I deal with the issue of the environmental crisis from the perspective of a phenomenologically embedded qualitative social ontology. The first point I make is that our environment is a «personal world», and not a «naturalistic world»: a world that is experienced in the «personalistic attitude» and as such is an ontologically qualitative world, in which both natural and social entities are given to us as essentially constituted by value-qualities and meanings, and not as merely material things. The second point (...) I argue for is that our environment is also a «common-surrounding world» whose personal collectives are its essential correlate: «common-surrounding world» and personal collectives existentially depend on one another, and human persons, both individual and collective, are responsible for the existence of their environment and its entities. I apply the tools of phenomenological eidetics to the ideas of «personal world» and «common-surrounding world», and inquire into the ontologically qualitative implications that they have for our environment and its crisis. (shrink)

En plus de concevoir la vue et la pensée comme des processus empiriques capables de reproduire les caractéristiques des corps, Épicure reconnaît un processus psychophysique intermédiaire par le biais duquel les phantasiai ou représentations sont produites dans l’esprit et synthétisent les caractéristiques des objets sensibles. L’objectif de cet article est de monter qu’Épicure a retravaillé la doctrine de Démocrite dans cette direction, à la lumière de la critique aristotélicienne de certaines théories de la perception et de sa réflexion sur la (...) formation du phantasma. Nous étudions le processus physiologique à l’origine de la phantasia chez Épicure, et nous montrons son lien avec le processus psychophysique adopté par Aristote pour expliquer la représentation. (shrink)

Aging is characterized by the decline and deterioration of functional cells and results in a wide variety of molecular damages and reduced physical and mental capacity. The knowledge on aging process is important because life expectancy is expected to rise until 2050. Aging cannot be considered a homogeneous process and includes different trajectories characterized by states of fitness, frailty, and disability. Frailty is a dynamic condition put between a normal functional state and disability, with reduced capacity to cope with stressors. (...) This geriatric syndrome affects physical, neuropsychological, and social domains and is driven by emotional and spiritual components. Sarcopenia is considered one of the determinants and the biological substrates of physical frailty. Physical and cognitive frailty are separately approached during daily clinical practice. The concept of motoric cognitive syndrome has partially changed this scenario, opening interesting windows toward future approaches. Thus, the purpose of this manuscript is to provide an excursus on current clinical practice, enforced by aneddoctical cases. The analysis of the current state of the art seems to support the urgent need of comprehensive organizational model incorporating physical and cognitive spheres in the same umbrella. (shrink)

Using the work of philosopher Henri Bergson to examine the nature of movement and memory, this article contributes to recent research on the role of the body in learning mathematics. Our aim in this paper is to introduce the ideas of Bergson and to show how these ideas shed light on mathematics classroom activity. Bergson’s monist philosophy provides a framework for understanding the materiality of both bodies and mathematical concepts. We discuss two case studies of classrooms to show how the (...) mathematical concepts of number and function are themselves mobile and full of potentiality, open to deformation and the remapping of the possible. Bergson helps us look differently at mathematical activity in the classroom, not as a closed set of distinct interacting bodies groping after abstract concepts, but as a dynamic relational assemblage. (shrink)

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

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the most deadly and costly chronic diseases in the world characterized by many breathing problems. The management of COPD and the prevention of exacerbations are a priority goals to improve the quality of life in patients affected by this illness. In addition, it is also crucial to improve the patients’ adherence to care which, in turn, depends on their knowledge and understanding of some factors such as the prescribed medical treatment, changes in (...) dailylife, and the process of breathing. In turn, the adherence to care leads to greater autonomy for the patient who is thus able to better manage his illness. Here we presented the application of the Model IARA in patients affected by COPD in order to achieve their autonomy in illness management which, in turn, leads to a better quality of life. IARA is an intervention program which improve the awareness and knowledge of patients with respect to both the disease and symptoms through health education. Moreover, through IARA the patients are encouraged to become more actively involved in COPD care process, also regarding drug therapy adherence. Using St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire combined with qualitative analysis, we demonstrated that IARA could be considered a useful approach in COPD management. (shrink)

This paper deals with phenomenological distinctions concerning empathy with real persons and empathy with fictional characters. We will introduce both contemporary accounts of our perception of others and Edith Stein’s account of empathy. These theories will turn out to be fruitful in defending our main thesis, i.e. that the differences between empathy with real people and empathy with fictional characters are not structural but just qualitative. We will argue that in both cases empathy is a direct act of perceiving others (...) and their lived experience. However, stemming from Stein’s work, we will underline that empathy with real persons is in principio more vivid and intense than empathy with fictional characters. In order to identify similarities and differences between empathy de vivo and empathy in fiction, we will focus on the following issues: the quality of perception; the motivational context and the “life-world context”; the ontological status of persons vs. characters. (shrink)

The purpose of this randomized controlled study was to investigate the impact of a 12-week physical education program on the self-efficacy of overweight schoolgirls. We randomly assigned 60 overweight schoolgirls to either an experimental moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise group or a control group that received non-specific regular PE lessons with activities chosen by the curricular teacher mainly focused on team games and sports skills that aimed to achieve general psycho-physical wellness. To assess the starting level of students and significant (...) changes reached, at baseline and after training, a battery of standardized assessment motor tests and a psychometric scale were administered. At the end of the intervention, the experimental group reported a considerable decrease in body mass index and a large improvement in self-efficacy. No significant changes were found in the CG. The results suggested that the 12-week moderate to a vigorous aerobic exercise program is an effective weight loss intervention and a vehicle to promote a range of outcomes important to the qualitative growth of adolescents. In fact, it could provide a positive and significant impact on the self-efficacy of overweight schoolgirls. (shrink)

In her Investigation Concerning the State, Edith Stein takes up some of the main ideas of the social ontology presented by Adolf Reinach, and develops a social ontology of the state, of the law and of social acts. I argue that Stein’s social ontology is an eidetics of the state, the law and social acts. Stein identifies the essential relations that constitute the state, the law and social acts, i.e. pinpoints the parts upon which the state, the law and social (...) acts existentially depend as wholes. In doing so, Stein applies Husserl’s account of wholes and parts to the social domain. I also suggest that Stein outlines a regional ontology of sociality that embodies Husserl’s idea of regional ontology. I focus on the intertwining of the wholes-parts relations, which characterize Stein’s regional ontology of sociality, and argue that there are not only necessary but also possible parts within the wholes. This makes Stein’s regional ontology of the sociality a dynamic ontology. (shrink)

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

In my paper, I will address two issues on the characterisation of social objects as subject-dependent objects: (i) Does phenomenological realism imply Platonism in social ontology? (ii) Which type of intentionality is the protagonist of social objects’ existential dependence on subjects? Both questions deal with Ferraris’ reception of Reinach’s phenomenological realism, on the one hand, and with the role played by the intentionality of social acts in the constitution of social objects, on the other (Reinach 1913, Ferraris 2009). According to (...) Ferraris, Reinach’s phenomenological realism becomes a sort of “social Platonism”, and the intentionality of social acts is an individual intentionality. On the contrary, I will maintain that phenomenological realism does not imply social Platonism in social ontology, and that social intentionality is not an individual and solitary intentionality: it is, rather, a heterotropic intentionality which necessarily refers to and depends on other subjects. (shrink)

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

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

I put forward four these concerning phenomenologically clarifying criteria to characterise social entities. The first thesis maintains that social entities have a sui generis ontological status: unlike natural and ideal entities, social entities depend existentially on individuals’ intentionality and are specifically normative entities. The second thesis claims that social entities existentially depend on heterotropic intentionality – i.e. on intentionality that involves at least two individuals –, and not on solitary intentionality. The third thesis identifies at least three different types of (...) heterotropic intentionality: collective, social and intersubjective intentionality. The fourth thesis states that all three types of heterotropic intentionality are effective: they create social entities, even if each of them creates social entities of different kinds. (shrink)

The article focuses on the idea of participation in contemporary art practice, analyzed through Carsten Höller’s artistic production. Starting from Guy Debord’s essay La société du spectacle, the public is no longer seen as an alienated mass of spectators, but it begins to participate by taking part in the activation of artworks, as pointed out in Nicolas Bourriad’s Esthétique Relationnelle. Like a scientist, Höller examines the viewer as if it was a lab rat, similar to the ones of Mäuserplatz black (...) and Mäuserplatz white. The observation of the interaction between the public and Höller’s works shows that it is not only the idea of fruition to be redefined, but the whole concept of aesthetic experience. (shrink)