In the current debate on human rights, the political conception is attractive in its ability to try to find solutions to the central questions and problems, which the orthodox conception has difficulties in solving, because of its own nature it does not need a moral foundation that is independent of the recognition established by international law and practice. On the one hand, it is necessary to recognize that the current practice and the international doctrine consider human rights as tools addressed, (...) mainly, to establish the limits of the legitimate sovereignty of the state, thus, recognizing the plausibility of the political conception. On the other hand, the article intends to show that this specific function, while important, should not exhaust all that human rights perform. Therefore, the political conception runs the serious risk of weakening the normative force of human rights and conflating two different agendas, that of human rights and that of global justice. To go through this argument, first of all, the article presents the contemporary genesis of the political conception of human rights based on the work of John Rawls. Secondly, it focuses on the reformulation given by Raz and Beitz’s approaches. Finally, in the third section, I criticize three main assumptions which ground the current paradigm of political conception of human rights. (shrink)

This article argues about John Rawls' paradigm shift in contemporary political philosophy. In the article, this paradigm is defined as democratic insofar it claims, among other things, to leave enough room for democratic deliberations and citizens’ political autonomy. On this specific issue, Rawls and Habermas dialogue is still particularly fruitful. Both authors believe that contemporary political philosophy must be modest in some relevant theoretical and methodological aspects but they disagree on which of these aspects should be more or less modest. (...) This article argues that when we look for the legitimate boundaries of the contemporary political philosophy, Rawls and Habermas projects should be seen as closely complementary to one another. On the one hand, the article partially agrees with Habermas’ objections to Rawls that political philosophy should not be too modest in providing orientations for the normative grounds of the political justification. On the other hand, against Habermas, the article remains on Rawls's side on the idea that political philosophy cannot be agnostic regarding the substantive and distributive issues of social justice. (shrink)

The article argues that the possibility of an unlimited gap in income and wealth between the top and bottom segments of society is incompatible with a democratic commitment to political equality. T...

Some scholars believe that only governments or those who uphold governmental policies can be human rights violators. Others argue that private individuals are also able to violate human rights. The two positions have come to be known in the literature as the institutional interpretation and the interactional interpretation of human rights respectively. This paper critically analyzes an exemplary case: Thomas Pogge’s institutional conception of human rights as presented in World Poverty and Human Rights: Second Edition. This paper focuses on some (...) of the negative consequences implicit in his approach. First of all, it shows that Pogge does not provide an adequate explanation of the reason why human rights should be conceived as claims on coercive social institutions and on those who uphold such institutions but not on single individuals, independently of their commitment to institutions. Secondly, it shows that official disrespect rather than violation as a criterion to evaluate the respecting of human rights is unsuccessful or at least insufficient. It sees in Pogge the same perspective mistake that infects Rawls’ conception of human rights, namely that of expanding unduly one of the functions human rights perform - establishing the limits of legitimate sovereignty - into their very essence. Therefore, this paper puts in question the way in which Pogge’s institutionalism mix the conception of human rights with the conception of distributive justice. The conclusion to which the whole paper comes to is that proponents of the institutional interpretation misconstrue human rights because they conflate two philosophical agendas, that of human rights and that of global justice. (shrink)

How rich should the 1% be? And, most importantly, when does the distance in economic resources between the richest citizens and ‘us’, the average citizenry, become a concern for justice? This volume explores how excessive economic inequality gives the best-off considerably more political influence than average citizens, thereby violating political equality. It argues that the gap between the best-off and the worst-off should not be reduced because it is good, but rather as an inescapable instrument to protect citizens from the (...) risk of material domination. For this reason, it defends the ‘principle of proportionality’: economic inequality should not exceed a certain range or proportion to enable both the best-off and the worst-off to be co-authors of the legal, political, and socioeconomic rules that govern the ‘social’ relations in which they are involved. Further, the book discusses material domination and explains how money influences politics and what are the remedies for this phenomenon; how social justice should face and harmonise power, poverty, efficiency, individual merit, and economic liberties; and, most importantly, how to determine income and wealth limit ratios in a liberal democracy. A thoughtful investigation on the interdependencies of money and justice and their influence our socio-political systems, this volume will be of great interest to students and researchers of political theory, political philosophy, economics and development, economics theory and philosophy, and social policy. (shrink)

This paper argues that the future of capabilities approach lies on the theoretical development of the democratic political structure. For this purpose, we take into account Martha Nussbaum’s late theoretical works. Firstly, we argue that the capability approach can be divided into two main models: the top down and the bottom up. Nussbaum, for example, endorses a top-down model, which it begins from an abstractive theory of partial justice and then draws the issue of institutional implementation. On the other hand, (...) Amartya Sem advocates the bottom-up model, which starts from the immanent demands of justice from public sphere and then up to normative and abstract questions (like his “idea of justice”). In the second part of this paper, we present Nussbaum’s partial theory of justice, arguing that it is mainly composed by four issues: (a) the elaboration of the list of capabilities, (b) the process of normative evaluation, (c) arguments for stability, (d) the implementation of the model. About this last topic, we argue in the third part that the current theoretical advance of the capabilities approach lies on the issue of the democratic political structure. In other words, the future of capabilities approach depends on the interaction between its own theory and a theory of democracy. Finally, in the last section we provide a re-elaboration of Nussbaum’s threshold level of capabilities (the list) in order to make it more adherent with the democratic political structure. (shrink)

A soteriological perspective is not altogether absent in the christological hymn of Phil 2:6-11, even though the salvific value of the death and resurrection of Jesus does not receive in it special emphasis. In fact, W. Kasper and J. Moltmann - who are considered critically in the article as examples of contemporary christological/soteriological reflection - find in the hymn some hints for a soteriological reflection, which sometimes stresses a paschal perspective, sometimes an incarnational one. Both Kasper and Moltmann, however, show (...) more interest in what they must make the hymn say than in the meaning which they may discover in the hymn or receive from it. While adopting either a paschal or an incarnational perspective, this article intends to take its starting point from the meaning offered by the scriptural text, following for this the «consensus exegeticus». Two elements are brought to light in view of an implicit soteriological reflection: 1. the salvific aspect of the mystery of Christ in its entirety, from the kenosis in the incarnation to the self-emptying of the death on the cross , in Phil 2:6-8; 2. the universal salvific Lordship of Christ in Phil 2: 9-11, understood in the sense of the Lordship of Yahweh, explicitly qualified as salvific in Is 45:20-25, which is the background of the second part of the christological hymn. (shrink)

Number 13 of Dei verbum, by means of the analogy of the incarnation and the perspective of the συγκαταβασιζ, invites us to look at the vast theological and historical-salvific background against which the Word of God, expressed in human language, is outlined. The present article, first, attends to the text of Dei Verbum 13 and its treatment in various commentaries on the dogmatic constitution as well as in official texts . Next, it focuses on the συγκαταβασιζ, in its relation to (...) oικoνoμíα and θεωρια, that is, to the modality of the divine salvific intervention in history and the contemplation of God which is granted to those who receive the manifestation of the condescension of the Saviour, attested to by Scripture. Third, the article develops the theme of συγκαταβασιζ in its profound relation to God's coming to men, from a Trinitarian point of view, in the light of the Verbum abbreviatum and the verbum scriptum, in the perspective of the action of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the faithful. The conclusions draw attention to the light that a person sees when, in the experience of his finitude, he listens to the Verbum abbreviatum which, in its συγκαταβασιζ, has become one with humanity. (shrink)

This book provides the first English translations of pivotal essays and debates on the role of language politics, linguistics, and translation in Antonio Gramsci's influential cultural theory. It also includes new works from leading and up-and-coming anglophone scholars to create a vital resource for a wide variety of readers interested in Gramsci across many disciplines including cultural studies, critical political economy, social and political theory, literature, sociology, post-colonialism, and philosophy.

El cumplimiento de la determinación puede ser que no tenga, a su vez, determinación independientemente o indiferentemente a la determinación misma: tampoco es posible que esta posible integridad tenga parte en su absolutez de diferencia de la totalidad: en este sentido, que es sentido estrictamente interno a la misma positividad del concepto que de suyo se puede determinar también, pero no solamente, en relación a la determinación, el cumplimiento ya sea también de la determinación, puede quedarse en el signo ambiguo (...) de una no determinada dialéctica de integridad y totalidad por la cual, propiamente, se da que, de la parte de la totalidad, la eventual absolutez de su determinación corresponde a toda la integridad de la diferencia que la divide de la integridad como tal o en cuanto enteramente determinada. (shrink)

Empiricism has many different faces. As the contributions to this volume demonstrate, in the 17th and 18th century demonstrate medical and philosophical empiricism is less about an "essence" and more a series of specifically modern "acts" or "gestures.".

The topic of this article is the «discourse of the philanthropist» in the thought of Michel Foucault. The discourse of the philanthropist has played a vital role in the formation of the psychiatric and psychological sciences; was crucial in the birth and development of modern penalty; has deeply influenced the history of the prison institution and was instrumental in the formation of the working class. Finally, the discourse of the philanthropist has animated the human and social sciences from the first (...) half of the nineteenth century. The discourse of the philanthropist, for Foucault, is the discourse that addresses the meaning of reality as a norm and rule that the behaviors, actions and representations of individuals must be uniform in all areas in which it carries out their existence. (shrink)

The essay aims at reading in the works of Daniel Bell the path of neoconservatism since its very beginning against the background of the Great Society and the rise of the black movement, the crisis of the Welfare State and the renewed centrality of the market in the global scenario of the 1970s. The objective is to show that neoconservatism is basically a politics of the limits of liberalism in front of the «continuity» of the «cultural tradition» of society: an (...) effort in many ways shared by rising neoliberalism to reestablish the order embedded in the “history” of the social fabric and in its power relations. (shrink)

Already translated into ten languages, this brief testament to the transformative power of ideas is resonating with readers—especially the rising generation—throughout the world. _Nobility of Spirit _is a spiritual journey to the source of those values—especially truth, freedom and dignity—that must be sustained in order for civilization to flourish. Riemen explores the tradition from Socrates and Spinoza, to Goethe, Whitman, and Thomas Mann—singular individuals who courageously refused to compromise their ideals, and he engages with them with great insight, intimacy and (...) invention. It is the anti-fascist Mann with whom Riemen feels a particular affinity, and who serves as a beacon to a world free of barbarism. Mann’s 1945 volume, _Nobility of Spirit: Sixteen Essays on the Problem of Humanity_, inspires the form of Riemen’s inquiry. Indeed, Riemen’s eloquent meditation on "nobility of spirit" begins with an extraordinary encounter with Elisabeth Mann Borghese, guardian of the oceans, and the last surviving daughter of the great author of _The Magic Mountain_ and other masterworks. Riemen’s slim, powerful volume ends with an essay on Leone Ginsberg, an Italian Jewish intellectual murdered by the Nazis, who implores his wife—the novelist Natalia Ginsburg—to “be brave” as he is taken to his death. Ultimately, Riemen calls for all of us to “be brave” as we battle those forces—terror, hate and ignorance—that are conspiring against humanity. (shrink)

L'articolo presenta un'analisi comparativa tra le posizioni di Adorno e Nietzsche riguardo al ruolo della soggettivitÀ. Se da un lato č possibile rilevare l'affinitÀ di percorso dei due autori nel criticare la soggettivitÀ ‘costitutiva' quale risultato di un processo storico di identificazione operato dalla razionalitÀ, allo stesso tempo si evidenziano le differenze delle due prospettive in merito alle conclusioni raggiunte da tale critica. Il processo di dissoluzione della soggettivitÀ sostenuto da Nietzsche č in parte respinto da Adorno sulla base del (...) rifiuto di identificare un principio formato sulle passioni. La critica sociale di Adorno lo porta a rifiutare l'affermazione di un principio di piacere ormai ridotto alla sua versione reificata. La critica della soggettivitÀ borghese conduce Adorno all'affermazione di quello che puň essere definito un ‘oltre-borghese': una forma di soggettivitÀ non costitutiva che rispetti il non-identico. (shrink)

This is my first professional philosophical essay. I wrote "The twofold meaning of being" in 1996 when I was a student of Nunzio Incardona at University of Palermo (Italy) and before my degree thesis, "The difference in Aristotle’s Metaphysics". It still waits to be published.

Il Teatro Sociale di Sondrio, inaugurato nel 1824, rappresenta tra XIX e XX secolo il più importante centro teatrale dell’intera Valtellina. Considerando anche l’importanza che riveste nella storia locale, il teatro sondriese può essere preso come esempio attraverso cui riconoscere, da un punto di vista particolare, le evoluzioni a cui va incontro la drammaturgia italiana a cavallo dei due secoli. Lo studio dei manifesti conservati negli archivi e lo spoglio dei periodici locali hanno permesso di analizzare le modalità e le (...) tempistiche con cui venivano allestiti gli spettacoli e l’accoglienza di questi da parte del pubblico e della critica di Sondrio: su queste basi, il seguente studio cerca di offrire una fisionomia del pubblico teatrale otto-novecentesco, un pubblico provinciale, lontano da quello delle grandi città ma che, come si vuole dimostrare, condivide con quest’ultimo gli stessi gusti: dalla ricerca della novità alla passione per i drammi sentimentali, dalla pièce bien faite alla nuova drammaturgia borghese. (shrink)

Pavel Florenski es un exquisito escritor ruso, filósofo, científico y teólogo, nacido en Rusia en 1882 y fusilado por el régimen soviético en 1937, influenciado por L.Tolstoi y colega de M. Bulgakov. Sacerdote ortodoxo casado, es autor de una obra tardíamente conocida, en la que destaca La columna y el fundamento de la fe, y que yo he podido conocer gracias a un amigo italiano, Nunzio, al tiempo que me regala la obra El pensamiento polifónico de P. Florenski2. Me (...) quedo sorprendido por el interés de este pensador efectivamente polifónico, cuya clave musical está en la noción radical de la relación, lo que me recuerda a nuestro Angel Amor Ruibal, pues la relación separa y repara todas las cosas y sus antinomias, si bien en el ruso la relación se constituye específicamente a través del simbolismo, y de un simbolismo de signo platónico-cristiano. En efecto, el platonismo de Florenski es un platonismo encarnado, así pues un idealismo encarnatorio, según el cual hay que conectar la inmanencia fenoménica con la trascendencia nouménica, y viceversa, de acuerdo con la divisa propia de todo humanismo cristiano: salvaguardar lo divino es salvaguardar lo humano. (shrink)

Il breve saggio si propone di esaminare la centralità della figura materna nell’opera di un ingegnoso costruttore di storie della letteratura italiana del Novecento: Alberto Moravia. La scelta dell’Autore nasce dalla rilevanza della tematica nella sua opera, in cui peraltro è quasi sempre assente il punto di vista femminile delle “voci” delle donne. Ciò sembra paradossale e questa circostanza è di grande interesse critico. In particolare, a dispetto delle interpretazioni più canoniche, secondo cui Moravia – negli scritti realizzati tra il (...) 1929 e il 1964 – ha inteso compiere una “distruzione” dell’immagine materna nel quadro di una visione pessimista della famiglia borghese, dovremo considerare un più complesso e articolato universo materno nello scrittore romano, in cui è possibile ricostruire cinque modelli – la “madre autoritaria”, la “madre-non madre”, la “madre padrona”, la “madre-angelo custode” e la “madre-seduttrice” –, ben esemplificati nei principali romanzi ma che si ritrovano nei racconti che Moravia scrive ininterrottamente dagli anni Trenta agli anni Sessanta, la cui mole ha determinato, ancor oggi, una mancanza di studi sistematici. In secondo luogo, la tematica della madre sarà esaminata nelle trasposizioni cinematografiche italiane delle opere letterarie di Moravia. Va ricordato che il rapporto dello scrittore con il cinema fu particolarmente intenso. Per un verso, la “settima arte” rivestì un ruolo non secondario nella formazione ed esperienza estetica dell’Autore romano, che al cinema si interessò anche professionalmente nelle vesti di critico cinematografico, a partire dal primo dopoguerra, dapprima, per La nuova Europa e Libera stampa, poi, per L’Europeo e L’Espresso, a cui dobbiamo aggiungere l’attività di saggista per numerose riviste specializzate. Per altro verso, il cinema italiano non solo ha attinto a “mani basse” dall’opera di Moravia per sceneggiature di pellicole, che furono pietre miliari della sua storia. L’elenco dei romanzi e racconti adattati al grande schermo rende conto della grande influenza nella cultura italiana degli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta: La provinciale (1953) di Mario Soldati, La romana (1954) di Luigi Zampa, Peccato che sia una canaglia (1954) di Alessandro Blasetti, Racconti romani (1955) di Gianni Franciolini, La ciociara (1960) di Vittorio de Sica, La giornata balorda (1960) di Mauro Bolognini, Risate di gioia (1960) di Mario Monicelli, Agostino (o la perdita dell’innocenza) (1962) di Mauro Bolognini, La noia (1963) di Damiano Damiani, Gli indifferenti (1964) di Francesco Maselli, Le ore nude (1964) di Marco Vicario, La donna invisibile (1969) di Paolo Spinola, Una ragazza piuttosto complicata (1969) di Damiano Damiani, L’amore coniugale (1970) di Dacia Maraini, Il conformista (1970) di Bernardo Bertolucci, e molti altri ancora. Come avremo modo soltanto di accennare, il successo della letteratura moraviana nel mondo del cinema italiano si deve a molteplici fattori, tra cui la raffigurazione dei personaggi e degli ambienti, la focalizzazione su certe tematiche e, non da ultimo, lo stile narrativo, particolarmente adatto alle trasposizioni cinematografiche. Come caso di studio, ci soffermeremo, infine, sulla figura materna della versione filmica de La noia di Damiani, con l’obiettivo di verificare se nel passaggio dal libro alla pellicola, quella particolare connotazione della madre autoritaria abbia subito delle alterazioni. L’ipotesi che muove l’analisi è che la stesura delle sceneggiature, la raffigurazione dei personaggi e la messa in scena delle sequenze filmiche facciano emergere un riadattamento adeguato al largo pubblico, con il sovvertimento dell’andamento cronologico, alcune “lacune” di ordine psicologico nella raffigurazione dei protagonisti e un certo cedimento moralistico alla cultura ancora dominante negli anni ’50 e ’60, in cui la figura materna, sia quando è incattivita dalla povertà che quando è inaridita dalla ricchezza, anela comunque agli affetti familiari, trovando in essi una qualche forma di redenzione. (shrink)

The article critically addresses Boris Groys’ interpretation of photographs by Alexandre Kojève. In 2012, Groys organized the exhibition After History: Alexandre Kojève as a Photographer, which intended to demonstrate the “posthistorical” dimension in Kojève’s artistic output. The article questions the adequacy of that perspective, given the somewhat tendentious curatorial presentation of the photos as showing an empty, dehumanized world. Considering the aesthetic and ontological aspects of the analysis of visual images that were central to Kojève’s brief account of his 1920 (...) visit to the Borghese Gallery in Rome and to his 1936 article on Kandinsky, Groys’ reading of Kojève’s photographic stance is subject to revision. The notion of aura, as proposed by Walter Benjamin, is operative in a comparative treatment of the photos by Kojève and Eugène Atget. (shrink)

In Melanconia e società (1969), W. Lepenies si propone di individuare le cause storico-sociali e le conseguenze sociologicamente rilevanti degli atteggiamenti individuali e collettivi melanconici per la genesi, la conservazione e innovazione delle strutture sociali. Egli afferma che non intende definire a priori che cosa sia la melanconia, ma piuttosto ricostruirne il significato tramite le rappresentazioni dei vissuti interiori di coloro che si sono autodefiniti tali attingendo alla letteratura di corte, salottiera nobiliare e borghese, francese e tedesca. In realtà, (...) egli esamina le differenti rappresentazioni della malinconia, alla luce del quadro clinico elaborato dalla psicoanalisi di S. Freud e dalla psichiatria di E. Kraepelin, H. Tellenbach, ecc., e dello schema sociologico dei tipi di adattamento di R.K. Merton. Queste categorie concettuali consentono a Lepenies di ricostruire gli atteggiamenti malinconici che si diffusero presso due diversi ceti sociali in tempi e in luoghi differenti: 1) i ceti nobiliari francesi dopo la sconfitta della Fronda e 2) la borghesia tedesca del ‘700. (shrink)

A revision of George Kennedy's translation of, introdution to, and commentary on Aristotle's On Rhetoric. His translation is most accurate, his general introduction is the most thorough and insightful, and his brief introductions to sections of the work, along with his explanatory footnotes, are the most useful available.

L’article étudie la notion de scénographie vis-à-vis des nouvelles tendances expographiques qui remettent aujourd’hui en question l’acte d’exposer. Des expositions historiques et contemporaines, telles que An Exhibit (ICA, Londres, 1957) de Richard Hamilton, ou Contemporanea (Villa Borghèse, Rome, 1973), organisée par Achille Bonito Oliva, montrent comment, au véritable travail scénographique, se substitue un lieu qui, avec sa spécificité et sa caractérisation architectonique et historique, joue le rôle de scénographie de l’exposition.

Bolognese painter and printmaker Giovanni Luigi Valesio’s varied output included engravings featuring heraldic imagery coupled with allegorical figures and, in some cases, perplexing narratives. Their erudite, panegyric character is typical of thesis prints, elaborate ephemera made for the festive academic defences that flourished in early modern colleges. This essay establishes the heretofore unknown subject of one thesis print and offers a note on the dedicatee and art historical significance of another likely ‘conclusione’. Both prints were dedicated to cardinal nephews, Scipione (...) Borghese and Pietro Aldobrandini respectively, and they situate the position of the cardinal nephew as a militant force against the Ottoman world through learned allusion and consciously affective depictions of captivity. Drawing on the monumental imagery of their respective papacies and offering innovative conflations of historical and allegorical representation, they testify to a visual apologetics of nepotism as good government that permeated art and life in the Papal States. (shrink)

Recent research on algebraic models of _quasi-Nelson logic_ has brought new attention to a number of classes of algebras which result from enriching (subreducts of) Heyting algebras with a special modal operator, known in the literature as a _nucleus_. Among these various algebraic structures, for which we employ the umbrella term _intuitionistic modal algebras_, some have been studied since at least the 1970s, usually within the framework of topology and sheaf theory. Others may seem more exotic, for their primitive operations (...) arise from algebraic terms of the intuitionistic modal language which have not been previously considered. We shall for instance investigate the variety of _weak implicative semilattices_, whose members are (non-necessarily distributive) meet semilattices endowed with a nucleus and an implication operation which is not a relative pseudo-complement but satisfies the postulates of Celani and Jansana’s strict implication. For each of these new classes of algebras we establish a representation and a topological duality which generalize the known ones for Heyting algebras enriched with a nucleus. (shrink)

Transcript of speeches by a Hindu philosopher, chiefly on Hindu philosophy and Hinduism.

Classical text on Nyaya and Vaiśeṣika philosophy; with Āloka Sanskrit commentary.

Classical work on Vedanta; includes Bhāṣyaratnaprabhā of Govindānanda and Śārīrakamīmāṃsābhāṣya of Śaṅkarācārya.

Classical work on Vedanta by Bādarāyaṇa; includes Śārīraka vijñānam bhāṣya of Śrī Madhusūdana Ojhā.

Purpose. The article is aimed to substantiate the view on the phenomenon of laughter as a subject of semiotic analysis, which leads to the following tasks: to reveal the possibilities of semiotics application in the study of laughter nature; to analyze the phenomenon of laughter as a cultural and natural phenomenon, as a sign and as an attribute; to consider the place of laughter in culture, which is understood as a sign system. Theoretical basis. The semiotic approach proceeds from the (...) fact that human lives in the world of signs, all the surrounding reality can be interpreted as a sign system. The basic concept of semiotics is the concept of a sign. The theoretical basis of the article is understanding the culture as a sign-symbolic system. Laughter is considered as a phenomenon ontologically rooted in human culture. At the same time, laughter is on the edge of culture. The research is based on the work of semiotic authors, cultural researchers, and the researchers of laughter. Originality. The originality lies in the application of the semiotic method to the research of laughter phenomenon, consideration of the dialectics of natural and cultural, signedness and non-signedness, manifested in the phenomenon of laughter. Conclusions. Laughter is considered as a psychophysiological phenomenon and as a cultural phenomenon. Laughter acts as an emotional manifestation, a physiological reaction, but socially and culturally mediated. In any case, laughter indicates an emotional or cognitive state of a human. Laughter acts as a process and result of the interpretation of a sign, a reaction to a sign. Laughter is a form and a means of communication. Being a natural phenomenon, in the process of social evolution, laughter acquires signedness, is integrated by culture as a sign system, and, at the same time, maintains a connection with nature. Thus, laughter occupies an ambivalent position between nature and culture. In the phenomenon of laughter, the dual state of human is revealed. In laughter, boundaries are blurred, the unity and opposition of natural and cultural, biological and social, soul and body, thought and feeling, sign and attribute are manifested. (shrink)

We are immersed within an odorous sea of chemical currents that we parse into individual odors with complex structures. Odors have been posited as determined by the structural relation between the molecules that compose the chemical compounds and their interactions with the receptor site. But, naturally occurring smells are parsed from gaseous odor plumes. To give a comprehensive account of the nature of odors the chemosciences must account for these large distributed entities as well. We offer a focused review of (...) what is known about the perception of odor plumes for olfactory navigation and tracking, which we then connect to what is known about the role odorants play as properties of the plume in determining odor identity with respect to odor quality. We end by motivating our central claim that more research needs to be conducted on the role that odorants play within the odor plume in determining odor identity. (shrink)

Eco-labels emphasize information disclosure as a tool to induce environmentally friendly behaviors by both firms and consumers. The goal of eco-labels is to reduce information asymmetry between producers and consumers over the environmental attributes of a product or service. However, by focusing on this information asymmetry, rather than on how the label meets consumer needs, eco-labels may send irrelevant, confusing, or even detrimental messages to consumers. In this article, the authors investigate how the environmental signal of eco-labels interacts with product (...) characteristics such as brand, quality, and price. In a discrete choice experiment, the authors examine consumer response to two similar eco-labels for wine, one associated with a quality reduction and the other not. The results show that respondents preferred both eco-labeled wines over otherwise identical conventional counterparts when the price was lower and the wine was from a lower quality region. However, they preferred conventional, more expensive wine from a high-quality region. This preference indicates that respondents not only obtain some warm glow value from eco-labeled wine but also possibly interpret eco-labeling as a signal of lower quality. This relationship held across both types of eco-labels, meaning that consumers did not understand the difference between them. This research contributes to the literature on information disclosure policies by highlighting important elements for effective eco-labels. These elements include consumer awareness and understanding of the eco-label, and consumer willingness to pay for an eco-labeled product. The results emphasize the need to create eco-labels that communicate clearly both the environmental attributes and the private benefits associated with them. (shrink)

This book completes medical care by adding the comprehensive humanistic perspectives and philosophy of medicine.

Purpose. To consider the uniqueness of Descartes’ way of interpreting poetry as a type of philosophizing that makes it possible to comprehend the metaphysical nature of man. Its implementation involves the consistent solution of the following tasks: a) understanding methodological changes in the philosophy of the 20th century in the process of actualization of anthropological interest; b) argumentation of the importance of poetic thinking for early Descartes in the process of addressing modern historians of philosophy and the thinker’s texts. Theoretical (...) basis. I rely on the conceptual positions of phenomenology, existentialism and hermeneutics. Originality. Finding of the study is that poetic thinking is the most authentic way of meaningful comprehension of the metaphysicity of man. The paper outlines the nature of the expression of this correlation in the philosophizing of the 20th-21th centuries and substantiates the thesis about the importance of the poetic principle for understanding the phenomenon of man in early works by Descartes. Conclusions. The paper examined the methodological shifts in anthropologically oriented philosophizing of the 20th-21th centuries and focused on the manifestations of related moments in the philosophical legacy of Descartes. The latter demonstrates the existence of a still underestimated version of interpreting the metaphysical foundations of human existence, the form of understanding of which is poetic thinking. It is a form of caring for the humane in man. (shrink)