Violence against women is a growing health problem, especially when perpetrated in intimate relationships. Despite increasing attention, there is little comparative evidence on the different types of violence involved and there is a paucity of research on sexual femicides. This study examines cases of violence against women in northern Italy, focusing on sexual and non-sexual femicides and comparing them with rape that does not result in femicides. The sample included 500 women who were victims of sexual and non-sexual femicides, and (...) of rape. Results show sexual femicides mostly involved unknown victims or women who were prostitutes. Sexual femicidal offenders used improper weapons to kill their victims, acted in secluded locations, and fled the crime scene; their crime was more likely the result of predatory intentions, with antisociality and sexual deviance being the most significant factors related to this type of femicide. The criminal and violent pattern that characterized sexual femicides in this study shared significant similarities with the pattern of violence involved in rape. Rape victims were in fact mostly unknown, or involved in a brief relationship with their killer. When the victim was known it was more likely that the abuse occurred at home and in front of the woman’s children. Rapists were often under the effect of alcohol or drugs. Non-sexual femicides mainly involved known victims, and they were more often committed in the context of domestic disputes. It was not seldom that the long relationship between the victim and perpetrator was likely to be characterized by contentiousness, suggesting that the woman was often victim of an oppressive climate of emotional tension and domination. Morbid jealousy contributed to aggravating the tone of a controlling relationship. Non-sexual femicides bore more similarities to cases of rape within the pattern of intimate partner violence. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for prevention and intervention. (shrink)

A comprehensive interpretation of the "Scienza Nuova" and of the ways in which Vico managed to present his essentially naturalistic philosophy in a form acceptable within the ecclesiastical climate of 18th century Italy.

The author Gino Capozzi, founder of the institutionalist napolitan phenomenological school, includes an original and promising exposition based on the contributions of praxeology and praxeologism, in relation to being and what should be the reality of human rights, their genesis, the development of..

It is now generally accepted that the motor system is not purely dedicated to the control of behavior, but also has cognitive functions. Mirror neurons have provided a new perspective on how sensory information regarding others’ actions and gestures is coupled with the internal cortical motor representation of them. This coupling allows an individual to enrich his interpretation of the social world through the activation of his own motor representations. Such mechanisms have been highly preserved in evolution as they are (...) present in humans, apes and monkeys. Recent neuroanatomical data showed that there are two different connectivity patterns in mirror neuron networks in the macaque: one is concerned with sensorimotor transformation in relation to reaching and hand grasping within the traditional parietal-premotor circuits; the second one is linked to the mouth/face motor control and the new data show that it is connected with limbic structures. The mouth mirror sector seems to be wired not only for ingestive behaviors but also for orofacial communicative gestures and vocalizations. Notably, the hand and mouth mirror networks partially overlap, suggesting the importance of hand-mouth synergies not only for sensorimotor transformation, but also for communicative purposes in order to better convey and control social signals. (shrink)

In The Cultural Roots of Strategic Intelligence, Gino LaPaglia argues that Strategic Intelligence is a core dynamic of human rationality and that it has always been foundational for creating meaning in society. For thousands of years the identity of the heroic strategist has provided hope for human life lived in extremis.

In _The Enigma of Art. On the provenance of Artistic Creation_ Gino Zaccaria offers a meditation on art in light of its ancient Greek sense and of its task inaugurated by “artist-thinkers” like Cézanne, Boccioni and van Gogh.

In this paper, I establish a reconstruction of the tensions between the theological and secular foundations of the concept of property during the Middle Ages. What I propose is that this tension is represented as well by tensions between the power of the church and monarchical power, which leads, in turn, to the secularization processes that we can find as a basis for modernity. In that sense, from this tension also arises the basis for the modern capitalist conception of property.

Archibald Pitcairne’s medical writings are inspired by Newton’s Principia mathematica, as the Scottish physician assumed Newtonian physics as a model for scientific inquiry that should be applied to other branches of natural philosophy, including physiology and pathology. The ideal of a comprehensive mathematical science was very appealing to late seventeenth-century intellectuals, including physicians. This essay focuses on how Pitcairne tried to implement these ideas. In particular, I argue that Pitcairne’s medical thinking is based on three philosophical assumptions: first, a methodological (...) assumption, for which medical knowledge should be sought in the form of a deductive system; second, an epistemological assumption, that is, that our knowledge of physiological processes is sound only when we reduce them to a set of mathematical laws; and, third, an ontological assumption that identifies blood as the substance on which animal life most directly depends. I also suggest that such ideas should be studied against the backdrop of Pitcairne’s general mindset, including his personal sympathy for political conservativism. I further argue that his insistence on the reduction of natural processes to mathematical relations and his search for the universal order of nature also connect to his religious and political ideals. (shrink)

En contra de la interpretación de Anselm Jappe del fetichismo de la mercancía como contradicción principal del capitalismo, sostengo que su obra adolece de un sobredimensionamiento del fetichismo que resulta determinista y reduccionista, y que comprende la contradicción en la obra de Marx de un modo simplista. Ofrezco, en cambio, una interpretación del fetichismo que parte de la noción de que la mercancía es una cristalización de las relaciones sociales de las sociedades capitalistas junto con una defensa de la contradicción (...) como motor dinámico del capitalismo antes que como aspecto paradójico del mismo. (shrink)

It has been shown that quantum mechanics in its orthodox interpretation violates four different formulations of causality principle endowed with empirical meaning. The present work aims to highlight how even a realistic non-standard interpretation of the theory conflicts with causality in its Cartesian formulation of the principle of the non-inferiority of causes over effects. Such an interpretation, which attributes some form of weak physical reality to the wave function (called empty wave, regarded as a zero-energy wave-like phenomenon), is a sort (...) of precursor of the more recent so-called wavefunction realism. We also discuss a more radical realistic interpretation according to which physical properties can also be assigned to non-metaphysical relative nothing, seen as the simple absence of a particle such as a photon, but not of its corresponding state (no-photon), which is considered real. By interpreting the wave function collapse as a consequence of an interaction with empty waves or of a detection of the no-photon, we will highlight how more real physical effects can derive from lower causes, including relative nothing. Finally, we will show how these interpretations, while violating Cartesian causality in its two variants, do not seem to affect the validity of the principle of a rational explanation that nothing can derive from (absolute) nothing, which does not seem satisfied by the orthodox interpretation. (shrink)

Describing the will and the extent of its causal power over human actions, Joseph Priestley famously compared the mind to a stone, as both are subject to deterministic laws: “Though an inclination...