Research In Mathematics Education In Australasia 2016–2019 (sometimes shortened to RiMEA 2016–2019) is a timely and important edited collection where contributors provide critical reviews on mathem...

Giorgio Levi Della Vida (1886-1967) was not only an eminent Islamologist, he was also a man with solid roots in his own time. He taught in Naples and Rome, then for the ten years 1939-1948 at the University of Pennsylvania. He was one of the few university teachers who, when the oath of loyalty to the Italian fascist regime was introduced in October 1931, opted not to accept that act of submission. His memoirs, Fantasmi ritrovati, were published in 1966; (...) the book, now out of print, conjures up a tableau vivant of half a century of intellectual encounters in Italy and Europe between the wars. Among the portraits he paints there is the astounding story of those crucial days in June 1924 when the fascist government became a full-blown regime. This article presents extended extracts from that story. (shrink)

Estratto da Jean-Paul Sartre, "Critica della ragione dialettica, Tomo II: L’intelligibilità della storia", trad. it. di F. Cambria, Christian Marinotti Edizioni, Milano 2006, pp. 409-426.Testo nella traduzione italianaTesto originale francese.

Research has shown a direct relationship between infertility-related stress and anxiety in infertile patients. The present study goes into this relationship in depth, testing the moderating role of coping strategies in the associations between specific infertility-related stress dimensions and State-Anxiety among male and female partners of infertile couples. Gender differences were also explored. Both members of 254 infertile couples completed a questionnaire consisting of Socio-demographics, Fertility Problem Inventory–Short Form, Coping Orientation to Problem Experienced–New Italian Version, and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Y. The (...) results revealed that Social Concern and Couple’s Relationship Concern, in both partners, and Need for Parenthood, in female partners, had positive correlations with State-Anxiety. Seeking Social Support and Avoidant coping were related to increasing levels of State-Anxiety in both partners, whereas Positive Attitude coping strategies were related to lower levels of State-Anxiety in female partners. Problem-Solving and Avoidant coping played moderating roles between specific infertility-related stress dimensions and State-Anxiety in unexpected directions. Problem-Solving exacerbated the negative effects of Social Concern, whereas Avoidant coping buffered the negative effects of several infertility-related stress dimensions in both partners. Interventions to improve stress management and psychological health in infertile couples should consider that the adequacy of coping strategies is inherently situation specific. It therefore follows that patient-centered clinical interventions should consider the potential inadequacy of promoting Problem-Solving strategies, and that even Avoidance can be an efficient strategy for dealing with specific infertility-related stress dimensions. (shrink)

What enables individuals to act together? Recent discoveries suggest that a variety of mechanisms are involved. But something fundamental is yet to be investigated. In joint action, agents represent a collective goal, or so it is often assumed. But how, if at all, are collective goals represented in joint action and how do such representations impact performance? To investigate this question we adapted a bimanual paradigm, the circle-line drawing paradigm, to contrast two agents acting in parallel with two agents performing (...) a joint action. Participants were required to draw lines or circles while observing circles or lines being drawn. The findings indicate that interpersonal motor coupling may occur in joint but not parallel action. This suggests that participants in joint actions can represent collective goals motorically. (shrink)

This is a translation of three works by Mirandola: "On the Dignity of Man," a document of early Renaissance humanism; "One Being and the One," a treatise on the relationship between unity and being; and "Heptaplus," an interpretation of the first verses of "Genesis.".

This paper defends an interpretation of Descartes according to which he sees us as having normative (and not merely psychological) certainty of all clear and distinct ideas during the period in which they are apprehended clearly and distinctly. However, on this view, a retrospective doubt about clear and distinct ideas is possible. This interpretation allows Descartes to avoid the Cartesian Circle in an effective way and also shows that Descartes is surprisingly, in some respects, an epistemological externalist. The paper goes (...) on to defend this interpretation against some powerful philosophical objections by Margaret Wilson and others by showing how Descartes' doctrine of the creation of the eternal truths can be brought in to support his epistemology. This doctrine and other analogous positions in Descartes can also reveal that Descartes, again surprisingly, takes important steps toward doing epistemology without direct appeal to God and God's veracity. (shrink)

Memory and forgetting are inextricably intertwined. In order to understand how memory works we need to understand how and why we forget. The topic of forgetting is therefore hugely important, despite the fact that it has often been neglected in comparison with other features of memory. This volume addresses various aspects of forgetting, drawing from several disciplines, including experimental and cognitive psychology, cognitive and clinical neuropsychology, behavioural neuroscience, neuroimaging, clinical neurology, and computational modeling. The first chapters of the book discuss (...) the history of forgetting, its theories and accounts, the difference between short-term and long-term forgetting as well as the relevance of forgetting within each of the numerous components of memory taxonomy. The central part summarizes and discusses what we have learned about forgetting from animal work, from computational modeling, and from neuroimaging. Further chapters discuss pathological forgetting in patients with amnesia and epilepsy, as well as psychogenic forgetting. The book concludes by focusing on the difference between forgetting of autobiographical memories versus collective memory forgetting. This book is the first to address the issue of forgetting from an interdisciplinary point of view, but with a particular emphasis on psychology. The book is scientific and yet accessible in tone, and as such is suitable for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of psychology and related subjects, such as science and neuroscience. (shrink)

Central sensitization refers to the increased responsiveness of nociceptive neurons in the central nervous system after repeated or sustained peripheral nociceptor activation. It is hypothesized to play a key role in the development of chronic pain. A hallmark of central sensitization is an increased sensitivity to noxious mechanical stimuli extending beyond the injured location, known as secondary hyperalgesia. For its ability to modulate the transmission and the processing of nociceptive inputs, attention could constitute a promising target to prevent central sensitization (...) and the development of chronic pain. It was recently shown that the experimental induction of central sensitization at both forearms of healthy volunteers using bilateral high-frequency electrocutaneous stimulation (HFS), can be modulated by encouraging participants to selectively focus their attention to one arm, to the detriment of the other arm, resulting in a greater secondary hyperalgesia on the attended arm as compared to the unattended one. Given the potential value of the question being addressed, we conducted a preregistered replication study in a well-powered independent sample to assess the robustness of the effect, i.e., the modulatory role of spatial attention on the induction of central sensitization. This hypothesis was tested using a double-blind, within-subject design. Sixty-seven healthy volunteers performed a task that required focusing attention toward one forearm to discriminate innocuous vibrotactile stimuli while HFS was applied on both forearms simultaneously. Our results showed a significant increase in mechanical sensitivity directly and 20 min after HFS. However, in contrast to the previous study, we did not find a significant difference in the development of secondary hyperalgesia between the attended vs. unattended arms. Our results question whether spatial selective attention affects the development of secondary hyperalgesia. Alternatively, the non-replication could be because the bottom-up capture of attention caused by the HFS-mediated sensation was too strong in comparison to the top-down modulation exerted by the attentional task. In other words, the task was not engaging enough and the HFS pulses, including those on the unattended arm, were too salient to allow a selective focus on one arm and modulate nociceptive processing. (shrink)

An ardent treatise for the Dignity of Man, which elevates Humanism to a truly Christian level, making this writing as pertinent today as it was in the Fifteenth Century.

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 42-44.

In their address of structural racism in healthcare, Sabatello and colleagues provide both a remarkable review of the empirical literature regarding the disproportionate impacts of the COVID...

The Parmenidean Ascent is a full-throated and wide-ranging defense of an extreme form of monism or the denial of all distinctions, a form of monism rarely seen since the time of the pre-Socratic philosopher, Parmenides. At once historically sensitive and deeply engaged with trends in recent and contemporary metaphysics, philosophy of action, epistemology, and philosophy of language, The Parmenidean Ascent aims, on rationalist grounds and in a skeptical spirit, to challenge the content of-and to overturn the methods of much of (...) contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

This paper presents an argument for the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the PSR, the principle according to which each thing that exists has an explanation. I begin with several widespread and extremely plausible arguments that I call explicability arguments in which a certain situation is rejected precisely because it would be arbitrary. Building on these plausible cases, I construct a series of explicability arguments that culminates in an explicability argument concerning existence itself. This argument amounts to the claim that the (...) PSR is true. The plausibility of the initial cases in the series provides the basis of an argument for the PSR, an argument that can be rebutted only by drawing a line between the plausible early cases in the series and the apparently unacceptable later cases. I argue that no principled reason for drawing this line has been found and that one cannot draw an unprincipled or arbitrary line without begging the question. The paper concludes that, therefore, this defense of the PSR remains unrebutted and that we have a powerful, new reason to embrace the PSR. (shrink)

While the normative debate on European integration has addressed the importance of the construction of truly democratic institutions as well as the establishment of social rights at EU level, the role of progressive social movements has not been much debated. Building upon theorization and research in social movement studies, I argue that progressive social movements are indeed already contributing to the construction of European public spheres. Not one liberal (or bourgeois), public sphere but the proliferation of subaltern counterpublics could allow (...) for the participation of the excluded, giving them the possibility to make their political voice heard. Through different paths of Europeanization (in particular, domestication, externalization and transnationalization), progressive social movements have played an important role in the creation of a critical public sphere as, by contesting European institutions, they have contributed to make them (more) accountable, but have also developed collective identities at EU level and, with them, European public spheres. A main challenge is now to connect an emancipatory critical public to public institutions. (shrink)

The introduction of Linear Logic extends the Curry-Howard Isomorphism to intensional aspects of the typed functional programming. In particular, every formula of Linear Logic tells whether the term it is a type for, can be either erased/duplicated or not, during a computation. So, Linear Logic can be seen as a model of a computational environment with an explicit control about the management of resources.

Draws upon ancient wisdom to illuminate a sacred feminine view of death that both honors this experience we all share and allows us to live more fully"--Cover.

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

Spinoza ' s understanding and understanding Spinoza -- Spinoza ' s understanding -- Understanding Spinoza -- The metaphysics of substance -- Descartes and substance -- Spinoza contra Descartes on substance -- Modes -- Necessitarianism -- The purpose of it all -- The human mind -- Parallelism and representation -- Essence and representation -- Parallelism and mind - body identity -- The idea of the human body -- The pancreas problem, the pan problem, and panpsychism -- Nothing but representation -- Representation, (...) will, and belief -- Skepticism -- Psychology : striving and self - preservation -- Conatus -- Desire, joy, and sadness -- Love, hate, and all that -- The ethics of the ethics -- The good notion of the good -- The right notion of the right -- Knowledge and morality -- Freedom and morality -- Helping others -- Lies and degrees of freedom -- The state, religion, and scripture -- Rights and power -- Religion and the state -- Scripture -- Prophecy and the truth of the Bible -- From PSR to eternity -- The aftermath of Spinoza -- Leibniz -- Bayle and Hume -- The pantheism controversy -- Hegel -- Nietzsche -- Prospects of spinozistic rationalism. (shrink)

This paper offers a defense of a much-maligned Leibnizian argument for the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the principle according to which whatever is has a sufficient reason or explanation. While Leibniz’s argument is widely thought to rely on a question-begging premise, the paper offers a wholly original and non-question-begging defense of that premise, a defense that Leibniz did not anticipate. The paper does not present this defense of Leibniz's argument as an interpretation of Leibniz; rather, the paper—more modestly in one (...) way, less modestly in another—simply claims that this argument succeeds. (shrink)

The intelligibility of change in Descartes Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9494-0 Authors Michael Della Rocca, Department of Philosophy, Yale University, P.O. Box 208306, New Haven, CT 06520-8306, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

This paper seeks to investigate and assess a particular form of relationship between the State and its citizens in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, namely that of obedience to the law and its related right of protest through civil disobedience. We do so by conducting an analysis and normative evaluation of two cases of disobedience to the law: (1) healthcare professionals refusing to attend work as a protest against unsafe working conditions, and (2) citizens who use public demonstration and (...) deliberately ignore measures of social distancing as a way of protesting against lockdown. While different in many aspects, both are substantially similar with respect to one element: their respective protesters both rely on unlawful actions in order to bring change to a policy they consider unjust. We question the extent to which healthcare professionals may participate in civil disobedience with respect to the duty of care intrinsic to the medical profession, and the extent to which opponents of lockdown and confinement measures may reasonably engage in protests without endangering the lives and basic rights of non-dissenting citizens. Drawing on a contractualist normative framework, our analysis leads us to conclude that while both cases qualify as civil disobedience in the descriptive sense, only the case of healthcare professionals qualifies as morally justified civil disobedience. (shrink)

We propose here the first translation into Portuguese of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s small treatise De Ente et Uno (1491). The translation is preceded by a brief presentation in which the work is contextualized within the scope of the thought of its young author and in the Florentine philosophical environment of the end of the Quattrocento. In the aftermath of the controversies between defenders of Plato and defenders of Aristotle, a quarrel brought by Greek and Byzantine intellectuals into Italy, (...) who exacerbated the differences between the two philosophers, there were also others who tried to show the essential concord between them, a purpose of which Pico’s treatise is one of the most expressive and relevant documents, seeking to prove the equivalence between Plato’s One and Aristotle’s Being. (shrink)

This paper critically examines a prominent and perennial strategy—found in thinkers as diverse as Kant and Shamik Dasgupta—of simultaneously embracing the Principle of Sufficient Reason and also limiting it so as to avoid certain apparently negative consequences of an unrestricted PSR. I will argue that this strategy of taming the PSR faces significant challenges and may even be incoherent. And for my purposes, I will enlist a generally derided argument by Leibniz for the PSR which will help us to see (...) the connections between the PSR and a radical form of monism. (shrink)