The Turin manuscript containing the first three books of Oppian' Halieutica was almost completely destroyed in the fire of 1904, but a collation of it has recently come to light. In 1811 the noted classical scholar and Orientalist Vittorio Amedeo Peyron collated the manuscript against Schneider' first edition of the poem and also transcribed the scholia. He sent his results to Schneider for use in the preparation of his second edition , but they apparently arrived too late. Although (...) the original plan of this second edition called for the inclusion of the scholia, Schneider published only a text of the poem and turned over his materials on the scholia to G. H. Schaefer, including no doubt Peyron' collation of the Turin manuscript. Schaefer never did manage to produce his edition of the scholia and in some unknown way Peyron' collation and some of the other material came on to the open market in 1969. (shrink)

Through a discussion of a number of unpublished manuscripts by the undervalued Ignazio Donaudi, the complexities of the Piedmontese political and economic situation of the latter decades of the eighteenth century are presented. Donaudi argued that as a result of the late seventeenth-century ‘Colbertist’ policies of Vittorio Amedeo II Piedmontese economic development had come to a halt. In the mid-eighteenth-century, a sectoral imbalance in the economy corresponded to a political system in which manufacturer entrepreneurs and their financiers were (...) pushed out by Turinese merchant bankers and a class of urban lawyers. In response to this situation, Donaudi, inspired by French political thinkers like Forbonnais, launched two consecutive reform strategies. Ironically, Donaudi's final proposal to devise a strategy for unlocking agricultural innovation, manufacturing and trade by creating an internal market in the Kingdom of Sardinia led him to be accused of colonialism. Enlightenment ideology, in the form of Raynal's Deux indes, blocked Donaudi's reform proposals. (shrink)

Empiricism had dominated scientific activities for about three centuries but beginning with the 20th Century a new philosophy, phenomenology, began to develop and certain scientists who conducted research with humans began to turn to phenomenology as the basis for their scientific work rather than empiricism. What was known as the Utrecht School in Holland just after World War II, psychologists at Duquesne University during mid-twentieth century, pedagogists in Canada at about the same time and nurses later in the twentieth century (...) all began to base their research on phenomenological philosophical principles rather than on empiricism. Certain philosophers criticized the approach of these scientists and offered their own praxis based directly on phenomenological philosophy. However, one of the members of the Duquesne University’s group strongly criticized the evaluation of his approach by the philosophers and demonstrated the significant errors of their criticism. The psychologist then clarified his scientific phenomenological approach toward psychological phenomena and emphasized the role of the phenomenological epoche’ and reduction for Husserlian scientific phenomenology. (shrink)

Discusses the phenomenological foundations for qualitative research in psychology which operates out of the intersection of phenomenological philosophy, science, and psychology; challenges long-standing assumptions about the practice of grounding the science of psychology in empiricism and asserts that the broader philosophy of phenomenological theory of science permits more adequate psychological development"--Provided by publisher.

This article points out the criteria necessary in order for a qualitative scientific method to qualify itself as phenomenological in a descriptive Husserlian sense. One would have to employ description within the attitude of the phenomenological reduction, and seek the most invariant meanings for a context. The results of this analysis are used to critique an article by Klein and Westcott , that presents a typology of the development of the phenomenological psychological method.

The author explains that his background was in experimental psychology but that he wanted to study the whole person and not fragmented psychological processes. He also desired a non-reductionistic method for studying humans. Fortunately he came across the work of Edmund Husserl and discovered in the latter’s thought a way of researching humans that met the criteria he was seeking. Eventually he developed a phenomenological method for researching humans in a psychological way based upon the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. (...) This article briefly describes the method. (shrink)

La Dictio 17 (= 239 Vogel) di Ennodio è una controuersia in cui il declamatore si scaglia contro un figlio che non ha provveduto al mantenimento del padre anziano tanto da provocarne la morte. L’argomentazione è rafforzata da esempi di animali, aquile e lupi, che, a differenza dell’accusato, si prendono cura dei genitori. Nell’esempio delle aquile è sfruttato un tema ampiamente diffuso nella tradizione esegetica biblica; in particolare, Ennodio dimostra strette consonanze con la versione di questo motivo che si legge (...) in Paolino di Nola (Carm. 24 Hartel). Più oscuro rimane l’esempio dei lupi che in genere sono contraddistinti da ferocia e rapacità, mentre in Ennodio dimostrano una singolare benevolenza verso i genitori. Anche in questo caso si propongono alcuni precedenti biblici che possono aver influenzato la loro caratterizzazione positiva nella controuersia ennodiana. Una lettura della Dictio 17 in chiave soltanto allegorica è da evitare, ma la scelta di questi esempi animali, connotati in modo fortemente cristiano, permette di pensare a un’interpretazione su più livelli, retorico, morale e spirituale. (shrink)

In this article we provide a unifying neural hypothesis on how individuals understand the actions and emotions of others. Our main claim is that the fundamental mechanism at the basis of the experiential understanding of others' actions is the activation of the mirror neuron system. A similar mechanism, but involving the activation of viscero-motor centers, underlies the experiential understanding of the emotions of others.

In adapting Husserl’s philosophical phenomenological method to conduct research in psychology I included Husserl’s two methodical steps, the epochē and the reduction, as part of the scientific procedure. Zahavi objected to my use of those steps. This article is a response to his objections and it is a reaffirmation of the necessity of the epochē and reduction for Husserlian phenomenological psychological research. A description of Husserl’s acknowledged types of psychology and a description of his transcendental phenomenology are also presented along (...) with two outlines of how Husserlian phenomenological research could be conducted. (shrink)

Concepts are the elementary units of reason and linguistic meaning. They are conventional and relatively stable. As such, they must somehow be the result of neural activity in the brain. The questions are: Where? and How? A common philosophical position is that all concepts—even concepts about action and perception—are symbolic and abstract, and therefore must be implemented outside the brain’s sensory-motor system. We will argue against this position using (1) neuroscientific evidence; (2) results from neural computation; and (3) results about (...) the nature of concepts from cognitive linguistics. We will propose that the sensory-motor system has the right kind of structure to characterise both sensory-motor and more abstract concepts. Central to this picture are the neural theory of language and the theory of cogs, according to which, brain structures in the sensory-motor regions are exploited to characterise the so-called “abstract” concepts that constitute the meanings of grammatical constructions and general inference patterns. (shrink)

Recently, a book was published, the sole purpose of which was to discourage researchers from using the scientific phenomenological method. The author had previously been critical of nurses who had used the scientific phenomenological method but in the new book he goes after the originators of different methods of scientific phenomenological research and attempts to criticize them severely. In this review I defend only the scientific phenomenological method that is strictly based upon the thought of Edmund Husserl. Given the entirely (...) negative project of only critiquing phenomenologically grounded scientific research, one would expect the author to be sensitive to the cautions historians and philosophers of science speak about when one attempts to criticize concepts and procedures that belong to a different research community. Paley, an empiricist, uses empirical criteria to criticize phenomenological work.Moreover, given the entirely negative project of critiquing phenomenologically grounded scientific research one would expect the author to be knowledgeable about phenomenology and the innovative research practices used by a new research community. However, the author has only a thin, superficial understanding of phenomenology. One gets the impression that he only reads phenomenology in order to critique it. He displays an outsider’s understanding of it which means that his criticisms of it are faulty because he does not know how to think and dwell within the phenomenological framework; he does not understand “discovery-oriented” research and he keeps judging such research according to criteria from the “context of verification” perspective which are the wrong criteria for “discovery-oriented” research; he denigrates and reduces nursing research strategies because he interprets them to be based on pragmatic motivations only. He does not even grant that nurses can have authentic scientific motivations for seeking phenomenologically based methods; he uses unfair rhetorical strategies in the sense that he uses strategies himself that he criticizes when others use them. The review below documents what has been summarized here. (shrink)

A new class of visuomotor neuron has been recently discovered in the monkey’s premotor cortex: mirror neurons. These neurons respond both when a particular action is performed by the recorded monkey and when the same action, performed by another individual, is observed. Mirror neurons appear to form a cortical system matching observation and execution of goal-related motor actions. Experimental evidence suggests that a similar matching system also exists in humans. What might be the functional role of this matching system? One (...) possible function is to enable an organism to detect certain mental states of observed conspecifics. This function might be part of, or a precursor to, a more general mind-reading ability. Two different accounts of mind-reading have been suggested. According to “theory theory‘, mental states are represented as inferred posits of a naive theory. According to “simulation theory‘, other people’s mental states are represented by adopting their perspective: by tracking or matching their states with resonant states of one’s own. The activity of mirror neurons, and the fact that observers undergo motor facilitation in the same muscular groups as those utilized by target agents, are findings that accord well with simulation theory but would not be predicted by theory theory. (shrink)

My initial scope will be limited: starting from a neurobiological standpoint, I will analyse how actions are possibly represented and understood. The main aim of my arguments will be to show that, far from being exclusively dependent upon mentalistic/linguistic abilities, the capacity for understanding others as intentional agents is deeply grounded in the relational nature of action. Action is relational, and the relation holds both between the agent and the object target of the action , as between the agent of (...) the action and his/her observer . Agency constitutes a key issue for the understanding of intersubjectivity and for explaining how individuals can interpret their social world. This account of intersubjectivity, founded on the empirical findings of neuroscientific investigation, will be discussed and put in relation with a classical tenet of phenomenology: empathy. I will provide an 'enlarged' account of empathy that will be defined by means of a new conceptual tool: the shared manifold of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

David Katz was an experimental psychologist who worked in the early years of psychology as an independent science. He performed many experiments on color vision and touch by means of what he called the “phenomenological method.” He claimed to have learned the method by attending Husserl’s lectures on phenomenological philosophy while the latter was teaching at Göttingen. However the method that Katz actually used was “description with an attitude of disciplined naiveté”. Consequently, while such a method was known as “phenomenological” (...) at the time Katz was working, the nomenclature reflects a historically dated meaning of phenomenology and not the sense of phenomenological method that Husserl developed later in his career. Katz’s method was actually qualitative and empirical. It was not phenomenological according to Husserl’s complete, mature philosophy. (shrink)

Background The 2020-2021 coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic is just the latest epidemic event that requires us to rethink and change our understanding of health. Health should no longer be conceived only in relation to human beings, but in unitary terms, as a dimension that connects humans, animals, plants, and the environment (holistic view, One Health). In general, alterations occurring in this articulated chain of life trigger a domino effect. Methodology In this paper, we review the One Health paradigm in the light (...) of the Covid-19 pandemic and distinguish two approaches within it that might be dubbed the Prudent one and the Radical one. Each approach is structured in three levels – epistemological, medical, and ethical. Results In this way, we show how we humans can better address the pandemic today and how, in the future, we can treat the whole living system better, by renouncing our anthropocentric perspective on health. Conclusion We hold that the Prudent approach can be very helpful, and we discuss the medical and ethical issues related to it. We also consider the Radical view and the epistemological turn it requires compared to the Prudent one. (shrink)

Four research strategies currently employed by mainstream psychologists in researching the experiences and behaviors of human subjects are criticized for diminishing the presence of subjectivity. Two perspectives that tend to exaggerate subjectivity are also criticized. A balanced approach to subjectivity is offered that: acknowledges a theoretical perspective that recognizes that there are invisible or nonsensorial characteristics of subjectivity that have to be theoretically appropriated, and that emphasizes the intersubjective dimension as being critical for properly assessing a balanced approach to human (...) subjectivity. A subject-dependent perspective that can efface its own interests is the attitude that is required for the achievement of objectivity. (shrink)

Historians of psychology are aware that, at its beginning, psychology had a choice with respect to the type of science it was going to be. It could be a content type psychology using the experimental method as proposed by Wundt or a basic empirical psychology founded on acts of consciousness explicated through critical analyses and careful descriptions of psychological phenomena as proposed by Brentano. As noted by Boring, because content was palpable and acts seemed elusive, Wundt’s experimental psychology prevailed. But (...) Watson believed that, as they were themselves still difficult to detect, the content of conscious processes were not sufficiently palpable. So, he advocated using behavior as the basis for experimental psychology. Yet palpability is essential for the experimental method, not for studying consciousness. Intentionality is the essence of consciousness, but it is not palpable, though detectable. In the teens and twenties of the 19th Century some German psychologists developed a type of bipartite psychology that included both acts and content, but their work remained isolated. (shrink)

In this article the phenomonelogical approach to qualitative research is compared with certain other qualitative approaches following other paradigms. The thesis is that a deepened understanding of phenomenological philosophy can provide the alternative framework that many of these authors have been seeking. The comparison with other approaches is made in terms of theoretical and methodical consistency. Theoretically, the argument is that the situation known as "mixed discourse" exists because practitioners have not sufficiently freed themselves from the criteria and practices of (...) traditional paradigms in which most qualitative researchers have been trained. The shift from the collection of numerical data to linguistic data takes place without appropriate shift in theoretical context. This state of affairs should be overcome in order to strengthen qualitative research. On the other hand, many qualitative researchers carry on practices that seem to be analogous to phenomenological prescriptions which are explicitly usually misunderstood or resisted when stated directly and generically. Thus, greater theoretical clarity and consistency as well as deeper reflection or better utilization of imaginative possibilities still seem to be called for in order to bring better theoretical conceptualization and more consistent practices to qualitative research. (shrink)

This article challenges the received view on the role of motivations in contemporary theories of social justice. Neo-Kantians argue that a theory of justice must be rooted in moral motivations of reasonableness, not rationality. Yet reasonableness is a demanding motivation, stipulating actions that people may not be able or willing to perform. This opens egalitarians like Rawls to the accusation of prescribing a political philosophy that is not 'followable'. The aim of this article is to explore the benefits for egalitarian (...) theories of justice of sanctioning both rational and reasonable motivations. Being vulnerable to self-regarding passions, people often fail to act upon the principles of fairness or impartiality, even when they are motivated by their sense of justice. The institutions of justice must therefore find a way to fortify and encourage the development of our sense of justice. This can be achieved by giving people a rational incentive to act upon and therefore engender their sense of justice. Finding ways to motivate people to act justly is the most pressing challenge facing egalitarian justice today. (shrink)

Phenomenology is a philosophy and it will always remain one. However, philosophies are also foundations for sciences and thus far in the West some form of empiricism or other has been the primary foundation for all sciences. Phenomenological philosophy has been developing for about a century now and is mature enough to serve as a basis for a science, especially the human sciences. This article articulates how phenomenological philosophy can serve as a foundation for the science of phenomenological psychology and (...) it indicates how its key concepts are better able to clarify and develop a proper understanding of human reality in a rigorous scientific way. (shrink)

This article is a response to Jonathan Smith’s attempted rebuttal to the accusations I had made that Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis’s methodical procedures did not meet generally accepted scientific criteria. Each of Smith’s defenses was carefully examined and found to be lacking. IPA’s claim to have roots in contemporary phenomenological philosophy was found to be seriously deficient and its claim that it has a basis in hermeneutics was superficial. IPA’s hesitation to proclaim fixed methods makes the possibility of replication of IPA (...) studies impossible and thus it makes the fulfillment of an important scientific criterion impossible. Its claim that its findings are subjective fails to meet the important scientific criterion of objectivity or even intersubjectivity. Consequently, the claims that I made in my original article were basically sustained and repeated. (shrink)

The aim of our paper is to show that there is a sense of body that is enactive in nature and that enables to capture the most primitive sense of self. We will argue that the body is primarily given to us as source or power for action, i.e., as the variety of motor potentialities that define the horizon of the world in which we live, by populating it with things at hand to which we can be directed and with (...) other bodies we can interact with. We will show that this sense of body as bodily self is, on the one hand, antecedent the distinction between sense of agency and sense of ownership, and, on the other, it enables and refines such distinction, providing a conceptual framework for the coherent interpretation of a variety of behavioral and neuropsychological data. We will conclude by positing that the basic experiences we entertain of our selves as bodily selves are from the very beginning driven by our interactions with other bodies as they are underpinned by the mirror mechanism. (shrink)

Our position is that psychology must have a sound basis if it is to develop properly. Due to the historical influences of the physical sciences on the development of psychology, we do not believe that psychology has been developing within a proper frame of reference and it is our opinion that a phenomenological perspective can provide a more adequate frame of reference. This is true for experimental psychology as well as clinical psychology and personality theory. However, in order to understand (...) the project of phenomenological psychology, it should be understood that a wholly different way of looking at psychological subject matter and methods is being suggested and thus, standard natural scientific criteria are not applicable. The lack of appreciation of this fact has led to innumerable misunderstandings in the past and still contributes to communication problems in the present. Consequently, after the clarification of key terms and after speaking to these difficulties of communication, the approach in this article was to speak from within the perspective of phenomenological psychology itself and we have tried to describe the general kinds of problems that spontaneously arose when we attempted to do research on psychological phenomena. The presence of these problems in no way altered our fundamental thesis that, in principle, it is possible to conduct precise and rigorous experiments within the framework of phenomenological psychology even though different means of executing precision and rigor will have to be invented. The specific challenge mentioned in this paper concerning the articulation of the praxis of phenomenological psychology was seen in the light of being able to conceive of new ways of approaching the phenomena of psychology, and this is essentially a theoretical task. (shrink)

Crucial in Girard's Mimetic Theory is the notion of mimetic desire, viewed as appropriative mimicry, the main source of aggressiveness and violence characterizing our species. The intrinsic value of the objects of our desire is not as relevant as the fact that the very same objects are the targets of others' desire. One could in principle object against such apparently negative and one-sided view of mankind, in general, and of mimesis, in particular. However, such argument would misrepresent Girard's thought. Girard (...) himself acknowledged that mimetic desire is also good in itself, because is at the basis of love, and even more importantly because it's the opening out of oneself. Starting from the notion of desire as openness to others I will discuss from a neuroscientific perspective the implications for social cognition of mimesis against the background of Girard's Mimetic Theory, an ideal starting framework to foster a multidisciplinary approach to the study of human intersubjectivity. It will be posited that a different, not mutually exclusive, account of mimesis leads to social identification henceforth to sociality. Mimesis is neither good or bad, but has the potentials to lead not only to mimetic violence but also to the most creative aspects of human cognition. Results of empirical research in neuroscience and developmental psychology show that such account of mimesis finds solid supporting evidence. It will be concluded that a thorough and biologically plausible account of human intersubjectivity requires the integration of both sides of mimesis. (shrink)

Foucault and Derrida react in two different ways to the new paradigm imposed by structuralism. Foucault uses structuralism to overcome phenomenology, in fact structuralism shows the naivety of phenomenology, in its claim to rely on conscience to constitute meaning. Instead, Derrida on the contrary immediately nurtures a certain distrust of structuralism, especially in its philosophical ambitions and uses the resources of phenomenology to criticize it, showing the metaphysical implications operating in it. We want to show how this opposing position is (...) generated by the specific way in which the two philosophers have responded to the open problems and bequeathed by Husserlian phenomenology. In particular, the theme of “passive genesis,” which was raised in the French debate by Tran-Duc-Thao and Merleau-Ponty, is central. In the first writings it emerges how Foucault has received Merleau-Ponty’s theses and it is precisely to overcome them that he inaugurates an archaeological analysis to try to distance himself from the normalizing anthropological discourse present in the passive synthesis. Derrida reads passive genesis in a radically different way from Merleau-Ponty (and therefore Foucault): the radical nature of Husserl’s phenomenology has opened a space to question the transcendental genesis of philosophical discourse and its possibility of transcending its historical, social and psychological genesis and therefore the sciences that preside over these dimensions. Consequently, showing the naivety of structuralism, Derrida’s research of the sixties is configured as post-structuralist. (shrink)

According to Williamson, our knowledge of metaphysical necessities and possibilities is just a “special case” of our knowledge of counterfactual conditionals. This subsumption of modal under counterfactual thinking mainly serves a methodological role: to sign the end of “philosophical exceptionalism” in modal epistemology, namely the view that our knowledge of metaphysical modalities is obtained by means of a special, dedicated, possibly a priori, capacity. In this paper, I show that a counterfactual approach to modal epistemology is structurally similar to more (...) traditional “conceivability-based” approaches. On this basis, I then show that the counterfactual approach suffers some of the same problems and I conclude that it is still based on a quite exceptional capacity to determine the truth of modal metaphysical claims. Given that, for Williamson, the epistemology of thought experiments should also be subsumed under the counterfactual approach, the problem I raise in this paper has consequences for his approach to thought experiments. (shrink)

In this article, I show that (i) from what I call a “Kripkean” account of the relations between conceivability and metaphysical necessities, (ii) an apparently plausible principle relating conceivability and epistemic modality, and (iii) the duality of epistemic modalities, one can show the utterly anti-Kripkean result that every metaphysical necessity is an epistemic necessity. My aim is to present and diagnose the problem and evaluate the costs of some possible Kripkean reactions. In particular, I will evaluate the consequences and theoretical (...) costs of rejecting the main ingredients of the argument, namely that we cannot genuinely conceive the negations of metaphysical necessities, that there is no postulated relation between conceivability and epistemic possibility (actually, between unconceivability and epistemic impossibility), and that epistemic possibility and necessity are not dualities. (shrink)

PurposeStarting from the end‐to‐end principle, a founding element of the internet's technical architecture, the paper aims to discuss its extension and effects at the social level. It shows how the internet moves power from governments and private entities to individual citizens, restructuring our societies and creating a new global stakeholder class – individual users of the internet. It connects the advent of this stakeholder class with a traditional principle of internet governance, “rough consensus”. It discusses advantages and risks of this (...) change, suggesting that this shift of power might be beneficial to solve deadlocks in the governance of global phenomena and to ensure that solutions pursue the global public interest. Finally, it discusses how this social evolution can be protected from opposing forces, countering the opinion that the freedom of the internet is intrinsic and not needing regulatory supports.Design/methodology/approachThe paper builds upon observation of case studies, such as the struggle between the industry and users over peer‐to‐peer music downloads, and upon the author's first‐hand experience in global internet governance processes.FindingsThe paper formalizes a social expression of the end‐to‐end principle and demonstrates the need for such principle to be recognized and protected by regulation, to preserve the social model described in the paper and its benefits.Originality/valueThe paper explores the connections between the technical, economic and social architectures of the global network, providing support for understanding the political dynamics of the internet and other global phenomena, and for designing effective governance processes to address them. (shrink)