We explore relationships between phenomenology and developmental psychology through an in-depth analysis of a particular problem in social cognition: the most fundamental access to other minds. In the first part of the paper, we examine how developmental science can benefit phenomenology. We explicate the connection between cognitive psychology and developmental phenomenology as a form of constructive phenomenological psychology. Nativism in contemporary science constitutes a strong impulse to conceive of the possibility of an innate ability to perceive others’ mental states, an (...) idea which also has a transcendental implication. In the second part, we consider how phenomenology can contribute to developmental science. Phenomenology can go beyond the necessary evaluation and reinterpretation of experimental results. Some phenomenological notions and theories can be put forward on a par with alternative cognitive-psychological models and compete with them on grounds of empirical adequacy. For example, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty’s notion of pairing can constitute a viable account of how infants access other minds. We outline a number of ways in which this account can be tested and can thus contribute to generating empirical knowledge. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to show that a particular view of emotion sharing and a specific hypothesis on infant social perception strengthen each other. The view of emotion sharing is called “the straightforward view.” The hypothesis on infant social perception is called “the pairing account.” The straightforward view suggests that participants in emotion sharing undergo one and the same overarching emotion. The pairing account posits that infants perceive others’ embodied experiences as belonging to someone other than the self (...) through a process of assimilation to, and accommodation of, their own embodied experience. The connection between the two theories lies in the domain-general process of association by similarity, which functions both in the individuation of a unitary emotion and in the interpretation of the sensory stimulus. By elaborating on this connection, the straightforward view becomes more solid from the cognitive-developmental standpoint and the pairing account expands its explanatory power. Since the straightforward view requires minimal forms of self- and other-awareness, the paper provides a characterization of the developmental origin of the sense of us, i.e., the experience of self and other as co-subjects of a shared emotional state. (shrink)

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)

In order to appreciate the rich implications of the transcendental reduction, one has to distinguish the different contexts where it acquires different meanings. The present paper focuses on a particular epistemological context and clarifies the contribution of the reduction within this context. The contribution consists in the formulation and solution of the problem of exhibiting the evidence supporting the belief in the world’s existence. In a nutshell, world-experience grounds the world-belief and world-experience entails a bedrock of experience legitimizing the positing (...) of others. I argue that this contribution is possibly an enduring achievement of Husserl’s transcendental philosophy against common objections that are raised against it. I show that both the necessity and the viability of the transcendental reduction are a consequence of the general structure of critical examination. Overall, a picture of Husserl’s philosophy emerges that emphasizes embodiment, intersubjectivity, and facticity without giving up the rigor of radical epistemological analysis, aiming at overcoming both naïve pseudo-problems and subtle forms of dogmatism. (shrink)

Sex robots are already a reality: in this provocative text, Maurizio Balistreri explores the fascinating world of future sex, exploring the ethical questions raised by the existence of a sex robot industry.

This paper evaluates Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological notion of pairing in light of a representative variety of findings and views in contemporary developmental psychology. This notion belongs to the direct social perception framework, which suggests that the fundamental access to other minds is intuitive, or perceptual. Pairing entails that the perception of other minds relies merely on first-person embodied experience and domain-general processes. For this reason, pairing is opposed to cognitive nativist views that assume specialized mechanisms for low-level mental state (...) attribution, while it is compatible with acknowledging innate affective tendencies. I criticize cognitive nativism for being based on ambiguous evidence. I argue that in early social interactions infants experience sufficient self–other similarities to ground the most primitive perception of others as minded beings. I show that pairing can account for the ontogenetically earliest perceptions of others’ actions and emotions, as well as for the earliest perception of others’ perceptions. (shrink)

This paper aims to argue for the thesis that it is not a priori morally justified that the first phase of space colonisation is based on sexual reproduction. We ground this position on the argument that, at least in the first colonisation settlements, those born in space may not have a good chance of having a good life. This problem does not depend on the fact that life on another planet would have to deal with issues such as solar radiation (...) or with the decrease or entire absence of the force of gravity. These issues could plausibly be addressed given that the planets or settlements we will feasibly colonise could be completely transformed through geoengineering processes. Likewise, the ability of humans to live in space could be enhanced through genetic modification interventions. Even if, however, the problems concerning survival in space were solved, we think that, at least in the first period of colonisation of space or other planets, giving birth to children in space could be a morally irresponsible choice since we argue, the life we ​​could give them might not be good enough. We contend that this is the case since when we decide to have a baby. We argue that it is not morally right to be content that our children have a minimally sufficient life worth living; before we give birth to children in space, we should make sure we can give them a reasonable chance of having a good life. This principle applies both on Earth - at least where you can choose - and for space travel. (shrink)

Skepticism toward the existence of neonatal differential imitation is fostered by views that assign it an excessive significance, making it foundational for social cognition. Moreover, a misleading theoretical framework may generate unwarranted expectations about the kinds of findings experimentalists are supposed to look for. Hence we propose a theoretical analysis that may help experimentalists address the empirical question of whether early differential imitation really exists. We distinguish three models of early imitation. The first posits automatic visuo-motor links evolved for sociocognitive (...) functions and we call it Genetically Programmed Direct Matching. The second is Meltzoff and Moore’s Active Intermodal Matching, which postulates a comparison between the acts of self and other. The third is the alternative we propose and we call it “Association by Similarity Theory”, as it relies on the tacit functioning of this domain-general process. AST describes early imitation merely as the differential induction or elicitation of behaviors that already tend to occur spontaneously. We focus on the contrast between AIM and AST, and argue that AST is preferable to AIM for two reasons. First, AST is more parsimonious and more plausible, especially because it does not require infants to be able to recognize self-other similarities. Second, whereas the extant findings tend to disqualify AIM, AST can account for them adequately. Furthermore, we suggest that AST has the potential to give new impulse to empirical research because it discriminates promising lines of inquiry from unproductive ones. (shrink)

The translation of this work has been funded by SEPS - Segretariato Europeo per le Pubblicazioni Scientifiche.

This article sets the stage for a genealogy of the postgenomic body. It starts with the current transformative views of epigenetics and microbiomics to offer a more pluralistic history in which the ethical problem of how to live with a permeable body – that is plasticity as a form of life – is pervasive in traditions pre-dating and coexisting with modern biomedicine (particularly humoralism in its several ramifications). To challenge universalizing narratives, I draw on genealogical method to illuminate the unequal (...) distribution of plasticity across gender and ethnic groups. Finally, after analysing postgenomics as a different thought-style to genomics, I outline some of its implications for notions of plasticity. I argue that postgenomic plasticity is neither a modernistic plasticity of instrumental control of the body nor a postmodernist celebration of endless potentialities. It is instead closer to an alter-modernistic view that disrupts clear boundaries between openness and determination, individual and community. (shrink)

A history of colonization inflicts psychological, physical, and structural disadvantages that endure across generations. For an increasing number of Indigenous Australians, environmental epigenetics offers an important explanatory framework that links the social past with the biological present, providing a culturally relevant way of understanding the various intergenerational effects of historical trauma. In this paper, we critically examine the strategic uptake of environmental epigenetics by Indigenous researchers and policy advocates. We focus on the relationship between epigenetic processes and Indigenous views of (...) Country and health—views that locate health not in individual bodies but within relational contexts of Indigenous ontologies that embody interconnected environments of kin/animals/matter/bodies across time and space. This drawing together of Indigenous experience and epigenetic knowledge has strengthened calls for action including state-supported calls for financial reparations. We examine the consequences of this reimagining of disease responsibility in the context of “strategic biological essentialism,” a distinct form of biopolitics that, in this case, incorporates environmental determinism. We conclude that the shaping of the right to protection from biosocial injury is potentially empowering but also has the capacity to conceal forms of governance through claimants’ identification as “damaged,” thus furthering State justification of biopolitical intervention in Indigenous lives. (shrink)

Starting from the doctrine of ideology proposed by Destutt de Tracy in the late eighteenth century, the paper reconstructs its historical relationship with the social science, of which it was originally meant to be the ultimate expression. The historical necessity of ideology as a political science of the social is found in its ability to mediate and legitimize power relationships. It is not for chance that the Marxian critique of ideology is a radical critique of the constitution of power in (...) a capitalist society. The attempt of the social science to neutralize the problem of power through the abandonment of the value judgments leads instead to the declaration of the end of ideologies. In the last part, the paper analyses the way in which ideology, after its identification with the forms of total domination, returns as a neoliberal tool of legitimizing market as a society without history. (shrink)

_Abstract_: In philosophy and cognitive science, the tension between cognitivism and the 4E-Cognition approach is both deep and polarizing. A lack of serious engagement with the theoretical and empirical work generated by the opposing framework seems problematic on both sides. In this paper, we closely discuss data on early socio-cognitive development produced by an influential nativist current of thought in the cognitivist paradigm. We consider these data from the point of view of a 4E-Cognition perspective called “the pairing hypothesis”, which (...) originates in phenomenological philosophy. We show that a close examination of these cognitivist-nativist data strengthens the phenomenological 4E-Cognition perspective by significantly expanding the range of findings it can account for. By addressing the debate between rich and lean explanations in early social cognition, we corroborate the idea that careful interaction between cognitivism and the 4E-Cognition approach can lead to progress in cognitive science. _Keywords_: Development of Social Cognition; Cognitivist Nativism; Direct Social Perception; Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences; Action Production and Perception _Spiegazioni ricche o parsimoniose? Un’alternativa fenomenologica per lo sviluppo della prima cognizione sociale_ _Riassunto_: Un’accesa e radicale tensione nelle scienze cognitive è quella tra il cognitivismo e il cosiddetto approccio delle quattro E (_Embodied, Enactive, Embedded_ e _Extended_). La mancanza di una riflessione aperta e sostanziale sul lavoro teorico ed empirico proposto dall’approccio opposto appare problematica da entrambe le parti. Il presente contributo analizza a fondo le evidenze empiriche presentate da una delle maggiori correnti innatiste del paradigma cognitivista nello studio dello sviluppo socio-cognitivo. Queste evidenze sperimentali vengono esaminate dal punto di vista della “ipotesi dell’appaiamento”, ipotesi inserita nel quadro della prospettiva teorica 4E e che proviene dalla filosofia fenomenologica. Il presente contributo mostra come una considerazione approfondita dei dati generati dal cognitivismo innatista può rafforzare il potere esplicativo della prospettiva fenomenologica 4E, ampliandone in misura significativa la gamma di evidenze scientifiche che essa può contribuire a spiegare. Affrontando il dibattito sullo sviluppo della prima cognizione sociale tra spiegazioni ricche e parsimoniose, viene corroborata l’idea che un’attenta interazione tra cognitivismo e approccio 4E può essere un modo per far progredire le scienze cognitive. _Parole chiave_: Sviluppo della cognizione sociale; Innatismo cognitivo; Percezione sociale diretta; Fenomenologia e scienze cognitive; Produzione e percezione di azioni. (shrink)

The article Thinking embodiment with genetics: epigenetics and postgenomic biology in embodied cognition and enactivism, written by Maurizio Meloni and Jack Reynolds, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal on 18 June 2020 without open access. With the author’ decision to opt for Open Choice the copyright of the article changed on 6 November 2020 to ©The Author 2020 and the article is forthwith distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution.

The debtor-creditor relation, which is at the heart of this book, sharpens mechanisms of exploitation and domination indiscriminately, since, in it, there is no distinction between workers and the unemployed, consumers and producers, working and non-working populations, between retirees and welfare recipients. They are all "debtors," guilty and responsible in the eyes of capital, which has become the Great, the Universal, Creditor.--from The Making of the Indebted Man Debt -- both public debt and private debt Has become a major concern (...) of economic and political leaders. In The Making of the Indebted Man, Maurizio Lazzarato shows that, far from being a threat to the capitalist economy, debt lies at the very core of the neoliberal project. Through a reading of Karl Marx's lesser-known youthful writings on John Mill, and a rereading of writings by Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault, Lazzarato demonstrates that debt is above all a political construction, and that the creditor/debtor relation is the fundamental social relation of Western societies.Debt cannot be reduced to a simple economic mechanism, for it is also a technique of "public safety" through which individual and collective subjectivities are governed and controlled. Its aim is to minimize the uncertainty of the time and behavior of the governed. We are forever sinking further into debt to the State, to private insurance, and, on a more general level, to corporations. To insure that we honor our debts, we are at once encouraged and compelled to become the "entrepreneurs" of our lives, of our "human capital." In this way, our entire material, psychological, and affective horizon is upended and reconfigured. How do we extricate ourselves from this impossible situation? How do we escape the neoliberal condition of the indebted man? Lazzarato argues that we will have to recognize that there is no simple technical, economic, or financial solution. We must instead radically challenge the fundamental social relation structuring capitalism: the system of debt. (shrink)

The Italian philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato reveals the underpinnings of contemporary subjectivity in the aesthetics and politics of mass media. This book discloses the conceptual groundwork of Lazzarato's thought as a whole for a time when his writings have become increasingly influential.

This book presents a critical examination of Machiavelli's thought, combining an accessible, historically-informed account of his work with a reassessment of his central ideas and arguments. Viroli challenges the accepted interpretations of Machiavelli's work, insisting that his republicanism was based not on a commitment to virtue, greatness, and expansion, but to the ideal of civic life protected by the shield of fair laws. His detailed study of how Machiavelli composed The Prince offers a number of new interpretations and he further (...) contends that the most challenging--and underestimated--aspect of Machiavelli's thought is his philosophy of life, in particular his conceptions of love, women, irony, God, and the human condition. (shrink)

An analysis of how capitalism today produces subjectivity like any other “good,” and what would allow us to escape its hold. “Capital is a semiotic operator”: this assertion by Félix Guattari is at the heart of Maurizio Lazzarato's Signs and Machines, which asks us to leave behind the logocentrism that still informs so many critical theories. Lazzarato calls instead for a new theory capable of explaining how signs function in the economy, in power apparatuses, and in the production of (...) subjectivity. Moving beyond the dualism of signifier and signified, Signs and Machines shows how signs act as “sign-operators” that enter directly into material flows and into the functioning of machines. Money, the stock market, price differentials, algorithms, and scientific equations and formulas constitute semiotic “motors” that make capitalism's social and technical machines run, bypassing representation and consciousness to produce social subjections and semiotic enslavements. Lazzarato contrasts Deleuze and Guattari's complex semiotics with the political theories of Jacques Rancière, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Paolo Virno, and Judith Butler, for whom language and the public space it opens still play a fundamental role. Lazzarato asks: What are the conditions necessary for political and existential rupture at a time when the production of subjectivity represents the primary and perhaps most important work of capitalism? What are the specific tools required to undo the industrial mass production of subjectivity undertaken by business and the state? What types of organization must we construct for a process of subjectivation that would allow us to escape the hold of social subjection and machinic enslavement? In addressing these questions, Signs and Machines takes on a task that is today more urgent than ever. (shrink)

Nationalism and patriotism are two of the most powerful forces shaping world history. In this paperback edition of a highly successful, wide-ranging study, Maurizio Viroli shows exactly why patriotism is a political virtue and nationalism a political vice.

What did Thomas Jefferson look like? How did he carry himself? Such questions, reasonable to ask as we look back on a person who lived in an era before photography, are the starting point for this boldly original new work. Maurizio Valsania considers all aspects of Jefferson’s complex conception of "the body," from eighteenth-century clothing and fashion to manners, adornment, posture, gesture, and visual and material culture. Drawing also from the fields of medical science, psychology, and cultural anthropology, the (...) author conjures a vivid and detailed re-creation of the third president as a living, breathing--and pondering--human being. Having situated Jefferson in his own body, Valsania looks at the embodied Jefferson in the world of his fellow humans. Any one of the other people in Jefferson’s society--whether that other person was male or female, free or enslaved, African American or Native American--was a critical counterexample for the eighteenth-century Virginian to define himself against, and Valsania’s explorations here lead to numerous insightful discoveries about race, gender, and structures of power. The first comprehensive exploration of Jefferson’s corporeal world, Jefferson’s Body brings the man vividly to life for the modern reader while deepening our understanding of what it meant to Jefferson to be alive. (shrink)

Starting from a historical-juridical study of A. M. de Aldama on the origin and evolution of the reference to the teaching of Christian doctrine to pueri contained in the formula of final vows of all priests in the Society of Jesus, the author investigates the meaning of this ministry and its importance today. In an analytic section, the article traces the historical development of the ministry of education in Christian doctrine to pueri and rudes in the experience of Ignatius and (...) his first companions and in the foundational texts. The theme is treated above all in the light of some questions brought up by the historical data of the past and present. In conclusion the author seeks to reply synthetically to the questions, by showing some essential elements in the significance of the ministry of teaching Christian doctrine to children for an apostle in today's world. (shrink)

The experience of the post-colonial State underlines the transformations of the modern State. In fact, some features of the post-colonial State which were regarded as being overcome or at least inconsistent with the constitutional, democratic and rational form of the State, are now emerging also in those States that never made experience of colonization, or have been colonizers. The essay analyses the transformations of the modern State aiming to articulate the concept of Global State. In this case, the question of (...) origins does not represent a principle of legitimation, as it was with the doctrine of social contract. Rather, the symbolic and historical discontinuity defines a cut between the origin and the functioning of the State, corresponding to a transformation of the legitimating sources of the State itself. Within the global State, sovereignty is not anymore a monopoly, but a widespread practice enacted by several social structures. (shrink)

The doctrines on the goodness or evilness of human nature maintained in ancient China respectively by Mencius and Xunzi has been interpreted mosttly as a contradition within the Confucian school. In this article it is argued that they represent two distinct , yet possible and congruous, modes of interpreting and re-elaboarting Confucius teachings, two opposing yet largerly complementary currents which have developed within the Confucian school.

Dissolution of tradition : the new affiliation -- Jefferson's communitarianism : in search of the affiliated man -- Consequences of communitarianism : the other side of love.

The idea that the phenomenon of morality and, consequently, our ability to distinguish between vice and virtue can be explained by sympathy has been challenged as a highly controversial hypothesis, since sympathy appears to be easily influenced by proximity and selective, and would therefore seem incompatible with the possibility of taking an impartial, objective point of view. We intend to show that even a sentimentalist moral perspective such as the ‘Humean’ one, which places empathy (or ‘sympathy’, as Hume calls it) (...) at the core of morality, is capable of accounting for and justifying moral responsibility to future generations. Moreover, if we consider things from a Humean perspective, it is immoral not only to harm future generations, but also not to care at all about the extinction of the human species. For in the former case, we perform actions that cause misery, pain and suffering, whilst in the latter, we are not at all concerned about the welfare (i.e., happiness) of possible people who may, in the near future, come into the world and have a life worth or very much worth living. That is, in both cases, we show no ability to empathize with the possible people who will or may be born tomorrow. (shrink)

The theme of human extinction is increasingly at the center of the current debate on moral philosophy and bioethics. We look at space missions and station construction projects capable of accommodating a large population and at the colonization of other planets with great hope. However, solutions are not excluded either, which for now certainly appear to be much more original. One of the most original projects involves launching a spacecraft containing cryopreserved human embryos, which, once they arrive at destination on (...) another planet, must be thawed and birthed by intelligent machines through artificial wombs (ectogenesis). In this paper, I do not intend to analyze whether the embryo space colonization project is indeed feasible. Instead, I will focus on examining the primary moral questions raised by the embryo space colonization project to determine whether, at least prima facie, it can be deemed morally acceptable. I will begin by discussing the objection advanced by Konrad Szocik (2021), according to which any embryo space colonization project is doomed to failure because it cannot offer the hoped-for solution to the problem of the extinction of the human species (second paragraph). In the third paragraph, then, I will ask whether embryo space colonization is able to ensure the people it brings into the world an adequate or at least the morally appropriate quality of life. Finally, in the fourth and last paragraph, I will examine the question of the morality of human reproduction that passes through the guidance and choice of intelligent machines. I will argue that to evaluate the morality of this project we should consider not only the interests and quality of life of the first people who could be born but also the interests of all possible subsequent generations. (shrink)

Chapter 1st of the book. This chapter explores the fundamental ambiguity of the concept of plasticity – between openness and determination, change and stabilization of forms. This pluralism of meanings is used to unpack different instantiations of corporeal plasticity across various epochs, starting from ancient and early modern medicine, particularly humouralism. A genealogical approach displaces the notion that plasticity is a unitary phenomenon, coming in the abstract, and illuminates the unequal distribution of different forms of plasticities across social, gender, and (...) ethnic groups. Taking a longer view of the plastic body as a ubiquitous belief in traditions predating and coexisting with modern medicine will help contextualize the seeming radicalism of today’s turn to permeability and the exceptionalism of Western findings. By highlighting the complex biopolitical usages of plasticity in the past, the chapter warns against simplistic appropriations of the term in contemporary body/world configurations driven by findings in neuroscience, epigenetics and microbiomics. (shrink)

In the present study, we addressed the problem of whether hand representations, derived from the control of hand gesture, are used in handedness recognition. Pictures of hands and fingers, assuming either common or uncommon postures, were presented to right-handed subjects, who were required to judge their handedness. In agreement with previous results (Parsons, 1987, 1994; Gentilucci, Daprati, & Gangitano, 1998), subjects recognized handedness through mental movement of their own hand in order to match the posture of the presented hand. This (...) was proved by a control experiment of physical matching. The new finding was that presentation of common finger postures affected responses differently from presentation of less common finger postures. These effects could be not attributed to mental matching movements nor related to richness in hand-finger cues useful for handedness recognition. The results of the present study are discussed in the context of the notion that implicit visual analysis of the presented hands is performed before mental movement of one's hand takes place (Parsons, 1987; Gentilucci et al., 1998). In this process, hand representation acquired by experience in the control and observation of one's and other people's hand gestures is used. We propose that such an immediate recognition mechanism belongs to the class of mental processes which are grouped under the name of intuition, that is, the processes by which situations or people's intentions are immediately understood, without conscious reasoning. (shrink)

The essay maintains that, despite the significant successive transformations, a ordoliberal moment operates within the neoliberal program. Ordoliberalism establishes a specific political anthropology based on the centrality of economic action and on an a-revolutionary temporality that enhances the normative continuity of the tradition. Even against the specific configurations that the State can assume, especially the democratic one, it also aims at the constant reactivation of a political as a fundamental decision in favor of the economic.