Achieving energy sovereignty is increasingly gaining prominence as a goal in energy politics. The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual analysis of this principle from an ethics and social justice perspective. We rely on the literature on food sovereignty to identify through a comparative analysis the elements energy sovereignty will most likely demand and thereafter distinguish the unique constituencies of the energy sector. The idea of energy sovereignty embraces a series of values, among which we identified: (i) (...) accessibility, to allow access to everyone, (ii) empowerment and recognition, to develop and sustain capabilities to collaboratively produce solution-oriented energy system knowledge and effectively participate in governance, (iii) stewardship and sustainability, to be able to design and manage decentralised renewable systems in view of protecting the environment, (iv) self-sufficiency, to reduce the negative shocks of exploitative business practises, (v) resilience, to maintain production capacities while withstanding socioeconomic, political, environmental and climatic shocks, (vi) peace, to establish production systems that do not involve hostile relations, (vii) transparency and self-determination, to establish democratic decision-making mechanisms that give a voice to previously underrepresented groups and limit corporate takeover (viii) gender-justice, by acknowledging the contributions of women and eliminate barriers to their empowerment. With a conceptual framework of energy sovereignty, we present a rationale that draws on the key values to be considered when formulating policy solutions for the energy sector. (shrink)

Kitcher has proposed an ideal-theory account—well-ordered science (WOS)— of the collective good that science’s research agenda should promote. Against criticism regarding WOS’s action-guidance, Kitcher has advised critics not to confuse substantive ideals and the ways to arrive at them, and he has defended WOS as a necessary and useful ideal for science policy. I provide a distinction between two types of ideal-theories that helps clarifying WOS’s elusive nature. I use this distinction to argue that the action-guidance problem that WOS faces (...) remains even under the aims/means distinction, because the WOS’s failure is more basic than critics have suggested. (shrink)

Intellectual property regimes necessarily create artificial scarcity leading to wastage, both by blocking follow-up research and hindering access to those who are only able to pay less then the actual retail price. After revising the traditional arguments to hinder access to people’s intellectual labour we will examine why we should be more open to allow free-riding of inventive efforts, especially in cases where innovators have not secured the widest access to the fruits of their research and failed to cooperate with (...) follow-up innovators. We will do so by questioning the voluntariness involved in consumption of objects of innovation, restating the positive social externalities that arise when wider access to the fruits of innovation is assured, and examining the eventual harms innovators face. (shrink)

Food security brings a number of benefits to humanity from which nobody can be excluded and which can be simultaneously enjoyed by all. An economic understanding of the concept sees food security qualify as a global public good. However, there are four other ways of understanding a public good which are worthy of attention. A normative public good is a good from which nobody ought to be excluded. Alternatively, one might acknowledge the benevolent character of a public good. Others have (...) argued that public goods demand being public in the sense of being visible to all. Finally, it has also been argued that public goods are those goods which need joint action to be produced and maintained. This chapter discusses these five understandings of the public good in relation to food security and highlights the advantage of assessing policies from each of these perspectives. (shrink)

The mixture of political, social, cultural and economic environments in Latin America, together with the enormous diversity in climates, natural habitats and biological resources the continent offers, make the ethical assessment of agricultural policies extremely difficult. Yet the experience gained while addressing the contemporary challenges the region faces, such as rapid urbanization, loss of culinary and crop diversity, extreme inequality, disappearing farming styles, water and land grabs, malnutrition and the restoration of the rule of law and social peace, can be (...) of great value to other regions in similar latitudes, development processes and social problems. This chapter will provide a brief overview of these challenges from the perspective of a continent that is exposed to the consequences of extreme inequality in multiple dimensions and conclude by arguing for the need to have a continuous South-South dialogue on the challenges of establishing socially and environmentally sustainable food systems. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the extent to which the very existence of substructural logics puts the Tarskian conception of logical systems in jeopardy. In order to do this, we highlight the importance of the presence of different levels of entailment in a given logic, looking not only at inferences between collections of formulae but also at inferences between collections of inferences—and more. We discuss appropriate refinements or modifications of the usual Tarskian identity criterion for logical systems, and propose an (...) alternative of our own. After that, we consider a number of objections to our account and evaluate a substantially different approach to the same problem. (shrink)

When discussing Logical Pluralism several critics argue that such an open-minded position is untenable. The key to this conclusion is that, given a number of widely accepted assumptions, the pluralist view collapses into Logical Monism. In this paper we show that the arguments usually employed to arrive at this conclusion do not work. The main reason for this is the existence of certain substructural logics which have the same set of valid inferences as Classical Logic—although they are, in a clear (...) sense, non-identical to it. We argue that this phenomenon can be generalized, given the existence of logics which coincide with Classical Logic regarding a number of metainferential levels—although they are, again, clearly different systems. We claim this highlights the need to arrive at a more refined version of the Collapse Argument, which we discuss at the end of the paper. (shrink)

At the invitation of the Commission for World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in collaboration with different associations involved in mission and ecumenical studies, the Regional Center for Central and Eastern Europe convened at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology of the Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, through its Center for Mission and Nomocanonical Studies (CMNS, in collaboration with the Central and Eastern European Association for Mission Studies (CEEAMS). Its aim was to reflect on how the (...) International Missionary Council (IMC) has influenced mission theology and practice in Central and Eastern Europe, taking into account different contextual realities. (shrink)

This paper argues for a revised concept of authenticity entailing two demands that must be balanced. The first demand moves authenticity from the position of a strictly self-regarding virtue towards the position of a fully social virtue, acknowledging the crucial feature of steadiness, i.e. self-consistency, as being precisely what we ‘naturally’ lack. Nevertheless, the value of personal authenticity in a modern, open society comes from the fact that it brings about not only steadiness, but also the public development of a (...) variety of existential options that can be understood as Millian ‘original experiments in living’. Thus the second demand of authenticity is a demand for ‘experimental’ authenticity which covers the whole spectrum of technologies of the self, from Nietzschean ‘brief habits’, to the use of enhancement technologies. (shrink)

In this note we shall argue that Milne’s new effort does not refute Truthmaker Maximalism. According to Truthmaker Maximalism, every truth has a truthmaker. Milne has attempted to refute it using the following self-referential sentence M: This sentence has no truthmaker. Essential to his refutation is that M is like the Gödel sentence and unlike the Liar, and one way in which Milne supports this assimilation is through the claim that his proof is essentially object-level and not semantic. In Section (...) 2, we shall argue that Milne is still begging the question against Truthmaker Maximalism. In Section 3, we shall argue that even assimilating M to the Liar does not force the truthmaker maximalist to maintain the ‘dull option’ that M does not express a proposition. There are other options open and, though they imply revising the logic in Milne’s reasoning, this is not one of the possible revisions he considers. In Section 4, we shall suggest that Milne’s proof requires an implicit appeal to semantic principles and notions. In Section 5, we shall point out that there are two important dissimilarities between M and the Gödel sentence. Section 6 is a brief summary and conclusion. (shrink)

De ce a fost fondată Uniunea Europeană? Un prim răspuns ar fi dorinţa de pace după un război devastator şi umilitor. Un al doilea răspuns ar fi realizarea importanţei unităţii. O unitate care se va caracteriza printr-o diversitate a culturilor şi a limbilor. Statele europene nu au dorit să renunţe la suveranitatea lor, au vrut să devină un corp comun pentru a nu a mai putea fi călcate în picioare de iureşul istoriei. Ca orice unitate, UE avea nevoie de un (...) cadru de reglementare oferit de instituţii şi politici europene. De asemenea, pentru a armoniza ceva trebuie să poţi pune împreună anumite elemente separate. Armonizarea Uniunii a fost realizată prin fondarea instituţiilor şi a reglementărilor acestora (structura instituţională a UE este prezentată în Anexa nr. 1). Instituţionalizarea Uniunii Europene este cheia de boltă a construcţiei istorice europene. Început în anul 1957, acest proces a lăsat urme adânci în conştiinţa politică europeană. Dacă la început a fost privită cu reticenţă, acum Uniunea nu poate exista fără instituţii. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine the problematic frontier that separates the phenomenology of the body and the phenomenology of animality. The main difficulty is to differentiate phenomenologically not only between embodiment and animality, but also between specifically human embodied experience and what is accessible to us through empathy in relation to the corporeality of the animal. I will tackle these questions by considering relevant textual material from the writings of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. On the one (...) hand, I will show that although embodiment and animality are convergent on the level of the naturalistic attitude in Husserl’s Ideas II, they are divergent as soon as we place ourselves in the personalistic attitude, where the body enters into a different conjunction—namely, with the idea of person and of the spiritual world. On the other hand, Heidegger claims that, in spite of the abysmal bodily kinship with the animal, there is an essential difference between the human body and the animal organism, thus opposing the tendencies to humanize the animal and to animalize the human. (shrink)

In this article, we will present a number of technical results concerning Classical Logic, ST and related systems. Our main contribution consists in offering a novel identity criterion for logics in general and, therefore, for Classical Logic. In particular, we will firstly generalize the ST phenomenon, thereby obtaining a recursively defined hierarchy of strict-tolerant systems. Secondly, we will prove that the logics in this hierarchy are progressively more classical, although not entirely classical. We will claim that a logic is to (...) be identified with an infinite sequence of consequence relations holding between increasingly complex relata: formulae, inferences, metainferences, and so on. As a result, the present proposal allows not only to differentiate Classical Logic from ST, but also from other systems sharing with it their valid metainferences. Finally, we show how these results have interesting consequences for some topics in the philosophical logic literature, among them for the debate around Logical Pluralism. The reason being that the discussion concerning this topic is usually carried out employing a rivalry criterion for logics that will need to be modified in light of the present investigation, according to which two logics can be non-identical even if they share the same valid inferences. (shrink)

Explanations of the genuine openness of the future often appeal to objective indeterminacy. According to the received view, such indeterminacy is indeterminacy of certain future-tensed state of affairs that presently obtain. We shall call this view the weak indeterminate present, to distinguish it from the view we will defend in this paper, which we dub the strong indeterminate present. According to our view, unsettledness of the future is grounded on the present indeterminacy of some present-tensed state of affairs. In order (...) for an indeterminate present-tensed state of affairs to explain the unsettledness of a future-tensed state of affairs, there has to be a connection between the two. We argue that this connection can only be provided if we look at the internal structure of the relevant state of affairs. Finally, we will suggest that the best background theory to explain the connection are the so-called spontaneous collapse models of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the implications of moral vagueness (viz., the vagueness of moral predicates) for non-naturalist metaethical theories like those recently championed by Shafer-Landau, Parfit, and others. I characterise non-naturalism in terms of its commitment to 7 theses: Cognitivism, Correspondence, Atomism, Objectivism, Supervenience, Non-reductivism, and Rationalism. I start by offering a number of reasons for thinking that moral predicates are vague in the same way in which ‘red’, ‘tall’, and ‘heap’ are said to be. I then argue that (...) the moral non-naturalist seeking to countenance moral vagueness faces a dilemma: are moral properties vague, or perfectly sharp? On either horn of the dilemma, serious problems arise for some of the central tenets of non-naturalism: vague properties seem to threaten Objectivism, Supervenience, and Non-reductivism; on the other hand, sharp properties raise problems for Supervenience and Rationalism. The difficulties on each horn of the dilemma are real, and while they may not be insuperable, they do, at the very least, drastically limit the things non-naturalists can consistently say about moral properties, facts, and reasons. (shrink)

Climate change, pollution, and deforestation have a negative impact on global mental health. There is an environmental justice dimension to this challenge as wealthy people and high-income countries are major contributors to climate change and pollution, while poor people and low-income countries are heavily affected by the consequences. Using state-of-the art data mining, we analyzed and visualized the global research landscape on mental health, climate change, pollution and deforestation over a 15-year period. Metadata of papers were exported from PubMed®, and (...) both relevance and relatedness of terms in different time frames were computed using VOSviewer. Co-occurrence graphs were used to visualize results. The development of exemplary terms over time was plotted separately. The number of research papers on mental health and environmental challenges is growing in a linear fashion. Major topics are climate change, chemical pollution, including psychiatric medication in wastewater, and neurobiological effects. Research on specific psychiatric syndromes and diseases, particularly on their ethical and social aspects is less prominent. There is a growing body of research literature on links between mental health, climate change, pollution, and deforestation. This research provides a graphic overview to mental healthcare professionals and political stakeholders. Social and ethical aspects of the climate change-mental health link have been neglected, and more research is needed. (shrink)

Transhumanism proposes human enhancement while regarding the human body as unfit for the future. This fulfills age-old aspirations for a perfect and durable body. We use “alienation” as a concept to analyze this mismatch between human aspirations and our current condition. For Hannah Arendt alienation may be accounted for in terms of earth- and world-alienation, as well as alienation from human nature, and especially from the given (“resentment of the given”). In transhumanism, the biological body is an impediment to human (...) accomplishment. At most, this movement accepts “clean” bodies, not bodies with excretions. We argue that real human bodies are valued in the event of giving birth, so a modified concept that Arendt proposed, natality, seems a suitable way to explore the dialectic alienation-reconciliation involving the body (Arendt’s “A child has been born unto us”), when re-read by some feminist scholars. (shrink)

După sfârşitul celei de a doua mari conflagraţii mondiale, Europa se afla în ruină şi dezastru economico-social. Ajutorul dat de Statele Unite ale Americii în reconstrucţia statelor europene a fost vital pentru supravieţuirea Occidentului european. În anul 1948, cinci state (Franţa, Marea Britanie, Belgia, Ţările de Jos şi Luxemburg) semnează Tratatul de Cooperare Culturală, Socială, Economică şi Apărare Colectivă, pe scurt Tratatul de la Bruxelles . După numirea generalului Dwight Eisenhower în funcţia de comandant suprem aliat în Europa, acest tratat (...) va deveni parte a documentelor NATO. Nevoia de apărare împotriva ameninţării sovietice se face şi mai vizibilă în propunerea ministrului de externe francez Réne Pléven. Planul Pléven, propus în anul 1952, viza constituirea unei Comunităţii Europene a Apărării, dar şi a unei Comunităţi Politice Europene. Planul nu a fost votat de către Adunare Franceză în anul 1954. Eşecul acestei comunităţi se datorează lipsei de viziune a liderilor europeni. O altă piedică în adoptarea acestui plan a fost teama statelor naţionale de posibila federalizare a Europei. (shrink)

In some recent articles, Cobreros, Egré, Ripley, & van Rooij have defended the idea that abandoning transitivity may lead to a solution to the trouble caused by semantic paradoxes. For that purpose, they develop the Strict-Tolerant approach, which leads them to entertain a nontransitive theory of truth, where the structural rule of Cut is not generally valid. However, that Cut fails in general in the target theory of truth does not mean that there are not certain safe instances of Cut (...) involving semantic notions. In this article we intend to meet the challenge of answering how to regain all the safe instances of Cut, in the language of the theory, making essential use of a unary recovery operator. To fulfill this goal, we will work within the so-called Goodship Project, which suggests that in order to have nontrivial naïve theories it is sufficient to formulate the corresponding self-referential sentences with suitable biconditionals. Nevertheless, a secondary aim of this article is to propose a novel way to carry this project out, showing that the biconditionals in question can be totally classical. In the context of this article, these biconditionals will be essentially used in expressing the self-referential sentences and, thus, as a collateral result of our work we will prove that none of the recoveries expected of the target theory can be nontrivially achieved if self-reference is expressed through identities. (shrink)

Ca actor pe scena internațională, UE trebuie să facă fată noilor pericole, amenințări și provocări, cu atât mai mult cu cât urmărește să joace un rol în securitatea globală ceea ce implică asumarea de responsabilități sporite, așa cum sunt prezentate în anexă. Mediul global este caracterizat prin insecuritate, astfel Uniunea Europeană are nevoie de un mecanism complex de management al crizelor. Dezvoltarea unei astfel de capabilități atrage de la sine o altă problemă majoră, dezvoltarea unei capabilități a Uniunii. Există pericolul (...) ca această nouă capabilitate să dubleze NATO sau există pericolul ca Uniunea să își dezvolte o capacitate dar fără puterea de a o proiecta. Un conflict ce se întrevede în viitor este între președintele Consiliului European și Înaltul Reprezentant al UE pentru afaceri externe şi politică de securitate, în opinia unor eurosceptici. Dezvoltarea acestor capabilități este necesară Uniunii ce se dorește un important actor pe scena internațională. (shrink)

Two competing accounts of value incomparability have been put forward in the recent literature. According to the standard account, developed most famously by Joseph Raz, ‘incomparability’ means determinate failure of the three classic value relations ( better than , worse than , and equally good ): two value-bearers are incomparable with respect to a value V if and only if (i) it is false that x is better than y with respect to V , (ii) it is false that x (...) is worse than y with respect to V and (iii) it is false that x and y are equally good with respect to V . Most philosophers have followed Raz in adopting this account of incomparability. Recently, however, John Broome has advocated an alternative view, on which value incomparability is explained in terms of vagueness or indeterminacy . In this paper I aim to further Broome’s view in two ways. Firstly, I want to supply independent reasons for thinking that the phenomenon of value incomparability is indeed a matter of the indeterminacy inherent in our comparative predicates. Secondly, I attempt to defend Broome’s account by warding off several objections that worry him, due mainly to Erik Carlson and Ruth Chang. (shrink)

In order to grasp the true ethical meaning of Foucault's aesthetics of existence, I begin by explaining in what sense he was an anti-normativist, arguing that the most important thing about the "final" Foucault is his strong emphasis on the idea of human freedom. I go on with a brief discussion about Foucault's sources of inspiration and a criticism of Rorty's kindred plea for "aesthetic life". I strongly reject the interpretation of Foucault's aesthetics of existence in terms of narcissistic individualism, (...) arguing, on the contrary, that it has a definite communitarian dimension. I also claim that it is rooted in the Socratic and Stoic understanding of "care of the self," at the same time allowing new challenging developments fitted for our "post-duty" historical age, by way of analogy with the process of artistic making. I conclude with some short answers to a few questions regarding the status of this aesthetics of living. (shrink)

The 20th century was a bloody one, full of armed clashes which destroyed Europe, withered an entire generation’s hope of European-level peace. After the Versailles Treaty, the famous economist John Maynard Keynes uttered this prophecy: ”With such a peace treaty, you’ll be at war again within 20 years”. John Maxwell Coetzee, an important South-African novelist, called the 20th century “Satan’s century”. A tough statement yet extremely true unfortunately. Besides war, the past one hundred years also witnessed terrible totalitarian regimes occur, (...) such as the Nazi and fascism. The hardness of those regimes at least equaled the suffering caused by the world wars. One wouldn’t be wrong to call such regimes state terrorism: a leader suppressing his own citizens just to satisfy his own fantasy. The hugeness of their deeds goes beyond human imagination according to the number of victims. A classical word of wisdom describes terrorism as follows: ”It kills a few, but terrifies more”. (shrink)

Extreme inequality of opportunity leads to a number of social tensions, inefficiencies and injustices. One issue of increasing concern is the effect inequality is having on people’s fair chances of attaining meaningful work, thus limiting opportunities to make a significant positive contribution to society and reducing the chances of living a flourishing life and developing their potential. On a global scale we can observe an increasingly uneven provision of meaningful work, raising a series of ethical concerns that need detailed examination. (...) The aim of this article is to explore the potential of a normative framework based upon the idea of contributive justice to defend a fairer provision of meaningful work. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a non-trivial and expressively complete paraconsistent naïve theory of truth, as a step in the route towards semantic closure. We achieve this goal by expressing self-reference with a weak procedure, that uses equivalences between expressions of the language, as opposed to a strong procedure, that uses identities. Finally, we make some remarks regarding the sense in which the theory of truth discussed has a property closely related to functional completeness, and we present a sound and (...) complete three-sided sequent calculus for this expressively rich theory. (shrink)

Mario Bunge souligne que la technologie est fondamentalement liée à la science et à sa méthode, autrement il s’agirait d’une technique pure. Mais il souligne également qu’elle ne se réduit pas à la science, car elle intègre d’autres éléments. Il est particulièrement préoccupé par l’étude du lien entre technologie et science. Sur la base de leur caractérisation, ces autres éléments sont explorés – l’approche inverse. Cette perspective permet une caractérisation épistémologique plus approfondie des technologies.

Rejecting the Cut rule has been proposed as a strategy to avoid both the usual semantic paradoxes and the so-called v-Curry paradox. In this paper we consider if a Cut-free theory is capable of accurately representing its own notion of validity. We claim that the standard rules governing the validity predicate are too weak for this purpose and we show that although it is possible to strengthen these rules, the most obvious way of doing so brings with it a serious (...) problem: an internalized version of Cut can be proved for a Curry-like sentence. We also evaluate a number of possible ways of escaping this difficulty. (shrink)

Some comparisons are hard. How should we think about such comparisons? According to John Broome, we should think about them in terms of vagueness. But the vagueness account has remained unpopular thus far. Here I try to bolster it by clarifying the notion of comparative vagueness that lies at its heart.

Me propongo aquí una reflexión sobre la crisis del humanismo que afecta profundamente a la sociedad y la cultura contemporáneas en todas sus dimensiones. De un modo falsamente optimista, se ha opuesto a esta crisis la figura de un post humanismo triunfante, resultado de los desarrollos de la tecnología contemporánea y sus posibilidades de intervención en el cuerpo y el alma del hombre. Haré aquí una evaluación crítica de ese optimismo, sin por ello reivindicar el viejo humanismo y su razón (...) colonizadora. Trataré de plantear a través de Heidegger y Agamben la condición post humanista y post histórica –en el sentido moderno– en la que nos encontramos. Pero luego intentaré pensar junto a Nietzsche y Bataille una figura del hombre que no es nueva, sino una figura más antigua y creo más profunda, que quedó sepultada bajo la irrupción tectónica del humanismo y su empresa civilizatoria. (shrink)

Transhumanists, like other elites in modernity, place great value on human creativity, and advances in human enhancement and AI form the basis of their propos- als for boosting it. However, there are problems with this perspective, due to the unique ways in which humans have evolved, procreated and socialized. I first describe how creativity is related to past evolution and developmental aspects in children, stressing pretend play and the ambivalent character of creativity. Then, I outline proposals for enhancing creativity, be (...) it in embodied humans on the way to a superior species, in AI- related beings (virtual reality, robotics), or even in any degree of mixture in human- machine interaction. In the final section, I describe intrinsic limits to these proposals, such as the absence of a good understanding of human psychology by the proponents of enhancement; the lack of interest in the subjective side of creativity (for one’s own sake); delayed maturation and the ambivalence of pretend play in childhood; and the contrariness typical of new human generations. As for the enhancement of creativity, it is argued that creativity in its social context may be the victim of its own past success. On the other hand, an asymmetry between virtual beings and children is described— the latter can behave in a nasty way, it is part of their growth and creativity, whereas the former are not supposed to cause any harm to human beings. In sum, despite impressive progress in several scientific and technological interventions in creativity, philosophical questions emerge that place many constraints on transhumanist dreams of endless creativity. (shrink)

In various responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, we can observe insufficient sensitivity towards the needs and circumstances of poorer citizens. Particularly in a context of high inequality, policy makers need to engage with the wider public in debates and consultations to gain better insights in the realities of the worst-off within their jurisdiction. When consultations involve members of traditionally underrepresented groups, these are not only more inclusive, which is in itself an ethical aim, but pool ideas and observations from a (...) much more diverse array of inhabitants. Inclusivity increases the odds to identify a larger range of weak spots for health security and to design health interventions that are less burdensome on those worst-off. (shrink)

Some transhumanists argue that we must engage with theories and facts about our evolutionary past in order to promote future enhancements of the human body. At the same time, they call our attention to the flawed character of evolution and argue that there is a mismatch between adaptation to ancestral environments and contemporary life. One important trait of our evolutionary past which should not be ignored, and yet may hinder the continued perfection of humankind, is the peculiarly human way of (...) bearing and raising children. The suffering associated with childbirth and a long childhood have demanded trade-offs that have enhanced our species, leading to cooperation, creativity, intelligence and resilience. Behaviors such as mother–infant engagement, empathy, storytelling, and ritual have also helped to create what we value most in human beings. Therefore, the moral, cognitive, and emotional enhancements proposed by these transhumanists may be impaired by their partial appropriation of evolution, insofar as the bittersweet experience of parenthood is left aside. (shrink)

In this article, I focus on the problem of body as it is developed in Heidegger’s Zollikon Seminars, in contrast with its enigmatic concealment in Being and Time. In the first part, I emphasize the implicit connection of Heidegger’s approach of body with Husserl’s problematic of Leib and Körper, and with his phenomenological analyses of tactility. In the second part, I focus on Heidegger’s distinction between the limits of the lived body and the limits of the corresponding corporeal thing, opening (...) to an ontological understanding of the ecstatic bodying forth of the body. In the third part, I analyse this ecstatic bodiliness in relation to the problem of spatiality, exploring the tension between the here and the over there in the experience of the embodiment. Heidegger not only refuses to understand the space starting from the here of the body, but he also refuses to understand the body starting from the here of the space. Thus, there are two interconnected inversions that Heidegger operates in relation to Husserl: In the topic of spatiality, he rejects the pre-eminence of the here; in relation to the body, he contests the primacy of tactility. Finally, the conclusion stresses that, even if the bodying forth penetrates almost all behaviour of Dasein in the world, there is however a limit of embodiment, an unreachable frontier beyond any possibility of the bodying forth, namely the understanding of being. This also implies that the problem of body needs be understood in the context of the ontological difference. (shrink)

The scope and type of property rights recognized over the effectiveness of antibiotics have a direct effect on how those claiming ownership engage in the exploitation and stewardship of this scarce resource. We examine the different property claims and rights the four major interest groups are asserting on antibiotics: (i) the inventors, (ii) those demanding that the resource be treated like any other transferable commodity, (iii) those advocating usage restrictions based on good stewardship principles and (iv) those considering the resource (...) as common heritage of humankind. (shrink)

Biomarker-based predictive tests for subjectively asymptomatic Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are utilized in research today. Novel applications of artificial intelligence (AI) promise to predict the onset of AD several years in advance without determining biomarker thresholds. Until now, little attention has been paid to the new ethical challenges that AI brings to the early diagnosis in asymptomatic individuals, beyond contributing to research purposes, when we still lack adequate treatment. The aim of this paper is to explore the ethical arguments put forward (...) for AI aided AD prediction in subjectively asymptomatic individuals and their ethical implications. The ethical assessment is based on a systematic literature search. Thematic analysis was conducted inductively of 18 included publications. The ethical framework includes the principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. Reasons for offering predictive tests to asymptomatic individuals are the right to know, a positive balance of the risk-benefit assessment, and the opportunity for future planning. Reasons against are the lack of disease modifying treatment, the accuracy and explicability of AI aided prediction, the right not to know, and threats to social rights. We conclude that there are serious ethical concerns in offering early diagnosis to asymptomatic individuals and the issues raised by the application of AI add to the already known issues. Nevertheless, pre-symptomatic testing should only be offered on request to avoid inflicted harm. We recommend developing training for physicians in communicating AI aided prediction. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 48, Issue 1, pp 57 - 76 The aim of this article is to address the question of the anthropological difference by focusing on the intersubjective relation between the human and the animal in the context of a phenomenological analysis of violence. Following some Levinasian and Derridian insights, my goal is to analyze the structural differences between interspecific and intraspecific violence by asking how the generic phenomenon of violence is modalized across various levels: from human to human, (...) from human to animal, from animal to human, from animal to animal. I will address questions of incarnated vulnerability and altered states of affectivity, and I will relate the various forms of violence emerging in the context of the anthropological difference to the question of territoriality, arguing that violence is structurally modified in relation to particular articulations of our worldly spatiality. (shrink)

We will explore ecumenical collaboration for the sake of mission in the 21st century in this region. In this sense, we will consider ecumenical relations, theological education, migration and diaspora, and present challenges, and will try to identify the vision of the future. We will do this by focusing on four countries from the region as critical studies: the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, and Serbia.

Having an adequate and extensively recognized resource governance system is essential for the conservation and sustainable use of crop genetic resources in a highly populated planet. Despite the widely accepted importance of agrobiodiversity for future plant breeding and thus food security, there is still pervasive disagreement at the individual level on who should own genetic resources. The aim of the article is to provide conceptual clarification on the following concepts and their relation to agrobiodiversity stewardship: open access, commons, private property, (...) state property and common heritage of humankind. After presenting each property regime, we will examine whether and how these incentivize the conservation, improvement and sharing of crop genetic resources, and conclude by defending a mixed property regime. (shrink)

Recently, it has been proposed to understand a logic as containing not only a validity canon for inferences but also a validity canon for metainferences of any finite level. Then, it has been shown that it is possible to construct infinite hierarchies of "increasingly classical" logics—that is, logics that are classical at the level of inferences and of increasingly higher metainferences—all of which admit a transparent truth predicate. In this paper, we extend this line of investigation by taking a somehow (...) different route. We explore logics that are different from classical logic at the level of inferences, but recover some important aspects of classical logic at every metainferential level. We dub such systems meta-classical non-classical logics. We argue that the systems presented deserve to be regarded as logics in their own right and, moreover, are potentially useful for the non-classical logician. (shrink)

A theory of truth is usually demanded to be consistent, but -consistency is less frequently requested. Recently, Yatabe has argued in favour of -inconsistent first-order theories of truth, minimising their odd consequences. In view of this fact, in this paper, we present five arguments against -inconsistent theories of truth. In order to bring out this point, we will focus on two very well-known -inconsistent theories of truth: the classical theory of symmetric truth FS and the non-classical theory of naïve truth (...) based on ᴌukasiewicz infinitely valued logic: PAᴌT. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed intensive efforts to specify which requirements ethical artificial intelligence (AI) must meet. General guidelines for ethical AI consider a varying number of principles important. A frequent novel element in these guidelines, that we have bundled together under the term explicability, aims to reduce the black-box character of machine learning algorithms. The centrality of this element invites reflection on the conceptual relation between explicability and the four bioethical principles. This is important because the application of general ethical (...) frameworks to clinical decision-making entails conceptual questions: Is explicability a free-standing principle? Is it already covered by the well-established four bioethical principles? Or is it an independent value that needs to be recognized as such in medical practice? We discuss these questions in a conceptual-ethical analysis, which builds upon the findings of an empirical document analysis. On the example of the medical specialty of radiology, we analyze the position of radiological associations on the ethical use of medical AI. We address three questions: Are there references to explicability or a similar concept? What are the reasons for such inclusion? Which ethical concepts are referred to? (shrink)

The concept of food sovereignty is becoming an element of everyday parlance in development politics and food justice advocacy. Yet to successfully achieve food sovereignty, the demands within this movement have to be compatible with the way people are pursuing consumer sovereignty, and vice versa. The aim of this article is to examine the different sets of demands that the two ideals of sovereignty bring about, analyze in how far these different demands can stand in constructive relations with each other (...) and explain why consumers have to adjust their food choices to seasonal production variability to promote food sovereignty and so secure future autonomy. (shrink)

This chapter connects the phenomenon of double bookkeeping to two critical debates in the philosophy of delusion: one from the analytic tradition and one from the phenomenological tradition. First, I will show how the failure of action guidance on the part of some delusions suggests an argument to the standard view that delusions are beliefs (doxasticism about delusion) and how its proponents have countered it by ascribing behavioral inertia to avolition, emotional disturbances, or a failure of the surrounding environment in (...) supporting the agent’s motivation to act. Second, I will show how the mismatch between the experience of double bookkeeping and that of having the usual propositional attitudes of folk psychology suggests another, more recalcitrant argument not only against doxasticism but against the very attempt to fit delusion into folk psychology. Third, I will show how phenomenologically inspired theories of delusion, such as the multiple realities hypothesis, bypass the debates above and focus on describing and understanding the disturbances in the structure of experience undergone by patients. I conclude that the philosophical discussions ensuing from an appreciation of double bookkeeping show some of the limitations of the analytic philosophical approach to delusion. (shrink)

It has been argued that quantum mechanics forces us to accept the existence of metaphysical, mind-independent indeterminacy. In this paper we provide an interpretation of the indeterminacy involved in the quantum phenomena in terms of a view that we call Plural Metaphysical Supervaluationism. According to it, quantum indeterminacy is captured in terms of an irreducibly plural relation between the actual world and various misrepresentations of it.