Nell'agosto del 1462 papa Pio II investiva il cardinale Bessarione di Nicea della commenda del monastero di Grottaferrata, che succedeva al calabrese Pietro Vitali, ultimo degli egumeni de regimine, eletto a capo dell'Archimandritato di Messina. Uno dei primi atti di governo di Bessarione fu di incaricare l'arcivescovo di Siponto Niccolò Perotti, quale suo procuratore, di procedere ad una dettagliata ricognizione dei beni mobili e immobili del monastero criptense. I relativi inventari ci sono pervenuti nei mss. Grottaferrata Z. δ. XII (ff. (...) 1-63) per i beni immobili, e Grottaferrata, Archivio del Monumento Nazionale, 523 (ff. 105-116) per i beni mobili. Nei ff. 108v-110 di quest'ultimo documento, la cui redazione era stata affidata dal Perotti al notaio Stefano Tegliati (o Tegliazio), si trova il primo sommario elenco conosciuto dei libri manoscritti della biblioteca, pubblicato da Pierre Batiffol e poi da Antonio Rocchi. Vi risultano 114 manoscritti greci, 2 latini e «circa viginti volumina librorum sine principio et mala ordinata». (shrink)

This is the first book to explore the epistemology and ethics of advanced imaging tests, in order to improve the critical understanding of the nature of knowledge they provide and the practical consequences of their utilization in healthcare. Advanced medical imaging tests, such as PET and MRI, have gained center stage in medical research and in patients’ care. They also increasingly raise questions that pertain to philosophy: What is required to be an expert in reading images? How are standards for (...) interpretation to be fixed? Is there a problem of overutilization of such tests? How should uncertainty be communicated to patients? How to cope with incidental findings? This book is of interest and importance to scholars of philosophy of medicine at all levels, from undergraduates to researchers, to medical researchers and practitioners (radiologists and nuclear physicians) interested in a critical appraisal of the methodology of their discipline and in the ethical principles and consequences of their work. -/- . (shrink)

The aesthetic experience may be defined as people's interactions with, and reactions to, objects, places, but also to the environment. Most psychological perspectives on the aesthetic experience argue that it results from the coordination of different mental processes such as perception, attention, memory, imagination, thought, and emotion. Physiological and neurological responses are also involved. Aesthetic experiences can take place while we observe works of art in museums and galleries as well as in other contexts such as natural and built environments. (...) Looking at a landscape, walking in a park, meeting people in a square, and walking into a building that is architecturally appealing are examples of natural and built environments where we can experience beauty, pleasure, attraction, and interest, among other aesthetic reactions.Research on aesthetic experiences has a long history, and in recent decades, the field has experienced tremendous growth in the number of empirical studies conducted. One of the areas that researchers have yet to fully address is the influence of the context (natural and built environments) on aesthetic experiences. We refer to context according to three broad categories: Context as natural environments, context as built environments, and environments for aesthetic experiences.Context as natural environments: People show a basic tendency to associate the natural environment with positive evaluations. According to an evolutionary explanation know... (shrink)

Background: Moral distress is an increasingly documented problem in nursing and might foster nurses’ intention to leave their workplace. It has been studied in different settings, but no specific research has been conducted in Italian correctional facilities. A recent Italian study produced a preliminary validation of the Moral Distress Scale for Correctional Nurses, which needs to be completed. Objectives: To investigate the level of moral distress of nurses working in the Italian correctional setting, by completing the validation process of the (...) Moral Distress Scale for Correctional Nurses. Methodology: Multicenter questionnaire survey. All correctional nurses (461) affiliated with the Italian Society of Medicine and Penitentiary Health (also called “Simspe-onlus”) were invited to participate and 238 responded. The survey was conducted between April and November 2017 through SurveyMonkey®. Analysis of covariance was conducted to investigate the relationship between moral distress and the other variables under study. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the scale to confirm its dimensions. Ethical considerations: The study was approved by the Italian Society of Medicine and Penitentiary Health (Simspe-onlus). The questionnaire included informed consent, pursuant to the law in force. The software could not accept questionnaires without explicit consent. Data were analyzed anonymously. Findings: The median score was 46.5, indicating moderate moral distress. The only variable affecting moral distress was work experience in correctional facilities. Longer experience was correlated to higher levels of moral distress and intention to leave. Incompetent colleagues and short staffing were related to higher levels of moral distress. The scale confirmed the one-dimensional structure suggested by the original authors. Discussion: This is the first study investigating moral distress among Correctional Nurses. The prison context is a high-risk environment for nurses, increasing the intention to leave the workplace. Conclusion: Corrective and protective measures, such as specific education, are needed to prevent moral distress development and to reduce nurses’ shortage in this area. (shrink)

The set of unary functions of complexity classes defined by using bounded primitive recursion is inductively characterized by means of bounded iteration. Elementary unary functions, linear space computable unary functions and polynomial space computable unary functions are then inductively characterized using only composition and bounded iteration.

Can everyone be wise? Is wisdom open to all or an exception reserved for a few, or perhaps for none? In this context, what is the role of the ‘example’ and the ‘imitation’? Aim of my paper is to reflect on these questions in reference to Ancient Cynicism. Specifically, my goal is to analyze whether the Cynic wisdom and, consequently, life (bios) – characterized by a complete opposition to that of the common man – was intended for everyone or only (...) for exceptional individuals, for specific types of people. In examining this aspect, I will focus particularly on the example represented by the life of the first Cynic, Diogenes of Sinope. I will show how it has been differently interpreted and understood throughout the long history of Cynicism. My attention will be primarily on Onesicritus of Astypalaea, who, contrary to certain modern simplifications and negations, represents a very interesting case in the history of Cynicism. He was a Cynic who did not live cynically. Therefore, more generally, I will demonstrate how differently Cynic philosophy could not only be followed but also reinterpreted: another sign of the theoretical fertility of this philosophical movement. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article:Science and Scepticism. By John W.N. Watkins.

ABSTRACT: In the present contribution, dealing with the intellectual legacy of Michel Foucault forty years after his death, I offer an analysis of some possible relations between certain aspects of Foucault’s project of a history of sexuality, Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetic investigation of the experience of lovemaking, and some recent attempts to critically rethink sexuality in the context of feminist scholarship. My approach towards Foucault’s thinking in this contribution is not philological or attentively reconstructive but rather selective and interpretive. In the (...) first section, I briefly examine Foucault’s general view of sexuality as a “limit-experience”; then, in the second section, I specifically focus my attention on his (critical) analysis of “the penetration model”—an expression coined by Foucault in the context of his inquiry into Greco-Latin sexual culture. In the third section, I take into examination the important influence of Foucault’s aesthetics of existence on Shusterman’s somaesthetics and, in particular, on his book Ars Erotica. Finally, in the fourth section, I make reference—without any ambition of completeness or systematicity—to the question of the relation between Foucault’s thinking and contemporary feminism, focusing my attention on some recent proposals for a critical rethinking of sexuality by feminist scholars such as Bini Adamczak, Ilka Quindeau, Amia Srinivasan, Tamara Tenenbaum, and bell hooks. (shrink)

In this article I focus on Jerold J. Abrams’ recently edited volume on Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics and I assume as a starting point the concept itself of soma, widely cited and examined in various contributions collected in Abrams’ book. Then, I specifically concentrate my attention on one of the essays, the one authored by Stefán Snævarr, which connects in an interesting, original and sometimes also challenging way Shusterman’s thinking to some questions that have characterized the current debates in the field (...) of the philosophy of mind. On this basis, in the final part of my short essay I try to offer some provisional remarks on the potential and mutually enriching dialogue between Shusterman’s somaesthetics and embodied, extended and enactive approaches to perception and mind, such as those, for example, of contemporary theorists like Andy Clark, Shaun Gallagher and Alva Noë. (shrink)

The first scholarly discussion on the band, Pearl Jam and Philosophy examines both the songs (music and lyrics) and the activities (live performances, political commitments) of one of the most celebrated and charismatic rock bands of the last 30 years. The book investigates the philosophical aspects of their music at various levels: existential, spiritual, ethical, political, and aesthetic. This philosophical interpretation is also dependent on the application of textual and poetic analysis: the interdisciplinary volume puts philosophical aspects of the band's (...) lyrics in close dialogue with 19th- and 20th-century European and American poetry. Through this widespread philosophical examination, the book further looks into the band's immense popularity and commercial success, their deeply loyal fanbase and genuine sense of community surrounding their music, and the pivotal place the band holds within popular music culture. (shrink)

We propose that in pictures both the extended limbs of actors and the ground are involved in gestalts for movement. Limbs extend to suggest more motion literally when a dancer is in air and refer to a canonical pose when on the ground. A running pony’s curled limbs off the ground depict fast action literally. A horse’s flying-gallop off the ground suggests speedy motion metaphorically. Cast shadows indicate the actor’s location with respect to the ground. We consider extended and curled (...) limbs, on-ground and off, in literal and metaphoric pictures. (shrink)

Da uno dei padri fondatori dell’Italia come nazione, un veloce e agile compendio su filosofia, politica risorgimentale e musica, centrato sulle idee e i gusti artistici mazziniani e ambientato nel panorama melodrammatico della prima metà dell’Ottocento, governato dalla maestosa figura di Gioacchino Rossini. Il volume è arricchito anche da un altro breve estratto mazziniano riguardante la musica, proveniente da Dell’Arte in Italia – A proposito del “Marco Visconti” di Tommaso Grossi (1835).

The article focuses on the theme of the “End of Art” in the philosophy of Arthur C. Danto, a concept he developed in his writing in the mid-1980s. Departing from the historical framework developed since Analytical Philosophy of History (1965) and adopting an interpretive Hegelian approach to the construction of history, Danto’s thought grapples with several contradictions. These contradictions encompass the notion of the “End of Art”, ultimately leading to a reduction of art to an idealized level. Consequently, this highlights (...) the irreconcilability between Essentialism and Historicism, furthering the philosophical disenfranchisement of art. (shrink)

Believing that the enterprise of constructing "artificial intelligence" transcends the bounds of any one discipline, the editors of Mechanical Bodies, Computational Minds have brought together researchers in AI and scholars in the humanities to reexamine the fundamental assumptions of both areas. The AI community, for example, could benefit from explorations of human intelligence and creativity by philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, literary critics, and others, while analysis of AI's theoretical struggles and technical advances could yield insights into such traditional humanist concerns as (...) the nature of rationality and the mind-body dichotomy.The contributions include a continuation of the famous Hubert Dreyfus-Daniel Dennett debate over Kasparov's defeat by IBM's Deep Blue; Philip Agre's tracing of difficulties in AI research to the inherited tensions of Cartesian dualism; Evelyn Fox Keller's examination of the development of computer technology in relation to biology; Douglas Hofstadter's argument that thinking is more than the theorem-solving activities of AI; and Alison Adam's discussion of the implicitly male universal subject used in AI. (shrink)

This paper provides the framework for understanding Galileo’s request to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, in 1610, to be appointed in Florence as both Mathematician and Philosopher. By explicitly choosing such a title, he wished to stress the fact that his own work aimed at contributing to the new physical astronomy with which Copernicus inaugurated what is now called the Scientific Revolution. As opposed to Ptolemy, who understood astronomy as a purely mathematical tool in order to “save the phenomena” and (...) allow for accurate predictions, Galileo – very much in line with Copernicus and Kepler, as well as Newton after him – supported the reality of the Copernican system not only against Aristotle and Ptolemy, but also against Tycho Brahe. And, as it turned out after 1616, against the Church itself, which, in full accord with Osiander’s unsigned preface to the De revolutionibus, refused to see in the Copernican theory anything more than a mere working hypothesis to which astronomers were allowed to appeal only for computations. (shrink)