Scientific observation has led to the discovery of recurring patterns in nature. Symmetry is the property of an object showing regularity in parts on a plane or around an axis. There are several types of symmetries observed in the natural world and the most common are mirror symmetry, radial symmetry, and translational symmetry. Symmetries can be continuous or discrete. A discrete symmetry is a symmetry that describes non-continuous changes in an object. A continuous symmetry is a repetition of an object (...) an infinite number of times. A consequence of continuous symmetry is the existence of conservation laws. A natural system with discrete and continuous symmetries displays several physical properties, such as the existence of long-range order. Geometric shapes exhibit symmetry as mirror reflections of each other. Symmetry in nature has been a model of beauty since the beginning of civilization. Since the earliest times, nature itself has manifestly been a model, evincing regularity in sundry forms and occurrences–from minerals and plants to the anatomy of living beings, to the regularly recurring stellar constellations. For Ancient Greek philosophers, proportion, symmetry, and harmony, were the basics to determine whether something is beautiful or not. Ancient Greek philosophers were known for bringing logic and rational thinking to phenomena that were previously explained by mythology and Gods. They observed the natural world around them and used their knowledge to answer questions about the proportion in observable objects and the origin of Earth. The Greek words _summetria_ and _summetros_ appear frequently in the Timaeus, defined as parts with each other and with the whole. Plato has a very rough concept of symmetry, and when he uses “beauty” to characterize the so-called Platonic Solids in the Timaeus, he seems to be emphasizing their regularity and indirectly their symmetry. Plato believes the four elements (earth, air, fire, water) have been constructed by the Demiurge, or a divine craftsman who appoints order in an otherwise chaotic universe. Minerals are representative examples of beauty, order, and symmetry in inorganic materials. Well-formed minerals (crystals) are a collection of equivalent faces related by symmetry. The goal of this paper is to relate the perspective of symmetry in ancient Greek philosophy with the modern scientific evidence of the geometric description of crystal structures. The five Platonic solids are ideal models of geometrical patterns that occur throughout the world of minerals. In this paper, minerals serve as a model of connecting the symmetry theory in Plato’s philosophy and modern advances in mineralogy. (shrink)

Clinical Ethics Committees (CECs), as distinct from Research Ethics Committees, were originally established with the aim of supporting healthcare professionals in managing controversial clinical ethical issues. However, it is still unclear whether they manage to accomplish this task and what is their impact on clinical practice. This systematic review aims to collect available assessments of CECs’ performance as reported in literature, in order to evaluate CECs’ effectiveness. We retrieved all literature published up to November 2019 in six databases (PubMed, Ovid (...) MEDLINE, Scopus, Philosopher’s Index, Embase and Web of Science), following PRISMA guidelines. We included only articles specifically addressing CECs and providing any form of CECs performance assessment. Twenty-nine articles were included. Ethics consultation was the most evaluated of CECs’ functions. We did not find standardized tools for measuring CECs’ efficacy, but 33% of studies considered “user satisfaction” as an indicator, with 94% of them reporting an average positive perception of CECs’ impact. Changes in patient treatment and a decrease of moral distress in health personnel were reported as additional outcomes of ethics consultation. The highly diverse ways by which CECs carry out their activities make CECs’ evaluation difficult. The adoption of shared criteria would be desirable to provide a reliable answer to the question about their effectiveness. Nonetheless, in general both users and providers consider CECs as helpful, relevant to their work, able to improve the quality of care. Their main function is ethics consultation, while less attention seems to be devoted to bioethics education and policy formation. (shrink)

In Imagining Europe, Chiara Bottici and Benoît Challand explore the formation of modern European identity. Europe has not always been there, although we have been imagining it for quite some time. Even after the birth of a polity called the European Union, the meaning of Europe remained a very much contested topic. What is Europe? What are its boundaries? Is there a specific European identity or is the EU just the name for a group of institutions? This book answers (...) these questions, showing that in Europe's formation, myth and memory, although distinct, are often merged in a common attempt to construct an identity for its present and its future. In a time when Europe is facing an existential crisis, when its meaning is being questioned, Imagining Europe explores a vital and often unacknowledged aspect of the European project. (shrink)

After almost a century of globalization, the trend now appears to be reversing, primarily due to global shocks since 2001. Using war as a legitimate means to reshape global sovereignty clearly signals the breakdown of the original globalization narrative. Societies are no longer fluid; they are increasingly solidifying into strongly opposing factions, particularly in Western nations. Within this framework, I propose an intervention divided into two parts. The first part, a pars destruens, interprets the roots of the contemporary episteme, characterized (...) by dualisms, polarizations, and a belligerent (both metaphorically and literally) approach to questions of human coexistence. The second part, a pars construens, focuses on the paradoxical concept of ‘interindependence’ – the constitutive relationality of life, both biological and social, as the foundation for genuine sustainability. Finally, I will suggest how Christian thought, stripped of superstructures and ideological instrumentalizations, can contribute to an authentic ‘dialogic dialogue’ among diversities. (shrink)

This article studies Ghazali’s viewpoint regarding Satan or Iblis. Ghazali’s interpretation of Satan is very different from that of traditional ones. Despite the Koran’s negative portrayal of Satan, Ghazali elaborates a new transformative theology of Satan. He defends Satan and considers him as the paragon of lovers in self-sacrifice. According to him, Satan’s refusal to bow down before God’s creation, Adam, signifies that Satan alone manifests the purest devotion to God’s oneness and is thus the unrivalled champion of tawhid. Ghazali’s (...) sympathetic understanding of Satan is a logical outcome of his theory of love. He depicts Satan not only as a sincere worshipper, but also as a true lover. He loves God even though he curses and casts him out. Because of being cursed, he has acquired a long life and a position of power over the whole world. (shrink)

After initially emerging in China, the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has advanced rapidly. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently declared it a pandemic, with Europe becoming its new epicentre. Italy has so far been the most severely hit European country and demand for critical care in the northern region currently exceeds its supply. This raises significant ethical concerns, among which is the allocation of scarce resources. Professionals are considering the prioritisation of patients most likely to survive over those with remote (...) chances, and this news has triggered an intense debate about the right of every individual to access healthcare. The proposed analysis suggests that the national emergency framework in which prioritisation criteria are currently enforced should not lead us to perceive scarce resources allocation as something new. From an ethical perspective, the novelty of the current emergency is not grounded in the devastating effects of scarce resources allocation, which is rife in recent and present clinical practice. Rather, it has to do with the extraordinarily high number of people who find themselves personally affected by the implications of scarce resources allocation and who suddenly realise that the principle of ‘equals should be treated equally’ may no longer be applicable. Along with the need to allocate appropriate additional financial resources to support the healthcare system, and thus to mitigate the scarcity of resources, the analysis insists on the relevance of a medical ethics perspective that does not place the burden of care and choice solely on physicians. (shrink)

This study analyses for the first time whether and when moral distress may be related to work-family conflict and burnout. Additionally, this study examines whether resilience and positive refocusing might protect healthcare professionals from the negative effects of moral distress. A total of 153 Italian healthcare professionals completed self-report questionnaires. Simple and moderated mediation models revealed that moral distress was positively related to burnout, directly and indirectly, as mediated by work-family conflict. Highly resilient professionals experienced low work-family conflict, regardless of (...) moral distress levels. Moreover, professionals who frequently used positive refocusing were less vulnerable to burnout following moral distress. (shrink)

: Autonomous driving systems promise important changes for future of transport, primarily through the reduction of road accidents. However, ethical concerns, in particular, two central issues, will be key to their successful development. First, situations of risk that involve inevitable harm to passengers and/or bystanders, in which some individuals must be sacrificed for the benefit of others. Secondly, and identification responsible parties and liabilities in the event of an accident. Our work addresses the first of these ethical problems. We are (...) interested in investigating how humans respond to critical situations and what reactions they consider to be morally right or at least preferable to others. Our experimental approach relies on the trolley dilemma and knowledge gained from previous research on this. More specifically, our main purpose was to test the difference between what human drivers actually decide to do in an emergency situations whilst driving a realistic simulator and the moral choices they make when they pause to consider what they would do in the same situation and to better understand why these choices may differs. Keywords: Self-driving Cars; Trolley Problem; Moral Choices; Moral Responsibility; Virtual Reality Dilemmi morali nelle automobili a guida autonoma Riassunto: I sistemi di guida autonomi promettono importanti cambiamenti per il futuro dei trasporti, principalmente attraverso la riduzione degli incidenti stradali. Tuttavia, vi sono preoccupazioni etiche, in particolare due questioni centrali, fondamentali per il loro sviluppo. In primo luogo, le situazioni di rischio che comportano inevitabili danni ai passeggeri e/o ai pedoni, ovvero situazioni in cui alcune persone devono essere sacrificate a beneficio di altri. In secondo luogo, l’identificazione delle parti responsabili in caso di incidente. Il nostro lavoro affronta il primo di questi problemi etici. Siamo interessati a studiare come gli umani rispondono a situazioni critiche e quali reazioni considerano moralmente giuste o almeno preferibili. Il nostro approccio sperimentale si basa sul trolley problem e sulle conoscenze acquisite da precedenti ricerche su questo ambito. Più specificamente, il nostro scopo principale è quello di testare la differenza tra ciò che i conducenti umani decidono effettivamente di fare in una situazione di emergenza, mentre guidano un simulatore realistico, e le scelte morali che compiono se posti nella stessa situazione e hanno la possibilità di decidere senza limiti di tempo. Lo scopo è inoltre comprendere come e perché queste scelte possono differire. Parole chiave: Automobili a guida autonoma; Trolley problem; Scelte morali; Responsabilità morale, Realtà virtuale. (shrink)

This article considers the relationship between John Buridan’s natural philosophy and medicine. By examining some aspects of Buridan’s description of the human body related to sensation, nutrition, and generation—especially as they were framed in the so-called “controversy between philosophers and physicians”—this article shows that, though mostly faithful to Aristotelian doctrine, Buridan’s theoretical biology relies to a large extent on medical ideas.

Le Quaestiones 2 («Se l’oggetto adeguato della conoscenza divina sia l’essenza di Dio o l’ente universale») e 3 («Se le creature secondo le loro proprie nature e le loro essenze siano vita in Dio e nel Verbo») della Distinctio 35 dello Scriptum di Pietro Aureoli sono importanti per la ricostruzione sia del pensiero del loro autore che della storia della dottrina delle idee divine nel Medioevo. Aureoli rifiuta il modello tradizionale di causalità esemplare, secondo cui Dio avrebbe creato il mondo (...) sulla base di modelli archetipi esistenti dall’eternità nella sua mente. Ricorrendo al concetto di aequivocatio, stabilisce che l’essenza di Dio è in maniera equivoca l’unico esemplare per tutte le creature ed elabora, così, la teoria della causalità esemplare equivoca. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show that, in order to understand the new public role of religion, we need to rethink the nexus, often neglected by contemporary philosophy, between politics and imagination. The current resurrection of religion in the public sphere is linked to a deep transformation of political imagination which has its roots in the double process of the reduction of politics to mere administration, on the one hand, and to spectacle, on the other. In an epoch (...) when politics is said to be simply a question of ‘good governance’, of good administration within a neo-liberal consensus, the paradox is that of a lack of political imagination which goes hand in hand with its hypertrophy through the media. This article tackles this paradox, by firstly discussing the nexus of politics, imagination and religion and, secondly, by analysing their contemporary transformations. In conclusion, the thesis is illustrated through the analysis of some contemporary examples. (shrink)

This article focuses on the link between borders and creativity that has come to light over the last two decades thanks to new interdisciplinary theoretical approaches proposing a systemic-processual shift within border studies. Following this, it is worth considering the creative interplay caused by the triad, bordering-ordering- othering, that conceives borders not only as demarcation lines, but also as dynamic, processual social practices. Borders are paradoxical structures that, created in order to separate and distinguish, signify created and creative spaces for (...) studying the contemporary world-system by adopting a pluri-versal perspective and moving toward a new border epistemology. (shrink)

This paper focuses on a specific aspect of political imaginaries: political myth. What are political myths? What role do they play within today commoditised political imaginaries? What are the conditions for setting up a critique of them? We will address these questions, by putting forward a theory of political myth which situates itself between psychoanalysis and political philosophy, in line with the tradition of critical theory that many still associate with the name of the Frankfurt School. We will first discuss (...) the notion of political myth by illustrating the contribution of both disciplines to its understanding and then, through a discussion of the notion of social unconscious, we will apply this analysis to a contemporary example of political myth, that of a clash of civilisations. (shrink)

Drawing on philosophy, law and political science, and on a wealth of practical experience delivering emergency medical services in conflict-ridden settings, Lepora and Goodin untangle the complexities surrounding compromise and complicity.

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Boredom, in cinema as well as in our everyday experience, is usually associated with a generalised loss of meaning or interest. Accordingly, boredom is often perceived as that which ought to be avo...

Complicity with wrongdoing comes in many forms and many degrees. We distinguish subcategories cooperation, collaboration and collusion from connivance and condoning, identifying their defining features and assessing their characteristic moral valences. We illustrate the use of these distinctions by reference to events in refugee camps in and around Rwanda after the 1994 genocide, and the extent to which international organizations and nongovernment organizations were wrongfully complicit with the misuse of refugees as human shields by the perpetrators of the genocide who (...) were allowed to run those camps. (shrink)

In this book, originally published in 2007, Chiara Bottici argues for a philosophical understanding of political myth. Bottici demonstrates that myth is a process, one of continuous work on a basic narrative pattern that responds to a need for significance. Human beings need meaning in order to master the world they live in, but they also need significance in order to live in a world that is less indifferent to them. This is particularly true in the realm of politics. (...) Political myths are narratives through which we orient ourselves, and act and feel about our political world. Bottici shows that in order to come to terms with contemporary phenomena, such as the clash between civilizations, we need a Copernican revolution in political philosophy. If we want to save reason, we need to look at it from the standpoint of myth. (shrink)

Why government outsourcing of public powers is making us less free Many governmental functions today—from the management of prisons and welfare offices to warfare and financial regulation—are outsourced to private entities. Education and health care are funded in part through private philanthropy rather than taxation. Can a privatized government rule legitimately? The Privatized State argues that it cannot. In this boldly provocative book, Chiara Cordelli argues that privatization constitutes a regression to a precivil condition—what philosophers centuries ago called "a (...) state of nature." Developing a compelling case for the democratic state and its administrative apparatus, she shows how privatization reproduces the very same defects that Enlightenment thinkers attributed to the precivil condition, and which only properly constituted political institutions can overcome—defects such as provisional justice, undue dependence, and unfreedom. Cordelli advocates for constitutional limits on privatization and a more democratic system of public administration, and lays out the central responsibilities of private actors in contexts where governance is already extensively privatized. Charting a way forward, she presents a new conceptual account of political representation and novel philosophical theories of democratic authority and legitimate lawmaking. The Privatized State shows how privatization undermines the very reason political institutions exist in the first place, and advocates for a new way of administering public affairs that is more democratic and just. (shrink)

What are the most detailed descriptions under which subjects intend to perform bodily actions? According to Pacherie (2006), these descriptions may be found by looking into motor representations—action representations in the brain that determine the movements to be performed. Specifically, for any motor representation guiding an action, its subject has an M‐intention representing that action in as much detail. I show that some M‐intentions breach the constraints that intentions should meet. I then identify a set of intentions—motor intentions—that represent actions (...) in as much detail as some motor representations while meeting the constraints that intentions should meet. (shrink)

Paraconsistent quantum logics are weak forms of quantum logic, where the noncontradiction and the excluded-middle laws are violated. These logics find interesting applications in the operational approach to quantum mechanics. In this paper, we present an axiomatization, a Kripke-style, and an algebraic semantical characterization for two forms of paraconsistent quantum logic. Further developments are contained in Giuntini and Greuling's paper in this issue.

In contemporary virtue ethics, virtues are often assimilated to skills. This assimilation suggests that the moral knowledge of virtuous individuals parallels the practical knowledge of experts in a particular skill. According to Julia Annas (2011a, 2011b), virtues function as skills requiring the ability to articulate reasons for one’s actions. These skills are developed through habitual practice over time. For example, a pianist who internalizes piano techniques possesses practical expertise akin to someone who understands their actions, even when performed automatically. Annas (...) argues that to cultivate ethical virtue, we should emulate musical action, viewing it as a habit rather than mere repetition. This analogy aids in understanding virtue acquisition as practical skill-building. Expanding on Annas’s insights, this article contends that musical practice offers profound ethical implications for musicians as potential moral agents. Supported by important neurological and psychological studies on musical expertise, as well as the dynamics of classical music interpretation and professional career development, this argument sheds light on the ethical dimensions of musical agency. These insights into musical expertise could enhance our understanding of ethical expertise overall. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the theory of divine ideas of Walter Burley. The medieval common theory of divine ideas, developed by Augustine, was intended to provide an answer to the question of the order and intelligibility of the world. The world is rationally organized since God created it according to the models existing eternally in his mind. Augustine's theory, however, left open problems such as reconciling the principle of God's unity with the plurality of ideas, the way in which ideas (...) can or cannot be said to be eternal, their ontological status. Medieval authors discussed such questions until at least the late 14th century. By resorting to the semantic tool of connotation, Burley explains both in what way ‘idea' can signify the divine essence as much as the creatures, and in what sense we can say that God has thought them from eternity, without slipping into a necessitarian view that undermines the principle of divine freedom. Moreover, by envisaging the objective mode of being as the only mode of being of ideas, he explains in what way they truly differ from one another on the basis of their different conceptual contents. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe concept of the social imaginary has been introduced as an alternative to theories of the imagination. Whereas the imagination tends to be conceived as a faculty that we possess as indiv...

Whereas “professional vision” has been mostly analyzed in apprenticeship and other settings where knowledge is made explicit or reflected upon, I focus on how expertise tacitly plays out in task-oriented interaction among practitioners. The paper considers orientation both to the coworker’s and one’s own expertise in the collaborative accomplishment of airport security work. I show how screeners recruit action from colleagues in largely underspecified ways, based on shared access to the visibility field and expected professional vision. Requesting is tacitly accomplished (...) via “highlighting,” which also accounts for one’s request. Accepting is silently achieved via locomotion, which also serves as a display of understanding. Embodied action is systematically preferred to verbal one. Talk is employed in larger proportions when the domain of scrutiny is not equally accessible to interactants, and when “face-work” is required. (shrink)

The article examines the ethics of musical interpretation, focusing on the performer’s responsibility in faithfully recreating a work from the score. Drawing inspiration from conductor Daniel Barenboim’s reflections (2016), it analyzes the delicate balance between personal expression and fidelity to the work, highlighting how interpretation involves not only technical skill but also moral responsibility. This notion develops through the importance attributed to history, authenticity, and the present in interpretation. These concepts are explored in the relationship between the score and the (...) performer, addressing the ethical challenges involved in balancing fidelity and creativity. The study of Historically Informed Performance (HIP) demonstrates how it serves as the foundation of the ethics of musical interpretation, due to its attempt to recreate the original conditions of performances. However, it is also noted that HIP embodies an overly rigid fidelity, thus requiring a more balanced approach that views musical practice as an ongoing dialogue between past and present. Finally, since the rules of musical practice are not enough for performers to interpret ethically, as they need to be internalized, the role of Aristotelian phronesis is explored as an internal guide for performers in interpretative practice. Phronesis aids the performer in mediating between past and present and in making interpretative decisions that are both ethically and musically appropriate. (shrink)

Environment learning is essential in everyday life. In individuals with Down syndrome (DS), this skill has begun to be examined using virtual exploration. Previous studies showed that individuals with DS can learn and remember paths in terms of sequences of turns and straight stretches, albeit with some difficulty, and this learning is supported by their cognitive abilities. This study further investigates environment learning in the DS population, newly examining their ability to learn a path from actual movements, and to learn (...) increasingly long paths, and how their performance relates to their visuo-spatial abilities and everyday spatial activities. A group of 30 individuals with DS and 30 typically-developing (TD) children matched for receptive vocabulary performed a 4 × 4 Floor Matrix task in a grid comprising 16 squares (total area 2.3 × 2.3 meters). The task involved repeating increasingly long sequences of steps by actually moving in the grid. The sequences were presented in two learning conditions, called Observation (when participants watched the experimenter’s moves), or Map (when they were shown a map reproducing the path). Several visuo-spatial measures were also administered. The results showed a clear difference between the two groups’ performance in the individual visuo-spatial measures. In the Floor Matrix task, after controlling for visuo-spatial reasoning ability, both groups benefited to the same degree from the Observation condition vis-à-vis the Map condition, and no group differences emerged. In the group with DS, visuo-spatial abilities were more predictive of performance in the Floor Matrix task in the Observation condition than in the Map condition. The same was true of the TD group, but this difference was much less clear-cut. The visuo-spatial working memory and visualization tasks were the strongest predictors of Floor Matrix task performance. Finally, the group with DS showed a significant relation between Floor Matrix task performance in the Observation condition and everyday spatial activity. These results enlarge on what we know about path learning in individuals with DS and its relation to their visuo-spatial abilities. These findings are discussed within the frame of spatial cognition and the atypical development domain. (shrink)

Medical complicity in torture is prohibited by international law and codes of professional ethics. But in the many countries in which torture is common, doctors frequently are expected to assist unethical acts that they are unable to prevent. Sometimes these doctors face a dilemma: they are asked to provide diagnoses or treatments that respond to genuine health needs but that also make further torture more likely or more effective. The duty to avoid complicity in torture then comes into conflict with (...) the doctor’s duty to care for patients. Sometimes the right thing for a doctor to do requires complicity in torture. Whether this is the case depends on: the expected consequences of the doctor’s actions; the wishes of the patient; and the extent of the doctor’s complicity with wrongdoing. Medical associations can support physicians who face this dilemma while maintaining a commitment to clear principles denouncing torture. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to illuminate the idea that humility – understood as self-knowledge and a relational virtue in the Thomistic sense – is essential for professional excellence in music. The article begins by examining contemporary interpretations of humility and then refers to the conceptions of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. It argues that 1) Aquinas’s conception of humility aligns well with current understandings of humility among professional musicians in Western classical music; 2) humility can be considered a role-specific (...) virtue in music; and 3) high-level musical practice serves as a form of training in the virtue of humility. The article then draws on studies by social scientists and testimonies from professional musicians and conductors to explore how humility is manifested and actualized in music, particularly concerning self-knowledge and excellence. (shrink)

Parent-teacher conferences (PTCs) are important institutional encounters to promote a constructive dialogue and alliance between the school and the family system. However, cooperation between parents and institutional actors is not always straightforward, especially in the case of foreign parents. Because of the unequal familiarity of the latter with the institutional frameworks and language resources needed to participate effectively in PTCs, foreign parents risk having less communicative resources to rely on in the joint construction of the interaction. In this paper we (...) focus on eight PTCs with foreign parents, paying attention to occurrences where children's learning difficulties are linked by teachers to their language skills. Using a conversation analysis framework, we will observe how language issues are intertwined with cultural, identity, and moral aspects that need special attention in order to enhance and support the effective construction of educational alliances between schools and families. (shrink)

The current situation around COVID-19 portrays a threat to us in several ways: It imposes uncertainty, a lack of control and reminds us of our own mortality. People around the world have reacted to these threats in seemingly unrelated ways: From stockpiling yeast and toilet paper to favoring nationalist ideas or endorsing conspiratorial beliefs. According to the General Process Model of Threat and Defense the confrontation with a threat - a discrepant experience - makes humans react with both proximal and (...) distal threat responses. While the proximal response manifests in behavioral inhibition that leads to heightened anxious arousal and vigilance, distal responses seek to lower behavioral inhibition and the associated state of anxiety and vigilance through engaging in distal defenses. In the present research, we propose that the reactions to COVID-19 may represent distal defense strategies to the pandemic (in the form of environmental or group related worldview defenses) and therefore can be explained and forecasted by the model. Thus we hypothesized increased perceived COVID-19 threat perception to lead to a proximal threat response in the form of heightened behavioral inhibition. This, in return, should enhance the use of distal defenses (i.e.: several ingroup biases, system justification and conspiratorial beliefs) overlapping with the reactions observed as a response to COVID-19. This hypothesized mediated effect of increased perceived COVID-19 threat on distal defenses was tested in two pre-registered studies: In Study 1 (N = 358) results showed perceived COVID-19 threat to be related to behavioral inhibition and in turn to be associated with increased distal defenses (i.e., higher entitativity, control restoration motivation, passive party support). In Study 2 (N = 348) we manipulated COVID-19 threat salience and found results suggesting the distal defenses of system justification and conspiratorial beliefs to be mediated by the proximal threat response. The results of the present research hint towards a common mechanism through which the seemingly unrelated reactions to COVID-19 can be explained. The results might help to predict future behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic and design measures to counteract detrimental effects of the pandemic. (shrink)

Complicity consists in one person contributing to someone else's wrongdoing. But there is a diverse cluster ways of being involved in another’s wrongdoing. For a ‘diagnosis by exclusion’, we first fix the meaning of complicity in contrast to that with which it is often wrongly conflated. Literally cooperating in wrongdoing with others, for instance, is more than complicity. Each and every cooperator is actually a co-principal in the wrong jointly committed; and each bears the full responsibility, shared with all co-principals, (...) for the outcomes of that wrongdoing. Other sorts of involvement with wrongs committed by others amount to less than complicity because the involvement there is causally inert and hence does not actually contribute to the other’s wrongdoing at all. Pardoning wrongs wholly in the past may be like that. So too may be some cases of wilfully overlooking wrongs that others commit under one's very nose. Complicity is a very precise way of being involved in wrongdoing. Complicity consists in a secondary contribution of a causal (or potentially causal) sort to a wrong committed by someone else. That ‘contribution factor’ can be graded on many axes, in terms of how proximate, reversible or frequent the contribution was. Other things being equal, one is more complicit the …. (shrink)