A pragmatist approach to clinical ethics support: overcoming the perils of ethical pluralism.Giulia Inguaggiato,Suzanne Metselaar,Rouven Porz &Guy Widdershoven -2019 -Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 22 (3):427-438.detailsIn today’s pluralistic society, clinical ethics consultation cannot count on a pre-given set of rules and principles to be applied to a specific situation, because such an approach would deny the existence of different and divergent backgrounds by imposing a dogmatic and transcultural morality. Clinical ethics support (CES) needs to overcome this lack of foundations and conjugate the respect for the difference at stake with the necessity to find shared and workable solutions for ethical issues encountered in clinical practice. We (...) argue that a pragmatist approach to CES, based on the philosophical theories of William James, John Dewey, and Charles Sanders Peirce, can help to achieve the goal of reaching practical solutions for moral problems in the context of today’s clinical environment, characterized by ethical pluralism. In this article, we outline a pragmatist theoretical framework for CES. Furthermore, we will show that moral case deliberation, making use of the dilemma method, can be regarded an example of a pragmatist approach to CES. (shrink)
Scales and Hierachies in Asymptotically Safe Quantum Gravity: A Review.Giulia Gubitosi,Chris Ripken &Frank Saueressig -2019 -Foundations of Physics 49 (9):972-990.detailsThe asymptotic safety program strives for a consistent description of gravity as a non-perturbatively renormalizable quantum field theory. In this framework the gravitational interactions are encoded in a renormalization group flow connecting the quantum gravity regime at trans-Planckian scales to observable low-energy physics. Our proceedings reviews the key elements underlying the predictive power of the construction and summarizes the state-of-the-art in determining its free parameters. The explicit construction of a realistic renormalization group trajectory describing our world shows that the flow (...) possesses two characteristic scales. The Planck scale where Newton’s coupling G becomes constant is generated dynamically. The freeze-out of the cosmological constant \ occurs at a terrestrial scale fixed by the observed value of the dimensionless product \. We also review the perspectives of determining the free parameters of the theory through cosmologicalobservations. (shrink)
La théorie épicurienne du vivant: l'âme avec le corps.Giulia Scalas -2023 - Paris: Classiques Garnier.details"Un monde fait d'atomes et de vide, des phénomènes réductibles aux mouvements et aux formes des atomes : ce sont là deux aspects bien connus de la philosophie matérialiste et mécaniste d'Épicure. Une telle conception de l'univers peut-elle cependant rendre véritablement compte de l'être vivant et de sa physiologie? Comment un rassemblement de matière aléatoirement combinée produirait-il un organisme? Et si le vivant est une sorte de mécanisme, qu'est-ce qui différencie un mécanisme vital des autres? L'ouvrage examine de façon systématique (...) les réponses épicuriennes à ces questions en s'attachant notamment à les replacer dans un dialogue avec les philosophes antérieurs, principalement Démocrite et Aristote."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)
The Contribution of Moral Case Deliberation to Teaching RCR to PhD Students.Giulia Inguaggiato,Krishma Labib,Natalie Evans,Fenneke Blom,Lex Bouter &Guy Widdershoven -2023 -Science and Engineering Ethics 29 (2):1-18.detailsTeaching responsible conduct of research (RCR) to PhD students is crucial for fostering responsible research practice. In this paper, we show how the use of Moral Case Deliberation—a case reflection method used in the Amsterdam UMC RCR PhD course—is particularity valuable to address three goals of RCR education: (1) making students aware of, and internalize, RCR principles and values, (2) supporting reflection on good conduct in personal daily practice, and (3) developing students’ dialogical attitude and skills so that they can (...) deliberate on RCR issues when they arise. What makes this method relevant for RCR education is the focus on values and personal motivations, the structured reflection on real experiences and dilemmas and the cultivation of participants’ dialogical skills. During these structured conversations, students reflect on the personal motives that drive them to adhere to the principles of good science, thereby building connections between those principles and their personal values and motives. Moreover, by exploring personal questions and dilemmas related to RCR, they learn how to address these with colleagues and supervisors. The reflection on personal experiences with RCR issues and questions combined with the study of relevant normative frameworks, support students to act responsibly and to pursue RCR in their day-to-day research practice in spite of difficulties and external constraints. (shrink)
Psychotherapy and Existential Therapy.PaulColaizzi -2002 -Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 33 (1):73-112.detailsThe aim of this essay is to provide an overview of how Existential Therapy is fundamentally different from every kind of psychotherapy, including existential psychotherapy. Existential Therapy is no kind of psychotherapy. Confusing the practicing of the two can harm people and thoughts. Existential Therapy is therapy for existence, whereas psychotherapy is therapy for life, a remedy for the problems of living. The adequate distinction between life and existence is an issue that shamefully has gone unaddressed in existential philosophy, existential (...) psychology and research, and existential psychotherapy. This essay describes the main differences between life and existence, and then takes a look at what is healthy for existence versus what is healthy for life. What is found to be most unhealthy for existence is metacarnalizing, recoiling from carnal limits. Metacarnalizing is a primary existential reversal. Existential therapy unreverses existential reversals. Existential therapy unreverses metacarnalizing. Existential therapy essentially de-metacarnalizes. The issue of metacarnalizing and de-metacarnalizing is absolutely alien to all forms of psychotherapy for life. The essay is followed by an appendix, "An Existential View of Physics," which mainly describes the metacarnalizing basis of physics throughout its history. (shrink)
Model Building and Problem Solving: A Case from Libor Market Derivatives.Giulia Miotti -2019 -Topoi 40 (4):1-9.detailsIn my paper I focus on the growth of knowledge in finance from an heuristic viewpoint and I propose the analysis of two different knowledge-advancing strategies usually adopted at the frontier of knowledge, i.e. problem-solving and model-building. I show how these two strategies, even though both effective in the short-run, nonetheless provide descriptions of the target object and which are different in their descriptive and knowledge-advancing depth. In order to do so, I propose a case study borrowed from the modelling (...) activities in the Libor market. (shrink)
Age‐Specific Effects of Lexical–Semantic Networks on Word Production.Giulia Krethlow,Raphaël Fargier &Marina Laganaro -2020 -Cognitive Science 44 (11):e12915.detailsThe lexical–semantic organization of the mental lexicon is bound to change across the lifespan. Nevertheless, the effects of lexical–semantic factors on word processing are usually based on studies enrolling young adult cohorts. The current study aims to investigate to what extent age‐specific semantic organization predicts performance in referential word production over the lifespan, from school‐age children to older adults. In Study 1, we conducted a free semantic association task with participants from six age‐groups (ranging from 10 to 80 years old) (...) to compute measures that capture age‐specific properties of the mental lexicon across the lifespan. These measures relate to lifespan changes in the Available Richness of the mental lexicon and in the lexical–semantic Network Prototypicality of concrete words. In Study 2, we used the collected data to predict performance in a picture‐naming task on a new group of participants within the same age‐groups as for Study 1. The results show that age‐specific semantic Available Richness and Network Prototypicality affect word production speed while the semantic variables collected only in young adults do not. A richer and more prototypical semantic network across subjects from a given age‐group is associated with faster word production speed. The current results indicate that age‐specific semantic organization is crucial to predict lexical–semantic behaviors across the lifespan. Similarly, these results also provide cues to the understanding of the lexical–semantic properties of the mental lexicon and to lexical selection in referential tasks. (shrink)
Changing appearances : a minimalist approach.Giulia Martina -2019 - Dissertation, University of WarwickdetailsIn this thesis, I defend a minimalist approach to perceptual appearances. On this approach, we aim at accounting for the ways things appear in perception compatibly with a view on which perceptual experience presents us with objective and perceiver-independent properties. The phenomenon of changing appearances has been taken to show that a minimalist approach is not viable. According to the Argument from Changing Appearances, in order to account for the ways things appear to subjects in certain conditions, we need to (...) appeal to special properties in addition to the objective and perceiver-independent properties that we are committed to on independent grounds. I focus on a variety of cases of changing appearances – three visual cases and two olfactory cases – and discuss how the minimalist can resist the Argument. Each case presents a somewhat different challenge, allowing us to explore different strategies that the minimalist can appeal to. (shrink)
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The problem with reproductive freedom. Procreation beyond procreators’ interests.Giulia Cavaliere -2020 -Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 23 (1):131-140.detailsReproductive freedom plays a pivotal role in debates on the ethics of procreation. This moral principle protects people’s interests in procreative matters and allows them discretion over whether to have children, the number of children they have and, to a certain extent, the type of children they have. Reproductive freedom’s theoretical and political emphasis on people’s autonomy and well-being is grounded in an individual-centred framework for discussing the ethics of procreation. It protects procreators’ interests and significantly reduces the permissible grounds (...) for interference by third parties. In this article I show that procreative decisions have far-reaching effects on the composition and size of the population. The upshot of considering these effects allows for the appreciation of the inadequacy of a framework that solely considers individual (i.e. procreators’) interests to discuss the ethics of procreation. To address such inadequacy, I assess costs and benefits of past and present proposals to reflect on procreation in such a way as to consider its far-reaching effects. I conclude by arguing that reproductive freedom should be defended as an imperfect but instrumentally necessary tool. This framing would enable those participating in debates on the ethics of procreative decisions to work towards an ethical framework that accounts for the cumulative effects of these decisions. (shrink)
What is an affective artifact? A further development in situated affectivity.Giulia Piredda -2020 -Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 19 (3):549-567.detailsIn this paper I would like to propose the notion of “affective artifact”, building on an analogy with theories of cognitive artifacts and referring to the development of a situated affective science. Affective artifacts are tentatively defined as objects that have the capacity to alter the affective condition of an agent, and that in some cases play an important role in defining that agent’s self. The notion of affective artifacts will be presented by means of examples supported by empirical findings, (...) by discussing a tentative definition and classification, and by considering several related but differing notions. Within the framework of situated affectivity, the notion of affective artifacts will represent a further step in the enterprise of understanding how the environment helps us scaffold our affective processes. I will conclude that affective artifacts play a key role in the philosophy of cognitive science, the philosophy of technology and in the debate about the self. (shrink)
Idee estetiche e bello di natura in Kant.Giulia Milli -2024 -Il Pensiero 2:179-195.detailsThe preeminence of beauty of nature over beauty of art arises as a key point in Kantian aesthetics. This preeminence is justified in the possibility of reading beautiful nature from the perspective of a purposive arrangement for human being’s moral realisation, mediating between the sensible and the supersensible. Based on this premise, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between natural beauty and aesthetic ideas by assuming that the latter are the product of genius and should therefore be traced back (...) to artistic beauty. The relationship between natural beauty and aesthetic ideas deserves attention in light of Kant’s problematic definition of beauty in general (both natural and artistic) as an expression of aesthetic ideas, a definition that risks blurring the line between natural beauty and artistic beauty. Therefore, I would like to suggest that this definition of beauty should be interpreted broadly and non-literally: beauty and aesthetic ideas, while having characteristics in common – such as the free character of imagination – also have differences that exclude overlapping or interdependence between them. (shrink)
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Green Breaks: The Restorative Effect of the School Environment’s Green Areas on Children’s Cognitive Performance.Giulia Amicone,Irene Petruccelli,Stefano De Dominicis,Alessandra Gherardini,Valentina Costantino,Paola Perucchini &Marino Bonaiuto -2018 -Frontiers in Psychology 9.detailsRestoration 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)
The Task of Political Philosophy.Giulia Bistagnino -2013 -European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 9 (1):14-24.detailsIn Th e Order of Public Reason, Gerald Gaus defends an innovative and sophisticated convergence version of public reason liberalism. Th e crucial concept of his argumentative framework is that of “social morality”, intended as the set of rules apt to organize how individuals can make moral demands over each other. I claim that Gaus’s characterization of social morality and its rules is unstable because it rests on a rejection of the distinction between the normative and the descriptive. I argue (...) that such rejection is motivated by certain practical aims Gaus wishes his theory to achieve. His method and his idea that morality needs to be understood both as the dictate of impartial reasoning and as a social and historical fact come from the need for his theory to perform the task of settling the problem of order. I discuss Gaus’s philosophical attitude and, finally, distinguishing between “therapeutic” and “evaluative” approaches, I present some points of discussion for understanding the role and scope of political philosophy in general. (shrink)
Lessons from Blur.Giulia Martina -2024 -Erkenntnis 89 (8):3229-3246.detailsThis paper is a contribution to the philosophical debate on visual blur from a relationalist perspective. At the same time, it offers a methodological reflection on the adequacy of explanations of phenomenal similarities and differences among perceptual experiences. The debate on seeing blurrily has been shaped by two implicit assumptions concerning our explanations of differences and similarities between experiences of seeing blurrily and other experiences. I call those assumptions into question, and argue that we do not need to provide a (...) unified explanation of the character of blurry experiences for our account to be adequate. The diversity of blurry experiences supports a different, pluralist approach to explanations of how things appear to subjects. (shrink)
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Diabolical devil’s advocates and the weaponization of illocutionary force.Giulia Terzian &María Inés Corbalán -2024 -Philosophical Quarterly 74 (4):1311–1337.detailsA standing presumption in the literature is that devil’s advocacy is an inherently beneficial argumentative move; and that those who take on this role in conversation are paradigms of argumentative virtue. Outside academic circles, however, devil’s advocacy has acquired something of a notorious reputation: real-world conversations are rife with self-proclaimed devil’s advocates who are anything but virtuous. Motivated by this observation, in this paper we offer the first in-depth exploration of non-ideal devil’s advocacy. We draw on recent analyses of two (...) better known discursive practices—mansplaining and trolling—to illuminate some of the signature traits of vicious devil’s advocacy. Building on this comparative examination, we show that all three practices trade on a manipulation of illocutionary force; and we evaluate their respective options for securing plausible deniability. (shrink)
What is animal communication?Giulia Palazzolo -forthcoming -Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy.detailsIt is a common intuition that animals communicate among themselves and even with us humans. But what is animal communication? Our intuition suggests that we can apply the same concept of communication to both animals and humans. But is there a theoretical account of communication that can vindicate this intuition? And if there is, what is the payoff of such an account? These are the questions that I address in this paper. I argue that vindicating the intuition that animals communicate (...) like humans do is more challenging than one might initially think. I show that the dominant accounts of animal and human communication in the literature (i.e. biological, information and Gricean) are neither designed nor able to vindicate this intuition. I then derive two basic constraints on what should count as a plausible Maximally Unified Account of animal and human communication (MUA), i.e. an account that is able to vindicate the intuition, discussing two accounts that meet these conditions: Millikan’s theory of intentional signs (2004; 2017) and Green’s theory of organic meaning (2019). Finally, I assess the utility of an MUA such as Millikan’s and Green’s in the studies of animal and human communication. (shrink)
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Frege pipes up.Giulia Felappi -forthcoming -Analysis.detailsMartone has recently built a case aimed at showing that any attempt to exploit the ingredients of the semantic machinery of demonstratives to solve Frege’s Puzzle seems hopeless. In this reply, I show that Martone’s case seems unable to shatter our hopes.
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Indeterminacy and Normativity.Giulia Pravato -2022 -Erkenntnis 87 (5):2119-2141.detailsThis paper develops and defends the view that substantively normative uses of words like “good”, “right” and “ought” are irresolvably indeterminate: any single case of application is like a borderline case for a vague or indeterminate term, in that the meaning-fixing facts, together with the non-linguistic facts, fail to determine a truth-value for the target sentence in context. Normative claims, like vague or indeterminate borderline claims, are not meaningless, though. By making them, the speaker communicates information about the precisifications that (...) s/he accepts. The analogy with vague/indeterminate language, I argue, lays out a new and interesting foundation for a subjectivist approach to normativity. (shrink)
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Introduction: Affectivity and Technology - Philosophical Explorations.Giulia Piredda,Richard Heersmink &Marco Fasoli -2024 -Topoi 43 (3):1-6.detailsIn connecting embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive (4E) cognition with affectivity and emotions, the framework of “situated affectivity” has recently emerged. This framework emphasizes the interactions between the emoter and the environment in the unfolding of our affective lives (Colombetti and Krueger 2015; Griffiths and Scarantino 2009; Piredda 2022; Stephan and Walter 2020). In the last decades, there has also been a growing interest in the philosophical analysis of technology and artifacts (Houkes and Vermaas 2010; Margolis and Laurence 2007; Preston (...) 2022). The aim of this special issue is to foster the interaction between philosophical reflections on affectivity and those on technology, further developing this fruitful borderland (Clowes et al. 2021; Colombetti 2020; Fasoli 2018; Krueger and Osler 2019; Heersmink 2018; Piredda and Candiotto 2019; Piredda 2020; Viola 2021). -/- . (shrink)
Overcoming the Past-endorsement Criterion: Toward a Transparency-Based Mark of the Mental.Giulia Piredda &Michele Di Francesco -2020 -Frontiers in Psychology 11.detailsStarting from the discussion on the original set of criteria advanced by Clark and Chalmers (1998) meant to avoid the overextension of the mind, or the so-called “cognitive bloat”, we will sketch our solution to the problem of criteria evaluation, by connecting it to the search for a mark of the mental. Our proposal is to argue for a “weak conscientialist” mark of the mental based on transparent access, which vindicates the role of consciousness in defining what is mental without, (...) however, identifying the mental with the conscious. This renovated link between mind and consciousness, spelled out through the concept of transparency, further develops some of our previous work on the topic (Di Francesco 2007; Di Francesco and Piredda 2012) and is partially inspired by Horgan and Kriegel (2008). (shrink)
Il Kant dei cartesiani. A proposito del convegno del 2004.Giulia Belgioioso -2022 -Kant E-Prints 17 (1):132-142.detailsNel 2004, in occasione del secondo bicentenario della morte di Kant, i cartesiani tornarono nelle fila dell'interpretazione che Ferdinand Alquié aveva opposto a quella di Alexis Philolenko. È possibile indagare su “Descartes est en Kant” per il fatto che il filosofo di Konisberg, come Cartesio prima di lui, poneva l'essere al di là della conoscenza. Certamente il percorso seguito fu un altro: Kant lo fece ponendo la condizione dei limiti della conoscenza; Cartesio affermando il carattere incomprensibile dell'infinito. Inutile, tuttavia, cercare (...) citazioni da Cartesio in Kant Werke, ed è impossibile risalire a tesi o concetti di scrittura cartesiana che possano essere identificati come tali. Così, i cartesiani, nel 2004, cercavano ciò che c'è in “Descartes est en Kant” al di là del confronto tra dottrine isolate, poiché i testi non consentono di stabilire affiliazioni dirette (come volevano i neokantiani): l'affiliazione di Cartesio a Kant trova nella co-appartenenza dei due filosofi allo stesso orizzonte di problemi. Sulla scia di Alquié, l'obiettivo dei cartesiani era »finalement, de reconnaître dans quelle mesure Kant renouvelle le moment cartésien, en sorte que, lorsque Kant pense, Descartes s'avance encore, caché. Caché en Kant, agissant encore sous la figure de Kant». (shrink)
Dimensions of shared agency: a study on joint, collective and group intentional action.Giulia Lasagni -2022 - Wilmington, Delaware: Vernon Press.details"Dimensions of Shared Agency" investigates the way in which standard philosophical accounts have been dealing with the issue of collective actions. In particular, the book focuses on the 'Big Five' of analytical social ontology and their accounts of shared/collective intentions and actions. Through systematic readings of different positions in the debate, the author proposes original ways of analyzing and classifying current theories of shared agency according to whether they advance a member-level or a group-level account of shared agency. While member-level (...) accounts are theories of shared agency based on individuals' attitudes and actions, group-level accounts give attention to the group of individuals considered as a whole, i.e., as an agent itself. Criticism arises against the idea that the Big Five have proposed stable group-level accounts suitable for explaining the case of shared agency as a group-level phenomenon. The widespread tendency in the debate is to endorse a perspective called holistic individualism, which maintains that high-level explanations are objective even though social facts are ontologically reducible to facts about individuals. Lasagni argues that as long as holistic individualism is held, the GLA is reducible to the MLA because holistic individualism upholds ontological individualism based on a deep individualistic premise, fixing the special status of individual agents as natural persons. The premise makes the claim to treat groups as agents contradictory to the general framework of the theory. This book profiles an alternative interpretation according to which agency should be considered as a functional kind, which is equally instantiated by different systems, such as individual human beings and organized social groups. In this way, the author claims, the reduction of the social can be avoided. "Dimensions of Shared Agency" will be of interest to doctoral students, researchers, and scholars interested in social ontology and the philosophy of the social sciences. It can also be utilised as supplementary reading or an introduction to philosophy students and scholars who are first approaching the philosophy of collective intentionality and shared agency. (shrink)