Given the food challenges that society is facing, we draw upon recent developments in the study of how food reputation affects food preferences and food choices, providing here a starting standard point for measuring every aspect of food reputation in different cultural contexts across the world. Specifically, while previous attempts focused either on specific aspects of food or on measures of food features validated in one language only, the present research validates the Food Reputation Map (FRM) in Italian, English and (...) Chinese over 2,250 participants worldwide. Here we successfully measure food reputation across 23 specific indicators, further grouped into six synthetic indicators of food reputation. Critically, results show that: (a) the specific measurement tool of food reputation can vary across cultural contexts, and that (b) people's reputation of food products or categories changes significantly across different cultural contexts. Therefore, in order to understand people's food preferences and consumption, it is important to take into account the repertoire of cultural differences that underlies the contexts of analysis: the three context-specific versions of the FRM presented here effectively deal with this issue and provide reliable context-specific insights on stakeholders' interests, perspectives, attitudes and behaviors related to food perceptions, assessment, and consumption, which can be effectively leveraged to foster food sustainability. (shrink)

Italian Sounding—i. e., the Italian appearance of a product or service brand irrespective of its country of origin—represents a global market phenomenon affecting a wide range of economic sectors, particularly the agro-food sector. Although its economic impact has been repeatedly stressed from different points of view, systematic scientific knowledge regarding its social–psychological bases is lacking. Three studies carried out in three different countries address this literature gap. Different consumer groups are targeted regarding major product categories pre-selected categories, which are the (...) major Italian food goods within the specific country according to piloting. In each study, the main independent variable has been manipulated by presenting real product images, whose “Italianness” degree is effectively manipulated by the main study variable across three or four levels. Main hypotheses are tested via a survey with the specific product images administered to samples in Italy, China, and the USA. Across the three studies, results show that Made in Italy products, compared to the other ones, are advantaged in terms of the main dependent variables: reputation profile, general reputation, attitude, and willingness to pay. Moreover, Italian Sounding products are endowed with corresponding significant advantages when compared to the Generic Foreign by non-Italian samples. Results reveal the specific social–psychological profile of Italian Sounding products in terms of either weaknesses or strengths when compared to both Made in Italy products and Generic Foreign ones, differently in the eyes of Italian and non-Italian consumers across different countries. Finally, consistently across the three studies, the extent to which a food product is perceived to be Italian increases consumers' WTP for that product, and this effect is consistently mediated by the product's reputation. (shrink)

Restoration involves individuals’ physical, psychological and social resources, diminished by meeting demands of everyday life. Psychological restoration can be provided by specific environments, in particular by natural environments. Research reports a restorative effect of nature on human beings, specifically in terms of the psychological recovery from attention fatigue and restored mental resources previously spent in activities that require attention. Two field studies in two Italian primary schools tested the hypothesized positive effect of recess-time spent in a natural (vs. built) environment (...) on pupils’ cognitive performance and their perceived restorativeness, using standardized tests. In Study 1, children’s psychological restoration was assessed measuring sustained and selective attention, working memory, and impulse’ control, before and after morning recess-time. Team standardized play-time was conducted in a natural (vs. built) environment, measuring perceived restorativeness after each recess-time. Results showed a greater increase in sustained and selective attention, concentration, and perceived restorativeness from pre-test to post-test after the Natural Environment condition. In Study 2 the positive effect of free-play recess-time in a natural (vs. built) environment was assessed during the afternoon school-time on sustained and selective attention and perceived restorativeness. Results showed an increase of sustained and selective attention after the Natural Environment condition (vs. Built) and a decrease after the built environment break. Higher scores in perceived restorativeness were registered after the Natural (vs. Built) Environment condition. Team standardized and individual free-play recess in a natural environment (vs. built) support pupils’ attention restoration during both morning and afternoon school-time, as well as their perceived restorativeness of recess environment. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in terms of nature’s role both for school ground design or re-design, and for school’s activities organization. (shrink)

Objectives: Investigate and identify the relationship between physical exercise and cognitive performance measured by using different cognitive tests taken from Cambridge Brain Science.Methods: Thirty subjects, divided into two groups, undergo twelve cognitive tests from CBS. A comparison between the pre- and post-exercise results in terms of cognitive performance differences is carried out. Regression analysis between Heart Rate Variability features and CBS tests results is performed.Results: In most CBS tests, there is an improvement, or at least a confirmation, of the subject's (...) cognitive ability, for both groups. Reasoning, concentration, and planning tests seem to undergo critical positive changes. The regression analysis, performed by using a set of different algorithms, has demonstrated that it is possible, by monitoring the HRV during the exercise, to predict to some extent the cognitive performance, i.e., the CBS tests results. The best performing regression algorithms are Simple Linear and REPTree. The statistical analysis has proved that physical activity is statistically useful for the subjects in improving their cognitive performance.Conclusions: This study has numerically appraised the improvement, the conservation, or the worsening on different aspects of cognition. The found mathematical relationship between physical exercise and cognitive performance suggests that it is possible to predict the beneficial effect of various exercises on executive and attentive control. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage interroge le sens de la relation entre lien magique et métamorphose en essayant de dégager des perspectives philosophiques et politiques spécifiques à la Renaissance et à l'âge classique. La pensée de Giordano Bruno demeure dans cette optique une référence essentielle. Le philosophe nolain n'a de cesse de réfléchir sur le sens de cette relation, puisque c'est à travers elle qu'il construit aussi bien l'art de la mémoire que la pratique magique comme art du lien. Des thèmes comme celui (...) de la fureur héroïque, de la différence entre l'homme et l'animal, de l'action magique ne sont compréhensibles qu'à partir de la relation constitutive entre le lien et la métamorphose. C'est par conséquent en étudiant les "liens de la métamorphose" que l'on peut faire apparaître la constitution d'un spectre de savoirs (magie, philosophie, politique) traversant l'histoire européenne de la Renaissance et de l'âge classique. Cela permet également d'insister sur le rapport que ces savoirs entretiennent avec les pratiques sociales. La philosophie et la magie, loin d'apparaître comme des savoirs abstraits et purement nominaux, s'affirment en réalité comme des discours performatifs légitimant la constitution des liens civils et sociaux. Il s'agit en définitive ici de reconstituer à nouveaux frais des séquences historiques et philosophiques qui tracent les relations entre une sphère des savoirs et une pratique de l'institution du social, dans une perspective comprenant aussi bien des auteurs de la Renaissance (Machiavel, Giordano Bruno) que de l'âge classique et baroque (Hobbes, Graciân)."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Giordano Bruno's philosophical feat consists in the definition of a transformational force proper to human nature, which underlines its radical integration in the infinite cosmos.

S'il est vrai que le XVIe siècle italien, ou Cinquecento, correspond à une affirmation extraordinaire des pouvoirs de l'image, il est également incontestable que cette profusion s'accompagne d'une stratification théorique réunissant, par exemple, la théologie et la philosophie, la magie naturelle et la morale, la médecine et la politique. Peut-on définir un fil directeur dans cette diversité thématique? Peut-on définir une "unité systématique" ou une homogénéité, permettant de mettre en évidence la spécificité de la notion et de la pratique de (...) l'image à la Renaissance, ou bien faut-il accepter l'hétérogénéité des perspectives? C'est de telles questions que part l'auteur pour interroger la pensée de Renaissance, en construisant une cartographie des images à partir d'un corpus d'auteurs précis : Nicolas de Cues, Marsile Ficin, Pic de la Mirandole, Le Tasse, Giordano Bruno. Au terme du parcours, qui implique un réexamen d'ouvrages majeurs comme les Essais d'iconologie de Panofsky, Devant l'image de Georges Didi-Huberman et Pouvoirs de l'image de Louis Marin, il apparaît que la différence des approches et des questions traitées n'empêche pas de déterminer une vision d'ensemble dans la pensée de la Renaissance. (shrink)

The theory of the conatus is a major presupposition of Spinozist philosophy. The principles and concepts involved therein are well known to specialists and interpreters of Spinoza’s philosophy, but unndoubtedly are much less well known or used by economists and sociologists. In his book La politique du capital, Frédéric Lordon, an economist, uses the principles of Spinoza’s theory of the conatus to interpret a financial event and attempt to derive from it the analytic criteria which are necessary to understand it. (...) Which financial event is this? The conflict that opposed the BNP to the Société Générale and Paribas, from January to August 1999. What does this series of events imply for French capitalism ? What are the laws and principle governing the financial struggle for the control of banks I Why does he speak, regarding such events, of a « politics of capital » ? As he tries to answer these questions, Lordon shows that the relations between the « subjects,) of capital are not founded on a « pure economic nature » but rather, more profoundly, on a dynamics of power making use of relations that are « mediated by mercantile exchange ». The politics of capital then turns out to be, in essence, a matter of « sovereignty », that is, a necessity of persevering in its being in the midst of the confrontation with the power of another. What is at stake in this conflict is nothing other than the « life » or better, the « survival » of capital. (shrink)

Découvert et transcrit par Francesco Saverio Nisio qui en a complété les références bibliographiques, ce texte, proposé en 1880 par le jeune Lucien Lévy à la Revue des études juives qui venait de se créer, et resté inédit depuis, met l’accent sur « l’exactitude et la profondeur des observations » psychologiques de Spinoza, « grand métaphysicien », c’est-à-dire « grand artiste », dans l’ Éthique.

The links between the philosophies of Montaigne and Bruno are explored here for the first time, in this speculative comparison that focuses as much on rhetoric and ethics as on ontology and anthropology.

Luc Vincenti starts from the question of applicability which, as regards human behaviour, specifies normativity within the wider field of regularity. Kant’s practical philosophy enables this applicability to be located, beyond the mere feeling of self, in the knowledge of one’s freedom. But what happens to this foundation of obligation outside of the moral realm, in the legal realm, where Kant is closer to Kelsenian positivism ? In fact, Kant’s political philosophy is two-sided : while he questions the contractualist foundation (...) within the properly legal realm, he returns to the idea of legitimacy in the purposive relation law has to morals, i.e., in the capacity of the law to produce peace by preserving peace. Kant’s notion of the public usage of reason then exhibits this purpose of law, through freedom of expression, and is also the public display of freedom’s knowledge of itself. (shrink)

Université libre de BruxellesThe vulgate text at Prop. 3.10.17–18 reads as follows: et pete, qua polles, ut sit tibi forma perennis inque meum semper stent tua regna caput. 17–18 om. N 17 polles T, uulgo: pelles FLP.

Nelle Summulae del salmantino Domingo de Soto, la teoria della proposizione sembra rivelare un’irrisolta tensione tra l’opzione per la prospettiva terministica, la quale considera il significato della proposizione come il risultato dell’analisi semantica dei suoi componenti, e l’opzione per la prospettiva ‘dictistica’, che si concentra sul riferimento e sul senso globale della proposizione. La struttura della proposizione mentale, pur determinata in maniera ‘causale’ dalle sue componenti, il nome e il verbo, viene d’altronde a costituirsi in maniera ‘uni-qualitativa’, ossia per mezzo (...) di un unico atto mentale, con il quale si designa uno stato di cose esterno . Il ‘valore di verità’ della proposizione, espresso sintatticamente mediante l’unione o la separazione di un termine da un altro, viene a denotare la conformità a un modo d’essere delle cose nella realtà. (shrink)

À partir du thème élaboré par Hobbes de la nécessité d'un passage de la multitude au peuple pour fonder l' État absolu, Giorgio Agamben se demande si l'on peut penser la puissance humaine à partir de la seule « gloire » de Dieu, c'est-à-dire de l'affirmation absolue de son impuissance. L'originalité d' Agamben est de faire de cette notion théologique un paradigme politique dérivé des notions juridiques d'Homo sacer et de sacratio. Starting from the theme elaborated by Hobbes of the (...) necessity of a passage from the multitudes to a people to permit the foundation of an Absolute state, Giorgio Agamben wonders whether one may establish human power from the starting point of God's "glory" alone, i.e. the absolute affirmation of His powerlessness. Agamben 's originality rests in turning such a theological notion into a political paradigm derived from the legal notions of both Homo sacer and sacratio. (shrink)