This study explores the use of deictic gestures, vocalizations and words compared to content-loaded, or representational gestures and words in children’s early one- and two-element utterances. We analyze the spontaneous production of four children, observed longitudinally from 10–12 to 24–25 months of age, focusing on the components of children’s utterances, the information encoded, and the temporal relationship between gestures and vocalizations or words that were produced in combination. Results indicate that while the gestural and vocal modalities are meaningfully and temporally (...) integrated form the earliest stages, deictic and representational elements are unevenly distributed in the gestural vs. the vocal modality, and in one vs. two-element utterances. The findings suggest that while gestural deixis plays a primary role in allowing children to define and articulate their vocal productions, representational skills appear to be markedly more constrained in the gestural as compared to the vocal modality. (shrink)

This study provides new longitudinal evidence on two major types of gesture–speech combination that play different roles in children’s early language. We analysed the spontaneous production of 10 Italian children observed monthly from 10–12 to 23–25 months of age. We evaluated the extent to which the developmental trends observed in children’s early gesture–word and word–word productions can predict subsequent verbal abilities. The results indicate that “complementary” and “supplementary” gesture–speech combinations predict subsequent language development in a different manner: While the onset (...) of “supplementary” combinations predicts the onset of two-word combinations, the use of “complementary” combinations at 12 and 18 months predicts the vocabulary and the ability to produce more words utterances at 2 years of age. Moreover, the results suggest that both “complementary” and “supplementary” crossmodal combinations are good predictive indexes of early verbal skills during the second year of age. (shrink)

This study provides new longitudinal evidence on two major types of gesture–speech combination that play different roles in children’s early language. We analysed the spontaneous production of 10 Italian children observed monthly from 10–12 to 23–25 months of age. We evaluated the extent to which the developmental trends observed in children’s early gesture–word and word–word productions can predict subsequent verbal abilities. The results indicate that “complementary” and “supplementary” gesture–speech combinations predict subsequent language development in a different manner: While the onset (...) of “supplementary” combinations predicts the onset of two-word combinations, the use of “complementary” combinations at 12 and 18 months predicts the vocabulary and the ability to produce more words utterances at 2 years of age. Moreover, the results suggest that both “complementary” and “supplementary” crossmodal combinations are good predictive indexes of early verbal skills during the second year of age. (shrink)

Les langues des signes sont des langues qui n’ont pas un système d’écriture qui leur est propre et qui, par leur nature visuo-gestuelle, ne peuvent pas être écrites phonographiquement. Les conséquences de cette « non‑scriptibilité » sont au centre des travaux menés à partir de 2000 par Elena Antinoro Pizzuto. EAP, décédée en 2011, mettait en évidence les biais que l’utilisation des « gloses », employées comme substituts de la transcription, induisent dans l’analyse linguistique des LS. Ces 10 (...) dernières années, les avancées technologiques et méthodologiques ont rendu plus aisée la saisie automatique des données corporelles, l’annotation multilinéaire de corpus multimodaux et le maintien des liens entre les annotations et les vidéos, ainsi que la diffusion des vidéos sur lesquelles se basent les analyses. Toutefois, ces technologies et bonnes pratiques — bien que fondamentales — ne font pas office de système de transcription : ce sont des solutions qui suppriment une partie des symptômes liés à la non‑scriptibilité des LS, mais ne comblent pas l’absence d’un système de représentation graphique de ces langues. Les questions soulevées par EAP sont donc encore d’actualité. Si différentes tentatives pour transcrire les LS ont vu le jour, leur utilisation pour exploiter de vastes corpus de LS s’est souvent heurtée à leur faible lisibilité et/ou requêtabilité. En comparant les avantages et les inconvénients de ces systèmes, il est possible d’établir une liste des caractéristiques que devrait posséder un système de transcription des LS. Mais développer un système qui réunit toutes ces spécificités est un défi que les linguistes ne peuvent pas relever seuls : c’est dans la pluridisciplinarité, et en particulier dans le travail conjoint avec les spécialistes des aspects graphiques de l’écriture, que semble résider la solution. Cette approche, dite « grapholinguistique », est suivie par l’équipe GestualScript pour développer Typannot, un système de transcription typographique des LS et de la gestualité co-verbale. (shrink)

Lotman’s contribution to semiotic theory, anthroposemiotics, the study of artistic texts and defining the relationship between language and culture represent some of the most powerful work produced within the Tartu–Moscow School of Semiotics. The importance of translation is one of the central principles that unites all of Lotman’s work. In the following paper, we will consider Lotman’s definition of translatability in the context of (1) the definition of semiospheric internal and external boundaries and the importance of crossing these boundaries, (2) (...) the role of no fewer than two languages as a minimal unit of semiotic meaning-generation, (3) culture text-level generation of collective memory, and (4) the ever-present tension in the communication act. In our concluding section, we will offer an extended model of the communication act, based on the fundamental principles given in Jakobson, Sebeok and Lotman, in order to specify important moments of the translation process. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons ed. by Alexandru Matei, Christian Moraru and Andrei TerianLaura Elena Savu WalkerMatei, Alexandru, Christian Moraru, and Andrei Terian, editors. Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons. Bloomsbury, 2021. 376pp.Far from “mourning” the demise of theory, this timely and thoughtfully curated essay collection testifies to its “renewed vitality,” its compelling presence (...) “across fields, domains of life, and geocultural boundaries,” and its power to build an ever-expanding world community of practioners who are forming what has come to be known as a “theory commons” (ix). As the collection’s editors point out, theory’s new lease on life hinges on ensuring both the democratic workings of this “world discourse formation” (1) and on the responsible theorizing of the very notion of community in “a world threatened by all kinds of anti-communal actions and reactions, from runaway globalization to exacerbated tribalism and tunnel-vision politics” (x). Working on the margins, specifically, out of a Romanian “lab” called The Critical Theory Institute (CTI), which opened its doors in early 2000, the contributors seek to revise the “standard history of theory,” one whose “Western origins, authority, and cultural compass ” strike them as “exceedingly reductive” (3). This project of geotheoretical repositioning and recalibration aims to recast theory as a “quintessentially cross-linguistic, cross-cultural, trans- and intercontinental undertaking” (4). As such, it carries on the project, launched in a previous volume, Romanian Literature as World Literature (2018), of fashioning an alternative to the nation-state paradigm that has long shaped literary and intellectual histories. In both of these works, Romanian critics and theorists have tuned into a wide range of voices, and tapped into a shared conceptual and methodological apparatus—itself the product of “an ethno-linguistic medley of traditions” (8). This approach informs what editors see as the “epoch-making” (17) discursive paradigm that has taken shape in globally networked post-Cold War societies (17), a viral model of cultural influence that fosters an ontology of “contact, contagion, of infection, dissemination, and horizontal accumulation” (15).To give us a sense of theory’s complex genealogy and evolution, the editors reference the Bulgarian critic Galin Tihanov, who has attributed [End Page 122] important developments in contemporary theory to the achievements of theorists (Nikolai Trubetskoi, Roman Jakobson, Vladimir Propp, and Georg Lukács) and schools of thought (Russian Formalism and the Prague Linguistic Circle). In “Traveling Theory” (1983) and “Traveling Theory Reconsidered” (2000), Edward Said called attention to the migratory nature of contributions made, for instance, by Georg Lukács, whose theories moved across different European locales in this period. Since then, contemporary theory has branched out to integrate the travels and travails of scholars affiliated with theory labs located in Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, and last, but not least, Romania (10).Theory in the “Post” Era highlights five characteristics that distinguish theory in the “post” era from earlier forms: 1) It has a “reluctantly epoch-alist” thrust (19; original italics), which assumes that the “post” lexicon entails “rupture, discontinuity, and opposition” (19), radical departures, tentative claims, provisional conclusions, and ex-centric perspectives; 2) it adopts a “self-reflexive and experimental” (20; original italics) stance in which theorists invoke inherited approaches or invent new ones; 3) it introduces a “transdisciplinary” (21; original italics) scope that allows authors to interrogate the foundations, aims, and methods of theoretical discourse and practice across several knowledge domains, from which they “borrow whole vocabularies and toolkits” (21); 4) it is “nationally, transnationally, and ecologically affiliative” (20) in ways that allow theorists to “think with others at a distance” (21) about global issues; and 5) it is programmatic, placing critical and theoretical concerns in the service of “the ethical, the political, and the communal” (22). Organized around three main themes (“Aesthetics,” “Temporalities,” and “Critical Modes”), the essays juxtapose discussions of pivotal historical events and cultural phenomena with literary analyses of Romantic era “classics,” modernist experiments, and postmodern works of the post-Communist era, a corpus that includes, but is not limited to, landmark works of national culture that are now part of a fast-expanding planetary... (shrink)

The article analyses Hegel's use of the expression >das Logische die Logik das Logische das Logische das Dialektische<. This shows in my point of view that the Jena logic is already conceived as metaphysics, and that dialectics is the very core of the identity of logic and metaphysics.

For Bergson, creating a masterpiece and perceiving it amounts to an act of intuitive communication between the artist and the spectator. Both the artist and the viewer intuit the work of art, which is something other than their own personal history, something that belongs to both of them and at the same time exists independently from them. The Bergsonian concept of heterogeneous duration, which primarily refers to consciousness and living processes, is extended in this instance to artistic communication as a (...) process that unites creation and contemplation. Artistic creation and communication constitute an intimate ontological bonding wherein human beings actualize their ability to intuit and where an artist shares with the audience his or her deep emotions without revealing personal data. This process of creation and perception of art could be named artistic duration or artistic communication. This duration is created by a joint participation of more than one individual and represents duration that escapes the boundaries of one mind because it is created by more than one mind. The artist initiates a continuity of emotion, by expressing it in art and making us feel it when we admire the masterpiece. By perceiving it, we do not return to the artist’s time and re-live his or her artistic creation vicariously, but pick up where the artist left this creation and let it live further on in our soul. (shrink)

Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. Edited By Tsing Anna Lowenhaupt, Swanson Heather Anne, Gan Elaine, Bubandt Nils.

The article is about the meaning of the word ‘transcendental’ in Kant and Fichte. Its aim is not merely exegetical. It is a common hermeneutical insight (now revitalised by research on conceptual engineering and conceptual genealogy for analytic philosophy) that analysing the use and definitions of concepts in history, and their shifts in the development of the history of philosophy, is a crucial tool we have to understand those concepts and to assess their viability for philosophy today. In this paper, (...) I focus on Kant’s use and definitions of the word ‘transcendental’ and suggest that they are symptomatic of a fundamental question that is not completely answered in Kant’s philosophy. If transcendental philosophy deals not with objects but rather the conditions of possibility of objective knowledge, then important questions emerge: What are these possibility conditions? Do they exist? Are they special objects? What is their nature? I show that the shift in Fichte’s use and understanding of the concept of ‘transcendental’ leads to a possible solution of the problem Kant was struggling with. (shrink)

The article analyses Kant’s and Fichte’s uses of the word ‘transcendental’. As a matter of fact, in both philosophers the use of the word is strongly connected with the problem of definition and foundation of philosophy. According to some commentators (first of all Norbert Hinske), Kant’s use of the word shows an oscillation (Doppeltendenz) between an old (metaphysical) and a new (epistemological-critical) meaning. This semantic oscillation means that Kant’s philosophical foundation fluctuates between the attempt to overcome traditional metaphysics and the (...) difficulty of getting rid of metaphysics. Unfortunately, Hinske does not explain which is the systematic reason why the word transcendental does not only have a new, programmatic meaning, but also maintains the old one. In my view, the Doppeltendenz of the Kantian transcendental is due to the problem of the ontological implications of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. On the one hand, the new definition of transcendental philosophy (as inquiry about a priori structures of knowledge) seems to imply a kind of Platonism, since it postulates the existence and objectivity of a priori structures. On the other hand, this Platonism seems to be contradicted by Kant’s epistemological dualism, according to which a priori concepts are void without intuitions, and therefore ontologically dependent from intuitions. In my view, Fichte’s interpretation of the transcendental is a possible solution to this problem. (shrink)

Medieval logic has become an object of increased interest in the last 20 years, for many reasons. One of them is, possibly, the fact that Medievals dealt with logical questions considering their in...

The enactive approach to cognition distinctively emphasizes autonomy, adaptivity, agency, meaning, experience, and interaction. Taken together, these principles can provide the new sciences of language with a comprehensive philosophical framework: languaging as adaptive social sense-making. This is a refinement and advancement on Maturana’s idea of languaging as a manner of living. Overcoming limitations in Maturana’s initial formulation of languaging is one of three motivations for this paper. Another is to give a response to skeptics who challenge enactivism to connect “lower-level” (...) sense-making with “higher-order” sophisticated moves like those commonly ascribed to language. Our primary goal is to contribute a positive story developed from the enactive account of social cognition, participatory sense-making. This concept is put into play in two different philosophical models, which respectively chronicle the logical and ontogenetic development of languaging as a particular form of social agency. Languaging emerges from the interplay of coordination and exploration inherent in the primordial tensions of participatory sense-making between individual and interactive norms; it is a practice that transcends the self-other boundary and enables agents to regulate self and other as well as interaction couplings. Linguistic sense-makers are those who negotiate interactive and internalized ways of meta-regulating the moment-to-moment activities of living and cognizing. Sense-makers in enlanguaged environments incorporate sensitivities, roles, and powers into their unique yet intelligible linguistic bodies. We dissolve the problematic dichotomies of high/low, online/offline, and linguistic/nonlinguistic cognition, and we provide new boundary criteria for specifying languaging as a prevalent kind of human social sense-making. (shrink)

: By introducing us into core concepts of Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems, Elena Esposito shows their relevance for contemporary social sciences and the study of unsettled times….

This essay frames systemic patterns of mental abuse against women of color and Indigenous women on Turtle Island (North America) in terms of larger design-of-distribution strategies in settler colonial societies, as these societies use various forms of social power to distribute, reproduce, and automate social inequalities (including public health precarities and mortality disadvantages) that skew socio-economic gain continuously toward white settler populations and their descendants. It departs from traditional studies in gender-based violence research that frame mental abuses such as gaslighting--commonly (...) understood as mental manipulation through lying or deceit--stochastically, as chance-driven interpersonal phenomena. Building on structural analyses of knowledge in political epistemology (Dotson 2012, Berenstain 2016), political theory (Davis and Ernst 2017), and Indigenous social theory (Tuck and Yang 2012), I develop the notion of cultural gaslighting to refer to the social and historical infrastructural support mechanisms that disproportionately produce abusive mental ambients in settler colonial cultures in order to further the ends of cultural genocide and dispossession. I conclude by proposing a social epidemiological account of gaslighting that a) highlights the public health harms of abusive ambients for minority populations, b) illuminates the hidden rules of social structure in settler colonial societies, and c) amplifies the corresponding need for structural reparations. (shrink)

The rise of East Asian Confucian heritage societies (China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and Singapore) has inspired an enormous amount of new empirical research. At the political level, one...

East Asia’s economy is leading the world into the new Asian century. While meritocratic practices in the educational and private sectors are often considered pivotal conditions for East Asia’s economic success, experts have pointed out that the path ahead requires new approaches to ensure social cohesion and stability, which depend on the quality of relations across social divides. These considerations raise multiple questions for philosophers: What forms of social meritocracy are necessary to sustain social cohesion? Moreover, how can the detrimental (...) effects of meritocratic practices be contained? Is it possible to utilise some of the intellectual resources indigenous to East Asia to generate innovative solutions? This paper argues that the answers to these questions lie in the indigenous Confucian conceptual resources. Confucian ideas can inspire a more desirable societal ideal for the future of East Asia. In particular, the Confucian emphasis on cultivating reciprocal harmonious human relationships and others’ morality can guide new approaches to fostering social cohesion. As Confucian personal cultivation through harmonious relations is a process of social cohesion, these ideas inspire a) a multiple approach to policymaking that is not only grounded in economic redistribution, b) a richer understanding of societal progress, and c) a democratic approach to fostering social cohesion. Unlike Confucian meritocrats and scholars who defend the Confucian roots of East Asian forms of political and social meritocracy, this paper proves that Confucian conceptual resources can help formulate a societal vision that strengthens cohesion and mitigates the adverse effects of meritocratic practices. (shrink)

Bioethics is a field in which innovation is required to help prevent and respond to zoonotic diseases with the potential to cause epidemics and pandemics. Some of the developments necessary to fight pandemics, such as COVID-19 vaccines, require public debate on the benefits and risks of individual choice versus responsibility to society. While these debates are necessary, a more fundamental ethical innovation to rebalance human, animal, and environmental interests is also needed. One Health (OH) can be characterized as a strategy (...) that recognizes and promotes the synergy between human, animal, and environmental health. Yet, despite the recognition that these entities are interdependent, there is a pronounced inequality in the power relations between human, non-human animal, and the environmental interests which threatens the well-being of all. Until OH can ensure the moral status of animals and the environment and thereby the equal consideration of these interests, it will struggle to protect non-human interests and, as a result, human health. To create a sustainable health system requires a renewed concept of justice that is ecocentric in nature and an application of OH that is flexible and responsive to different ethical interests (e.g., person-centred care and physician responsibilities). Ultimately, to save themselves, humans must now think beyond themselves. Bioethics must assume a key role in supporting the developments required to create and maintain relationships able to sustain environmental and human health. (shrink)

A common approach for measuring the effectiveness of an education system or a school is the estimation of the impact that school interventions have on students’ academic performance. However, the latest trends aim to extend the focus beyond students’ acquisition of knowledge and skills, and to consider aspects such as well-being in the academic context. For this reason, the 2015 edition of the international assessment system PISA incorporated a new tool aimed at evaluating the socio-affective variables related to the well-being (...) of students. It is based on a definition focused on the five dimensions proposed in PISA theoretical framework: cognitive, psychological, social, physical and material. The main purpose of this study is to identify the well-being components that significantly affect student academic performance and to estimate the magnitude of school effects on the well-being of students in OECD countries, the school effect being understood as the ability of schools to increase subjective student well-being. To achieve this goal, we analyzed the responses of 234,000 students from thirty-five OECD countries to PISA 2015 questionnaires. Specifically, we considered non-cognitive variables in the questionnaires and student performance in science. The results indicated that the cognitive well-being dimension, composed of enjoyment of science, self-efficacy and instrumental motivation, as well as the test anxiety all had a consistent relationship with student performance across countries. In addition, the school effect, estimated through a two-level hierarchical linear model, in terms of student well-being was systematically low. While the school effect accounted for approximately 25% of the variance in the results for the cognitive dimension, only 5-9% of variance in well-being indicators was attributable to it. This suggests that the influence of school on student welfare is weak, and the effect is similar across countries. The present study contributes to the general discussion currently underway about the definition of well-being and the connection between well-being and achievement. The results highlighted two complementary concerns: there is a clear need to promote socio-emotional education in schools, and it is important to develop a rigorous framework for well-being assessment. The implications of the results and proposals for future studies are discussed. (shrink)

The article discusses Karl Popper’s account of Lamarckism. In this article I use Popper’s published and unpublished statements regarding Lamarckism as well as his correspondence with the Australian immunologist Edward Steele and other biologists to examine why Popper was interested in Lamarckism, how his account of Lamarckism can be understood in the context of his philosophy, and what, if any, new context Popper provided for the discussion of this abandoned doctrine. I begin by discussing Popper’s frame of reference regarding Lamarckism, (...) examining how it changed following his involvement with different “transitory groups” of biologists concerned with redefining the boundaries between traditional disciplines. I then discuss Popper’s account of Lamarckism in positioning it in relation to three aspects of his philosophy: his distinction between the principles of induction/instruction and deduction/selection, his distinction between scientific and teleological concepts, and his concept of progress in science. Then, I follow the debate concerning Steele’s Lamarckian experiments with a closer look at Popper’s role and his position in this controversy. I conclude that Popper’s writings provided a new context for the discussion of Lamarckism in the 1970s and 1980s, thus making it “scientifically acceptable” again. I preface this discussion by a brief outline of Steele’s Lamarckian hypothesis and Popper’s comments on Steele’s work. (shrink)

"Now in its third edition, this classic text remains the seminal resource for in-depth information about major concepts and principles of the cultural-historical theory developed by Lev Vygotsky, his students, and colleagues, as well as three generations of neo-Vygotskian scholars in Russia and the West. Featuring two new chapters on brain development and scaffolding in the zone of proximal development, as well as additional content on technology, dual language learners, and students with disabilities, this new edition provides the latest research (...) evidence supporting the basics of the cultural-historical approach alongside Vygotskian-based practical implications. With concrete explanations and strategies on how to scaffold young children's learning and development, this book is essential reading for students of early childhood theory and development"--. (shrink)

Confucian meritocratic rule has been recently advocated on the basis of the economic performance of Western democracies and the political ignorance of their average voters. These arguments are grou...

The subject of our article is the identification of cultural codes of Eastern European shtetl towns in the play by Grigory Gorin "Memorial Prayer", the libretto of which was written by the author based on the works of the famous Yiddish writer Sholom Aleichem. The author of the article describes the history and conditions of localization of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire, the peculiarities of its transformation, the tragic history of the Jewish theater in the first (...) third of the twentieth century. After the disappearance of the towns and the disuse of the Yiddish language, the preservation of the history of the characteristic everyday and philosophical way of life of the shtetls became the goal of museum figures, historians, writers, playwrights, and artists. In the work, using the example of Tevye the milkman, his family and environment, characteristic images of the inhabitants of small towns, their habitat, types of thinking and actions are revealed. The article uses the methods of historicism in the retrospective of the culture of Shtetl towns, the method of analysis in the identification of Shtetl archetypes, the method of synthesis in the generalization of a set of characteristic cultural codes. The main conclusions of the study are: 1. Eastern European Jewish shtetl towns are small urban-type settlements with a predominantly Jewish population, whose unique culture was determined by the Jewish faith, everyday and religious traditions, the Yiddish language, as well as the localization of residence in a small area. 2. During the period of large-scale social upheavals of the early twentieth century and the subsequent expansion beyond the boundaries of the towns, their unique culture became a mythologeme, the foundation for writers, artists, musicians, and theater figures who emerged from it. One of the milestones in the preservation of this culture was the Jewish theater GOSET, whose existence was tragically cut short in the middle of the twentieth century. 3. The play "Memorial Prayer", written by Grigory Gorin based on the works of Sholem Aleichem and staged at the Lenkom Theater by Mark Zakharov, became the quintessence of the characteristic images of the shtetl, and at the same time the revival of authentic Jewish culture. The author's special contribution is to highlight in the play the images-the archetypes of the Shtetl, which have become cultural markers, or codes of Jewish Yiddish culture. (shrink)

This essay argues that according to feminist existential phenomenology, feminist pragmatism, and feminist genealogy, our embodied condition is an important starting place for ethical living due to the inevitable role that habits play in our conduct. In bodies, the phenomenon of habit uniquely holds together the ambiguities of freedom and determinism, transcendence and immanence, and stability and plasticity. Seeing habit formation as a matter of self-growth and social justice gives fresh opportunity for thinking of “assuming ambiguity” as a lifelong endeavor (...) made up of many small projects and practices of situated resistance to stagnation. Transcendence, understood as ameliorative transformation, is found in cultivating habits of learning from our bodily living. I articulate this argument via a reading of Simone de Beauvoir's The Coming of Age, John Dewey's Human Nature and Conduct, and Ladelle McWhorter's Bodies and Pleasures. I discuss two domains wherein the ethical significance of habit formation appears: cognitive psychological research on neural plasticity, and certain projects of self-cultivation that risk turning into overdetermining “cult of the self ” practices that close off possibilities for personal and collective transformation. (shrink)

Since March 2020, many countries throughout the world have been in lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Italy, the quarantine began on March 9, 2020, and containment measures were partially reduced only on May 4, 2020. The quarantine experience has a significant psychological impact at all ages but can have it above all on adolescents who cannot go to school, play sports, and meet friends. In this scenario, this study aimed to provide a general overview of the perceived (...) risk related to COVID-19 and the psychological experience of quarantine in a large sample of Italian adolescents. 978 adolescents (males = 339; females = 639) living in 13 Italian regions and attending upper secondary school (age range: 13–20, M = 16.57, SD = 1.20), responded to an internet-based questionnaire about perceived health risk related to COVID-19, knowledge and information on measures to control the pandemic, beliefs and opinions on stage two of the quarantine, and psychological experiences related to quarantine. 31.1% of the participants lived in "red zones," which are places where the government has imposed stricter measures of containment due to exponential and uncontrolled growth in contagion cases compared to other areas in Italy. According to our results, Italian adolescents had a low perception of risk of COVID-19. Perceived comparative susceptibility and perceived seriousness were also very low. However, they were aware of the restriction measures necessary to contain the spread of the virus, and they agreed with the limitations imposed by the government. Females and adolescents living in a “red zone” showed more significant psychological negative feelings about the quarantine experience. However, no significant differences were found about the regions where the teenagers of our sample live and the other variables related to the COVID-19 experience. This is very interesting data, leading us to hypothesize that the participants' negative feelings may be more related to the adolescent period than to the pandemic itself. (shrink)

How many scientific demonstrations can a single phenomenon have? This paper argues that, according to Aristotle's theory of scientific knowledge as laid out in the Posterior Analytics, a single conclusion may be demonstrated via more than one explanatory middle term. I also argue that this model of multiple demonstration is put into practice in the biological writings. This paper thereby accomplishes two related goals: it clarifies certain relatively obscure passages of the Posterior Analytics and uses them to show how Aristotle (...) explains biological phenomena by reference to both final and material causes in the Parts of Animals. The first part of the paper explains the account of multiple demonstration present in the Posterior Analytics and distinguishes it from another kind of plural explanation rejected by Aristotle. The second part of the paper turns to the biological explanation in the Parts of Animals and shows how Aristotle's account of multiple demonstrations works in practice. The paper thus provides evidence for the claim that the ‘applied’ reasoning on display in the biological works is in harmony with the framework of the logical treatises, and thus may also shed light on questions of the unity of the Aristotelian corpus. (shrink)

The justification of democracy, while widely debated, is hindered by a sub-optimal conceptual framework. For a start, there is confusion about the basic terms in the discussion. Many theorists claim to support either the ‘intrinsic’ or the ‘instrumental’ value of democracy, but it is unclear what this exactly means. Can democracy have other kinds of values? What does it mean to value democracy intrinsically? As a result, at certain points, scholars are talking past one another and their assessments of their (...) respective approaches to democracy are less clear than what they intended. This paper develops a conceptual framework of the values of democracy. I use this framework to classify theories of democracy under three main groups: theories that value democracy intrinsically, instrumentally, or contributorily (necessarily and non-necessarily). Through this analysis, the points of engagement among the different approaches will emerge and flawed arguments about democracy will be revealed. (shrink)

The Congress for Cultural Freedom is remembered as a paramount example of the “cultural cold wars.” In this paper, I discuss the ways in which this powerful transnational organization sought to promote “science studies” as a distinct – and politically relevant – area of expertise, and part of the CCF broader agenda to offer a renewed framework for liberalism. By means of its Study Groups, international conferences and its periodicals, such as Minerva, the Congress developed into an influential forum for (...) examining the ways Big Science impacted the relations between science, society, and politics, thus constituting a semi-institutional niche for Science Studies before its professionalization within academia during the 1970s. I argue that the Congress contributed to the construction of public space in which the relations between science, society and politics were debated, and science was reconceptualized as a social activity. The vision of “science studies” the CCF-associated intellectuals promulgated was different from the science studies we know today. Yet, this alternative vision, in which the issues of science politics appeared inseparable from those of science policy, science organization, and science governance, constituted the “pre-history” of science studies today. (shrink)

The first to use Judith Butlers work as a reading of how the legal subject is formed, this book traces how Butler comes to the themes of ethics, law and ...

This paper investigates Negative Concord, arguing that it results from a systematic lexical ambiguity: the items that participate in Negative Concord ("n-words" in Laka's 1990 terminology) are ambiguous between negative polarity items and their genuinely negative counterparts. I try to show that on empirical grounds the proposed account compares favorably with other analyses that shy away from ambiguity. I furthermore suggest that the ambiguity is not implausible conceptually because it can be viewed as reflecting an intermediate stage of the Jespersen (...) Cycle. Negative Concord can be observed in many languages. The data discussed here are taken from Romance, primarily Spanish. (shrink)