[1] Relazioni e interventi.--[2] Comunicazioni.

Observing averted eye gaze results in the automatic allocation of attention to the gazed-at location. The role of the orientation of the face that produces the gaze cue was investigated. The eyes in the face could look left or right in a head-centred frame, but the face itself could be oriented 90 degrees clockwise or anticlockwise such that the eyes were gazing up or down. Significant cueing effects to targets presented to the left or right of the screen were found (...) in these head orientation conditions. This suggests that attention was directed to the side to which the eyes would have been looking towards, had the face been presented upright. This finding provides evidence that head orientation can affect gaze following, even when the head orientation alone is not a social cue. It also shows that the mechanism responsible for the allocation of attention following a gaze cue can be influenced by intrinsic object-based (i.e. head-centred) properties of the task-irrelevant cue. (shrink)

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) is crucial for moral behavior, yet the mechanism through which the VMPFC promotes moral behavior remains unclear. In this article, we emphasize that moral choice is often intertemporal, requiring foregoing short-term gains in favor of future outcomes of larger value. We propose that the VMPFC may be necessary for mental time travel (MTT), a cognitive process enabling vivid preexperiencing of future outcomes. By providing anticipated outcomes that inform decisions, MTT may promote farsighted, moral behaviors.

Although trust and reciprocity are ubiquitous in social exchange, their neurobiological substrate remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated the effect of damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)—a brain region critical for valuing social information—on individuals’ decisions in a trust game and in a risk game. In the trust game, one player, the investor, is endowed with a sum of money, which she can keep or invest. The amount she decides to invest is tripled and sent to the other player, (...) the trustee, who then decides what fraction to return to the investor. In separate runs, ten patients with focal bilateral damage to the vmPFC and control participants made decision while playing in the role of either investor or trustee with different anonymous counterparts in each run. A risk game was also included in which the investor faced exactly the same decisions as in the trust game, but a random device (i.e., a computer), not another player, determined the final payoffs. Results showed that vmPFC patients’ investments were not modulated by the type of opponent player (e.g., human vs. computer) present in the environment. Thus, vmPFC patients showed comparable risk-taking preferences both in social (trust game) and nonsocial (risk game) contexts. In stark contrast, control participants were less willing to take risk and invest when they believed that they were interacting with people than a computer. Furthermore, when acted as trustee, vmPFC patients made lower back transfers toward investors, thereby showing less reciprocity behavior. Taken together, these results indicate that social valuation and emotion subserved by vmPFC have a critical role in trusting and reciprocity decisions. The present findings support the hypothesis that vmPFC damage may impair affective systems specifically designed for mediating social transaction with other individuals. (shrink)

This paper explores taste fragmentalism, a novel approach to matters of taste and faultless disagreement. The view is inspired by Kit Fine’s fragmentalism about time, according to which the temporal dimension can be constituted—in an absolute manner—by states that are pairwise incompatible, provided that they do not obtain together. In the present paper, we will apply this metaphysical framework to taste states. In our proposal, two incompatible taste states (such as the state of rhubarb’s being tasty and the state of (...) rhubarb’s being distasteful) can both constitute reality in an absolute manner, although no agent can have joint access to both states. We will then develop a formalised version of our view by means of an exact truthmaker semantics for taste assertions. Within this framework—we argue—our linguistic and inferential practices concerning cases of faultless disagreement are elegantly vindicated, thus suggesting that taste fragmentalism is worth of further consideration. (shrink)

A coherence-based probability semantics for categorical syllogisms of Figure I, which have transitive structures, has been proposed recently (Gilio, Pfeifer, & Sanfilippo [15]). We extend this work by studying Figure II under coherence. Camestres is an example of a Figure II syllogism: from Every P is M and No S is M infer No S is P. We interpret these sentences by suitable conditional probability assessments. Since the probabilistic inference of ~????|???? from the premise set {????|????, ~????|????} is not informative, (...) we add ????(????|(????∨????))>0 as a probabilistic constraint (i.e., an “existential import assumption”) to obtain probabilistic informativeness. We show how to propagate the assigned (precise or interval-valued) probabilities to the sequence of conditional events (????|????,~????|????,????|(????∨????)) to the conclusion ~????|???? . Thereby, we give a probabilistic meaning to the other syllogisms of Figure II. Moreover, our semantics also allows for generalizing the traditional syllogisms to new ones involving generalized quantifiers (like Most S are P) and syllogisms in terms of defaults and negated defaults. (shrink)

This book is a systematic analysis of John R. Searle’s philosophy of mind. Searle’s view of mind, as a set of subjective _and_ biologically embodied processes, can account for our being part of nature _qua_ mindful beings. This model finds support in neuroscience and offers reliable solutions to the problems of consciousness, mental causation, and the self.

What it means to be a medical professional has been defined by medical ethicists throughout history and remains a contemporary concern addressed by this paper. A medical professional is generally considered to be one who makes a public promise to fulfill the ethical obligations expressed in the Hippocratic Code. This presentation summarizes the history of medical professionalism and refocuses attention on the interpersonal relationship of doctor and patient. This keynote address was delivered at the Founders of Bioethics International Congress (June, (...) 2010). (shrink)

SummaryThe congruence between medicine and philosophy which we find in the Protagoras and the Treatise on Ancient Medicine as well as the tensions symbolized in the dialectic between Eryximachus and Diotima will always be with us. The congruence and the divergence of these ancient disciplines are both important to human well-being. By opposing one another, medicine and philosophy can each balance the other's pretension to universality. By converging, they illumine some of the most important questions of human existence. This essay (...) has examined ways in which medicine and philosophy can converge in our times as philosophy and medicine, philosophy in medicine, and philosophy of medicine. The present moment in our intellectual history is particularly propitious for the nurture of the engagement of medicine and philosophy. The most fruitful form of that interaction may be in the philosophy of medicine, which is a definable discipline with a set of issues specific to it. If the obvious intellectual dangers can be avoided, those who practice medicine, those who think about it, and those who are served by it can gain deeper insight into the nature and the purpose of medicine as well as the nature of the profession and of man himself. Perhaps—positioned as it is, at the intersection of the sciences, the humanities, and technology—medicine can become “… a medium and the focus in which the problems of wisdom and science meet” (Buchanan 1938, p. 194). (shrink)

The brain constructs within itself an understanding of its surround which constitutes its own world. This is described as its Double in the frame of the dissipative quantum model of brain, where the perception-action arc in the Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception finds its formal description. In the dialog with the Double, the continuous attempt to reach the equilibrium shows that the real goal pursued by the brain activity is the aesthetical experience, the most harmonious “to-be-in-the-world” reached through reciprocal actions, the (...) aesthetical dimension characterized by the “pleasure” of the perception. Aesthetical pleasure unavoidably implies disclosure, to manifest “signs”, artistic communication. An interpersonal, collective level of consciousness then arises, a larger stage where the actors are mutually dependent. The coherent structure of the brain background state manifests itself in the auto-similarity properties of fractal structures. These are observed to occur also in a large number of natural phenomena and systems. The conception of Nature divided in separated domains is replaced by the vision of Nature unified by laws of form implied by the underlying quantum dynamics of the coherent vacuum, an integrated ecological vision. (shrink)

After the birth of thermodynamics’ second principle—outlined in Carnot's Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu —several studies provided new arguments in the field. Mainly, they concerned the thermodynamics’ first principle—including energy conceptualisation—, the analytical aspects of the heat propagation, the statistical aspects of the mechanical theory of heat. In other words, the second half of nineteenth century was marked by an intense interdisciplinary research activity between physics and chemistry: new disciplines applied to the heat developed in the form of (...) analytical, mechanical and statistical theories. Inside all these theories, entropy—the brand-new function that Clausius coined in his Mechanical theory of heat—started to play a central epistemic role. In the present paper, we analyse some steps of the historical process of conceptualisation of such function from 1850 to 1902. Particularly, we retrace the historical–foundational path that—starting from Clausius’ Second Law—lead Boltzmann and Gibbs to their distinguished formulations of statistical entropy. As usual, our research has been unrolled through the analyses of primary sources and by leaning on critical readings of the secondary literature. As for the methodological approach, text analysis of historical documents constituted our privileged modus operandi. This paper is the expression of a collaborative historical research program focused on the thermodynamic foundations of physics–chemistry relationship; early results have already been published by the same authors upon the concepts of reversibility––and––thermal equilibrium. (shrink)

This paper focuses on a specific proposal connected with the issue of mitigating climate change by reducing GHG concentrations in the atmosphere. The idea of campaigning in favour of a temporary reproductive suspension, to be addressed to a range of citizens of developed countries , is explored. Some details of the proposal are specified, and the proposal itself is defended against four objec- tions: 1. that it encroaches reproductive freedom; 2. that it subtracts from the overall value the value of (...) future lives; 3. that it is costly and ineffectual; 4. that it is unfair, especially when women are considered. (shrink)

Some time ago I advanced on the pages of this journal a critique of the interpretation given by Jay L. Garfield and Mark Siderits (hereafter GS) of Nāgārjuna’s doctrine of the two truths (Ferraro, J Indian Philos 41(2):195–219, 2013.1); to my article the two authors responded with a ‘defense of the semantic interpretation’ of the Madhyamaka doctrine of emptiness (GS, J Indian Philos 41(6):655–664, 2013). Their reply, however, could not consider my personal understanding of Nāgārjuna’s notions of śūnyatā and dve (...) satye. My interpretation of these notions was in fact absent in the paper GS responded, and was only related in a second paper of mine (Ferraro, J Indian Philos 41(5):563–590, 2013.2), still unpublished at the time of GS’s drafting of their ‘defense’. Therefore, in the present rejoinder, I found it appropriate, rather than responding point by point to the passages of GS’s reply, to advance a comparison between the semantic interpretation and my ‘realist antimetaphysical’ understanding of Nāgārjuna’s thought. (shrink)

Gianni Vattimo, one of Europe's foremost contemporary philosophers and most famously associated with the concept of weak thought, explores theoretical and practical issues flowing from his fundamental rejection of the traditional Western understanding of Being as an absolute, unchanging, and transcendent reality. The essays in this book move within the surroundings of Being without constructing a systematic, definitive analysis of the topic. In Being and Its Surroundings, Vattimo continues his career-long exploration of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, in particular his (...) repudiation of metaphysics with its presupposition of the existence of permanent, universal truth, and that of Friedrich Nietzsche, with its promotion of nihilism. One consequence of problematizing the idea of an attainable truth is the relativization of values and cultures. In the face of the death of God – or the absence of a transcendent guarantor of the validity of human judgments – we have the postmodern tendency to see all value systems and assertions of truth as purely subjective, and to suggest that "anything goes," which Nietzsche called passive nihilism. Vattimo advocates a more active response as he challenges all forms of authoritarianism in the world today. He brings his intellectual acumen to bear on such urgent issues as globalization, the clash of civilizations and terrorism, the crisis of democracy, and the relevance of orthodox religion. Rather than endorse dogmatism or indifference and detachment from social engagement in the name of relativism, Vattimo opts for the path of meaningful dialogue and a search for a mediated consensus based on reason, with all its limitations. (shrink)

We here report the findings of our investigation into the validity of the conjunction fallacy (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983), bearing in mind the role of conversational rules. Our first experiment showed that subjects found a logically correct answer unacceptable when it implied a violation of the conversational rules. We argue that tautological questions, such as those which concern the relationship of inclusion between a class and its sub-class, violate conversational rules because they are not informative. In this sense, it is (...) not understood that the question in a Linda-type problem involves a comparison between an inclusive and included class, but presumed that a different type of comparison is intended. Tautological questions (and, consequently, also their answers) do not become a matter of discussion except under certain specific conditions. Our second experiment showed that, providing the context was adequately marked (such as in the case of a rhetorical question), the conjunction fallacy disappears. In two further experiments, the implications of our view were compared with those of the other critical approaches to the heuristic programme: the classical pragmatic view (which we call logical complementarity) and the frequentist view. (shrink)

Population ethics is defined and presented, and some of the paradoxes it encapsulates are spelled out. It is argued that the concept of the quality of a life or of a life worth living can- not be avoided if inquiry on many relevant ethical and political topics is to be pursued in a theoretically fitting mode. In particular, the article deals with the asymmetry between rea- sons for not creating unhappy lives and reasons for creating happy lives, the well-known repugnant (...) conclusion and the paradox of mere addition. (shrink)