Recent mathematical results, obtained by the author, in collaboration with Alexander Stokolos, Olof Svensson, and Tomasz Weiss, in the study of harmonic functions, have prompted the following reflections, intertwined with views on some turning points in the history of mathematics and accompanied by an interpretive key that could perhaps shed some light on other aspects of (the development of) mathematics.

The Cambridge Platonist Henry More was fiercely averse to the Lurianic Kabbalah, with which he became acquainted through the two tomes of the Kabbala denudata. More contributed to the first tome substantially and was highly influential in shaping the reception of this work, edited by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth. He denounced the incompatibility of the Christian religion with Luria's system and in his last contribution, the Fundamenta, he put forward an apagogical argument meant to show the inconsistency of Luria's teaching. (...) The article aims at exploring the nature of More's argument so as to highlight the philosophical essence of his criticism, the intention of which was to emphasize the incompatibility of the Kabbalah with any form of rational speculation. Luria's doctrine appeared to More to be a compromise between materialism and spiritualism, a sort of hybrid theory that was even worse than materialism, given its misleading theistic appearance as well as the lack of internal coherence. This compromise was also morally unacceptable, being symptomatic of weakness of the will. (shrink)

Introduction: Novel coronavirus is having a devastating psychological impact on patients, especially patients with cancer. This work aims to evaluate mood disorders of cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy during COVID-19 in comparison with cancer patients who underwent radiation therapy in 2019.Materials and Methods: We included all the patients undergoing radiation therapy at our department in two-time points and during the COVID-19 outbreak. All the patients were asked to fulfill a validated questionnaire, the Symptom Distress thermometer, and the Beck Depression Inventory (...) v.2. We took into account the COVID-19 outbreak and also sex, age, week of radiation treatment, and disease.Results: We included 458 patients, with a median age of 64 years. STAI-Y1 median score was 40, whereas the median score of SDT was five and BDI-2 median score was 11. STAI-Y1, SDT, and BDI-2 were significantly correlated with the COVID-19 outbreak, sex, week of treatment, and disease.Conclusions: The prevalence of mood disorders in patients undergoing radiation therapy is higher than expected and even higher during the COVID-19 outbreak. These measurements could be useful as a baseline to start medical humanities programs to decrease these scores. (shrink)

I manoscritti dell'abate Galiani.--Catalogo sistematico dei manoscritti dell'abate Galiani.--Intorno al terzo dei Libri della Biccherna.--Due recensioni.--Groce, B. I manoscritti dell'abate Galiani.--Nicolini, B. Profilo di Fausto Nicolini archivista.

Questo contributo considera e analizza specifici elementi pagani celtici nella Navigatio sancti Brendani, soprattutto attraverso la comparazione con il genere epico tradizionale degli immrama e delle echtrai. Il proposito è quello di dimostrare la continuità di alcuni tradizionali concetti religiosi irlandesi sull’escatologia e la visione dell’aldilà in questi testi, particolarmente nell’ambito delle funzioni religiose espresse nelle figure di Brendano, di Barinto e degli dèi irlandesi del mare Manannán e Mongán. Attraverso le osservazioni svolte, si può stabilire che questa continuità funzionale (...) non è basata su un passivo lavoro di ricezione, ma è generata da un autentico sforzo di comprensione degli elementi cruciali che hanno determinato l’originalità e la sostanza della struttura escatologica della Navigatio. (shrink)

In 1582, Carlo Sigonio published a text entitled De Republica Hebraeorum. It used the format of the De repubblica Athenensium manual. The question of the political structure in ancient Israel had already been addressed before, but Siconio was the first to adopt a systematic approach. However, he did not know Hebrew and so used the translation of the Septuagint, giving rise to not a few problems.

In this article we address the so-called argument of «individual causal inefficacy» (ICI), according to which CO2-emission-generating actions are morally neutral with regards to climate change, in so far as, taken in their singularity, they are neither sufficient nor necessary to cause climate change. In the first part, we address the main substantive objection to ICI: if a single emission, analysed in isolation, does not cause any disutility, it is impossible to explain why climate change (which is the result of (...) a sum of emissions) is the source of an enormous disutility; thus, ICI should be rejected in so far as it leads to a conclusion that is logically inconsistent. We argue, contrary to this, that it is possible to hold together ICI and individual moral responsibility for climate change, given the characteristics of the natural carbon cycle and of net-zero emissions. In the second part, accordingly, we propose a theory of individual responsibility for climate change which is based on the distinction between individual and collective freedom to emit, compatibly with a given mitigation target. This theory allows us to maintain that there exists a moral duty to reduce individual emissions, without having to demonstrate the fallacy of ICI. This duty is based on distributive reasons, which can prescind from the direct causal relationship between individual polluting actions and climate damage. (shrink)

In this article I hold that utilitarians are wrong to want to disaggregate climate- induced harm, whether in terms of chaotic or linear causality. This is not because individual emissions do not count, in probabilistic terms, for risk projections of overall climate dam- age, rather because individual emissions only contribute to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration if the anthropogenic flow of CO2 exceeds the amount of CO2 that can be naturally taken up by the biosphere, over a given time segment. I (...) therefore maintain that individual climate duties consist of reforming the social and technological structures that make each individual emission part of a collective phenomenon, global warming, which leads to an enormous global disutility, climate change. In the final part of the article, I ar- gue that utilitarian ethics would have much more to say if, instead of focusing on the dis- aggregation of climate-induced harm, it addressed the key issues of the energy transition, i.e. carbon pricing, research and development in green technologies and climate finance. (shrink)

Psychotic-like experiences are a phenomenon that occurs in the general population experiencing delusional thoughts and hallucinations without being in a clinical condition. PLEs involve erroneous attributions of inner cognitive events to the external environment and the presence of intrusive thoughts influenced by dysfunctional beliefs; for these reasons, the role played by metacognition has been largely studied. This study investigates PLEs in a non-clinical population and discriminating factors involved in this kind of experience, among which metacognition, as well as psychopathological features, (...) seems to have a crucial role. The aim of this study was to extend the knowledge about the relationship between metacognition, psychopathology, and PLEs, orienting the focus on metacognitive functioning. The sample consisted of 207 Italian participants voluntarily recruited online, who gave consent to participate in the study. The average age of the sample was 32.69 years. Subjects affected by psychosis, neurological disease, and drug addiction were excluded from the analyses. The following scales were used to investigate PLEs: Peters et al. Delusions Inventory, Launay-Slade Hallucinations Scale-Extended Revised, Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief, and Revised Hallucination Scale. To assess general psychopathological features, the Behavior and Symptom Identification Scale was administrated. The Metacognition Self-Assessment Scale was chosen to evaluate metacognitive functioning. From hierarchical regression analyses, it emerged that the presence of anxiety, depression, and impulsive/addictive symptoms constitute a remarkable vulnerability factor for PLEs, in line with previous evidence regarding the relationship between general psychopathology and PLEs. Metacognition negatively predicts PLEs, and its presence does not affect the significance of psychopathological variables, suggesting that metacognitive abilities seem to play a protective role for the occurrence of PLEs among non-clinical individuals, and such ability operates as an independent predictor along with other variables. These results are explained by the role of metacognitive functions, which allow individuals to operate many mental processes such as interpreting sensorial events as real or illusory, understanding behaviors, thoughts, and drives of others, and questioning the subjective interpretation of facts. (shrink)

Il volume raccoglie i risultati di una Giornata di studio sull'insegnamento della Filosofia tenuta a Firenze nel novembre 2003, in cui docenti dell'università, dei licei e i giovani specializzandi in filosofia della SSIS si sono confrontati sul tema La filosofia nella scuola, tra identità disciplinare e relazione agli altri saperi. I contributi nascono da un comune disagio indotto dalla evidente cesura tra come la filosofia è oggi insegnata nelle scuole secondarie e come vorremmo vi fosse insegnata. L'interesse prevalente è per (...) una prospettiva di cambiamento che metta in risalto la relazione tra la filosofia stessa e le altre aree della cultura. Sopratutto sono venute criticamente in evidenza tre questioni: a. il problema del metodo; b. il problema della formazione professionale del docente; c. il problema di una necessaria apertura interdisciplinare del discorso filosofico. Le diverse linee di risposta a questi problemi ne hanno fatto emergere uno ulteriore, quello della centralità che dovrebbe avere il pensiero contemporaneo nel quadro di un insegnamento rinnovato della filosofia - problema cruciale, dal momento che il pensiero contemporaneo è giunto a interrogarsi sulla "post-modernità" e sul "dopo la filosofia". (shrink)