Nel contesto della presente crisi climatica ed ambientale, istituzioni pubbliche e private promuovono la costruzione di ‘infrastrutture viventi’. L’articolo analizza l’economia biopolitica che caratterizza questi progetti, concentrandosi sull’infrastrutturalizzazione del pioppo: un genus botanico ampiamente utilizzato come ‘barriera contro la desertificazione’, ‘struttura di fitorisanamento’, e ‘pozzo di assorbimento di anidride carbonica’. Questi progetti mobilizzano il metabolismo della cellula vivente, dando forma a nuove reti di potere bio-infrastrutturale ed elaborate strategie di accumulazione del capitale.

The case of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology is based on the weaving between experience and expression of experience. From this point of view, the article examines Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on children’s drawing and on modern art. Bot try to get back the raw perception of the world - beyond the idealisations of perspective art and of geometry - and rediscover the expressive and symbolic dynamics in our body experience.

L’indagine filosofica riserva da sempre grande attenzione alle questioni riguardanti la natura del linguaggio e della comunicazione. Recentemente, nel contesto della scienza cognitiva, sono stati avanzati tentativi esplicativi promettenti, sulla base di un assunto fondamentale: i modelli concettuali devono essere vincolati alla ricerca empirica. Il testo curato da Francesco Ferretti e Daniele Gambarara si fa portavoce di questa esigenza di dialogo tra scienza e filosofia, in opposizione ad un...

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Italian cytologist Paolo Della Valle developed a theory of instable chromosomes (teoria dei cromosomi labili). He radically criticized the so-called Sutton–Boveri hypothesis (Martins and Martins, Genetics and Molecular Biology, 22:261–271, 1999), focusing on numerical constancy in the species and individuality. On the basis of bibliographical review and personal observations, he maintained that the chromosomes were neither stable bodies, nor permanent structures, but transitory cellular materials, resulting from the periodical re-arrangement of (...) the chromatin during the cell division. German and English-speaking biologists reacted. The paper shows some content of the argumentations used by Thomas H. Montgomery and especially Edmund B. Wilson. The discussion was characterized by the same data which is interpreted by different scholars in different ways. And the point is that no one of them had the decisive test to demonstrate his own point of view. Wilson simply invoked on his behalf a certain ‘common sense’, defending at least a ‘high degree of constancy’. The debate waned along with the reception of Morgan’s chromosome theory of heredity, but only the advent of molecular biology definitively stated the nature of chromosomes as permanent structures of the cell. (shrink)

Il trascendentalismo della prassi per andare oltre lo scetticismo e oltre ogni pretesa da parte della filosofia di cogliere l'essere nella sua definizione universale e razionale. Una proposta anche storiografica.

Critical edition of Leon Battista Alberti's Encomion Sancti Thome Aquinatis, with introduction and ample indices. Latin and Italian text. Organizzazione dell'opera: Salvatore I. Camporeale, Alle origini della 'Teologia umanistica' nel primo '400. L'Encomion S. Thomae di Lorenzo Valla I. INTRODUZIONE: I testimoni manoscritti Le edizioni Le traduzioni Nota ecdotica Criteri di edizione Ultime considerazioni II. TAVOLE III. LAURENTII VALLE ENCOMION SANCTI THOME AQUINATIS IV. INDICI: Indice delle tavole Indice dei manoscritti Indice dei passi citati degli auctores Indice delle (...) opere di Lorenzo Valla Indice dei nomi e dei luoghi. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001) 463-482 [Access article in PDF] The "Antiquarianization" of Biblical Scholarship and the London Polyglot Bible (1653-57) Peter N. Miller The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the heroic age of the antiquaries. Roaming from text to context and back again, these scholars completed the revolution begun by the humanists who realized that Greek and Roman texts could never be understood isolated from (...) the men and societies that made them. These scholars, from Petrarch to Poggio, from Panvinio to Peiresc to Perizonius, looked beyond the page and collected, described, and compared the material remains of the ancient world. That these investigations transformed the understanding of the past and effected a revolution in the method of historical inquiry was insisted upon by Arnaldo Momigliano beginning half a century ago. 1 In recent years these antiquaries have also attracted the attention of historians of early modern art, science, archaeology, politics, and scholarship. 2 [End Page 463]This renewed focus on antiquaries as agents of late humanism has tended to concentrate on their contribution to understanding ancient Greece and Rome, but they were also responsible for the first generation of serious scholarship about the ancient and modern Near East. Drawing on the same methods to ask the same questions they had asked of classical antiquity these antiquaries directed their attention to the extra-European world. Like the study of the earlier Renaissance of Greece and Rome, that of Israel and Egypt was stimulated by a profusion of new materials, streaming back to scholars' studies from the missionaries, merchants, and diplomats traveling to the Ottoman East in greater and greater numbers. It is breadth of inquiry that characterizes this new approach--more texts in more languages--but also a much greater explanatory weight placed on objects as evidence and more confidence in using knowledge provided by people presently living in far-away places to shed light on those who lived there long ago. In this approach to a region and its culture as a whole early modern antiquaries created oriental studies.Because so much of the contemporary interest in the Near East was driven by the ingrained association of these lands and their peoples with the history narrated in the Bible, early oriental studies is inseparable from biblical scholarship. Pietro della Valle's letters from the East were, after all, signed "Il Pellegrino," and Fabri de Peiresc's efforts to recover the Samaritans and their history were triggered by his desire to contribute to the publication of their Pentateuch. It is because oriental studies like these were shaped by the ways and means of antiquaries that so much seventeenth-century biblical scholarship can be described as having been "antiquarianized." Like the earlier humanists who had given Virgil and Horace a context, those fascinated and obsessed with understanding every jot and tittle of the sacred text turned to the Bible's context for help: the history of the ancient Near East as it could be reconstructed from texts, objects, and the long-lived traditions preserved by marginal groups like the Samaritans or in out of the way places like the Coptic monasteries of Wadi Natrûn. This antiquarianization reflects the move from the word to the world that had begun with Petrarch. Early modern sacred philologists--the Englishman Thomas Fuller called this figure "The True Church Antiquary"--set out to prove, by the most sophisticated methods available, that sacred history was historical.At the heart of this inquiry lay a belief in historia sacra, understood as both a theory of providential history and a methodology of historical scholarship. The theory gave them the confidence to pursue with reason the truth of revelation because all had to reflect the plan of the One Creator. The practice encouraged scholars to recruit the evidence of history, philosophy, archaeology, and geography to the service of the sacred, all confirming the triumph of Christianity. They [End Page 464] were convinced that erudition could only amplify, and not undermine, the conclusions already reached by faith. 3 It was this... (shrink)

Gran parte della letteratura riguardante l’uso dell’intelligenza artificiale (IA) sul posto di lavoro, in particolare nell’ambito dell’assistenza infermieristica e dei servizi di cura, si è concentrata sui problemi etici che insorgono a valle della sua implementazione o per ragioni puramente speculative. Concentrarsi sull’IA come artefatto separato dal suo design e dai suoi progettisti rende l’assistenza infermieristica e la cura, come qualsiasi altro settore, in gran parte impotente nei confronti degli impatti dell’IA. Per questo motivo, la focalizzazione sul (...) design e su come progettare rispettando valori e professionalità dei professionisti e degli operatori sanitari è di massima importanza. Sono state proposti vari approcci per raggiungere questo obiettivo, come la progettazione partecipata, la progettazione universale, la progettazione inclusiva e la progettazione orientata ai valori. Nonostante i vantaggi di questi approcci più consolidati, nessuno di essi si concentra sulle narrazioni e le metafore sottostanti che guidano e influenzano come l’IA viene percepita e quindi impatta il lavoro dei professionisti. Questo lavoro esamina brevemente un approccio complementare, ovvero l’IA centrata sull’essere umano (HCAI), che propone nuove narrazioni di potenziamento e miglioramento per gli utenti, piuttosto che narrazioni di sostituzione. Se i professionisti spingono per l’adozione di tale approccio e nuove narrazioni, possono aumentare, piuttosto che abdicare, la loro responsabilità sul posto di lavoro e aumentare la loro capacità di fornire cure adeguate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Prima parte – Descrizione del sermonarioNel 1494 Johann Meder, francescano osservante, affronta il compito di predicare la Quaresima a Basilea. Davanti all'interrogativo su come conquistare l'attenzione degli ascoltatori, vincendone la distrazione senza diventare un "adulterator verbi Dei," concepisce un ciclo profondamente innovativo, dato alle stampe l'anno successivo. Nella stessa città un altro ciclo di predicazione sui generis vede la luce in concomitanza alle prediche di Meder: in quei giorni (...) infatti viene pubblicato a Basilea il Narrenschiff di Sebastian Brant, testo di immediato successo, rapidamente tradotto e diffuso in tutta Europa. Lo studio dei due testi mostra precisi contatti e convergenze di interessi tra il predicatore francescano e Brant, tra pulpito e tipografia. Se il Narrenschiff si caratterizza fin da subito per le sue xilografie, che annoverano tra gli autori il giovane Dürer, è proprio il comune interesse per l'uso delle immagini a caratterizzare il rapporto tra Brant e Meder. Basti qui anticipare che le prediche di Meder vengono stampate con un corredo di xilografie, opera di uno dei migliori illustratori del tempo influenzati da Dürer, che rendono questa edizione un unicum nel panorama dei sermonari alla fine del Quattrocento.L'intreccio di questi fatti accresce l'interesse di una ricerca che indaghi come si comporta un predicatore osservante nella Basilea di Brant e Dürer. Pur essendo state già notate alcune particolarità del sermonario di Meder, questo testo ha ricevuto finora un'attenzione solo cursoria. Questo articolo si propone di mettere in luce quattro elementi: nella prima parte l'architettura generale del quaresimale, in maniera particolare il suo impianto teatrale; nella seconda parte la sincronia tra predicazione e Narrenschiff, il rapporto tra Meder e Brant e le caratteristiche dell'edizione del Quadragesimale novum come sermonario illustrato.1. Basilea 1494: il Narrenschiff e un ciclo di prediche quaresimaliIl volto di Basilea lungo il XV secolo è segnato da tre avvenimenti determinanti: il concilio, l'università, la stampa. Li evochiamo rapidamente per la loro incidenza sull'identità e lo spessore culturale della città. Il concilio pose per diversi anni Basilea al centro della cristianità, permettendole di assumere un ruolo e una notorietà europea. Uno dei frutti del nuovo profilo assunto dalla città fu la nascita dell'università, la quale, dopo una prima breve esperienza , venne rifondata su più solide basi nel 1460, contribuendo a creare le condizioni favorevoli per il precoce impianto della stampa e il suo rapido sviluppo, che rese Basilea presto uno dei centri di eccellenza, soprattutto per i libri illustrati.Dentro a queste coordinate si colloca Brant, nato a Strasburgo nel 1457 e giunto come studente nel 1475 a Basilea, dove si licenzia in diritto nel 1484 e diviene doctor utiusque iuris nel 1489. All'università Brant ricopre la cattedra sia di diritto che di poesia, affiancando all'insegnamento il lavoro presso diversi editori, fino al 1501, quando torna a Strasburgo, dove morirà nel 1521. Se nel 1494 Brant è ormai un esperto protagonista nella vita di Basilea, Meder vi si è inserito da poco, dall'anno precedente. È un uomo intorno ai sessant'anni e un predicatore esperto, con un curriculum ormai ventennale in diversi conventi francescani lungo la valle del Reno, tra Magonza e Basilea, dove risiederà fino al 1502.Nei giorni di Carnevale del febbraio del 1494, alla vigilia della Quaresima, viene pubblicato il Narrenschiff. Come è noto si tratta di una satira morale che, capitolo dopo capitolo, passa in rassegna le follie del mondo, soprattutto cittadino. È una critica alla follia non ancora capace di quell'ironia che sarà di Erasmo, ma che, pur condannando tutto e tutti, crede possibile l'azione educatrice della sapienza e dunque il 'rinsavimento' dei folli. Se si chiede chi siano i folli, la risposta di Brant è tutti, e la prima follia è non volerselo sentire dire. Proprio per questo Brant ha costruito uno spiegel nel quale ognuno possa vedere la propria follia, perché l'inizio della sapienza è il riconoscimento della stoltezza e della.. (shrink)

We begin, in section 2, with a brief sketch of a cluster of assumptions about human desires, beliefs, actions, and motivation that are widely shared by historical and contemporary authors on both sides in the debate. With this as background, we’ll be able to offer a more sharply focused account of the debate. In section 3, our focus will be on links between evolutionary theory and the egoism/altruism debate. There is a substantial literature employing evolutionary theory on each side of (...) the issue. However, it is our contention that neither camp has offered a convincing case. We are much more sanguine about recent research on altruism in social psychology, which will be our topic in section 4. Though we don’t think this work has resolved the debate, we will argue that it has made illuminating progress – progress that philosophers interested in the question cannot afford to ignore. (shrink)

The interest of assigning homework is frequently discussed due to its alleged low impact on student achievement. One of the current lines of research is to emphasize the quality of student homework engagement rather than the amount of time spent on homework. The aim of this study was to determine (a) the extent to which students’ prior achievement affects their homework engagement (i.e., time spent, time management, and amount of teacher-assigned homework done), and (b) how students’ intrinsic motivation towards homework (...) may mediate or moderate the relationship between prior achievement and the homework engagement variables. A large sample of students from the first four years of Secondary Education (N = 1899) completed questionnaires. The results showed that intrinsic motivation partially mediates, but does not moderate, the effect of prior achievement on the three variables related to homework engagement (time spent, time management, and amount of teacher-assigned homework done). These results highlight the importance of considering both students’ current level of achievement and their motivation towards homework engagement when assigning homework. (shrink)

BackgroundInnovations in technology have contributed to rapid changes in the way that modern biomedical research is carried out. Researchers are increasingly required to endorse adaptive and flexible approaches to accommodate these innovations and comply with ethical, legal and regulatory requirements. This paper explores how Dynamic Consent may provide solutions to address challenges encountered when researchers invite individuals to participate in research and follow them up over time in a continuously changing environment.MethodsAn interdisciplinary workshop jointly organised by the University of Oxford (...) and the COST Action CHIP ME gathered clinicians, researchers, ethicists, lawyers, research participants and patient representatives to discuss experiences of using Dynamic Consent, and how such use may facilitate the conduct of specific research tasks. The data collected during the workshop were analysed using a content analysis approach.ResultsDynamic Consent can provide practical, sustainable and future-proof solutions to challenges related to participant recruitment, the attainment of informed consent, participant retention and consent management, and may bring economic efficiencies.ConclusionsDynamic Consent offers opportunities for ongoing communication between researchers and research participants that can positively impact research. Dynamic Consent supports inter-sector, cross-border approaches and large scale data-sharing. Whilst it is relatively easy to set up and maintain, its implementation will require that researchers re-consider their relationship with research participants and adopt new procedures. (shrink)

It has become a truism that the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) is necessary and must help guide technological developments. Numerous ethical guidelines have emerged from academia, industry, government and civil society in recent years. While they provide a basis for discussion on appropriate regulation of AI, it is not always clear how these ethical guidelines were developed, and by whom. Using content analysis, we surveyed a sample of the major documents (_n_ = 47) and analyzed the accessible information regarding (...) their methodology and stakeholder engagement. Surprisingly, only 38% report some form of stakeholder engagement (with 9% involving citizens) and most do not report their methodology for developing normative insights (15%). Our results show that documents with stakeholder engagement develop more comprehensive ethical guidance with greater applicability, and that the private sector is least likely to engage stakeholders. We argue that the current trend for enunciating AI ethical guidance not only poses widely discussed challenges of applicability in practice, but also of transparent development (as it rather behaves as a black box) and of active engagement of diversified, independent and trustworthy stakeholders. While most of these documents consider people and the common good as central to their telos, engagement with the general public is significantly lacking. As AI ethics moves from the initial race for enunciating general principles to more sustainable, inclusive and practical guidance, stakeholder engagement and citizen involvement will need to be embedded into the framing of ethical and societal expectations towards this technology. (shrink)

BackgroundArtificial intelligence has been described as the “fourth industrial revolution” with transformative and global implications, including in healthcare, public health, and global health. AI approaches hold promise for improving health systems worldwide, as well as individual and population health outcomes. While AI may have potential for advancing health equity within and between countries, we must consider the ethical implications of its deployment in order to mitigate its potential harms, particularly for the most vulnerable. This scoping review addresses the following question: (...) What ethical issues have been identified in relation to AI in the field of health, including from a global health perspective?MethodsEight electronic databases were searched for peer reviewed and grey literature published before April 2018 using the concepts of health, ethics, and AI, and their related terms. Records were independently screened by two reviewers and were included if they reported on AI in relation to health and ethics and were written in the English language. Data was charted on a piloted data charting form, and a descriptive and thematic analysis was performed.ResultsUpon reviewing 12,722 articles, 103 met the predetermined inclusion criteria. The literature was primarily focused on the ethics of AI in health care, particularly on carer robots, diagnostics, and precision medicine, but was largely silent on ethics of AI in public and population health. The literature highlighted a number of common ethical concerns related to privacy, trust, accountability and responsibility, and bias. Largely missing from the literature was the ethics of AI in global health, particularly in the context of low- and middle-income countries.ConclusionsThe ethical issues surrounding AI in the field of health are both vast and complex. While AI holds the potential to improve health and health systems, our analysis suggests that its introduction should be approached with cautious optimism. The dearth of literature on the ethics of AI within LMICs, as well as in public health, also points to a critical need for further research into the ethical implications of AI within both global and public health, to ensure that its development and implementation is ethical for everyone, everywhere. (shrink)

BackgroundClinical ethics consultations can be complex interventions, involving multiple methods, stakeholders, and competing ethical values. Despite longstanding calls for rigorous evaluation in the field, progress has been limited. The Medical Research Council proposed guidelines for evaluating the effectiveness of complex interventions. The evaluation of CEC may benefit from application of the MRC framework to advance the transparency and methodological rigor of this field. A first step is to understand the outcomes measured in evaluations of CEC in healthcare settings. ObjectiveThe primary (...) objective of this review was to identify and map the outcomes reported in primary studies of CEC. The secondary objective was to provide a comprehensive overview of CEC structures, processes, and roles to enhance understanding and to inform standardization.MethodsWe searched electronic databases to identify primary studies of CEC involving patients, substitute decision-makers and/or family members, clinicians, healthcare staff and leaders. Outcomes were mapped across five conceptual domains as identified a priori based on our clinical ethics experience and preliminary literature searches and revised based on our emerging interpretation of the data. These domains included personal factors, process factors, clinical factors, quality, and resource factors. ResultsForty-eight studies were included in the review. Studies were highly heterogeneous and varied considerably regarding format and process of ethical intervention, credentials of interventionist, population of study, outcomes reported, and measures employed. In addition, few studies used validated measurement tools. The top three outcome domains that studies reported on were quality, process factors, and clinical factors. The majority of studies examined multiple outcome domains. All five outcome domains were multidimensional and included a variety of subthemes.ConclusionsThis scoping review represents the initial phase of mapping the outcomes reported in primary studies of CEC and identifying gaps in the evidence. The confirmed lack of standardization represents a hindrance to the provision of high quality intervention and CEC scientific progress. Insights gained can inform the development of a core outcome set to standardize outcome measures in CEC evaluation research and enable scientifically rigorous efficacy trials of CEC. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se procede a la entrega de los resultados de una investigación acerca de los imaginarios sociales producidos por la prensa en un contexto específico que corresponde a la crisis argentina de 2001, y, a su vez, procura contribuir empíricamente a la discusión acerca del poder que ostenta la prensa escrita en contextos de conflicto social.

Imagine that someone recovers relatively quickly, say, within two or three months, from grief over the death of her spouse, whom she loved and who loved her; and suppose that, after some brief interval, she remarries. Does the fact that she feels better and moves on relatively quickly somehow diminish the quality of her earlier relationship? Does it constitute a failure to do well by the person who died? Our aim is to respond to two arguments that give affirmative answers (...) to these questions. The first argument, which is developed by Dan Moller in “Love and Death”, states that recovering relatively quickly from grief over the deaths of people who are close to us is deeply regrettable, in one respect, because it means that these people were relatively unimportant to us. The second, which derives from some classic literary discussions of grief, states that such a recovery is regrettable because it amounts to abandoning the person who died. Responding to these arguments promises to dissolve certain anxieties about whether we do well by the people we love when they die. Beyond this, it promises to help us better understand what it means to cultivate good relationships with these people during their lives. (shrink)

Epistemic injustice has undergone a steady growth in the medical ethics literature throughout the last decade as many ethicists have found it to be a powerful tool for describing and assessing morally problematic situations in healthcare. However, surprisingly scarce attention has been devoted to how epistemic injustice relates to physicians’ professional duties on a conceptual level. I argue that epistemic injustice, specifically testimonial, collides with physicians’ duty of nonmaleficence and should thus be actively fought against in healthcare encounters on the (...) ground of professional conduct. I do so by fleshing out how Fricker’s conception of testimonial injustice conflicts with the duty of nonmaleficence as defined in Beauchamp and Childress on theoretical grounds. From there, I argue that testimonial injustice produces two distinct types of harm, epistemic and non-epistemic. Epistemic harms are harms inflicted by the physician to the patient qua knower, whereas non-epistemic harms are inflicted to the patient qua patient. This latter case holds serious clinical implications and represent a failure of the process of due care on the part of the physician. I illustrate this through examples taken from the literature on fibromyalgia syndrome and show how testimonial injustice causes wrongful harm to patients, making it maleficent practice. Finally, I conclude on why nonmaleficence as a principle will not be normatively enough to fully address the problem of epistemic injustice in healthcare but nevertheless may serve as a good starting point in attempting to do so. (shrink)

PurposeAdolescents develop their decision-making ability as they transition from childhood to adulthood. Participation in their medical care should be encouraged through obtaining assent, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). In this research, we aim to define the current knowledge of AAP recommendations and surgeon practices regarding assent for elective reconstructive procedures.MethodsAn anonymous electronic survey was distributed to North American paediatric surgeons and fellows through the American Pediatric Surgical Association (n=1353).ResultsIn total, 220 surgeons and trainees responded (16.3%). Fifty (...) per cent of the surgeons who are familiar with the concept of assent had received formal training; 12% of the respondents had not heard of assent before the survey. Forty-seven per cent were aware of the 2016 AAP policy statement regarding assent in paediatric patients. Eighty-nine per cent always include adolescents as part of the consent discussion. Seventy-seven per cent solicit an expression of willingness to accept the proposed care from the patient. The majority (74%) of the surgeons perceived patient cooperation/understanding as the biggest barrier to obtaining assent. Over half of the respondents would consider proceeding with elective surgery despite the adolescent patient’s refusal. Reasons cited for proceeding with elective surgery include surgeons’ perception of medical necessity, perceptions of disease urgency, and lack of patient maturity.ConclusionPaediatric surgeons largely acknowledge the importance of assent, but variably practice the principles of obtaining assent from adolescent patients undergoing elective reconstructive procedures. Fewer surgeons are explicitly aware of formal policy statements or received formal training. Additional surgeon education and institutional policies are warranted to maximise inclusion of adolescents in their medical care. (shrink)

Activity in the prefrontal cortex may distinguish the meta-awareness experienced during lucid dreams from its absence in normal dreams. To examine a possible relationship between dream lucidity and prefrontal task performance, we carried out a prospective study in 28 high school students. Participants performed the Wisconsin Card Sort and Iowa Gambling tasks, then for 1 week kept dream journals and reported sleep quality and lucidity-related dream characteristics. Participants who exhibited a greater degree of lucidity performed significantly better on the task (...) that engages the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, but degree of lucidity achieved did not distinguish performance on the task that engages the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, nor did it distinguish self-reported sleep quality or baseline characteristics. The association between performance on the Iowa Gambling Task and lucidity suggests a connection between lucid dreaming and ventromedial prefrontal function. (shrink)