„Strategia noastră a fost de a gândi un text util pentru profesori, dar de a-l scrie mai ales pentru studenți. Etica este interesantă cu precădere atunci când pune în joc intuiții morale sau valori diferite și când ne confruntăm cu dileme în care decizia nu este evidentă, iar dezacordul este rezonabil. Prin urmare, am încercat să ne ferim pe cât a fost posibil de verdicte și de simpla enumerare a unor interdicții. Veți observa că, de cele mai multe ori, exercițiile (...) și temele de discuție nu au soluții impuse. Nu pentru că autorii manualului nu ar adera la anumite soluții (poate nu la aceleași!), ci pentru că ni s-a părut mult mai importantă conturarea problemelor. Dilemele și întrebările deschise generează dezbateri și prilejuiesc reflecție. Sentințele, pe de altă parte, tind să ucidă discuția și să prilejuiască mai curând reacții de îmbrățișare sau de respingere vehementă. Dacă vom ajunge, în comunitățile noastre profesionale și în societate, să vorbim mai mult unii cu alții și mai puțin unii la alții, vom fi făcut probabil un pas major în direcția corectă pentru dezvoltarea unei atitudini morale.” (Autorii). (shrink)

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists, such as semaglutide, and dual GLP-1 and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) receptor agonists, such as tirzepatide, have been found to be effective for treating obesity and diabetes, significantly reducing weight and the risk or predicted risk of adverse cardiovascular events. There is a global shortage of these medications that could last several years and raises questions about how limited supplies should be allocated. We propose a fair-allocation framework that enables evaluation of the ethics of current (...) practices and could guide governments, professional societies, and physicians in allocation decisions. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with fictive utterances, the authorial utterances that make up works of fiction. It is widely held that fictive utterances cannot be constative speech acts, such as assertions. Instead, fictive utterances are construed as pretended speech acts, as invitations to make-believe or as declarations. My aim is to challenge the non-constative consensus and to defend a view on which fictive utterances are constative speech acts after all, namely constatives that have a story as their target. I motivate (...) the constative view by discussing works of fiction that feature plot twists. Some of these plot twists indicate that fictive utterances can carry assertoric commitment and can be lies, contrary to what is commonly assumed. And I spell out a version of the constative view that takes cues from Stalnaker’s common ground account of assertion and the debate on commitment and responsibility in constatives. (shrink)

Intentionalism is the view that demonstratives, gradable adjectives, quantifiers, modals and other context‐sensitive expressions are intention‐sensitive: their semantic value on a given use is fixed by speaker intentions. The first aim of this paper is to defend Intentionalism against three recent objections, according to which speakers at least sometimes do not have suitable intentions when using supposedly intention‐sensitive expressions. Its second aim is to thereby shed light on the so far little‐explored question of which kinds of intentions can be semantically (...) relevant. (shrink)

According to Perdurantism, persons are identical to maximal aggregates of appropriately interrelated temporal parts. Within the Perdurantist framework, an epistemic concern arises, targeting the perduring persons’ belief that they are persons, suggesting that, ultimately, they are not in a position to know that they are persons as opposed to temporal parts. Despite the consideration it has received over the years, this concern has not yet been converted into a full-fledged objection. This paper aims to address this gap by exploring the (...) possibility of formulating a coherent Epistemic Objection against Perdurantism. We shall examine several epistemological principles around which such an objection might be built, arguing that none of them, in the end, allows a plausible formulation of the objection. As a result, we shall conclude that the burden of proving that in a Perdurantist setting persons are not in a position to know that they are persons rests with the objectors. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has helped to clarify the fair and equitable allocation of scarce medical resources, both within and among countries. The ethical allocation of such resources entails a three-step process: (1) elucidating the fundamental ethical values for allocation, (2) using these values to delineate priority tiers for scarce resources, and (3) implementing the prioritisation to faithfully realise the fundamental values. Myriad reports and assessments have elucidated five core substantive values for ethical allocation: maximising benefits and minimising harms, mitigating unfair (...) disadvantage, equal moral concern, reciprocity, and instrumental value. These values are universal. None of the values are sufficient alone, and their relative weight and application will vary by context. In addition, there are procedural principles such as transparency, engagement, and evidence-responsiveness. Prioritising instrumental value and minimising harms during the COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread agreement on priority tiers to include health-care workers, first responders, people living in congregate housing, and people with an increased risk of death, such as older adults and individuals with medical conditions. However, the pandemic also revealed problems with the implementation of these values and priority tiers, such as allocation on the basis of population rather than COVID-19 burden, and passive allocation that exacerbated disparities by requiring recipients to spend time booking and travelling to appointments. This ethical framework should be the starting point for the allocation of scarce medical resources in future pandemics and other public health conditions. For instance, allocation of the new malaria vaccine among sub-Saharan African countries should be based not on reciprocity to countries that participated in research, but on maximally reducing serious illness and deaths, especially among infants and children. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a conceptually tighter, quasi-Fregean solution to the concept horse paradox based on the idea that the unterfallen relation is asymmetrical. The solution is conceptually tighter in the sense that it retains the Fregean principle of separating sharply between concepts and objects, it retains Frege’s conclusion that the sentence ‘the concept horse is not a concept’ is true, but does not violate our intuitions on the matter. The solution is only ‘quasi’- Fregean in the sense that (...) it rejects Frege’s claims about the ontological import of natural language and his analysis thereof. (shrink)

All parties involved in researching, developing, manufacturing, and distributing COVID-19 vaccines need guidance on their ethical obligations. We focus on pharmaceutical companies' obligations because their capacities to research, develop, manufacture, and distribute vaccines make them uniquely placed for stemming the pandemic. We argue that an ethical approach to COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution should satisfy four uncontroversial principles: optimising vaccine production, including development, testing, and manufacturing; fair distribution; sustainability; and accountability. All parties' obligations should be coordinated and mutually consistent. For (...) instance, companies should not be obligated to provide host countries with additional booster shots at the expense of fulfilling bilateral contracts with countries in which there are surges. Finally, any satisfactory approach should include mechanisms for assurance that all parties are honouring their obligations. This assurance enables countries, pharmaceutical companies, global organisations, and others to verify compliance with the chosen approach and protect ethically compliant stakeholders from being unfairly exploited by unethical behaviour of others. (shrink)

This chapter describes the process of institutionalization of natural law at the University of Pisa, essential to interpreting the conditions in which the first public law chair of Italy was founded. The study of legal education in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century will allow a more in-depth understanding of both the development of natural law in teaching practice throughout the long eighteenth century, and the features of the two processes of reception, respectively for educational and political purposes. In (...) fact, although both processes were founded on appreciation of the centrality of Roman law and philosophy in the construction of doctrines by the so-called ‘modern natural law school’, and developed through mediation of traditional Roman legal culture of the Pisan ‘historical-critical school’, there were some differences. In this initial phase, the didactic reception was indirect, although not entirely implicit, whereas the political reception was direct and explicit. (shrink)

It is widely held that all lies are assertions: the traditional definition of lying entails that, in order to lie, speakers have to assert something they believe to be false. It is also widely held that assertion contrasts with presupposition and, in particular, that one cannot assert something by presupposing it. Together, these views imply that speakers cannot lie with presuppositions—a view that Andreas Stokke has recently explicitly defended. The aim of this paper is to argue that speakers can lie (...) with presuppositions, and to discuss some of the implications this outcome has for current research on lying, assertion and presupposition. (shrink)

In response to commentators, we argue that whether waiving patent rights will meaningfully improve access to COVID-19 vaccines for low income and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly in the short term, is an empirical matter. We also reject preferentially allocating vaccines to countries that hosted trials because doing so unethically favours those with research infrastructure, rather than those facing the worst burdens from COVID-19.

The chapter explains why evolutionary genetics – a mathematical body of theory developed since the 1910s – eventually got to deal with culture: the frequency dynamics of genes like “the lactase gene” in populations cannot be correctly modeled without including social transmission. While the body of theory requires specific justifications, for example meticulous legitimations of describing culture in terms of traits, the body of theory is an immensely valuable scientific instrument, not only for its modeling power but also for the (...) amount of work that has been necessary to build, maintain, and expand it. A brief history of evolutionary genetics is told to demonstrate such patrimony, and to emphasize the importance and accumulation of statistical knowledge therein. The probabilistic nature of genotypes, phenogenotypes and population phenomena is also touched upon. Although evolutionary genetics is actually composed by distinct and partially independent traditions, the most important mathematical object of evolutionary genetics is the Mendelian space, and evolutionary genetics is mostly the daring study of trajectories of alleles in a population that explores that space. The ‘body’ is scientific wealth that can be invested in studying every situation that happens to turn out suitable to be modeled as a Mendelian population, or as a modified Mendelian population, or as a population of continuously varying individuals with an underlying Mendelian basis. Mathematical tinkering and justification are two halves of the mutual adjustment between the body of theory and the new domain of culture. Some works in current literature overstate justification, misrepresenting the relationship between body of theory and domain, and hindering interdisciplinary dialogue. (shrink)

The distinction between lying and mere misleading is commonly tied to the distinction between saying and conversationally implicating. Many definitions of lying are based on the idea that liars say something they believe to be false, while misleaders put forward a believed-false conversational implicature. The aim of this paper is to motivate, spell out, and defend an alternative approach, on which lying and misleading differ in terms of commitment: liars, but not misleaders, commit themselves to something they believe to be (...) false. This approach entails that lying and misleading involve speech-acts of different force. While lying requires the committal speech-act of asserting, misleading involves the non-committal speech-act of suggesting. The approach leads to a broader definition of lying that can account for lies that are told while speaking non-literally or with the help of presuppositions, and it allows for a parallel definition of misleading, which so far is lacking in the debate. (shrink)

I. Kant’s Critique of Judgment is a maintext to catch the epistemological tensions created by the emerging notion of life . By investigating the specific causality of life in order to explain the phenomenon of self-organization of the living, Kant uses the remarkable concept of technique of nature , thus establishing a strong analogy between technique and life.The consequences of this analogy affect not only the epistemology of life, but also the modern conception of technique.To a technicization of life corresponds (...) a vitalization of technique. A new hybrid territory is thus discovered – that of technical life – in whichstands the possibility of a biological archaeology of modern technique. (shrink)

Lying requires asserting a disbelieved proposition, that much is widely accepted in the debate on how to define lying. But what else is required? Does lying require a particular linguistic manner of expression, such as saying? Does the proposition asserted have to be false (and not merely disbelieved)? And does lying require an intention to deceive? The aim of this chapter is to provide an opinionated introduction to the debates on these questions that takes into account both theoretical considerations and (...) empirical data. (shrink)

Die 1755 verfasste Schrift Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio enthält eine Bestimmung der Willensfreiheit, die ein konsequentes Ergebnis der relevanten Erneuerung im Rahmen der Ontologie der ersten Philosophie Kants darstellt. Mein Beitrag betrifft insbesondere die in der Schrift geführte Auseinandersetzung mit Crusius, dessen Wertschätzung im Vergleich mit der Wolff’schen Schule Kant nicht daran hindert, zwei Hauptlehren seines Ansatzes zu kritisieren. Erstens sieht Kant eine Beziehung zwischen dem Freiheitsbegriff und dem Satz des zureichenden Grundes vor, die wichtige Elemente der Ethik (...) von Crusius in Frage stellt. Zweitens wendet er sich gegen Crusius’ Theorie der Spontaneität, indem er dessen Verteidigung der Willkürfreiheit als Gleichgültigkeit wie beim Gleichgewicht kritisiert. (shrink)

We argue that charging people to participate in research is likely to undermine the fundamental ethical bases of clinical research, especially the principles of social value, scientific validity, and fair subject selection.

Hegel’s concern for determinism induced some scholars to interpret his practical philosophy as a form of determinism or as a form of compatibilism. Against both interpretations I will show some historical features of determinism at the edge of XVIII Century aiming to explain Hegel’s concept of determinism. I will pay a special attention to the debate between Ulrich and Kant’s criticism as well as to the peculiar development of kantian presuppositions in Fries’ philosophy. I will illustrate how this debate influenced (...) Hegel’s definition of arbitrariness (Willkür) and how important it could be to understand his distinction between freedom of choice and free will. (shrink)

Our Viewpoint argues that expanding access to less effective or more toxic treatments is supported not only by utilitarian ethical reasoning but also by two other ethical frameworks: those that emphasise equality and those that emphasise giving priority to the patients who are worst off. The inadequate resources available for global health reflect not only natural constraints but also unwise social and political choices. However, pitting efforts to reduce inequality and better fund global health against efforts to put available resources (...) to their best use mistakes complementary objectives for conflicting ones. (shrink)

In this article, we propose the Fair Priority Model for COVID-19 vaccine distribution, and emphasize three fundamental values we believe should be considered when distributing a COVID-19 vaccine among countries: Benefiting people and limiting harm, prioritizing the disadvantaged, and equal moral concern for all individuals. The Priority Model addresses these values by focusing on mitigating three types of harms caused by COVID-19: death and permanent organ damage, indirect health consequences, such as health care system strain and stress, as well as (...) economic destruction. It proposes proceeding in three phases: the first addresses premature death, the second long-term health issues and economic harms, and the third aims to contain viral transmission fully and restore pre-pandemic activity. -/- To those who may deem an ethical framework irrelevant because of the belief that many countries will pursue "vaccine nationalism," we argue such a framework still has broad relevance. Reasonable national partiality would permit countries to focus on vaccine distribution within their borders up until the rate of transmission is below 1, at which point there would not be sufficient vaccine-preventable harm to justify retaining a vaccine. When a government reaches the limit of national partiality, it should release vaccines for other countries. -/- We also argue against two other recent proposals. Distributing a vaccine proportional to a country's population mistakenly assumes that equality requires treating differently situated countries identically. Prioritizing countries according to the number of front-line health care workers, the proportion of the population over 65, and the number of people with comorbidities within each country may exacerbate disadvantage and end up giving the vaccine in large part to wealthy nations. (shrink)

In this paper I take evolutionary biology as an example to reflect on the role of philosophy and on the transformations that philosophy is constantly stimulated to do in its own approach when dealing with science. I consider that some intellectual movements within evolutionary biology (more specifically, the various calls for 'synthesis') express metascientific views, i.e., claims about 'what it is to do research' in evolutionary biology at different times. In the construction of metascientific views I see a fundamental role (...) to be played by philosophy, and, at the same time, a need to complement the philosophical methods with many more methods coming from other sciences. What leads philosophy out of itself is its own attention to scientific practice. My humble methodological suggestions are, at this stage, only meant to help us imagine metascientific views that are built with a more scientific, interdisciplinary approach, in order to attenuate partiality, subjectivity and impressionism in describing the scientific community. And yet, we should not be naïve and imbued with the myth of 'datadriven' research, especially in this field: other complex issues about metascientific views call for a serious, constant philosophical reflection on scientific practice. (shrink)

Landgrebe and Smith (2022) have recently offered an important mathematical argument against the possibility of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): human intelligence is a complex system; complex systems have some properties that cannot be modelled mathematically; hence we have no viable way to build an AI that would be able to emulate human intelligence. The issue of complexity is thus at the heart of the Landgrebe and Smith approach, and they tackle this issue by postulating a set of conditions, derived from (...) mathematics, for a system to be complex. I argue that Hayek’s “Theory of Complex Phenomena” offers an interesting alternative path to understanding what makes complex systems complex. This offers an argument complementary to that of Landgrebe and Smith, which approaches the issue of complexity from an ontological angle, and which is designed to show that AI systems are not the right kind of entity that may interact meaningfully with complex systems. (shrink)

The concept of adaptation is employed in many fields such as biology, psychology, cognitive sciences, robotics, social sciences, even literacy and art,1 and its meaning varies quite evidently according to the particular research context in which it is applied. We expect to find a particularly rich catalogue of meanings within evolutionary biology, where adaptation has held a particularly central role since Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859) throughout important epistemological shifts and scientific findings that enriched and diversified the concept. Accordingly, (...) a conceptual taxonomy of adaptation in evolutionary biology may help to disambiguate it. Interdisciplinary researches focused on adaptation would benefit from such a result. In the present work we recognize and define seven different meanings of adaptation: (1) individual fitness; (2) adaptation of a population; (3) adaptation as the process of natural selection; (4) adaptive traits; (5) molecular adaptation; (6) adaptation as structural tinkering; (7) plasticity. For convenience here, we refer to them as W-, P-, NS-, T-, M-, S- and PL-ADAPTATION. We present the seven meanings in some detail, hinting at their respective origins and conceptual developments in the history of evolutionary thought (references are offered for further deepening). However, it is important to point out that evolution researchers seldom if ever refer to a single meaning purified from the others. This applies also to the authors we cite as representatives of one of the seven meanings. In Discussion and Conclusion draw from our work some future perspectives for adaptation within evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Der letzte Teil der ‚Moralität‘ in der Enyzklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften behandelt das ‚Gewissen‘ als eine dialektische Instanz. Die Bestimmung dieser Dialektik als Äußerung des ‚Objektiven Geistes‘ stellt eine Neuheit in Hegels Denken dar. Mein Beitrag will die Relevanz der Heidelberger Schriften Hegels für die Genese dieser Theorie verdeutlichen. Zu diesem Zweck wird die Rezension zum dritten Band der jacobischen Werke zusammen mit der ersten Ausgabe der Enzyklopädie in Betracht gezogen. Die entsprechende Analyse soll zeigen, dass die Auseinandersetzung mit Jacobi (...) für Hegel wichtig war, um den Begriff einer Dialektik des Gewissens überhaupt zu bestimmen. Gleichzeitig wird sich daraus die Eigenheit der hegelschen Lösung dieser Dialektik erweisen. (shrink)

Il Corso su L’ermeneutica del soggetto problematizza un tema che attraversa sottotraccia l’intera riflessione di Foucault, quello della tecnica. L’articolo, proponendo un dialogo fra Foucault, Heidegger e Simondon, prova a rintracciare lo sviluppo di questo tema, chiedendosi inoltre in che modo la tecnica entri in relazione con i processi di assoggettamento e di soggettivazione.

In a recent paper, Stefan Wintein criticizes my responses to the objections he raised to my modal-epistemic argument (MEA) for the existence of God. In this paper, I continue our debate and respond to Wintein’s criticisms of my previous responses. I argue that Wintein’s criticisms are unsuccessful. As a result, the MEA still stands.

This paper explores some features of the epistemic environment in social media and online communication. We argue that digital environments differ from offline ones in at least two ways: (a) online environments are thoroughly structured and programmed. Every action is defined and limited by the underlying code created by the system’s developers, providing the tools users need to navigate the online space. In contrast, offline environments are open to chance and unpredictability, allowing for events and actions that the system has (...) not predetermined; (b) every action is traced and used to evaluate levels of engagement with content and posts, with significant epistemic consequences. This creates a “dense” environment in which users are deeply entangled. In this regard, the concept of purely passive engagement is challenged, since activities such as just watching a video or reading a post can alter the epistemic landscape and promote specific content with which a person interacts. As a result, online social environments facilitate a variety of indirect communicative and epistemic activities across the network. Given this, the paper suggests that in such settings, attentional disengagement and avoidance should be considered a potential proactive way to modulate self-exposure. This strategy is aimed not only at protecting individuals from harmful content but also at actively shaping the information flow and knowledge structure within the environment. Managing one’s own attention can thus significantly influence how information is perceived and disseminated, essentially controlling the personal and collective epistemic environment. (shrink)

This paper explores the tensions and potential contradictions in the “self-construction” of habits and preferences, arguing that preferences and tastes not only arise from habit formation but also contribute to the development of new habits. Changing tastes necessitates self-reflection on our current preferences and habits, which then become subjects of evaluation, transformation, and alteration from a higher-order perspective. It will be argued that modifying the structure of one’s habits and preferences requires various forms of (self)-distancing: these include the impossibility of (...) immediate transformation, recognizing the gradual nature of change, and acknowledging the limits of direct intentionality and control in the transformative process. These points ultimately reveal the inherent indeterminacy and openness of any self-cultivation endeavor involving preference-based habits, highlighting its balance between controllability and the potential for its loss. (shrink)

First, we will address the unnecessary link between symbio-studies and Gaia, asking for the historical and epistemological reasons why they become associated. In particular, we contend that the association is mediated by the common interest in large-scale physico-chemical and biochemical patterns, rather than by an emphasis on harmony, equilibrium, and cooperation (Visvader 1992). Second, we will ask what Gaia is in a metatheoretical sense: is it a scientific hypothesis, a theory, a metaphor, an inspired invention, or a resurgence of antiscientific (...) attitude? After examining some alternatives that show the importance of metatheorizing, we will define Gaia a ‘scientific narrative’, this being a technical term in a sketchy metatheory. Let us just say, for now, that by narrative we don’t mean fairytale or artistic fiction, but rather a way of telling the history of our planet. We are not going to answer the question whether or not we should ban Gaia from any scientific discourse, nor the question how symbio-students should deal with the traditional association of their field with Gaia. But we hope to frame the dilemma in which symbio-students and the scientific community at large are held in a better way than simply insisting on classic demarcations between science and non-science. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the 21st century, technologies like neural networks, deep learning and “artificial intelligence” (AI) have gradually entered the artistic realm. We witness the development of systems that aim to assess, evaluate and appreciate artifacts according to artistic and aesthetic criteria or by observing people’s preferences. In addition to that, AI is now used to generate new synthetic artifacts. When a machine paints a Rembrandt, composes a Bach sonata, or completes a Beethoven symphony, we say that this is (...) neither original nor real art, but simply the complex imitation and reproduction of existing products of human culture. We face the old question concerning the nature of creativity: what kind of recombination of ideas, unusual analogies, and conceptual connections are considered the mark of originality? Can AI produce artworks? Could machines reach a point at which we consider them genuinely creative? We also need to investigate the challenges posed by AI-art to the notion of authoriality: Who is the author of an artificially generated artifact? An artificial system could be considered just an artist’s and a programmer’s tool. However, we are also fascinated by the idea of autonomous artificial creativity in the aesthetic domain, as a manifestation of highly intelligent behavior. This paper will try to define some key questions around what could it mean to consider a machine creative or even equipped with artistic intentionality. (shrink)

Allocation of very scarce medical interventions such as organs and vaccines is a persistent ethical challenge. We evaluate eight simple allocation principles that can be classified into four categories: treating people equally, favouring the worst-off, maximising total benefits, and promoting and rewarding social usefulness. No single principle is sufficient to incorporate all morally relevant considerations and therefore individual principles must be combined into multiprinciple allocation systems. We evaluate three systems: the United Network for Organ Sharing points systems, quality-adjusted life-years, and (...) disability-adjusted life-years. We recommend an alternative system—the complete lives system—which prioritises younger people who have not yet lived a complete life, and also incorporates prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value principles. (shrink)

To approach the issue of the recent proposal of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) put forth by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd Müller, I suggest to consider the EES as a metascientific view: a description of what’s new in how evolutionary biology is carried out, not only a description of recently learned aspects of evolution. Knowing ‘what is it to do research’ in evolutionary biology, today versus yesterday, can aid training, research and career choices, establishment of relationships and collaborations, decision of (...) funding and research policies, in order to make the field advance for the better. After reviewing the concepts associated to the EES proposal (categorized for convenience as mechanisms, measures, fields, perspectives and applications), I show their transience, and sketch out ongoing disagreements about the EES. Then I examine the deep difficulties, i.e., the enormity and complexity of the covered field, affecting the achievement of trusted metascientific views; the insufficiency of conceptual analysis to capture the substance of scientific research; the entanglement between empirical and metascientific concepts, between multiple chronologies, and between descriptive and normative intentions; and the ineliminable stakeholding of any reviewer involved in the reviewed field. I propose that disciplines such as scientometrics, ethnography, sociology, economics and history, combined with conceptual analysis, inspire a more rigorous approach to the evolutionary biology scientific community, more grounded and shared, confirming or transforming claims for ‘synthesis’ while preserving their maintenance goals. (shrink)

This paper is about evolutionary explanations. They come in different kinds but mostly need traits and functions. Evolutionary theory requires traits to be inheritable although not in a strong genetic sense: ideas of “inheritance pattern” and “inheritable pattern” are explored. Function is also a necessary concept, but complex and diverse, and it lacks causal power on traits. The debate on the evolution of morality is cautious and already far from naive “just-­‐so story” explanations, but theoretical analysis fleshed into morality-­‐related examples (...) can aid towards the development of critically conscious and up-­‐to-­‐date explanatory hypotheses in this field. (shrink)

Hegel’s definition of ‘free will’ and ‘person’ gets over a phenomenological or psychological definition of these concepts. My essay explains how Hegel justifies the placing of his theory of free will in a philosophy of Mind analyzing the concept of ‘recognition’ in the Phenomenology as a section of the Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences as well as the main steps of The practical Spirit, the second part of the section Psychology. With regard to this last science my essay clarifies the essential (...) differences between freedom of the will and freedom of choice. These differences only explain how the free will could develop as objective Spirit in the third science involved by Hegel towards a proper definition of freedom, i.e. the philosophy of Right. In the philosophy of Right as a part of Hegel’s System of philosophical sciences the free will finds its own adequate reality and the concept of a person can be explained without the mistakes caused by a phenomenological or psychological approach to it. Against some interpretations which identify Hegel’s definition of free will with communitarian practices, the final part of my essay focuses on the importance of the concept of a person to explain the general structure of the philosophy of Right. (shrink)

This book reconstructs some of the phases and themes of the debate - never completely celebrated - between René Girard and Jacques Derrida. The volume recapitulates the essential aspects of mimetic theory and traces the development of the theoretical tools underlying the thought of deconstruction to set up the confrontation and meeting between the two great French thinkers. With a preface by Paul Dumouchel.

In this paper we offer an interpretation of the inner relationship between nihilism and the tragic. With reference to the work of Heinz von Foester and to the sciences of complexity, we will argue that the essential feature of the tragic is “autoreferentiality”. Furthermore, arguing in favor of the use of the theological notion of kenōsis as the most precise description of the “history of nihilism”, we will show that the latter is to be understood in terms of the “weakening”, (...) or lowering of all the reference points generated by autotranscendent, etheronomous, social phenomena. The consequence of nihilism is therefore autoreferentiality. This result will offer the opportunity to see both to what extent we are now, at the end of modernity, living a tragic situation and, eventually, to claim – by recalling that autoreferentiality is also the inner logic of freedom – that the tragic is the outcome of modernity, but not a necessary one. (shrink)

Sam Berstler defends a general moral advantage for misleading over lying by arguing that liars, but not misleaders, act unfairly toward the other members of their linguistic community. This article spells out three difficulties for Berstler’s account. First, though Berstler aims to avoid an error theory, it is dubitable that her account fits with intuitions on the matter. Second, there are some lies that do not exhibit the unfairness Berstler identifies. Third, fairness is not the only morally relevant difference between (...) lying and misleading. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to examine Deleuze’s fascination with “spiritual automata” as a counterpoint to his more famous notion, the “body without organs”. I shall argue that both are grounded in a deep reflection, on Deleuze’s part, on the problems and issues generated by Spinoza’s notion of parallel attributes. Ultimately, I argue, the development of the two notions is motivated by identical metaphysical worries regarding the tenability of transformation, persistence, and affective interrelations between individuals. The answer, for both thinkers, (...) is the insertion of a “third” relational term, which virtually interfaces with each without violation of their parallel development. For Spinoza, such term is the absolutely infinite substance; for Deleuze, it is instead the notion of sense and the faculty of sense-making. (shrink)

Hegel’s dispute with Schleiermacher in Berlin had as its premise his reception of Schleiermacher’s Reden über die Religion. My intention is to clarify the history of this reception by arguing that Hegel’s Frankfurt early writings already contain clues as to his reading of Schleiermacher’s work. Differently from previous interpretations, however, I will not support the hypothesis that, during his Frankfurt period, Hegel was influenced by Schleiermacher’s foundations of religion. My contention is that, from the very beginning, Hegel opposed Schleiermacher’s concepts (...) of positivity and polemics as specific features of the Christian religion. This view is confirmed if we analyze the works that Hegel wrote in the Jena period, such as Differenz des Fichte’schen und Schelling’schen Systems der Philosophie, Glauben und Wissen and Phänomenologie des Geistes. My aim is to demonstrate that these works typify Schleiermacher’s approach to the Christian religion, and in so doing, to confute the idea that Hegel’s view on the above-mentioned approach changed over the years. A final aspect that I consider is the enduring nature of Hegel’s conception of the significance of the Reden – an aspect that emerges on analyzing some crucial sentences in the Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. (shrink)

In this short article, I analyze forms of public speech by individuals in positions of power through a framework based on Austin’s theory of speech acts. I argue that because of the illocutionary and perlocutionary force attached to such individuals’ offices and their public figures, their public speech qualifies for being framed as speech acts—which are not covered by even a broad understanding of freedom of speech or right to privacy. Therefore, I formulate a call for the assessment of public (...) speech by individuals in positions of power through a framework based on “linguistic responsibility.” This framework accounts for the peculiar power structure that such individuals can and do exploit to bring about considerable real-world effects through what could be understood as an exploitation of their speech act power. (shrink)

In Glauben und Wissen as well as in the Wissenschaft der Logik Hegel states that the kantian question: «How are synthetical judgements a priori possible?» is speculative in its own. Despite this statement Hegel argues that the results of Kant’s theory of judgement in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft contradicts its speculative sense. So in Hegel’s opinion the question is still waiting for an answer. Aim of this contribution is to make clear how Hegel solves this issue in a speculative (...) way without going back to a precritical philosophy. Focusing on Hegel’s theory of ‘Subjective Spirit’ in the Enzyklopädie this contribution wants to clarify the Hegel’s solution to a pivotal problem of criticism through the sublation of a phenomenological approach to the idea of ‘Reason’ and his theory of intelligence as a part of the ‘Theoretical Spirit’. (shrink)

Schon am Anfang seiner Lehrtätigkeit war Kant kritisch gegenüber den gängigen Definitionen der Philosophie, weil er bereits eine eigene Reform der Metaphysik entworfen hatte. Um diese These zu zu stützen, beschäftigt sich der Beitrag mit Kants Behandlung von Martin Knutzens Definition der Philosophie und dem dritten Teil von Kants Schrift Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (1755), die zwei neue metaphysische Grundsätze enthält. Mit ihrer innovativen Theorie von Zeit und Raum liefern «der Satz der Aufeinanderfolge» und «der Satz des Zugleichseins» (...) eine neue Begründung der Psychologie und Kosmologie, die eine Alternative zur Theorie des physischen Einflusses sowie zu Leibniz’ vorherbestimmter Harmonie darstellen. Kants Theorie einer allgemein begründeten Harmonie wird somit als ein Versuch vorgestellt, die Grundsätze der Metaphysik zu erneuern, um die Bestimmung der Philosophie als Wissenschaft von den Gründen der Dinge im Vergleich zum zeitgenössischen Rationalismus besser zu rechtfertigen. (shrink)

Hegel’s dispute with Schleiermacher in Berlin concerned two disciplines: dogmatics and philosophy. My contribution reconstructs the proper historical circumstances for each of Hegel’s disputes, defining the theoretical unity that underlies both. That unit strictly depends on a theory of ‘objective mind’ that is fulfilled between Heidelberg and Berlin. My contribution uses as a starting point to explain what is new in the Berlin disputes, and what is a repetition of Hegel’s lecture of Schleiermacher’s Dialogues about Religion, which he had criticized (...) at least since the Frankfurt times. Showing the relevance of the theory of ‘objective mind’ for the interpretation of the Hegelian concept of religion as a sphere of absolute mind, my contribution corrects two main mistakes of twentieth-century interpretations of Hegel: 1. Hegel doesn’t consider religion as a cultural phenomenon simply cancelled by philosophy; 2. his philosophy is not a speculative translation of Christian dogmas. The clarification of the reasons why Hegel was against Schleiermacher are therefore an attempt to remove reasons to be against Hegel's concept of religion. (shrink)