v. 1. Dall'antico al moderno -- v. 2. L'età contemporanea -- v. 3. Teoria e metodo.

Complex crises like the coronavirus pandemic are showing us that modern societies are becoming increasingly unable to live in equilibrium with nature. These crises are the result of multiple causes, which interact at different scales and across different domains. Therefore, investigating their proximate causes is not enough to fully understand them. It is also crucial to take into account the structural factors involved. As concerns the global pandemic, I suggest four levels of analysis: (i) the surface or “proximate” level of (...) the crisis; (ii) the human–environment–animal interface, as pointed out by the One Health approach; (iii) the broader socioeconomic context; and (iv) the deeper or worldview level. Furthermore, I argue that there is the need for a mindset shift if we want to properly trace causality. Much more attention must be given to the study of multilevel connecting patterns and nonlinear mechanisms as the producers of emergent global effects. (shrink)

De bono comuni -- De bono pacis -- Sermones de pace.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific experts advised governments for measures to be promptly taken; they also helped people to understand the situation. They carried out this role in the face of a worldwide emergency, when scientific understanding was still underway. Public scientific disputes also arose, creating confusion among people. This article highlights the importance of experts’ epistemic stance under these circumstances. It suggests they should embrace the intellectual virtue of epistemic humility, regulating their epistemic behavior and communication accordingly. In so (...) doing, they would also favour the functioning of the broad network of knowledge-based experts, which is required to properly address all the aspects of the global pandemic. (shrink)

Many believe that a citizen who engages in civil disobedience is not exempt from the sanctions that apply to standard law-breaking conduct. Since he is responsible for a deliberate breach of the law, he is also liable to punishment. Focusing on a conception of responsibility as answerability, I argue that a civil disobedient is responsible (i.e. answerable) to his fellows for the charges of wrongdoing, yet he is not liable to punishment merely for breaching the law. To support this claim, (...) I defend an account of political obligation framed in terms of respect for (rather than mere obedience to) the law, and argue that the mere illegality of civil disobedience does not suffice to establish wrongdoing. I then discuss and reject three objections to my argument. (shrink)

Este artigo busca ressoar um percurso de sensibilização vivido por um professor que descobre a força desestabilizadora e inspiradora da infância das crianças durante as aulas de filosofia. Ao investigar a (im)possibilidade das crianças fazerem filosofia, vemos semelhanças com a experiência de tocar violão, o qual transformamos em um personagem conceitual para nos ajudar a (re)pensar o ensino de filosofia para crianças. Ensaiamos, neste texto, formas de explorar os sentidos que se desprendem de experiências vividas entre a infância e a (...) filosofia a partir de encontros vividos em salas de aula, para encontrarmos/criarmos possibilidades de alimentarmos essa investigação ao invés de pôr fim a ela. Um exercício que nos possibilita encontrar/construir formas mais acolhedoras, sensíveis e inventivas de fazer, viver e habitar a educação entre a infância e a filosofia na escola. Deparamo-nos, assim, com ideia (conceito-corpo) de devir-violão, a qual trabalhamos a partir dos encontros com Gilles Deleuze e Jean-Luc Nancy. Vida. É disso que se trata este texto; e pesquisa, pois, no que diz respeito à educação, essas duas coisas se confundem, acontecem juntas, co-partilham percursos, são inseparáveis; do mesmo modo que não podemos separar o som do arrepio que causam em nossa pele. O texto é, antes de tudo, um convite a nos colocarmos à escuta daquilo que nos toca, não para explicar ou fundamentar nossas práticas, mas sim para descobrir e inventar sentidos: ser em-com-outros, entre educação, filosofia, infâncias e escolas. (shrink)

Jason Brennan has argued that democracy is intrinsically unjust, for it grants voting power to politically incompetent individuals, thus exposing people to an undue risk of harm. He claims democracy should be replaced by epistocracy, i.e., the rule of the knowers. In this paper, I show that his argument fails. First, Brennan mistakes voters’ competence for voters’ trustworthiness. Second, despite Brennan's claim to the contrary, an epistocracy may not reduce people’s exposure to an undue risk of harm. Third, Brennan overlooks (...) the fact that citizens are not equally affected by ‘bad voting.’ Fourth, far from being a defence of libertarian ideals, Brennan's argument supports paternalism. (shrink)

The author, starting from what is currently known about cup-marks and their distribution in the north-western Italian alpine area, formulated a hypothesis on their material and ritual functions in the Neolithic period. It is conceivable that cup-marks were originally carved in connection with the ritual use of Amanita muscaria, and that they may later have assumed other functions as well.

Aging is characterized by the decline and deterioration of functional cells and results in a wide variety of molecular damages and reduced physical and mental capacity. The knowledge on aging process is important because life expectancy is expected to rise until 2050. Aging cannot be considered a homogeneous process and includes different trajectories characterized by states of fitness, frailty, and disability. Frailty is a dynamic condition put between a normal functional state and disability, with reduced capacity to cope with stressors. (...) This geriatric syndrome affects physical, neuropsychological, and social domains and is driven by emotional and spiritual components. Sarcopenia is considered one of the determinants and the biological substrates of physical frailty. Physical and cognitive frailty are separately approached during daily clinical practice. The concept of motoric cognitive syndrome has partially changed this scenario, opening interesting windows toward future approaches. Thus, the purpose of this manuscript is to provide an excursus on current clinical practice, enforced by aneddoctical cases. The analysis of the current state of the art seems to support the urgent need of comprehensive organizational model incorporating physical and cognitive spheres in the same umbrella. (shrink)

Moj rad u vezi s Vicovom misli polazi od stajališta da sveukupna zapadna filozofska misao – kao uostalom i religija i moderna znanost – predstavlja proizvod čovjekovog obrambenog mehanizma protiv straha od smrti kao sveopćeg ništavila, odnosno kao obrana od evidentnosti da stvari izlaze iz ničega u kojem se, na kraju egzistencijalnog ciklusa, neminovno i vraćaju. Riječ je o evidentnosti koju je starogrčka filozofija prva evocirala i prikazala.U sklopu tog općeg filozofskog obrambenog mehanizma i Vicova »Nova znanost« promatrana je kao (...) još jedan pokušaj da se u kaotičnost još neuređenih društvenih činjenica uvede određeni epistemski red, tako da se fenomenološka zbilja obuhvati u jednom racionalnom totalitetu koji će ljudskom biću pružati sigurnost.U tom smislu, Vicova filozofija, a posebice njegovo glavno djelo Načela nove znanosti, zauzima posebno mjesto unutar zapadne filozofske tradicije, jer u sebi sadržava i ujedinjuje dvije važne komponente europske misli koje će se u moderno doba razvijati u različitim pravcima. Misli se, s jedne strane, na filozofsku misao koja će svoj vrhunac dostići u Hegelovoj sistematizaciji zapadne filozofske misli i, s druge strane, na modernu znanost koja će, u svojoj sve većoj specijalizaciji u sve partikularnije znanstvene discipline i parcijalizaciji same stvarnosti, istinu identificirati s djelotvornošću proučavanih činjenica, ostavljajući po strani apstraktnu, epistemsku istinu filozofije.My report on G. B. Vico’s thought moves from the assumption that all Western philosophy – just as religion and modern science – represents the product of the defence mechanism human beings use against the fear of death seen as absolute nothingness, that is defence from the evidence that things come from the nothingness to which, at the end of their existence, they imminently return. It is the obviousness that Greek philosophy has evoked and showed first.Within this general philosophical defence mechanism Vico’s “New Science” is also seen as an attempt to introduce a kind of epistemic order in the chaos of social facts not yet systemised according to reason, trying in this way to understand the phenomenological reality inside a rational whole capable of granting security to human beings.In this sense Vico’s philosophy and especially his main work, Modern Science, holds an important position in the Western philosophical tradition, as it contains and combines two important constituents of Western thought which in the modern age will develop in various directions. We are referring to the philosophical thought which will reach its climax in Hegel’s systematisation of Western philosophy and on the other hand, to the modern science that, considered its ever increasing specialisation into always more detailed scientific disciplines and the fragmentation of reality itself, will identify truth with the fulfilling efficacy of tested facts, leaving behind the abstract epistemic truth of philosophy. (shrink)

As is well known, any preorder R on a set U induces an Alexandrov topology on U. In some interesting cases related to data mining an Alexandrov topology can be transformed into different types of logico-algebraic models. In some cases, (pre)topological operators provided by Pointless Topology may define a topological space on U even if R is not a preorder. If this is the case, then we call R a crypto-preorder. The paper studies the conditions under which a relation R (...) is a crypto-preorder and how to transform a crypto-preorder into a proper preorder. (shrink)

Diese Ansicht wird von Kant an einigen Stellen der Kritik der Urteilskraft dargelegt, an denen die Musik als „Sprache der ...

The potential for jointly using or integrating Western science and indigenous knowledge, especially in such fields as environmental management, is a hotly debated topic nowadays. However, the difficulties involved in such a task are not always fully understood and co-management experiences achieved only partially the expected outcomes. In this contribution, I show how a sound combination of the two bodies of knowledge would be possible only if there is a way to accommodate different interpretations of reality and knowledge criteria. The (...) issue should then be faced at the epistemological level too, discussing the possibility and implications of a genuine epistemic pluralism. With reference, among others, to Feyerabend’s later writings, here I illustrate some possible insights for addressing the matter that a Western perspectivist stance could provide. (shrink)

Descartes's distinction between res cogitans and res extensa is a paradigmatic concept on which Western thought has been grounded. The reductionist and objectivistic approach of modern science draws its fundamental premise from it. This dualism has also instigated a view of human as separate from nature. The complexity approach in its most radical form questions many of these assumptions, asserting that the subjective and objective dimensions are involved in a relation of mutual determination and dependence. This article argues that if (...) the dualistic metaphysics is replaced by a vision emphasizing this mutual dependence, a new way of interacting with nature may also be fostered. (shrink)

Protein aggregation has been studied for at least 3 decades, and many of the principles that regulate this event are relatively well understood. Here, however, we present a different perspective to explain why proteins aggregate: we argue that aggregation may occur as a side‐effect of the lack of one or more natural partners that, under physiologic conditions, would act as chaperones. This would explain why the same surfaces that have evolved for functional purposes are also those that favour aggregation. In (...) the course of reviewing this field, we substantiate our hypothesis with three paradigmatic examples that argue for the generality of our proposal. An obvious corollary of this hypothesis is, of course, that targeting the physiological partners of a protein could be the most direct and specific approach to designing anti‐aggregation molecules. Our analysis may thus inform a different strategy for combating diseases of protein aggregation and misfolding. (shrink)

Dieser Band analysiert den Begriff des ‚Abenteuers der Vernunft’, welcher in der dritten Kritik von Kant als Hypothese für die Erklärung des Ursprungs des Lebendigen aufgestellt wird. In systematischer Hinsicht werden vornehmlich zwei Themen behandelt: der kantische Materialismus und das Verhältnis zwischen dem Abenteuer der Vernunft und der kopernikanisch-newtonianischen Wende. Der Nietzsche gewidmete Teil hat das Anliegen, seine Theorie aus dem Jahre 1868 als eine selbständige Erarbeitung physiologischer, empirischer und materialistischer Aspekte des Kantischen Kritizismus zu präsentieren.