The 1830s and 1840s are the formative years of modern public health in Britain, when the poor law bureaucrat Edwin Chadwick conceived his vision of public health through public works and began the campaign for the construction of the kinds of water and sewerage works that ultimately became the standard components of urban infrastructure throughout the developed world. This book first explores that vision and campaign against the backdrop of the great "condition-of-England" questions of the period, of what rights and (...) expectations working people could justifiably have in regard to political participation, food, shelter and conditions of work. It examines the ways Chadwick's sanitarianism fit the political needs of the much-hated Poor Law Commission and of Whig and Tory governments, each seeking some antidote to revolutionary Charitism. It then reviews the Chadwickians' efforts to solve the host of problems they met in trying to implement the sanitary idea: of what responsibilities central and local units of government, and private contractors, were to have; of how townspeople could be persuaded to embark on untried public technologies; of where the new public health experts were to come from; and of how elegant technical designs were to be fitted to the unique social, political and geographic circumstances of individual towns. Rejecting the view that Chadwick's program was a simple response to an obvious urban problem Professor Hamlin argues that at the time a "public health" focusing narrowly on sanitary public works represented a retreat of public medicine from involvement with the great social issues of the Industrial Revolution. In exploring the views of medical men who were critical of Chadwick, Hamlin suggests the parameters of a public health that might have been, in which concern for health and well-being becomes the foundation of a public medicine that is a principal guarantor of social justice. This book offers modern public heatlh professionals elements of a forgotten professional heritage that might be useful in responding to the bewildering range of health problems we now confront. (shrink)

Introduzione.--Federico Enrico Jacobi.--Carlo Leonardo Reinhold.--Enesidemo (Graziadio Ernesto Schulze).--Sigismondo Beck.--Salomone Maimon.--Conclusione.

El presente ensayo afronta la cuestión de la relación entre espíritu y naturaleza en la filosofía clásica alemana, por medio del análisis de esta problemática en las principales figuras del idealismo alemán, de Kant a Schelling y de Fichte a Hegel. El autor busca hacer emerger la complejidad y la actualidad de las respectivas posiciones, confrontándolas recíprocamente para sacar a la luz sus diferencias y analogías, e insiste en la irreductibilidad del idealismo a una pura y simple metafísica de la (...) subjetividad. (shrink)

It is well known that, from the second year of life, children engage in imaginative activities and pretend play. Pretending is changing the nature of perceptual inputs at will. In this paper I shall take up the question of young children’s knowledge about the pretend-real distinctions. According to Josef Perner, they have an immature concept, called prelief, because they do not differentiate between believing and pretending. But, we know that belief and pretense have different inputs. Imagination is at the whim (...) of our intentions, belief not. And, on the side of outputs, when children pretend, they carry out behavioral sequences “as if” they really had beliefs, but belief and pretense have different causal roles in action tendencies. So, when a boy pretends, he acts out his pretense within the scope of a supposition, but, why doesn’t he go all the way? That is, how are we to explain the limits children place on their activity? I shall answer these questions arguing that pretense is tied to conceptual knowledge. This will enable me to give a metaphysical account of this phenomenon, because it is based on the intentional manipulation of the identity of things and their properties. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to analyse a passage of the pseudoepigraphic Carmen de resurrectione which relates to insipientes, interpreted as those who do not accept that the rational observation of nature proves the existence of a unique creator God. Such a refusal is believed to make them worthy of eternal damnation. The resulting concept of sapientia involves both ratio and voluntas; it is also connected with gnoseology and soteriology. A similar concept can be found in the Aquitanian poetry (...) of the fifth century and in the theology of the so-called Semipelagians. This similarity calls into question the traditional dating and the supposed area of origin of the Carmen. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to determine the historical and cultural context of the pseudoepigraphic Carmen de resurrectione. The Carmen treats poetically many subjects of Christian eschatology: the second coming of Christ, the final judgement, heaven and hell, the universal conflagration. The author believes that the end time is imminent. This perception is common to all the Christians who experienced tribulations: persecutions, natural calamities, barbarian invasions. These painful events urged the Christians to undertake a path of true conversion, in (...) the religious and moral sense. Unlike other poets, the Anonymous author emphasises the virtuous value of the hope of divine reward rather than the fear of divine punishment. The same perspective can be found in the poets and in the monks of early fifth-century Gaul, who suffered the barbarian invasion of 406. (shrink)

Humans make decisions about social information efficiently, despite – or perhaps because of – the sheer scale of data available. Of these various signals, sex cues are vitally important, yet understanding whether participants perceive them as static or dynamic is unknown. The present study addressed the related question of how expertise impinges on sex judgements. Participants were asked to target female and male exemplars from a set of own- or other-race hand images. Data show: that the own-race sex categorisation advantage (...) observed previously using face stimuli can occur in relation to hands, and sensitivity of Asian participants, but not Caucasian participants, is dynamic relative to how many fe/males there are in a set. Implications of these findings are discussed as further evidence that there exists a pan-stimulus sex processor, and as fresh evidence that human sex perception can change probabilistically. (shrink)

Charles-Louis de Secondat, barón de La Brède y de Montesquieu, es uno de los personajes intelectuales más significativos del "siglo de las Luces". Todavía hoy, a doscientos cincuenta años de su muerte, son de gran actualidad algunas de sus fundamentales teorías y formulaciones, como el principio de la división de poderes dentro de un Estado, la concepción de la existencia de un "espíritu" característico de cada pueblo, el rechazo de la tortura y la necesidad de conmensurar las penas a los (...) delitos. La relevancia, la complejidad y la riqueza de los temas afrontados por el filósofo francés hacen comprender claramente el motivo por el que autores ilustres se han visto influidos por su pensamiento, y esto sería motivo suficiente para recopilar todos sus escritos. (shrink)

Partindo das discussões que Gadamer realiza em Verdade e Método sobre a Crítica do Juízo de Kant, e em particular sobre a distinção entre beleza livre e beleza aderente, o objetivo deste texto é mostrar as implicações políticas do projeto de Gadamer. Contra as interpretações niilistas e conservadoras de Verdade e Método, queremos argumentar que o verdadeiro objetivo de Gadamer é conceber uma verdade que seja emancipadora, ou melhor, que, enquanto vivenciada e histórica, ultrapasse as condições de verdade como conformidade (...) a uma dada regra. A verdade extrametódica, de que fala Gadamer, é função de uma “universalidade intensional” que envolve a abertura de um domínio dado, entendido tanto em termos científicos (reino de verdades constituídas) quanto em termos políticos (reino de exercício do poder). Essa é, para Gadamer, a função da experiência da verdade na arte e, em geral, nas ciências do espírito. (shrink)

In the present article, the role of Gestalt concepts in clarifying the issues of perception is evaluated. Grounded in anti-atomism, Gestalt assumed organizing forces intrinsic to perception. Insofar these were identified with singularity preference, Gestalt is criticized for having failed to distinguish between perception and thought.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that, in order for the debate in Computing and philosophy to move forward with respect to its current state, the advances of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence of the last decades must be taken into account. Computational reflection, one of these advances, is presented in detail and its philosophical implications are discussed, in contrast with old-fashioned views of computational systems such as those presented by Lucas’ papers on Minds and Machines.

Infinità e dialettica dell'Infinito-finito sono i due temi su cui si concentra il conflitto filosofico che vede impegnati nella veste di protagonisti assoluti il Bruno, il Vico e lo Hegel, accompagnati dallo Spaventa che ne interpreta le focali istanze prodotte dal pensiero che tutto muove e promuove sia nello scorrere della vita dell'Universo sia di quella degli uomini, divenendo a tal punto consapevole del loro destino futuro. Esso si costruisce passando pure per il discorso, ovvero per la filologia che riconosce, (...) tuttavia, e sempre, il ruolo peculiare del pensiero che non è solo quello proprio, ma anche quello degli altri col quale puntigliosamente si confronta, per aspirare, in realtà, a conoscere la verità esaustivamente in tutte le forme da esso preconizzate. (shrink)