Toleration as the Balance Between Liberty and Security

The Journal of Ethics - Traditionally, an adequate strategy to deal with the tension between liberty and security has been toleration, for the latter allows the maximization of individual liberty...     

Behavioural Problems in Children with Headache and Maternal Stress: Is Children's Attachment Security a Protective Factor?

Headache is a potentially disabling condition involving enduring pain that negatively influences the quality of family life. Behavioural problems are more common in children with headache and are potentially associated with higher levels of parental stress. The aim of this study was to evaluate the extent to which children's behavioural problems were associated with maternal stress and how the child's perception of security in the maternal attachment relationship moderates this association. Seventy‐one school‐aged children with headache (headache group (HG), age M = 9.8 years old, SD = 1.3) and 71 children from a low‐risk normative population (control group (CG), age M = 9.2 years old, SD = 1) and their mothers were involved in the study. Mothers' reports of children's behavioural problems were associated with higher maternal stress in the caring task both in the HG and in the CG. Results also showed that the HG was more at risk for behavioural problems, whereas no difference between groups was detected for parenting stress and for attachment insecurity. In children with headache, perception of attachment security decreased the strength of the association between maternal stress and externalizing behavioural problems. Secure attachment may provide children with headache and their parents with support in managing the negative emotions that arise in the context of significant health issues. Implications for practice are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Information Channels and Biomarkers of Disease

Current research in molecular epidemiology uses biomarkers to model the different disease phases from environmental exposure, to early clinical changes, to development of disease. The hope is to get a better understanding of the causal impact of a number of pollutants and chemicals on several diseases, including cancer and allergies. In a recent paper Russo and Williamson (Med Stud, 2012) address the question of what evidential elements enter the conceptualisation and modelling stages of this type of biomarkers research. Recent research in causality has examined Ned Hall’s distinction between two concepts of causality: production and dependence (Hall in Causation and counterfactuals. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 225–276, 2004). In another recent paper, Illari (Philos Technol, p 20, 2011b) examined the relatively under-explored production approach to causality, arguing that at least one job of an account of causal production is to illuminate our inferential practices concerning causal linking. Illari argued that an informational account solves existing problems with traditional accounts. This paper follows up this previous work by investigating the nature of the causal links established in biomarkers research. We argue that traditional accounts of productive causality are unable to provide a sensible account of the nature of the causal link in biomarkers research, while an informational account is very promising.     

Interpreting Causality in the Health Sciences

We argue that the health sciences make causal claims on the basis of evidence both of physical mechanisms, and of probabilistic dependencies. Consequently, an analysis of causality solely in terms of physical mechanisms or solely in terms of probabilistic relationships, does not do justice to the causal claims of these sciences. Yet there seems to be a single relation of cause in these sciences—pluralism about causality will not do either. Instead, we maintain, the health sciences require a theory of causality that unifies its mechanistic and probabilistic aspects. We argue that the epistemic theory of causality provides the required unification.     

Going Rural and Urban at Once: Reflections from the Roman Sikh Context

This article highlights some considerations emerging from an ongoing ethnographic research I am carrying out at the local gurdwara of Fiumicino, in the outer edges of Rome, and in two ashrams owned by Italian converted Sikhs, which are also hosting some Sikh migrants. These sites seem to question the separation of urban from rural contexts, since they both act as community centres for Sikhs living in the town and neighbouring villages and as places of residence from where people commute for professional purposes. In this perspective, the ‘Sikh case’ is a good example to further reflect on the changing urban shape of Rome, which appears to have been constantly transforming itself over the last decades with the increasing expansion of the suburban areas; such restructuring has also influenced the way migrants choose where to work and live.     

“I Hope I Will Be Able to Go Back to My Home City”: Narratives of Suffering and Survival of Children in Palestine

Psychological Studies - In light of critical psychology and socio-constructionist theories, the present work aims at analyzing attitudes of political agency, psychological adjustment to trauma, and...