Cristina Amoretti

University of Genoa | UNIGE · DAFIST - Philosophy Section

This paper depicts a Covid science case, that of the AstraZeneca Vaxzevria vaccine, with specific focus on what happened in Italy. Given that we believe acknowledging the role of non-evidential factors in medicine is an important insight into the recent philosophy of science, we illustrate how in the case of Vaxzevria, the interplay between facts,...

Most of the epidemiological models of the Covid-19 pandemic contain the reproduction number (R) as a parameter. In this article we focus on some shortcomings regarding its role in driving health policies and political decisions. First, we summarize what R is and what it is used for. Second, we introduce a three-question matrix for the evaluation of...

Most of the epidemiological models of the Covid-19 pandemic contain the reproduction number (R) as a parameter. In this article we focus on some shortcomings regarding its role in driving health policies and political decisions. First, we summarize what R is and what it is used for. Second, we introduce a three-question matrix for the evaluation of...

Most of the epidemiological models of the Covid-19 pandemic contain the reproduction number (R) as a parameter. In this article we focus on some shortcomings regarding its role in driving health policies and political decisions. First, we summarize what R is and what it is used for. Second, we introduce a three-question matrix for the evaluation of...

ITA: Nella pratica scientifica ci sono molte questioni di tipo concettuale che possono trarre vantaggio da uno specifico sguardo filosofico. Per esempio, qual è la differenza tra scienza e pseudoscienza? Le teorie scientifiche sono in grado di fornire una descrizione vera del mondo? In cosa consiste la spiegazione scientifica? In che misura l’impre...

The latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) included the Social (Pragmatic) Communication Disorder (SPCD) as a new mental disorder characterized by deficits in pragmatic abilities. Although the introduction of SPCD in the psychiatry nosography depended on a variety of reasons—including bridging a nosologi...

Ageing is one of the main risk factors for Covid-19. In this paper, we delineate four alternative conceptualisations of ageing, each of which determines different understandings of its causal role to the susceptibility to Covid-19 as well as to the severity of its symptoms and adverse health outcomes.

In this paper we focus on some new normativist positions and compare them with traditional ones. In so doing, we claim that if normative judgments are involved in determining whether a condition is a disease only in the sense identified by new normativisms, then disease is normative only in a weak sense, which must be distinguished from the strong...

This paper aims at considering the conceptual status of feeding and eating disorders (FEDs). Now that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) has changed the classification and some relevant criteria of FEDs, it is particularly relevant to evaluate their psychiatric framework and their status as mental disorders. I focus m...

In the ongoing pandemic, death statistics influence people’s feelings and government policy. But when does COVID-19 qualify as the cause of death? As philosophers of medicine interested in conceptual clarification, we address the question by analyzing the World Health Organization’s rules for the certification of death. We show that for COVID-19, W...

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it especially visible that mortality data are a key component of epidemiological models, being a single indicator that provides information about various health aspects, such as disease prevalence and effectiveness of interventions, and thus enabling predictions on many fronts. In this paper we illustrate the interrel...

Il presente contributo mostra come la certificazione di morte per Covid-19 sia un processo com-plesso che mette in gioco componenti convenzionali (tra cui le regole dell'Organizzazione mondiale della sanità), fattuali (lo stato effettivo del paziente e la capacità diagnostica del medico), nonché scelte di valore. Quest'ultima componente emerge dall...

In this paper, we discuss the conceptual structure of cocktail recipes. This topic involves engaging questions for philosophers and food theorists due to some peculiar characteristics of cocktail recipes, such as the fact that they are standardised by international associations but, nonetheless, vagueness in some elements of the recipes introduces...

Philosophers of medicine have formulated different accounts of the concept of disease. Which concept of disease one assumes has implications for what conditions count as diseases and, by extension, who may be regarded as having a disease (disease judgements) and for who may be accorded the social privileges and personal responsibilities associated...

In this paper I review how the notion of gender is understood in psychiatry, specifically in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). First, I examine the contraposition between sex and gender, and argue that it is still retained by DSM-5, even though with some caveats. Second, I claim that, even if ge...

Wines with geographical indication can be classified and represented by such features as designations of origin, producers, vintage years, alcoholic strength, and grape varieties; these features allow us to define wines in terms of a set of necessary and/or sufficient conditions. However, wines can also be identified by other characteristics, invol...

The general definition of mental disorder stated in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders seems to identify a mental disorder with a harmful dysfunction. However, the presence of distress or disability, which may be bracketed as the presence of harm, is taken to be merely usual, and thus not a necessary requ...

As it emerged from philosophical analyses and cognitive research, most concepts exhibit typicality effects, and resist to the efforts of defining them in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. This holds also in the case of many medical concepts. This is a problem for the design of computer science ontologies, since knowledge representation...

In this paper I focus on the connection between some of Stanley’s claims about propaganda and flawed ideologies, and the idea of the social situatedness or perspective-relativity of knowledge. More precisely, I will try to show how Stanley’s reflections on the nature of propaganda and its relationship with flawed ideologies push us towards the empi...

The general concept of mental disorder specified in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is definitional in character: a mental disorder might be identified with a harmful dysfunction. The manual also contains the explicit claim that each individual mental disorder should meet the requirements posed by the...

A quite radical way to look at psychiatry has been recently proposed by Dominic Murphy, who boldly defends a «strong medical model», seeing psychiatry as a branch of cognitive neuroscience. In the present paper, we overview and discuss Murphy's proposal focusing on three different but related theses. First, the claim that a mental disorder must be...

Ricevuto: 29 novembre 2017; accettato 16 aprile 2018 █ Riassunto In questo contributo analizzeremo il criterio del danno, presente nella definizione generale di di-sturbo mentale del DSM. La questione ha rilevanza sia da un punto di vista filosofico, perché il danno è una componente normativa e valoriale, non oggettiva, sia da un punto di vista cli...

In this first chapter we will briefly introduce some key topics that, perhaps in different ways, are part and parcel of both “traditional” philosophies of science and feminist philosophies of science: the situatedness of knowledge, the notion of relationality, the idea of conceiving sciences as sets of communal practices, the underrepresentation an...

This volume offers a meta-philosophical reflection on feminist philosophies of science. It emphasizes and discusses both the connections and differences between "traditional" philosophies of science and feminist philosophies of science. The collection systematically analyses feminist contributions to the various philosophies of specific sciences. E...

In this paper, we aim to criticise the dualistic approach of gender-specific medicine with regard to sex and gender. Firstly, we analyse the definition of intersexuality and reject the idea that it is a disease unto itself. Medicine classifies cases of intersexuality as disorders of sex development, because they do not conform to the dualist scheme...

Reason and rationality represent crucial elements of the self-image of human beings and have unquestionably been among the most debated issues in Western philosophy, dating from ancient Greece, through the Middle Ages, and to the present day. Many words and thoughts have already been spent trying to define the nature and standards of reason and rat...

Feminist standpoint epistemologies of the sciences must be acknowledged to have significant merits. However, as we have already argued, the very notion of standpoint – being intrinsically linked to the notions of better epistemic reliability, privilege, or advantage – brings with it an unavoidable dilemma: it forces its defenders to choose between...

This volume breaks new ground by bringing together a great variety of innovative contributions on triangulation, epistemology, and mind. The notion of "triangulation," developed by Donald Davidson (1917-2003) during the last two decades of his life, has changed our understanding of the relationship between subjective, intersubjective, and objective...

Gender-specific medicine is a recent branch of medicine that investigates the role of sex and/or gender in human health and its implications for research, teaching diagnosis, cures, therapies, and preventive strategies. Given the recent growth of this new sub-discipline, the chief aim of this paper is to evaluate, from an epistemological point of v...

Thanks to their heterogeneity, the nine essays in this volume offer a clear testimony of Donald Davidson's authority, and they undoubtedly show how much his work - even if it has raised many doubts and criticisms - has been, and still is, highly influential and significant in contemporary analytical philosophy for a wide range of subjects. Moreover...

The aim of this paper is to analyze some arguments against the coupling-constitution fallacy, one of the most common objection to the extended mind and the extended consciousness hypotheses. Along the way, I will try to emphasize two conflicting but essential requirements: on the one hand, many authors feel the need to identify an explicit criterio...

Despite the great interest for externalist oriented models of the mind (enactivism, the extended mind, various forms of externalism, embodiment, embeddedness), most current artificial agents are designed as though the mind "is still in the head". In other words, in the field of AI, the prevailing view still assumes that the relevant information is...