il dovere di verita' e completezza nel processo civile

la tesi qui presentata si propone di indagare sull'esistenza, nel processo civile italiano, del dovere di verità e completezza. si tratta di un argomento di grande interesse vista la sua attinenza a profili e principi fondamentali del processo civile

Matrigel plug assay: evaluation of the angiogenic response by reverse transcription-quantitative PCR

The subcutaneous Matrigel plug assay in mice is a method of choice for the in vivo evaluation of pro- and anti-angiogenic molecules. However, quantification of the angiogenic response in the plug remains a problematic task. Here we report a simple, rapid, unbiased and reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) method to investigate the angiogenic process occurring in the Matrigel plug in response to fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF2). To this purpose, a fixed amount of human cells were added to harvested plugs at the end of the in vivo experimentation as an external cell tracer. Then, mRNA levels of the panendothelial cell markers murine CD31 and vascular endothelial-cadherin were measured by species-specific RT-qPCR analysis of the total RNA and data were normalized for human GAPDH or b-actin mRNA levels. RTqPCR was used also to measure the levels of expression in the plug of various angiogenesis/inflammation-related genes. The procedure allows the simultaneous, quantitative evaluation of the newly-formed endothelium and of nonendothelial/ inflammatory components of the cellular infiltrate in the Matrigel implant, as well as the expression of genes involved in the modulation of the angiogenesis process. Also, the method consents the quantitative assessment of the effect of local or systemic administration of anti-angiogenic compounds on the neovascular response triggered by FGF

How far can genealogies affect the space of reasons? : vindication, justification and excuses

Pragmatic vindicatory genealogies provide both a cause and a rationale and can thus affect the space of reasons. But how far is the space of reasons affected by this kind of genealogical argument? What normative and evaluative implications do these arguments have? In this paper, I unpack this issue into three different sub-questions and explain what kinds of reasons they provide, for whom are these reasons, and for what. In relation to this final sub-question I argue, most importantly, that these arguments are ambiguous about what they give us reasons for, meaning that they can be interpreted both as justifications for recognizing the normative standing of certain norms, values, and practices - and thus for living by them - and as excuses for those that do so. I illustrate this point by reference to the genealogical vindication of honor cultures, showing how the vindicatory argument can illuminate such case as one of excusing moral ignorance. Drawing on legal theory and moral philosophy, I show that different evaluative and normative implications hang on the result of the interpretation as either justification or excuse, and show that this ambiguity is a virtue rather than a limitation

“When in Rome...”: on the Authority of Social Norms

The debate on moral norms and standards is as old as philosophy itself. But social norms and conventions have finally started attracting their fair share of attention too. Their authority is the topic of two sophisticated books published in the last few years, namely David Owens’ Bound by Convention (2022) and Laura Valentini’s Morality and Socially Constructed Norms (2023). In this essay, I present the theoretical outlooks of these two books and then proceed to criticize both. First, I point out a small but significant flaw in Valentini’s ontological account of social norms, according to which such norms obtain in virtue of the beliefs and commitments of rule-followers. More specifically, I argue that such an account – to make sense – should include a reference to the desires of rule followers too. Then, I develop Valentini’s crucial criticism against Owens, according to which Owens’ account cannot make sense of the obligatory character of certain social norms. In this respect I argue that Owens’ answer to such criticism fails in a way that reveals even deeper flaws than Valentini recognizes

CRABWALK: APPLYING PRAGMATIC GENEALOGY TO CONTEXTUALIST POLITICAL THEORY

Contextualist approaches to political theory share a common feature: they include statements about contextual facts in the justification of normative political judgments. This feature exposes them to the problem of critical distance, i.e. to the worry that an approach including facts about the context to be evaluated in the justification of the judgments evaluating it may entail a form of unduly conservatism or status quo bias. Is it thus possible to increase contextualism’s critical purchase without giving up its distinctiveness, i.e. without relying on external and fact-independent normative resources but remaining into the context? I argue that this is possible, and that genealogy makes a salient contribution in making it so. More specifically, I argue that pragmatic genealogy – the hybrid functionalist approach to genealogy pioneered by Bernard Williams, Edward Craig and Miranda Fricker – can provide crucial insights about the normative standing of contextual facts while steering clear from the genetic fallacy. My argument unfolds across three papers. In the first two papers, I put the method to test, showing that it can bring about different results. In the third paper, I take stock of the issue offering an account of the logic and practical import of the kind of genealogical arguments made in the previous two, namely the mix of justification and explanation known as vindicatory explanations

Political normativity… all-things-considered

The idea of a distinctively political normativity came under sustained fire lately. Here I formulate, test, and reject a moderate and promising way of conceiving it. According to this conception, political normativity is akin to the kind of normativity at play in all-things-considered judgments, i.e., those judgments that weight together all the relevant reasons to determine what practical rationality as such requires to do. I argue that even when we try to conceive political normativity in this all-things-considered way, and even when we do not concede from the get-go that moral reasons necessarily trump or override normative reasons of a different kind, political normativity is still reducible to morality, because the peculiar content of all-things-considered political oughts can be explained by the interplay of general moral principles and contextual facts that do not obtain exclusively in political scenarios. If my arguments are correct, I provide political realists with one more reason to withdraw from the metaethical battle over the idea of a distinctively political normativity and show that the moralist approach is defensible against a prima facie promising, but ultimately untenable, alternative

Genealogical Solutions to the Problem of Critical Distance: Political Theory, Contextualism and the case of Punishment in Transitional Scenarios

In this paper, I argue that one approach to normative political theory, namely contextualism, can benefit from a specific kind of historical inquiry, namely genealogy, because the latter provides a solution to a deep-seated problem for the former. This problem consists in a lack of critical distance and originates from the justificatory role that contextualist approaches attribute to contextual facts. I compare two approaches to genealogical reconstruction, namely the historiographical method pioneered by Foucault and the hybrid method of pragmatic genealogy as practiced by Bernard Williams, arguing that they both ensure an increase in critical distance while preserving contextualism’s distinctiveness. I also show, however, that only the latter provides normative action-guidance and can thus assist the contextualist theorist in the crucial task of discerning how far certain contextual facts deserve their justificatory role. I prove this point by showing how a pragmatic genealogy of the practice of punishment can inform the contextualist’s reflection about the role this practice should play in a transitional scenario, i.e. in the set of circumstances societies go through in the aftermath of large-scale violence and human rights violations