensibility and his pregnancy to understand the organization of experience. Such an aesthetical perspective has also relevant implications for Plessner’s philosophical anthropology and his theory of eccentric positionality of human being, which is mainly a theory on the body-mind philosophical conjunction.