David Harvey : On peut difficilement imaginer vérification plus spectaculaire de ce que tu prédis depuis très longtemps dans tes théories que l’actuelle crise du système financier mondial. Y a-t-il des aspects de la crise qui t’ont surpris? Giovanni Arrighi : Ma prédiction était très simple. Dans The Long Twentieth Century, je qualifiais de crise annonciatrice d’un régime d’accumulation le début de la financiarisation et je faisais remarquer qu’après un certain temps – en général environ un demi-siècle – la (...) crise terminale suivait. L’hypothèse fondamentale est que toutes ces expansions financières ne pouvaient pas tenir parce qu’elles amenaient à la spéculation plus de capital qu’il n’était possible d’en gérer – en d’autres termes, ces expansions financières avaient tendance à créer des bulles de différentes sortes. Je prévoyais que cette expansion financière mènerait à une crise terminale parce que, aujourd’hui comme dans le passé, les bulles ne peuvent pas tenir. (shrink)

Ecological-enactive approaches to cognition aim to explain cognition in terms of the dynamic coupling between agent and environment. Accordingly, cognition of one’s immediate environment (which is sometimes labeled “basic” cognition) depends on enaction and the picking up of affordances. However, ecological-enactive views supposedly fail to account for what is sometimes called “higher” cognition, i.e., cognition about potentially absent targets, which therefore can only be explained by postulating representational content. This challenge levelled against ecological-enactive approaches highlights a putative explanatory gap between (...) basic and higher cognition. In this paper, we examine scientific cognition—a paradigmatic case of higher cognition—and argue that it shares fundamental features with basic cognition, for enaction and affordance selection are central to the scientific enterprise. Our argument focuses on modeling, and on how models promote scientific understanding. We base our argument on a non-representational account of scientific understanding and on the material engagement theory, for models are hereby conceived as material objects designed for scientific engagements. Having done so, we conclude that the explanatory gap is significantly less threatening to the ecological-enactive approach than it might appear. (shrink)

The field of psychiatry has long struggled with developing models of practice; most underemphasize the interpersonal aspects of clinical practice. This essay is unique in putting intersubjectivity front and centre. It is an attempt to provide a clinical method to re-establish the fragile dialogue of the soul with oneself and with others.

Solving the meta-problem of consciousness requires, among other things, explaining why we are so reluctant to endorse various forms of illusionism about the phenomenal. I will try to tackle this task in two steps. The first consists in clarifying how the concept of consciousness precludes the possibility of any distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality'. The second consists in spelling out our reasons for recognizing the existence of something that satisfies that concept.

Digital technologies have become a crucial factor in nursing. Given the fact that many tasks could also be done by robots or AI systems, the place for the nurse in this scenario is unclear. In what way and to what extent will the implementation of ever more sophisticated technology affect nursing practice? It is the aim of this paper to analyse the potential challenges of nursing practice in the digital age. The analysis is conducted through the lens of new materialism, (...) a set of theoretical models that understand the relationship between humans and technology as dynamic and performative. According to this view, there is no prefixed essence of technology. Rather, the meaning of technology is enacted in concrete practice. The analysis shows that in past debates on technology use in nursing, the nurses’ role has been defined as guardians of humanity, defending the patient against the dehumanizing effects of technology. This role has been transferred to the digital age, where it is the duty of nurses to cushion the negative effects of digital technology. As an alternative to this outdated role, nurses should be included in processes of technology design and policymaking. Enabling nursing professionals to shape the circumstances of a digitally enhanced holistic practice may empower their status within the healthcare system and also benefit the patient by contributing to a more person‐centred care. (shrink)

Computational systems are traditionally approached from control-oriented perspectives; however, as soon as we move from centralized to decentralized computational infrastructures, direct control needs to be replaced by distributed coordination mechanisms that are on par with institutional constructs observable in human societies (contracts, agreements, enforcement mechanisms, etc.). This paper presents a formalization of Hohfeld's framework building upon a logic whose language includes primitive operators of ability and parametric deontic operators. The proposal is meant to highlight the fundamental interaction between deontic and (...) potestative concepts and contains proofs of soundness and completeness with respect to a class of relational models. (shrink)

Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument has been thought to be in tension with the doctrine that we enjoy privileged epistemic access to our own mental states. In this paper, I will argue that the tension is only apparent. Friends of privileged access who accept the conclusion of the argument need not give up the claim that our beliefs about our own mental states are mostly or invariably right, nor the view that mental states are epistemically available to us in a way that (...) renders everything within our mind ‘open to view’ – arguably, two main pillars of their doctrine. What they need to reject is the idea that the mental is a realm whose ’determinacy’ or ’fineness of grain’ never escapes our appreciation. This idea – I will suggest – is not essential to privileged access and defenders of the doctrine should not be afraid to give it up. (shrink)

Negli ultimi anni di vita Giovanni Gentile aveva in progetto una Storia della Filosofia che abbracciasse tutta la materia dalle origini ai giorni nostri. La morte tragica nel 1944 non gli permise di portare a compimento l'opera, che si ferma a Platone: ritrovata tra le sue carte, è stata ricostruita e pubblicata postuma. Pur incompleta, rappresenta un'accurata panoramica del pensiero greco antico, a partire dai filosofi naturalisti fino ai presocratici e ai capisaldi Socrate e Platone, tramite una scrittura appassionata, (...) al tempo stesso accessibile e ricca di dettagli. (shrink)

The coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented health crisis. Many governments around the world have responded by implementing lockdown measures of various degrees of intensity. To be effective, these measures must rely on citizens’ cooperation. In the present study, we drew samples from the United States (N= 597), Italy (N= 606), and South Korea (N= 693) and examined predictors of compliance with social distancing and intentions to report the infection to both authorities and acquaintances. Data were collected between April 6th (...) and 8th 2020. We investigated the role of cultural orientations of horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism, self-conscious emotions of shame and guilt related to the infection and trust in the government’s action. Across all countries, vertical collectivism (VC) predicted stronger shame, whereas horizontal collectivism predicted stronger trust in the government. Only in the United States, VC was associated with stronger trust. Stronger feelings of shame predicted lower compliance and intentions to report the infection to both authorities and acquaintances. In contrast, guilt was associated with stronger intentions to report the infection to the authorities. Finally, trust was associated with stronger compliance and intentions to report the infection to the authorities. Unlike Italy and South Korea, the association between trust on compliance was not statistically significant in the United States, implications of the findings, and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to define and describe the main phenomenological dimensions of the life-world of persons prone to Feeding and Eating Disorders (FEDs), within the framework of a model that considers abnormal eating behaviour an epiphenomenon of a more profound disorder of lived corporeality and identity. The core idea is that persons with FEDs experience their own body first and foremost as an object being looked at by another, rather than coenaesthetically or from a first-person perspective. Alienation (...) from one’s own body and the need to feel oneself only through the gaze of the others can be illuminated by looking at it in the light of the Sartrean concept of feeling a lived-body-for-others. (shrink)

Anticipatory looking on mindreading tasks can indicate our expectation of an agent's action. The challenge is that social situations are often more complex, involving instances where we need to track an agent's false belief to successfully identify the outcome to which an action is directed. If motor processes can guide how action goals are understood, it is conceivable— where that kind of goal ascription occurs in false-belief tasks— for motor representations to account for someone's belief-like state. Testing adults (N = (...) 42) in a real-time interactive helping scenario, we discovered that participants' early mediolateral motor activity (leftwards– rightwards leaning on balance board) foreshadowed the agent's belief-based action preparation. These results suggest fast belief-tracking can modulate motor representations generated in the course of one's interaction with an agent. While adults' leaning, and anticipatory looking, revealed the contribution of fast false-belief tracking, participants did not correct the agent's mistake in their final helping action. These discoveries suggest that adults may not necessarily use another's belief during overt social interaction or find reflecting on another's belief as being normatively relevant to one's own choice of action. Our interactive task design offers a promising way to investigate how motor and mindreading processes may be variously integrated. (shrink)

In Novatian’s De Trinitate there is a passage which, while it makes a reference to an “invidia mortalitatis”, has been to some extent the torment of editors and of translators. On the one hand, the genitive tends mostly to be read as objective, on the other, the text is manipulated at times (even in recent editions) on the basis of a lectio facilior derived from conjecture. The article summarizes the history of criticism relative to the above-mentioned passage, highlighting some of (...) its limits. From there it searches for historical-philological bases of a reading of the passage in which the genitive is understood as subjective. The evidence gathered seems to point to an Origenist source, and that would lean us toward welcoming the invitation, already formulated by Manlio Simonetti, to new research inNovatian and his sources. (shrink)

This essay is unique in putting intersubjectivity front and center. It is an attempt to provide a clinical method to re-establish the fragile dialogue of the soul with oneself and with others. Throughout, the book builds on the assumption that to be human means to be in dialogue. It uses dialogue as a unitary concept to address three essential issues for clinical practice: 'What is a human being?', 'What is mental pathology'?, and 'What is care?'. To be human - it (...) is argued - means to be in dialogue with oneself and with other persons. Thus, mental pathology is the interruption of this dialogue - of the person with the alterity that inhabits them, and with the alterity incarnated in other persons. Therefore, therapy is a dialogue with a method whose aim is to re-enact one's interrupted dialogue with alterity. Lost in Dialogue provides a method to approximate the Other, to understand its experiences, actions, and in general, understand the world in which it lives. (shrink)

According to Reid, color sensations are not extended nor are they arranged in figured patterns. Reid further claimed that ‘there is no sensation appropriated to visible figure.’ Reid justified these controversial claims by appeal to Cheselden's report of the experiences of a young man affected by severe cataracts, and by appeal to cases of perception of visible figure without color. While holding fast to the principle that sensations are not extended, Dugald Stewart tried to show that ‘a variety of colour (...) sensations is a necessary means for the perception of visible figure.’ According to John Fearn, two motives appear to be central to Reid's views about color sensations and extension: his commitment to the Cartesian doctrine of the immateriality of the soul, and his attempt to evade ‘Hume's dilemma’ about the existence and immateriality of the soul. (shrink)

The relationship between philosophy and psychology could be introduced by resuming freely two episodes occurred to the first two recognized exponents of the respective disciplines, Talete and Freud. The fall of Talete in the well and the astonishment of Freud in front of the picture of the Monna Lisa can symbolize the characteristic of surprise, but also of encounter-clash of the philosophy and the psychology with an unexpected reality, reassumed in both with the smile, the smile of the servant Tracia (...) and the smile of the Gioconda: two smiles that show the presence of a greater wealth of the knowledge which they inaugurated. These two smiles can highlight the tasks of instruction and criticism to which philosophy and psychology refer reciprocally: to be aware of the risk of reductivism, the conceit to enclose the complexity of man and life in a banal formula, a risk always existing and fascinating, in order to face the effort of undertaking more complex and multiple ways, open to the mystery of existence. (shrink)