RISULTATI RICERCA

This study analyses consumption styles and affective-motivational factors that influence the use and abuse of alcohol among university students. Over the last few years a European trend to homogenize the consumption of alcohol has been recorded: in Italy there seems to emerge the presence and overlapping of a traditional (Mediterranean model) and a juvenile (Anglo-Saxon model) style. Six hundred and seventy-two students (392 males and 280 females) participated in the research. They were handed a questionnaire which investigated consumption habits and comprised the main variables to determine the different motivations underlying the use of alcohol: family habits, peer influence, emotions connected to drinking, Health Locus of Control and Sensation Seeking. Main results show the presence of Mediterranean consumption (wine with meals, with less emo-tional involvement and sensation seeking), Anglo-Saxon consumption (beer and spirits between meals, with greater emotion and sensation seeking), but also of consumption with features from both models. The factors un-derlying alcohol consumption are differentiated: for individuals who drink with their meals low arousal emotions, family habits and external locus of control emerge; whereas those who drink between meals are influenced by high arousal emotions, peer influence, sensation and sexual approach seek-ing. Determinants of abuse are more similar in both groups of drinkers. However, those who abuse at meals are from families with high alcohol consumption, those who abuse between meals are from families with mod-erate consumption of alcohol.

Some people think that personality tests are very interesting, other that they are horrible. The farmer trust in personality tests, the latter refuse them at all. Measurement of characteristics that are so difficult to define (such as personality traits) can appear both possible and aberrant. The arti-cle aims at showing, in the most comprehensible way, how it is possible to measure, in a valid and reliable manner, personality characteristics. This can be done through the use of an appropriate tool which has the right psy-chometric properties.

Starting from Rizzuto’s innovative model, the paper aims to open the debate on some issues concerning processes and outcomes (either mentally healthy or psychopatological) of the pathway leading from a psychic representation to the formation of a God concept and a personal attitude towards God, and their possible transformation along the life cycle. The question inherent to a typology (and predictability) of such paths seems to have to deal with a in-dividual’s clinical the development of an ego-syntonic religious attitude, il-lusion, disillusion, disappointment and delusion - invariably mingled and revolving around the pleasure principle -reality principle axis - are always to be found.

The purpose of this article is primarily methodological, aimed at develop-ing suitable methodologies for analyzing the perceptual structure of opposi-tion. The phenomenological internal structures of 37 opposite spatial di-mensions are discussed, based on data collected in two different experi-mental tasks. The data have been previously discussed in terms of non-fuzzy logic (Savardi, & Bianchi, 2000). This paper explores the potential applications of a fuzzy model for reanalyzing the data. The fuzzy struc-tures for the 37 spatial dimensions, which resulted from an indirect method of obtaining membership functions, are presented and discussed.

A peculiar gap can be noted in experimental phenomenology literature. Among all the authors who are cited as indispensable sources and refer-ences, Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, is hardly ever men-tioned. Savardi and Bianchi’s research on the relationship of opposition provides an opportunity for reflecting on some of the possible reasons for this omission. Indeed, while their research opens up a new field of investiga-tion for experimental phenomenology, these authors seem to implicitly re-vive Husserl's main themes, in scientific approach, method, as well as re-sults pertaining to the specific subject of opposition. The analysis of the af-finities between pure and experimental phenomenology is proposed as an encouragement to rekindle the all-too-abruptly-interrupted relationship be-tween the method’s basic arguments and its scientific developments. The lack of dialogue between the two approaches to reading phenomenology is apparently due more to historical and cultural causes than to sound theoreti-cal reasons.

Meinong and his pupils use a unique method to tackle the fundamental prob-lem of relations, which has its roots in Aristotelian logic. Between the nine-teenth and twentieth centuries, this important theme remained at the center of scientificphilosophical debate. Moreover, it is well known that B. Russell, with respect to the problem of empirical relations, opposed Bradley’s meta-physical formulations. In turn, Brentano and his School, eventually identi-fied a new kind of relation: the intentional relation, thereby breaking ground for the birth of a new discipline, that of mereology. Meinong, for his part, brought the enigmatic problem of higher order objects into focus with the prophetic visions of his disciple and friend von Ehrenfels. Yet many other of Meinong’s famous and less-famous pupils (e.g., Witasek, Be-nussi, Höfler, Ameseder, and Frankl) enlivened the epistemological debate and promoted the growth of the phenomenology of vision. Of particular theoretical interest is the very advanced attempt to develop an idea of a vis-ual phenomenology of relations in a completely novel way, one which looks very promising for eventually surpassing the limits of the logical and em-pirical tradition.

Brentano’s theory of intentionality has been traditionally interpreted as a theory of the «intentional relation», i.e. the relation between the mental act and its «immanent» or «intentional object». This interpretation, though cor-rect, has led to misunderstandings, insofar as the concept of relation is cur-rently understood in a framework that is quite different from the Aristote-lian-scholastic one, on which Brentano’s thought was based. This paper takes a stance against the manifold distortions and misinterpretations of the Brentanian theory of intentional relation and proposes an exegetically and theoretically correct interpretation.

In this essay the author examines the affirmation of the concept of mathe-matical relations in modern philosophy and its applicability to the disci-plines of physics and mathematics and to psychology. The first part high-lights the prominence given to the concept of mathematical relations in Hobbes’, Locke’s, Leibnitz’, and Hume’s gnosiologies. The second part documents how modern mathematics has gone on to mathemetize the con-cept. In the third part, Wolff’s role is closely examined to illustrate the relevance of relations to philosophy in general. The author also discusses Kant’s use of relations to describe the perception of phenomena and to dis-cuss the representability, in mathematical terms, of the activity of con-sciousness.