Moving from the paradigms of “mentalization” and “reflective function”, this article develops the concept of “mentalizing” in organizations, understood as a process of construction of shared meaning in the work contexts, and whose absence or deterioration produces suffering in organizational experience, exposing individuals to significant psychosocial risks. This model converges in outlining a framework in which the absence of a reflective competence and the lack of symbolization of the experience of work fall on the perception of one's own job, and (...) on the relationship with colleagues and management, producing unsustainability of the work experience. The availability of reflective spaces that are inscribed in the ordinary dimension of work thus appears as a solution capable of promoting organizational well-being. (shrink)

In psychological and managerial literature, the meaning of work boasts a long tradition; in this topic, scholars and researchers have explored sources of meaning and meaningfulness of the working activity in workers' motivations, values, and beliefs. Less attention, however, is given to the function work has in terms of signifier of each individual's personal identity. This article aims at deeply examining the relationship between identity construction and meaning of work, focusing on this theme through the exploration of Charles Bukowski's narrative (...) world. My attention was particularly focused on representations and emotional connotations characterizing the relationship between identity and work, deduced by the content analysis of his literary production. Bukowski's difficult working experience sustainability intersects with the instability scenario of the second postwar period in the United States, recursively affecting the development of a self-reflexive thought around which an idea of oneself could be modeled. In this sense, the author's experience is paradigmatic for the contemporary condition, in so far as today's work experience, deprived of a shared meaning system, negatively influences the meaning attribution process involving one's own life experiences. (shrink)

Advanced medical imaging, such as CT, fMRI and PET, has undergone enormous progress in recent years, both in accuracy and utilization. Such techniques often bring with them an illusion of immediacy, the idea that the body and its diseases can be directly inspected. In this paper we target this illusion and address the issue of the reliability of advanced imaging tests as knowledge procedures, taking positron emission tomography in oncology as paradigmatic case study. After individuating a suitable notion of reliability, (...) we argue that PET is a highly theory-laden and non-immediate knowledge procedure, in spite of the photographic-like quality of the images it delivers; the diagnostic conclusions based on the interpretation of PET images are population-dependent; PET images require interpretation, which is inherently observer-dependent and therefore variable. We conclude with a three-step methodological proposal for enhancing the reliability of advanced medical imaging. (shrink)

The vision of an art masterpiece is associated with brain arousal by neural processes occurring quite spontaneously in the viewer. This aesthetic experience may even elicit a response in the motor areas of the observers. In the neurorehabilitation of patients with stroke, art observation has been used for reducing psychological disorders, and creative art therapy for enhancing physical functions and cognitive abilities. Here, we developed a virtual reality task which allows patients, by moving their hand on a virtual canvas, to (...) have the illusion of painting some art masterpieces, such as The Creation of Adam of Michelangelo or The birth of Venus of Botticelli. Twenty healthy subjects and four patients with stroke performed this task and a control one in which they simply colored the virtual canvas. Results from User Satisfaction Evaluation Questionnaire and the NASA Task Load Index highlighted an appropriate level of usability. Moreover, despite the motor task was the same for art and control stimuli, the art condition was performed by healthy subjects with shorter trajectories and with a lower perception of physical demand. In experiment 2, only the patients treated with artistic stimuli showed a reduction in the erroneous movements performed orthogonally to the canvas. This finding reminds the so-called Mozart effect that improves the performance of subjects when they listen to classic music. Thus, we called this improvement in the performance when interacting with an artistic stimulus as Michelangelo effect. (shrink)

The increasing challenges faced by organizations have led to numerous studies examining human resource management (HRM) practices, organizational ethical climates and sustainability. Despite this, little has been done to explore the possible relationships between these three topics. This study, based on a probabilistic sample of 6,000 employees from six European countries, analyses how HRM practices with the aim of developing organizational ethics influence the benevolent, principled and egoistic ethical climates that exist within organizations, while also investigating the possible moderating role (...) played by their employees’ perception of corporate sustainability. Findings demonstrate that ability-enhancing practices (i.e. recruiting, selection and training) and opportunity-enhancing practices (i.e. job design, industrial relationships and employee involvement) improve benevolent and principled organizational ethical climates, while motivation-enhancing practices (i.e. performance management, compensation and incentives) rather than being related to these organizational ethical climates, are linked to the egoistic climate. In addition, the perceptions of the company’s employees in terms of corporate sustainability moderate these relationships, by reinforcing the positive relationships of ability-enhancing and motivation-enhancing HRM practices in terms of benevolent and principled ethical climates and by reducing the positive relationships between motivation-enhancing practices and egoistic climate. Specific implications for HRM research, teaching and practice are then advanced and discussed. (shrink)

Individuals with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have difficulties in the recollection of past experiences (Episodic Memory). Accumulating evidence suggests that they might have also difficulties in the ability to imagine potential future scenarios (Episodic Future Thinking, EFT) and in narrative generation skills. This investigation aimed to determine 1) whether impairments of EFT can be identified in a large cohort of children with high functioning ASD using a task with minimal narrative demands; and 2) if such impairments are related to the (...) ability to generate a narrative's scenario. 77 children with high-functioning ASD and 77 children with typical development were recruited for the study. The two groups were balanced for age, level of formal education, and IQ. EFT was assessed by administering a task with minimal narrative demands, whereas narrative generation skills were assessed with three tasks requiring children to generate past, middle or future episodes in a narrative discourse. With respect to control participants, a subgroup of children with ASD had impaired EFT skills and also showed significant impairments in the ability to generate adequate narratives. On the contrary, participants with spared EFT had normal performance on the narrative generation task. Interestingly, EFT skills predicted narrative generation abilities in both groups. The results of this study support the hypothesis that EFT may be impaired in some but not all children with ASD and of a relation between difficulties with EFT and impairments in the process of narrative generation. The assessment of EFT should employ tasks that do not require narrative production, as children with impaired EFT may also have reduced narrative skills. (shrink)

This study analyzed the relation between mental time travel (MTT) and the ability to produce a storytelling focusing on global coherence, which is one of the most notable characteristics of narrative discourse. As global coherence is strictly tied to the temporal sequence of the events narrated in a story, we hypothesized that the construction of coherent narratives would rely on the ability to mentally navigate in time. To test such a hypothesis, we investigated the relation between one component of MTT—namely, (...) episodic future thinking (EFT)—and narrative production skills by comparing the narratives uttered by 66 children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with those produced by 66 children with typical development. EFT was assessed by administering a task with minimal narrative demands, whereas storytelling production skills were assessed by administering two narrative production tasks that required children to generate future or past episodes with respect to the target stimuli. The results showed that EFT skills were impaired only in a subgroup of children with ASD and that such subgroup performed significantly worse on the narrative production task than ASD participants with high EFT skills and participants with typical development. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Objective: To assess the psychological distress of healthcare providers working in the field of obstetrics during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and to identify factors associated with psychological distress at the individual, interpersonal, and organizational level.Design: Cross-sectional survey study.Setting: Four University hospitals in Italy.Participants: HCPs working in obstetrics, including gynecologists, residents in gynecology and obstetrics, and midwives.Methods: The 104-item survey Impatto PSIcologico COVID-19 in Ostetricia was created by a multidisciplinary expert panel and administered to HCPs in obstetrics in May 2020 (...) via a web-based platform.Main Outcome Measures: Psychological distress assessed by the General Health Questionnaire-12 included in the IPSICO survey.Results: The response rate to the IPSICO survey was 88.2%, and that for GHQ-12 was 84.4%. Just over half of the GHQ-12 respondents reported a clinically significant level of psychological distress. Psychological distress was associated with either individual, interpersonal, and organizational factors in dealing with the pandemic.Conclusions: Results confirm the need for monitoring and assessing the psychological distress for HCPs in obstetrics. Interventions at the individual, interpersonal, and organizational level may relieve the psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic and foster resilience skills in facing emotional distress. (shrink)

_Background:_ Literature has documented the role of family in the outcome of chronic schizophrenia. In the light of this, family interventions (FIs) are becoming an integral component of treatment for psychosis. The First Episode of Psychosis (FEP) is the period when most of the changes in family atmosphere are observed; unfortunately, few studies on the relatives are available. _Objective:_ To explore burden of care and emotional distress at baseline and at 9-month follow-up and the levels of service satisfaction at follow-up (...) in the two groups of relatives (experimental treatment EXP vs. treatment as usual TAU) recruited in the cluster-randomized controlled GET UP PIANO trial. _Methods:_ The experimental treatment was provided by routine public Community Mental Health Centers (Italian National Health Service) and consisted of Treatment as Usual plus evidence-based additional treatment (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for psychosis for patients, Family Intervention for psychosis, and Case Management). TAU consisted of personalized outpatient psychopharmacological treatment, combined with non-specific supportive clinical management and informal support/educational sessions for families. The outcomes on relatives were assessed by the Involvement Evaluation Questionnaire (IEQ-EU), the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), and the Verona Service Satisfaction Scale (VSSS-EU). Differences within and between groups were evaluated. _Results:_ At baseline, 75 TAU and 185 EXP caregivers were assessed. In the experimental group 92% of relatives participated in at least 1 family session. At follow-up both groups experienced improvement in all IEQ and GHQ items, but caregivers belonging to the EXP arm experienced a significantly greater change in 10 IEQ items (mainly pertaining to the “Tension” dimension) and in GHQ items. Due to the low sample size, a significant effectiveness was only observed for 2 IEQ items and 1 GHQ-12 item. With respect to VSSS data at follow-up, caregivers in the EXP arm experienced significantly greater satisfaction in 8 items, almost all pertaining to the dimensions “Relatives' Involvement” and “Professionals' Skills and Behavior.” _Conclusions:_ The Family intervention for psychosis delivered in the GET UP PIANO trial reduced family burden of illness and improved emotional distress and satisfaction with services. These results should encourage to promote FIs on caregivers of first-episode psychosis patients. (shrink)

Nella sua straordinaria opera scientifica, Franco Selleri si è sempre opposto alla rinuncia alla comprensione della struttura della realtà e della natura degli oggetti fisici, che egli considera come l’elemento caratterizzante delle principali teorie della fisica del Novecento e che è stata stigmatizzata da Karl Popper come tesi della “fine della strada in fisica”. Sin dalla fine degli anni ’60, egli ha sviluppato quella riflessione critica nei confronti delle teorie fondamentali della fisica moderna, in particolar modo della teoria delle particelle (...) elementari e della meccanica quantistica, e in un secondo tempo delle teorie relativistiche, che contraddistingue il suo programma di ricerca. Nel corso della sua intensa e infaticabile attività scientifica, Selleri è entrato in proficuo contatto con molti grandi fisici e filosofi della scienza, instaurando un intenso dialogo critico con Louis de Broglie, John Bell e Karl Popper. Le sue originali e non convenzionali ricerche lo hanno portato a risultati significativi non solo nell’ambito dei fondamenti della fisica, ma anche della storia e della filosofia della fisica. Per questo abbiamo voluto dedicare un numero speciale di Isonomia al nostro impareggiabile amico e collega, sia per la sua passione instancabile e la sua profonda conoscenza dei fondamenti formali, concettuali e filosofici delle teorie della fisica contemporanea, sia e forse ancor più come maestro di una prospettiva perennemente critica che egli ha sempre seguito e proposto con particolare rigore ed estrema determinazione. (shrink)

The discussion on the 900 Conclusiones projected and sponsored by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in Rome was cut short by the condemnation of 13 of them by the papal commission in 1487. Princeps Concordiae’s counter-arguments presented in his Apologia, published in the same year, can not be certainly considered a disputatio as Pico had called for; the papal intervention removed in this way the possibility to have a better acquaintance with a work which is still a very difficult one, (...) just for its “unfinished” form. Pedro Garsia’s Determinationes magistrales against Pico’s Apologia are a very poor reply to Pico. In this paper Pico’s arguments against some of the condemned Conclusiones are considered as well as Pedro Garsia’s counter-arguments. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola displays a deep familiarity with medieval logical and semantical doctrines, while Pedro Garsia’s arguments betray a solid ignorance. (shrink)

Near the end of the first book of his De reditu the poet Rutilius is delayed in Triturrita, on the Tuscan coast, because of the dark and stormy weather. The South-West Wind with its dripping wings—says the poet in an Ovidian imitation—does not cease from summoning pitch-black clouds and obfuscating the sun's light for several days. Elegant images of constellations —perhaps not just ornamental, but also indicating the dates and the duration of the delay—and the reference to the tempestuous sea (...) and to two possible explanations of ocean's tides round the first book off : interea madidis non desinit Africus aliscontinuos picea nube negare dies.iam matutinis Hyades occasibus udae;iam latet hiberno conditus imbre Lepus,exiguum radiis, sed magnis fluctibus, astrum, 635quo madidam nullus nauita linquat humum;namque procelloso subiungitur Orioniaestiferumque Canem roscida praeda fugit.632 negare B: necare VR Although the meaning of the first couplet is clear, a textual difficulty seems to affect the pentameter. Since the editio princeps by Giovanni Battista Pio, a well-established tradition of scholars has preferred the vulgate reading negare to necare, a reading found in V and R. However we reconstruct the stemma, necare was the reading of the archetype, whereas negare could be a banalization of necare or a conjecture of the editor princeps. (shrink)

Over the last few decades, research on auditory perception has increased a great deal, treating a wide range of topics from different perspectives. Empirical research has provided a detailed account of sound perception in neurobiological terms. From a different perspective, the phenomenology of music has focused on the experience of auditory perception, highlighting the conditions that allow for the perception of sounds. Starting from the work by Giovanni Piana, I argue that sound perception is rooted in the experiential, from (...) which arise the biological and cultural structures that allow for it, with no priority of one structure over another, but rather interconnections and reciprocal conditioning. I then introduce ‘biological constraints’ and ‘phenomenological rules’, as the key notions that any conceptual investigation on sound perception should focus on in order to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of musical listening. Biological constraints are ‘a priori’ conditions and are mainly due to the biology of the human perceiving system. Phenomenological rules emerge from the constitution of the auditory object according to subjective experience. Combining knowledge from neurosciences and phenomenology, my work aims also at fostering an innovative approach to the aesthetics of music that takes advantage of empirical progress in current research on auditory perception. (shrink)

L'articolo si domanda, con riferimento al tardo Medioevo, se e in quale misura si possa osservare uno spostamento verso un approccio più laico alla questione specifica della legittimità della resistenza al tiranno. Nel secolo circa che separa Giovanni di Salisbury e Tommaso d'Aquino si passa da una analisi di carattere essenzialmente etico teologico del problema a una considerazione più simile a quella che oggi si potrebbe definire laica. Nelle pagine del De Regno, Tommaso discute anche dal punto di vista (...) teologico la questione della legittima resistenza a un governo tirannico e, tuttavia, in questo stesso contesto esamina attentamente i meccanismi costituzionali grazie ai quali una comunità politica può minimizzare il rischio di cadere sotto una forma tirannica di potere.With reference to the late Middle Ages, this paper discusses whether and to which extent we can see a shift towards an approach more secular concerning a specific issue: whether the resistance to tyrant is lawful or not. In the century, more or less, between John of Salisbury and Thomas Aquinas it goes from an essentially ethical-theological consideration of the problem to a consideration more close to that which today one would define secular. In the pages of De regno, Thomas discusses also from the theological point of view the question of lawful resistance in front of a tyrannical government and, however, in the same context he carefully examines the constitutional devices by which a political community can minimize the risk of coming under a tyrannical form of power. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper analyzes the public fasts of two Italian “hunger artists,” Giovanni Succi and Stefano Merlatti, in Paris in 1886, and their ability to forego eating for a long period (thirty and fifty days respectively). Some contemporary witnesses described them as clever frauds, but others considered them to be interesting physiological anomalies. Controversies about their fasts entered academic circles, but they also spread throughout the urban public at different levels. First, Succi and Merlatti steered medical debates among physicians (...) on the “scientific” explanations of the limits of human resistance to inanition, and acted as ideal mediators for doctors’ professional interests. Second, they became useful tools for science popularizers in their attempt to gain authority in drawing the boundaries between “orthodox” and “heterodox” knowledge. Finally, in the 1880s, Succi and Merlatti’s contest, the controversy around the liquids they ingested, and their scientific supervision by medical doctors, all reinforced their own professional status as itinerant fasters in a golden decade for that kind of endeavor. For all those reasons, Succi and Merlatti can be viewed as useful, epistemologically-active charlatans. (shrink)

Tommaso Giannini was a prominent professor at the ferrarese Studium between sixteenth and seventeenth century. Probably influenced by Platonic sympathies nurtured by the Court and partly by the University milieu, in 1587 he published his first work titled De providentia ad sententiam Platonis et Platonicorum liber unus, which was a catalyst for his academic career. A compilative work in essence, the De providentia displays a large amount of sources always tacitly used: Marsilio Ficino, Jacques Charpentier, Giulio Serina, Stefano Tiepolo, (...) Teofilo Zimara, Bessarion, Agostino Steuco and amid the ancients Plotinus, Plutarcus, Sirianus, Proclus, Giamblicus, Apuleius, Calcidius, Ammonius, Psellus. A small place is reserved to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and precisely to his Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem. The aim of the paper is to provide a supplement of analysis of Giannini’s interest in Pico’s works considering his later writings, each one commonly identified as Disputationes Aristotelicae. (shrink)

In everyday reasoning - just as in science and art - knowledge is acquired more by "doing" than with long analyses. What do we "do" when we discover something new? How can we define and explore the pattern of this reasoning, traditionally called "synthetic"? Following in the steps of classic pragmatists, especially C.S. Pierce, Giovanni Maddalena's Philosophy of Gesture revolutionizes the pattern of synthesis through the ideas of change and continuity and proposes "gesture" as a new tool for synthesis. (...) Defining gesture as an action with a beginning and an end that carries on a meaning, Maddalena explains that it is a dense blending of all kinds of phenomena - feelings and vague ideas, actual actions, habits of actions - and of signs - icons, indexes, and symbols. When the blending of phenomena and signs is densest, the gesture is "complete," and its power of introducing something new in knowledge is at its highest level. Examples of complete gestures are religious liturgies, public and private rites, public and private actions that establish an identity, artistic performances, and hypothesizing experiments. A departure from a traditional Kantian framework for understanding the nature and function of reason, The Philosophy of Gesture proposes an approach that is more attuned with our ordinary way of reasoning and of apprehending new knowledge. (shrink)

This paper argues that what is currently the most popular version of temporal Fragmentalism—‘unstructured’ temporal Fragmentalism, as I shall call it—faces a problem of Tensed Belief Explosion. Four possible solutions to this problem are reviewed and shown to be wanting; two more promising ones risk fostering scepticism about the existence of tensed facts—hence, about Fragmentalism itself. The tentative moral is that unstructured versions of Fragmentalism are at best unmotivated and at worst seriously flawed.

_Philosophy of Molecular Medicine: Foundational Issues in Theory and Practice_ aims at a systematic investigation of a number of foundational issues in the field of molecular medicine. The volume is organized around four broad modules focusing, respectively, on the following key aspects: What are the nature, scope, and limits of molecular medicine? How does it provide explanations? How does it represent and model phenomena of interest? How does it infer new knowledge from data and experiments? The essays collected here, authored (...) by prominent scientists and philosophers of science, focus on a handful of mainstream topics in the philosophical literature, such as _causation_, _explanation_, _modeling_, and _scientific inference_. These previously unpublished contributions shed new light on these traditional topics by integrating them with problems, methods, and results from three prominent areas of contemporary biomedical science: _basic research_, _translational_ and _clinical research_, and _clinical practice_. (shrink)

Płonka sums consist of an algebraic construction similar, in some sense, to direct limits, which allows to represent classes of algebras defined by means of regular identities. Recently, Płonka sums have been connected to logic, as they provide algebraic semantics to logics obtained by imposing a syntactic filter to given logics. In this paper, I present a very general topological duality for classes of algebras admitting a Płonka sum representation in terms of dualisable algebras.

The spread and publicity given to questionable practices in the corporate world during the last two decades has fostered an increasing interest about the importance of ethical work for organizations, practitioners, scholars and, last but not least, the wider public. Relying on the Social Identity Approach, we suggest that the effects of different ethical climates on employee behaviors are driven by affective identification with the organization and, in parallel, by cognitive moral (dis)engagement. We compared the effects of two particular ethical (...) climates derived from the literature: An ethical organizational climate of self-interest, and an ethical organizational climate of friendship. Three hundred seventy-six workers completed measures of Ethical Climate, Organizational Identification, Moral Disengagement, Organizational Citizenship Behaviors, and Counterproductive Work Behaviors. Structural equation modelling confirmed that the two ethical climates considered were independently related to organizational identification and moral disengagement. These, in turn, mediated the effects of ethical climates on Organizational Citizenship Behaviors and Counterproductive Work Behaviors. We discuss results in light of the social identity approach, and present some practical implications of our findings. (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.

One of the main positions in the contemporary debate on joint attention is John Campbell’s relationalist account. This account has been welcomed as extremely promising in some strands of philosophy and cognitive science, but it has recently been subject to renewed criticism. In this paper, I take a sympathetic approach toward Campbell’s relationalism and I provide support for it by means of a naturalistic theory of the individuation of joint-attentional states. I start from examining some recent objections raised against Campbell’s (...) account. I suggest that, although these objections do not undermine the account, they point to questions that current relationalism leaves unanswered. Specifically, current relationalism does not provide an explanation of the psychological processes through which a joint-attentional experience is individuated, i.e., assembled and experienced, in such a way that it can constitute an immediate justification for a coordinated action. I propose that such an explanation can be found in a phenomenological-interactionist approach to shared intentionality. (shrink)

We show how to extend the Continuous Propositional Logic by means of an infinitary rule in order to achieve a Strong Completeness Theorem. Eventually we investigate how to recover a weak version of the Deduction Theorem.

A radical reform of the agri-food biotech regulation in the EU is considered in many quarters as a pressing necessity. Indeed, two important decisions on the legal status of the so-called New Breeding Techniques are expected shortly. In order to clarify some basic aspects of the complex scenario, after a brief introduction regarding the “GMO” fallacy, we offer our point of view on the following facets: A faulty approach is frequent in the discussion of the agri-food regulation; NBTs, genome editing (...) may lead to the disappearance of the “GMO” meme; Beyond health and safety issues: socio-economic considerations; Sustainability: the comprehensive, meaningful starting point of a positive reform; The theoretical and legal basis for the reform are already contained in the EU’s general guidelines to legislation. (shrink)

I present a Russellian analysis of Donnellan’s classic examples involving empty definite descriptions, such as a use of ‘the man with the Martini’ in a scenario in which the intended target is a teetotaler with water in his glass. Unlike the traditional Kripke‐style responses to Donnellan, my analysis grants semantic significance to the intuition that, in appropriate circumstances, such a use picks out the teetotaler. I then argue that the apparatus developed in my discussion of Donnellan’s examples may be successfully (...) applied to the semantic treatment of improper definite descriptions, such as ‘the table’ in Strawson’s ‘the table is covered with books.’. (shrink)

We introduce a natural deduction system for the until-free subsystem of the branching time logic Although we work with labelled formulas, our system differs conceptually from the usual labelled deduction systems because we have no relational formulas. Moreover, no deduction rule embodies semantic features such as properties of accessibility relation or similar algebraic properties. We provide a suitable semantics for our system and prove that it is sound and weakly complete with respect to such semantics.

We associate with any game G another game, which is a variant of it, and which we call . Winning strategies for have a lower recursive degree than winning strategies for G: if a player has a winning strategy of recursive degree 1 over G, then it has a recursive winning strategy over , and vice versa. Through we can express in algorithmic form, as a recursive winning strategy, many common proofs of non-constructive Mathematics, namely exactly the theorems of the (...) sub-classical logic Limit Computable Mathematics [6], Hayashi and Nakata [7]). (shrink)